Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838)

by White, Linda J.

  Kit looked down at the controls of the Boston Whaler. “Where would a boat like this fuel up?”

  “Norfolk, Wachapreague, Chincoteague, Ocean City. That’s basically it along the Delmarva Peninsula.”

  “You think marinas would notice a group of Latinos getting fuel?”

  Rick smiled. “Oh, yeah.” He cut the engine back as they approached the area offshore from where Kit found the boy’s body. “How long do you figure the kid drifted in the water?”

  “Initially, the ME guessed no more than thirty-six hours. The autopsy will be more accurate.” She put her hand to her brow, shielding her eyes from the sun, which had begun its descent to the horizon. From the ocean, Assateague looked like the sandy spit it was, a white strip stretching from north to south, untamed, and unspoiled.

  “And he was strangled, right?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You got that from the news?”

  Rick laughed. “Heard it in town.”

  Kit let it pass. “The waves are breaking from the northeast. Is that the usual pattern?”

  “In the summer. In winter or when a storm comes up, that can change.”

  “So the current would run south along the beach, right?”

  “Yes, it would slip south. You’ve felt it when you’re in the water, I’m sure.”

  Kit looked up toward the northeast. “So if he fell off a boat, we’re talking up there somewhere,” she gestured toward the vast ocean.

  “Yep.” Rick squinted. “That’s quite a crime scene.”

  David O’Connor sat on the front porch of Kit’s grandmother’s former home, in an old white wicker rocker, watching the sun slide toward the horizon. Tomorrow he would begin painting the house. He planned to go to bed early and get up early to avoid working in the heat. He had his shirt off, and was massaging some cream into the scar on his shoulder, stuff that supposedly softened the collagen fibers and improved mobility. It was hard, though, to reach the bigger scar on his back, and frankly he wondered if the cream wasn’t just another one of his sister’s snake oil compounds.

  He capped the jar and pulled his shirt back on, then decided to walk across the street and over to the dock to watch the rest of the sunset. As he walked down the steps and the screen door slammed behind him, he automatically thought of his gun. Half the reason he’d come to Chincoteague was to get away from that, but old habits die hard, and he had to set his jaw to keep from turning around to retrieve it.

  Walking through the motel parking lot he could hear kids playing in the swimming pool out front, and his mind turned again to the little dead boy on the beach. It’s not your case, he told himself, but he couldn’t help wondering how the boy got there, and where his parents were. Was he dead when he hit the water or did someone choke him then throw him overboard, still alive?

  Shaking his head to dislodge those thoughts, he looked through the motel office window. He saw the front desk clerk, a young woman named Maria, waved to her, and continued walking through the parking lot and out onto the blue-gray weathered dock. A few small boats bobbed in slips near the shore and a couple of youngsters, two boys wearing Washington Nationals baseball caps, stood on the dock. One of them had a small line in his hand, the other a net. They peered excitedly over the edge and David knew they had a crab nibbling their bait.

  The sun sat just above the horizon, a blood orange disk lending its dying light to the shimmering atmosphere. The marshes to the west, deep in shadow, looked purple now. David could still smell them. He was a long way from D.C.

  When he stood at the end of the dock, he felt like he was in the middle of the water, surrounded and enveloped by the colors of the sunset and the deepening twilight. The waves beneath him lapped gently against the pier and birds swooped all around, looking for one last morsel of fish, their wings making soft whooshing noises in the air. As David breathed slowly, evenly, his soul reached out for the beauty before him.

  The sunsets were why he’d taken the house on South Main Street, and in just the few days he’d been there, he’d not been disappointed. Every night seemed different; tonight, a symphony of deep red yielding to pinks and purples played out before him on the horizon and echoed on the water, first on the channel, then in the runs and sloughs beyond the marshes across the way. He saw waterfowl lift off from a marsh, and a large white bird land on a channel marker, and he heard fish plop as they jumped up to catch the insects that hovered over the water. He looked down at the dark, swiftly moving water, and for a second he imagined taking one step forward, and slipping into its embrace.

  Muttering an oath he diverted his eyes. He could hear a boat coming up the channel. He stood still and watched it make its way north, its running lights defining its outline. It was a good-sized powerboat, something like a Grady-White or a Boston Whaler, with a small canopy. It cut through the water efficiently, undeterred by the strong currents. David watched as it pulled into the Coast Guard station just a few hundred yards away.

  Then it was quiet again, except for the call of a night bird.

  As darkness fell, he heard footsteps on the pier, and thought it was one of the crabbers, but when he turned and looked, the footsteps belonged to Maria, from the motel office. “¡Buenos noches, señorita!” he said. He found himself anticipating her smile. She wore a sundress with a white background and big splashes of bright flowers. Her thick, dark hair framed her face and fell to her shoulders.

  “So how are you tonight, Señor David?” she asked in her thickly accented voice.

  He responded in Spanish, telling her he felt tired from surfing and running errands and that he was going to go back to the house, read for a while, and go to sleep. She loved the fact he would speak to her in her language, and he was happy to please her. It seemed such a small thing.

  “¿Dónde comió usted esta noche?” she asked. Where did you eat tonight?

  He told her he hadn’t eaten, and she frowned at him, pursing her lips, and began making restaurant suggestions. Finally he raised his hand, laughing, and told her he would just probably make a sandwich and then go to bed.

  They chatted some more about her job, the beach, and her plans for the weekend. Off in the distance, toward the motel pool, he heard voices again, children’s voices, and he looked at Maria, and casually asked her if she’d seen the story on the news about the little boy found washed up on the beach.

  She said she hadn’t, but David knew a television blared nonstop in the motel office, and certainly that story would get her attention. He didn’t know where she was from, just that she was a Latina, and a college student working at the motel for the summer. “Some mama is missing her niño, yes?” he said to her, trying to stimulate her interest. “Wonder why they were out on the ocean?”

  Her eyes flickered. “Probably fishing, like everyone else,” she said in English, and David knew at that moment that there was more to it than she felt willing to share.

  That night, he lay in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the boy, about Maria, and this FBI agent, Kit, and wondering how a world that could be so beautiful could also be so cruel.

  3

  THE MEDICAL EXAMINER HAD SCHEDULED THE AUTOPSY OF THE LITTLE BOY for 9:00 a.m. at the morgue in Norfolk. Kit planned to be there.

  The cottage she’d rented from Connie Jester sat perched on the east side of Chincoteague Island, overlooking the Assateague Channel. From her deck, she had a view of the great, red-and-white-striped lighthouse and the bridge linking the two islands, and she could launch her kayak right from her yard. With the windows open, she could hear the shriek of herons and the plopping of fish in the water.

  As dawn lifted its light over the horizon, Kit stood on her deck and ate a carton of yogurt. She inhaled the smell of the salt marsh. The cattle egrets and marsh hens stalked the shallows, catching minnows and alewives, the mainstays of their diets. She saw an osprey leave its nest in a strong, arching flight, and counted four different kinds of gulls flapping about the marshes.

  She had
n’t slept well the night before. Images of the beach child, and questions about him, plagued her. Who was he? Where had he come from? Where was his mother? And then, more broadly, did God really count the sparrows? Where was he when someone was strangling the Latino boy? Watching?

  Kit had watched other autopsies but they had been performed on criminals, a young man shot robbing a store, and a drug dealer who’d overdosed. This would be the autopsy of a child, and his age and the circumstances of his death set her feelings on edge. She masked up, fully aware that doing so would in no way block the smells to which she would be exposed. When a morgue worker offered her a dab of Vicks VapoRub to dot beneath her nose, she took it. Then, notebook and pen in hand, she tightened her resolve and entered the room.

  “Feel free to sit down if you want to. I’ll narrate,” the medical examiner said, looking up as she entered. Dr. Scott McGregor had already joked with Kit about their common Celtic roots, which only made her think about David O’Connor. She wondered again how he had been shot, and why he was on Chincoteague for six whole months.

  Dr. McGregor had two people helping him, his regular assistant and one student. True to his word, he narrated as he cut, listing everything from the sand in the little boy’s ears to the weight of his liver, from the contents of his stomach to the size of his skull.

  Kit wrote it all down, although she knew she’d get it in official form eventually. She asked a pertinent question or two along the way, and requested clarification when the doctor said something she didn’t understand. When they finished, she sat down with the doctor in his office. He lit up a cigar. “I know I’m not supposed to smoke in these government buildings,” he said, “but sometimes nothing but a stogie will do.”

  She smiled her acquiescence and looked down at her notes. “Dr. McGregor, how long do you think the victim had been dead?”

  He took a long draw on his cigar, and let the smoke drift from his mouth. “What’s the ocean temperature off Assateague right now? 70? 71?”

  She hadn’t checked that, but her failure in that regard didn’t slow the doctor down.

  “Being submerged in water makes a big difference. Salt water, too. The rule of thumb is one day on the ground equals one week in the water equals one month underground. I found very little evidence of decomposition and only a little of predation or infestation, so my preliminary estimate is that death occurred within twenty hours of the time you found the body on the beach. Furthermore, the body had been on the beach less than half an hour before you got there.”

  “I think it had just washed up.”

  Dr. McGregor nodded, and went on talking about flies, crabs, and other agents of decomposition, and Kit found her mind taking it in like medicine, as necessary but not pleasant. She wondered how he could continue to live a normal life, with normal relationships, without seeing everyone as a future decaying corpse. “The cause of death will be ligature strangulation,” he said.

  Kit snapped back to attention. “So he was dead when he hit the water?”

  “Right. No water in his lungs. Someone wrapped something—a cord or a rope—around his neck, killed him, and dumped him overboard.”

  “What about those marks on his wrists and his arms?”

  “His right wrist looks like someone grabbed him like this,” he demonstrated with his own hands, “like adults do sometimes. His fingernails are broken, which could indicate he defended himself, but could also just mean he’s an active boy or that he’s involved in manual labor.”

  “Like ag work?” Kit asked. “Could he be a farm worker?”

  “At age eight? He’s not supposed to be.”

  Kit tapped her pen against her leg, caught up now in possible scenarios.

  “I’m ruling it a homicide,” the ME said.

  Kit’s mind whirled. “How far would a body travel in the ocean in twenty hours?” she asked, trying to pinpoint where the boy might have fallen off of a boat.

  “I’d suggest you ask an oceanographer about currents. Try the Virginia Institute for Marine Sciences over in Gloucester.” He pronounced it “Glosster.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Oh, Agent McGovern, one more thing.”

  Kit refocused on him.

  “My assistant found some interesting things in the boy’s clothing. You know how he had his sleeves rolled up?”

  Kit nodded.

  “There were some tomato seeds caught up in them. It’s not very likely they would have been deposited there in the ocean. And you heard me when I said I’d found lots of tomato seeds in his gut, like tomatoes were a major source of food. Also, the kid had acorns in his pocket. Six of them. I’m thinking you might do well to have a forensic botanist take a look at those things. We’ll bag them for you.”

  A forensic botanist. Kit pondered that idea. As she walked out of the ME’s office, exhaustion swept over her, and she realized her entire body had been tense for hours. She pulled out her cell phone. The Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mark Handley, had told her to call him with the autopsy results.

  “Look,” she explained, sensing his resistance after she gave him the basics, “this isn’t just a little boy. We found his body on a federal reservation. He was murdered. Why was a Latino boy out on the ocean? Why did someone kill him?” She took a deep breath. “I think we may be looking at something bigger than just one murder. Maybe it’s trafficking in drugs. Maybe the kid knew something he shouldn’t know. Maybe it’s illegals, coming in by boat.”

  She waited during a long pause. Kit’s heart drummed. Then the AUSA indicated he would conditionally accept the case. She could proceed. Kit hung up her cell phone. Overhead, a crow in a pine tree cackled.

  Where had the boy been dumped into the ocean? The ME had suggested the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences might help. And the only problem with consulting with VIMS was the institution’s connection with the College of William & Mary. And the only problem with William & Mary was its association with one Eric Allen Sandford, J.D. PhD, assistant professor of ethics at the school’s Marshall-Wythe School of Law.

  Eric was Kit McGovern’s ex-husband.

  They had met at the University of Virginia one spring morning when the gardens near the Lawn were in full bloom and all the world seemed to be in love. They were both pre-law, and like most UVA students, they loved Charlottesville, deep discussions, and Greenberry’s coffee. Justice was their mutual passion, but their paths had taken different turns after graduation. Kit went on to get a master’s in forensic psychology while Eric went to law school at George Washington University. When she accepted a job as a police officer trainee in the Fairfax Criminal Justice Academy, they had a salary they could live on and so they married.

  Seven years of hard work followed. He didn’t understand her decision to enter law enforcement rather than the law. Still, her choice of career certainly paid the bills and so he didn’t complain. Then she applied to and was accepted by the FBI, went through the Academy, and was assigned to the Washington Field Office. He continued his education, first attaining a J.D., then going on for more graduate work in philosophy. It seemed to Kit he enjoyed studying the law more than practicing it, but she recognized his years as a student couldn’t go on forever: his PhD in legal ethics was within reach.

  By the time he finished his dissertation and attained that coveted degree, they had been married seven years. She was six months away from being thirty years old and well aware of her biological clock. She looked forward to having children, maybe even adopting as well, giving a child from Latin America a home.

  If she’d sensed a growing distance in their relationship, she’d chosen to ignore it. Degrees in hand, he obtained a teaching position at William & Mary, the culmination of a long-held dream. And that’s when he told Kit he really didn’t want to be married anymore.

  The shock of his announcement, and the trauma of the next year, left Kit reeling. Her entire world felt like it was tilting, like the Titanic about to slip into the sea. She tried to get her husband to g
o to counseling, tried engaging the help of their minister, even tried petitioning his family to help. And what about their faith? Christianity was part of the glue of their marriage … had he forgotten the tenets of their faith? Their vows? But Eric had made up his mind, and no one could talk him out of the split.

  Her divorce was Crisis No. 1, and two years later, she still grieved the loss of their marriage and her hopes for a family. Someday, her minister told her, God would make everything right. That seemed little comfort to Kit.

  She dealt with her feelings of rejection in her usual way: she sucked up her gut, put away her desire for children, and poured herself into her calling as an agent of justice in this life. She felt privileged to be with the FBI, but her passion, coupled with a complete disregard for political correctness, had precipitated Crisis No. 2, in which she’d taken an unpopular stand on a high-profile criminal case, pursuing a suspect her boss thought irrelevant. She was sidelined, forbidden to follow her instincts, and she had no choice but to back off. Then a reporter began asking questions along those same lines. Her boss accused her of leaking information, which she hadn’t. Still, it was clear she had lost her boss’s trust. When she found out Norfolk needed a scuba-certified agent, she had applied for the job and been accepted. Now, here she was, pursuing justice in Crisis No. 3, justice for a little boy delivered into her path by the pounding surf of the Atlantic.

  And where was God during all this? She had no idea. She’d almost stopped asking.

  Dr. Harry Light, an oceanographer at VIMS, had spent his career studying currents in the mid-Atlantic. He stroked his beard. “No one’s ever asked me before how far a 54-pound body might be carried in typical August sea conditions off of Assateague Island,” he said to Kit.

  He walked over to the overstuffed bookshelves in his office, and began thumbing through a thick volume. “Let’s see,” he murmured. “We could create a 54-pound dummy, equip it with a transmitter, drop it overboard …”

  “But sir,” Kit said, “that wouldn’t simulate a real human body, would it? I mean, a corpse begins emitting gases even in the early stages of decomposition, and wouldn’t that make it rise and fall in the water?”