She slid her feet into a pair of yellow sandals, and looked over at Wyatt, who was standing in front of the dresser mirror. Stoopid was perched right in front of him, warbling away.
“Stoopid, if I wanted to tie a Windsor knot, I would have already done it,” Wyatt said as he finished with his tie.
“Be careful,” Maggie said, smiling. “You’re getting to be as bad as me.”
“No, I am not,” Wyatt said. “I’m just humoring him.”
He straightened his white dress shirt, tucking it more neatly into his gray trousers. Wyatt hated dressing up, too, preferring shorts and one of his Hawaiian shirts, but he still looked more appropriate than Maggie felt.
“You look nice,” Maggie said.
“I know. I’m thinking I might hit on some of the other moms.”
“Oh, I forgot you were a jerk,” Maggie said.
“Sure you did.” He stopped in front of her and put his hands on her waist. “You’re just pretending you did to get back on my good side.”
“Okay, yeah,” Maggie said. “I mean, I’ve had to have sex with you, and everything.”
“Especially everything,” Wyatt countered.
Sky’s voice popped up from the open doorway.
“Could we please at least make it to coffee without me having to barf all over the place?”
Sky looked so beautiful that Maggie wanted her to go change. To go put on something she would wear any other Saturday, so that Maggie could have a little more time.
Her hair was up in its usual bun, though a little bit neater, and she’d been very careful with her modest but immaculate make-up. She was wearing a dress that she’d bought back in May. It was a black sheath that hugged her figure and hung to her knees and made her look like a twenty-five-year old woman.
“You’re going to miss our little conversations when you’re gone, kiddo,” Wyatt said.
“Oh, yeah,” Sky said, rolling her eyes.
“Maybe we can Skype you when we’re flirting, so you don’t get homesick.”
“OMG, you’re helpless,” she said. “Why would you Skype when you can just FaceTime me on your phone? But don’t.”
Maggie pulled away from Wyatt. “Can you go see if Kyle’s ready?”
“You mean can I bug off? Sure.”
He walked out of the room, kissing the top of Sky’s head as he passed. Maggie walked over to her.
“You look incredible.”
“Thanks.”
Maggie sighed. “Are you excited?”
“Yeah, sure. I don’t have to remember a locker combination anymore.” Maggie smiled at her. “Of course I’m excited, but not because I’m abandoning my mother, so don’t get all goopy and crazy, okay?”
“Okay.”
Sky wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and sighed. “Geez, dude.”
Maggie breathed in deeply. Gardenias.
Maggie and Wyatt sat in the second row of the parents’ section. Kyle was a couple of rows back with her parents, who had gotten back a few days earlier. Maggie had seen Boudreaux too, but he had slipped away into the crowd.
The day was cloudy and overcast, but there was a nice breeze, and Maggie didn’t have to fight the sun’s glare on her phone. She had already stuck it up over the head of the blond man in front of her when Sky walked up to the podium.
It took her just a moment to start speaking, but her voice was clear and strong, her head high.
“I started writing my valedictorian speech weeks ago,” she started. “I went through seven drafts of a speech about becoming leaders in our communities, and I hated every one of them. But a week ago, I wrote a new speech. Something that I could actually stand up here and say, and know that what I was saying was from my heart.”
She glanced down at the podium for a moment before speaking again.
“We were born into a world that has never been seen before. A world where a high-school student in Franklin County can build a lasting friendship with a high-schooler in Kenya. A world where it seems like at least half of life is lived online. It’s a world where the cure for cancer is right at our fingertips, and where we see, all the time, that one person really can make a difference, no matter what age they are.”
She stopped, took a breath, and went on.
“The internet and social media have made it possible, just in our lifetimes, to make the world smaller, more accessible, and safer. To make us more tolerant, kinder, and more aware.” Sky stopped and looked around the first few rows of students. “But the internet and social media have also created unprecedented opportunities for every one of us to fall short of our potential as human beings. Kids our age, and much younger, live for their fifteen minutes of internet fame, and don’t care how they get it. Life isn’t lived, it’s only photographed and shared. Friendships aren’t built with experiences shared face to face but with a click and a Like.”
Maggie saw the man in front of her, and his wife, shift a little in their seats.
“Kids like us, the ones born into this generation, have a much-greater chance of being bullied and tormented and stalked, and kids like us have much-greater opportunities to humiliate, frighten, and attack others.”
“Good for you, kid,” Wyatt said under his breath.
“This isn’t the only reason that teen suicides have increased dramatically,” Sky said. “It isn’t the only reason that it’s almost common for a kid to walk into a high school or public place and open fire. But I believe, in my heart, that it is one of the biggest reasons.”
Sky glanced over towards Maggie.
“When my mom went to this high school just twenty years ago, school violence meant two kids fighting in the parking lot. Now it means a kid walking into the school and killing dozens.”
Sky paused a moment and put her hands on either side of the podium. Maggie couldn’t believe she looked so self-assured. The girl who, two years ago, couldn’t speak without rolling her eyes.
“We were born into this new world, and in just a few minutes, we will be graduating into a world that we can change. We are the ones who can work to exploit the good possibilities of the internet without exploiting each other. We are the ones who can make it clear that it is never okay for a kid to take a gun to school, and we are the ones who can change the circumstances that make that kid think he or she wants to.”
Sky paused and scanned the crowd of students in front of her, most of whom she had known her whole life.
“We are the generation who can turn bullies into outcasts and the bullied into victors. We are the generation who can make it cool to stand up for others and shameful to tear them down. We are the ones who can put the internet back into its rightful place, and start living in and experiencing the real world again. A world that is safer, more exciting, and more uplifting than it was when we woke up this morning.”
She stopped, took a smooth breath, and let it out.
“We can’t un-invent the internet or social media, but we can re-invent how we use them. We can’t undo the tragedy and violence that have already taken place, but we can work to change the climate that allowed them.” Sky looked up from her notes.
“We come from a very small part of Florida. We come from a very tiny part of the world; but that doesn’t mean that we’re too small to change it.”
She looked out at the crowd and gave a smile. “Thank you.”
The crowd burst into enthusiastic applause, and Maggie would have joined in, but she was still holding her phone high. She brought it down when the row of parents in front of her stood.
She stood, too, and turned the phone around. “Did you catch it all?” She asked, beaming.
Dwight’s face was almost as pale as the hospital pillows, and the FaceTime app wasn’t necessarily kind, but he looked good.
“Reckon I’m crying ’cause they took my Percoset away?” D
wight asked, smiling. He shoved himself up a little bit further in the bed. “I’d stand and applaud but they still haven’t brought me my underwear.”
The 10th book in the Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense series, Overboard, will be out in August. Until then, have you started the spin-off Still Waters series, featuring Wyatt’s good friend, Sheriff Evan Caldwell? If not, read on for a look at the first book in the series, Dead Reckoning.
ONE
People who dream about quiet country nights have never been in the country after dark.
Even after their dogs had shut up, Mooney White and Grant Woodburn were surrounded by nothing but noise. The crickets and the frogs were screaming at each other, and there was a light breeze, nice for June, moving through the trees that had been bothersome to the men before they’d finally bagged their fill.
It was just past three in the morning, and dark-dark. The men were in the ass end of Gulf County, FL, in the woods just north of Wewahitchka and near the Dead Lakes Recreation Area. The low, thick cloud cover made the moon pointless.
Mooney was a black man in his late forties. He was dressed in an old pair of his blue work pants and a navy windbreaker. The many spots of white in his close-cropped hair looked like a little patch of fireflies in the night. He used his flashlight to guide their steps over rocks and fallen limbs. His .22 rifle was slung over his shoulder, and he held his dog’s leash in the other hand.
Grant Woodburn, a redheaded man just a bit younger than his best friend, held his dog’s leash in one hand, and a .410 single shot in the other. Their bag of coons was slung around his neck.
The men’s boots crunched softly atop the thick carpet of pine needles. Ahead of them, the two dogs were almost soundless in their passage.
It was Mooney who first spotted the dim lights. They rounded a thick copse of shrubs and old cypress, and the two circles of light were just visible through the trees, about a hundred yards ahead.
“Hey, Woodburn,” he said. “You left the lights on in my truck, I’m gonna kill you.”
Woodburn stopped and looked at the lights. “Man, I didn’t leave your lights on,” he said. There was a high-pitched buzzing near his right ear, and he brushed at it with the sleeve of his Carhartt jacket. “We ain’t even over there.” He lifted his arm again and pointed off to the right. “We’re over there.”
Mooney’s dog, a fawn-colored Ladner Black Mouth cur, went to tugging on his leash. Mooney tensed up on the leash and made a sound almost like he was getting something out of his teeth. The dog stopped, and the leash got some slack to it again. Mooney stopped, too.
“Those lights is about out,” he said. “Somebody’s gonna be pissed when they get back to their vehicle.”
Woodburn looked over at him as he jerked slightly on his own leash. His brown and white Beagle stood stiffly where he was, looking toward the truck.
“Reckon we should go shut his lights off for him?” Woodburn asked.
“If the fool left his doors unlocked,” Mooney answered.
“Man, this is right around where we heard that shot a while back,” Woodburn said, his voice slightly hushed.
Mooney stopped walking. His dog and then his friend followed suit.
“That don’t necessarily mean nothin’,” Mooney said quietly.
“Maybe we should just go to your truck and call the police or somethin’,” Woodburn whispered.
“Man, we got two guns,” Mooney said. “Besides, what are we gonna tell ’em? Haul y’all asses out here to shut this fool’s lights off? You watch too much TV.”
He made a clicking noise with his tongue, and men and dogs veered off their intended path and headed for the lights. When they were about fifty feet out, Mooney squinted at the pickup that sat silently in the clearing. From where they STOOD they were looking at the truck head on. The driver’s side door was standing open. The interior light either didn’t work or had already burned out.
“I know that truck,” Mooney said under his breath.
It was a black Ford F-150, which in Gulf County was like saying its name was John. But the Gators antenna topper was ringing a bell for Mooney.
“Whose is it?” Woodburn asked.
“Hold on, I’m thinking,” Mooney answered. He was quiet for a moment. “That’s Sheriff Hutchins’ truck.”
“Are you sure?” his friend asked him.
“Yeah, man, I put a new tranny in it last year,” Mooney answered.
“Aw, man, I don’t like it,” Woodburn said. His beagle, Trot, had set to whining.
“I’m not real excited, either,” Mooney said. “But maybe he needs help or somethin’.”
“Not from us, man,” Grant said. “Maybe from the cops.”
“Man, pull your pants up,” Mooney said. “Norman, let’s go,” he said to his dog, and started following him slowly into the clearing.
Mooney and Norman were in the lead, Woodburn and Trot lagging a bit behind, which was definitely Woodburn’s choice and not the dog’s. The beagle strained at his leash.
As Mooney got closer, he realized that the weird shininess on the driver’s side window wasn’t some trick of the light. Something on the window, all over it. He stopped walking. A thin sheet of moisture had suddenly appeared on his onyx skin, and he swiped at it with one huge, calloused hand.
“Sheriff?” he called out, flicking his flashlight on and off against the windshield. The flashlight wasn’t a particularly powerful one. Its light bounced off the glass, revealing nothing. “Hey, Sheriff? It’s Mooney White!”
The crickets and frogs went silent. For a few moments, there was just the wind in the trees and the quiet keening of the dogs.
“Shut up, Norman!” Mooney snapped, and both dogs quieted. A new sound, a faint one, reached Mooney’s ears. “You hear that?”
Both men listened for a moment. “Radio,” Woodburn whispered finally.
“Hell’s up in here?” Mooney asked himself mostly.
He flicked the flashlight on again, trained it at the open door. In the edge of the light, he saw something, and dropped the beam lower. Beneath the door, he saw pants. Knees of pants. And one hand just hanging there.
“Aw hell, man,” Woodburn whispered. “This ain’t right at all.”
Mooney slid his rifle down his arm, released the safety with his flashlight hand. The light bobbed off to the side of the truck.
“Sheriff?” Mooney called again. “Scarin’ Mooney just a little bit here.”
There was no answer. Norman gave out a couple of barks, higher-pitched than some people would expect from such a sturdy dog. Mooney gave him his lead, and followed Norman as the dog pulled toward the truck. Mooney tugged him off to the side, made him circle wide, about eight or ten feet from the old Ford. He could hear Woodburn several yards behind him, whispering to himself.
When Mooney had gotten round to the back side of the open door, he pointed the flashlight at it.
“Oh, hellfire,” Mooney said to himself.
Sheriff Hutchins was slumped forward on his knees, his upper body hung up on the open door. Closer up, the black on the window wasn’t black at all, but a deep red, and there was a lot more of it on the inside of the door.
Mooney stood there staring, barely hearing his best friend gagging behind him, or Lynyrd Skynrd on the Sheriff’s truck radio, singing about going home.
TWO
The cell phone bleated, vibrated, and did a little jig on the built-in teak nightstand. Evan Caldwell reached over and thumbed the answer button without looking at the screen.
“This is Vi,” a deep voice intoned before he had a chance to speak.
“So it would seem,” Evan answered. She always said it like that, deliberately and with brevity, like a newscaster introducing himself.
“You need to get out to Wewa,” she said. “It’s very serious.”
“I’m off to
day, Vi,” he said.
“Not anymore,” she said, her voice like gravel that had been soaked in lye. “We need you to get out there immediately.”
“I don’t think that I actually know where it is,” he said.
“You may not know how to pronounce Wewahitchka, but certainly you can recognize it on a map,” she replied. “Take 71 straight to Wewa. Go to the Shell station at the intersection of 71 and 22. You’ll be met by Chief Beckett.”
“Is he an Indian chief?”
He heard Vi try to sigh quietly. She was Sheriff Hutchins’ assistant, and had apparently been with the Sheriff’s Office since law enforcement was invented. Evan had only been there a few weeks and had yet to make a good impression on her. Granted, he hadn’t put forth much effort. It seemed rather pointless, considering he was from “out of town” and would probably be gone again before she could decide if she liked him.
“He is the Chief of Police in Wewa,” she said. “Lieutenant Caldwell, this is a very grave matter, which I don’t want to explain over the phone. Chief Beckett will fill you in, then lead you to the scene.”
Evan was mostly awake at this point, and her voice told him that his sarcasm would be unappreciated and possibly inappropriate.
“Did the Sheriff ask you to call me?” he asked her as he sat up.
There was silence on her end for a moment. When she finally spoke, he thought maybe her voice cracked just a little. “Please just go, as quickly as possible,” she said, and hung up.
Evan looked at his phone for a moment, then checked the time. It was just after four in the morning. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed at his face as the teak sole of the master stateroom chilled his feet.
Evan was just shy of forty-two and starting to collect tiny lines at the corners of his eyes and crease lines along the sides of his mouth. His eyes were a bright, clear green that was surprising beneath his black hair and thick eyelashes. The very narrow, white scar that ran from the left corner of his mouth down to his chin kept him from being too pretty, or so his wife Hannah liked to say.
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