Squall Line (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 9)

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  Stuart Newman appeared to be eating a late lunch or an early dinner, and he looked up from his plate as the sliding door opened. Maggie and Wyatt followed the man out.

  “The police have some more questions,” Mr. Newman said, his tone a mixture of weariness and anxiety.

  “Now what?” Stuart asked, clearly exasperated.

  Maggie disliked him instantaneously. He was not an attractive kid; quite a bit overweight and with bright red hair that was wild to the point of ugly. His looks wouldn’t have meant much if he didn’t have such an angry, entitled look on his face, and a clear ring of arrogance to his tone.

  “Hi, Stuart,” Wyatt said almost cheerfully, and Maggie knew the kid was done.

  “Who are you?”

  “Stuart,” the father said quietly. The kid didn’t seem to hear him.

  “I’m Wyatt Hamilton with the Sheriff’s Office, and this is Lt. Redmond,” Wyatt answered. “We’d like to ask you some questions about Adrian Nichols.”

  “Well, why don’t you ask him, ’cause I’ve been at your office for the last three hours or something and now I’m trying to eat.”

  “Stuart,” the father said again, to the same effect. The mother hadn’t said a word yet.

  “Nobody seems to be able to find your friend Adrian,” Wyatt said. “You know where he is?”

  The kid didn’t really try to hide his amusement. “You mean, like, the whole Sheriff’s department can’t find him?”

  “I mean his parents don’t know where he is,” Wyatt said. “No one’s seen him since yesterday evening.”

  The kid looked under his bread and then at his mother. “Why did you put brown mustard on this? You know it gives me heartburn.”

  “We were out of the yellow,” she answered. Her voice was quiet, and while not quite timid, it wasn’t exactly confidant, either.

  “Geez.”

  “Stuart? You know where Adrian is?” Wyatt asked.

  “No, man,” Stuart said. “I don’t.”

  “You sure? You’re his best friend, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not his girlfriend.” He finally looked up from his plate. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Where does he hang out when he’s not at home?”

  The kid shrugged his large shoulders. “Wherever.”

  “Stuart, please show these officers some respect,” the father said quietly. “A deputy has been shot.”

  “Well, I didn’t shoot him, so…” The kid pushed back his chair and heaved himself out of it. “I haven’t talked to Adrian since yesterday, and I took down my YouTube channel. So leave me alone already.”

  Maggie couldn’t believe the nerve on the kid. She’d seen it in many adults, but never in a high school kid. Not with the law, and not with a lawman the size of Wyatt.

  The kid headed toward them, as though to go into the house. Wyatt held up a finger when the kid was almost abreast of him.

  “How old are you, Stuart?”

  The kid’s chest got a little higher. “Eighteen.”

  Wyatt smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “Excellent! Come with me for a minute.”

  He started leading the kid out to the yard.

  “Uh, shouldn’t we be present?” the father asked.

  “He’s eighteen,” Wyatt said. “We’ll just be a minute.”

  The father looked at Maggie as she started after them. “He’s not going to hurt him or anything, is he?”

  “No. No, not at all,” Maggie answered. “Sometimes it’s just better to speak privately.”

  She knew for a fact that Wyatt wanted to toss this kid around for a while, and she’d seen him do more than a little damage more than a few times. But she’d never known someone so even-tempered, so able to choose when to let his anger, and his might, have their own way.

  She hurried to catch up with them. Stuart was mumbling, but she didn’t catch what he was saying. She had almost caught up when Wyatt stopped and faced the kid and popped his fists on his hips.

  “Listen up, kid. You not only bully and harass people, but you make and upload videos you have no business making or uploading—”

  “Hey, I know my First Amendment rights, so don’t even,” the kid said. “And my channel happens to be popular.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about the First Amendment,” Wyatt said evenly.

  “My father’s a lawyer.”

  “He’s a CPA with a law degree,” Wyatt snapped. “So let me give you some legal advice that’s actually applicable to your situation. You might not get charged for putting up that video of Ryan Warner. You might not even get charged for uploading to the public the shooting of a Franklin County Sheriff’s Deputy. A deputy whose family didn’t need to see their father or husband or son get a bullet in the abdomen because he was trying to help some kids.”

  “Hey, it’s news,” the kid said. “That’s what my channel is about, stuff that’s interesting or news, and people watch my stuff!”

  Wyatt leaned in. “You think you’re a celebrity because you have a channel any third-grader or barely functioning alcoholic could create? You think getting a bunch of clicks means people are actually interested in you? You’re a snowflake in a hailstorm, kid, and your videos are not news or entertainment, or anything else that means anything.”

  “I don’t have to listen to you lecture me, man.” Stuart’s face had turned red, the red of humiliation and frustration.

  “I’m almost done talking,” Wyatt said. “You upload one more video, and I will make damn sure you wait inside Franklin Correctional while we let the DA and your lawyer argue about whether the charges will stick.”

  “You can’t do that,” the kid said.

  “Don’t put too much money on that,” Wyatt said. “Although, by the time Dwight Shultz’s attorney gets done suing you and your parents for emotional duress, you probably won’t have much.”

  With that, Wyatt spun around and headed for the patio, where Mr. and Mrs. Newman were waiting.

  Wyatt handed Mr. Newman his card. “Please call me if you hear anything about where Adrian Nichols might be,” he said.

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Clearly Stuart can afford a car,” Wyatt said. “Why was he on that school bus?”

  “He failed his exam again,” the man answered. “His mother has offered to pick him up, but he prefers to ride the bus and spend time at Adrian’s house.”

  Wyatt sighed. “Thank you for your time.”

  Mr. Newman walked them out and shut the door quietly behind them. Maggie didn’t speak until they were in the driveway.

  “The next time I feel like I’m too hard on the kids, remind me what indulgence looks like,” she said.

  “Okay. Do you think they specifically asked the adoption agency for a redneck baby?”

  The storm foretold by the small army of anvils had been overhead for an hour. At only 7pm, it shouldn’t have been dark yet, but it nearly was.

  Maggie was late getting home and starting dinner. She and Wyatt met with most of the rest of the team to compare notes and next steps, then they’d driven together to Port St. Joe. This time, they’d been allowed to step into Dwight’s room for just a minute, even though he was in the ICU.

  He’d been deeply tanned since Maggie had known him, when she’d been a teenager helping her Daddy out on the oyster beds, and he’d been just a little kid, helping his father sort shrimp by size. Sometimes, both of their fathers would be at Boudreaux’s receiving docks at the same time, and Maggie would walk little Dwight over to the soda machine at Scipio Creek Marina, so they could get some cold Dr. Peppers while the men transacted business.

  The first thing Maggie noticed when she stepped quietly into Dwight’s hospital room was that he was frighteningly pale. As she and Wyatt stopped at his bedside, she also noticed that Dwight’s Adam’s apple
was unnaturally still. Dwight was always either chattering or swallowing nervously, that little knot of cartilage constantly bobbing, like a buoy in rough waters.

  They had stayed for just a few minutes, offering Amy and Dwight’s parents what superficial comfort they could, then driven the half hour back to Apalach in silence.

  Maggie stared out the window over the sink as she rinsed the butter lettuce that she’d cut from the garden. She hadn’t minded getting wet to do it, after drowning in the heat all day.

  She had the windows and sliding glass doors open, in spite of the heat and humidity, so that she could listen to her storm. They were all her storms; her favorite weather since she was a baby. The lightning, the thunder, the sheets of rain. Even after fighting for her life during a hurricane the year before, she considered the storms her special friends.

  The rain was starting to die down, the air beginning to cool a bit now that the day had gotten something out of its system. Stoopid stood at the sliding glass door, beak to screen, testing the barometric pressure and warbling in the general direction of the chicken run, where the girls were huddled single file beneath the overhangs.

  Maggie didn’t hear Kyle come in from the living room, and was surprised when he leaned against the counter next to the sink.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hey, bud,” she said. “How’s it going?”

  She never got over Kyle. His almost-black hair and sensuously-long eyelashes were directly from his father, the boy she’d loved since they’d been twelve years old. A little younger than Kyle was now, she realized with a start. Kyle was a constant reminder of someone who had been her very best friend her whole life, more friend than lover, she’d eventually realized, but he was also incredible in his own right. He was funny and smart and very often seemed like he had the simple wisdom of an old man.

  “Okay, I guess,” he said quietly. “I’m done with my homework.”

  “What’s the matter?” she asked him. She carried the colander of lettuce over to the island, and he turned around to face her.

  “I watched the video,” he said after a moment. “Do you think that was disrespectful?”

  Maggie swallowed hard. “Of Dwight?”

  “Yeah.” He used his thumbnail to scrape at a ding in the heavily-varnished barnwood counter.

  “Well, I guess that would depend on why you watched it,” Maggie answered. She had picked up her chef’s knife, but it hovered in place over her cutting board.

  Kyle shrugged one shoulder, that way a kid does when he knows what an answer is but doesn’t know how it’ll be received.

  “I don’t know,” Kyle said finally. “I just couldn’t help wanting to see what really happened. It was going around and around in my head, anyway, wondering. Picturing it.”

  “How did it make you feel to watch it?”

  “I cried.”

  “Good,” she said softly.

  “It’s not that I was watching it just out of curiosity, or because it would be freaky to see somebody get shot,” Kyle said insistently. “I just felt like…” He shrugged again, looking uncomfortable.

  “Like what?” Maggie turned to the cutting board and started slicing tomatoes, trying to give him the illusion of privacy that he needed to be frank.

  “I know it’s kinda weird, but I felt like Dwight had been all alone. You know, like he was all alone when it happened,” Kyle said.

  Maggie’s hand decelerated, and she was slicing in slow motion.

  “I felt like, if I watched it, it would be like someone who cared about him was with him,” her son said.

  Maggie breathed in deeply through her nose, and slowly used her knife to slide the tomatoes aside.

  “I know it’s not logical,” Kyle said, “but that’s just what I felt like.”

  Maggie looked over at him. A wisp of a breeze came through the kitchen window behind him, drifted through the silky hair at the top of his head.

  “It doesn’t have to be logical to be right,” Maggie said quietly.

  Kyle chewed at the corner of his lower lip, the way she did when she was thinking, but didn’t know she did.

  “So, you don’t think it was disrespectful?”

  “No. I don’t know if it was wise; I wish you hadn’t seen it,” she answered. “But it wasn’t disrespectful.”

  He nodded slightly. “Okay.”

  He looked down at the hardwood floor, rubbed it with his bare toe. Maggie put down the knife and started tearing the lettuce into a bowl.

  “How long till dinner?” he asked her.

  “Just a few minutes. I’m just waiting for the corn chowder to thicken up a bit.”

  “Okay. Do you want some help?”

  “No, thanks,” she answered distractedly. “Actually, could you take the trash bins out to the road? I’m gonna run some scraps out to the girls and put them inside.”

  It was a bit of a trek to the road from the house, and her parents had a beaten-up old golf cart they’d been given which they had used to haul the trash and recycling bins. Maggie and Wyatt just kept the bins on the back of the cart so nobody had to lift the full bins.

  “Yeah, okay,” Kyle said.

  Maggie finished tearing the lettuce, dumped it into the salad bowl, then grabbed a small Tupperware from the counter that held grapefruit skins and some soft blueberries from breakfast, wilted lettuce leaves, and the corn cobs left from making the chowder.

  She grabbed her phone from the island and slid it into her back pocket, then went out the sliding door to the back deck. She didn’t bother trying to bring Stoopid out; he was too good for the rain anymore.

  By the time she got to the run, the girls had clustered in front of the chicken wire door, guessing noisily at what she might have in the bowl this evening.

  “Hey, ladies,” she said gently. “Back up.”

  The door opened inward. Most of the hens backed up. The ones who were senile or just a little slow had to be moved back by the door, like protesters behind a police barricade.

  Maggie stepped in and, tapping at the bowl with her fingernail, preceded everybody to the ramp that led up into the coop. As several hens either ran up or flew in, she tossed the snacks inside. Once everyone was in and focused on the produce, looking like old ladies bobbing for apples, Maggie lifted the ramp to close the coop and pushed the wooden toggle over.

  She walked over to the waterer and made sure there was plenty of water and a minimum of poop, then she leaned up against the side of the coop and pulled out her phone.

  It seemed there were plenty of videos of cops getting shot or shot at. It took Maggie just a few minutes, using three different search phrases, to find Dwight. The thumbnail was of a frightened-looking Ryan Warner pointing a gun somewhere between the camera and the ground. The title of the video was “Raw Footage!!! COP SHOT IN FRONT OF MY EYES!!!!”

  A flash of pure rage surged from Maggie’s feet to her forehead. Her heart pounded with it, and she closed her eyes as she pictured herself kicking Stuart Newman all over his manicured lawn. She didn’t remember ever wanting to beat someone so young, but she knew she did now.

  For a minute, Maggie tried to talk herself into going into the house. Then she tapped at the screen and watched Ryan’s head turn to his right. The camera did, too, and there was Dwight, hands in the air, his uniform spotless and hanging just a bit from his wiry frame.

  The sound wasn’t great, even though Maggie did have it turned down a bit, out of fear. But she could hear.

  “Son, what’s your name?” Dwight was asking Ryan.

  “Ryan.” His voice wasn’t what Maggie had expected. He looked and sounded younger somehow.

  “Come on, Ryan,” Dwight said kindly. “It’ll be okay.”

  The camera zoomed out jerkily, and now Maggie could see both Ryan and Dwight in the same frame, and the back end of the school b
us.

  “Ryan, we’re sorry, man,” said someone close to the camera.

  Dwight glanced toward the camera. Maggie tapped at the screen in a near panic. She wanted Dwight to stay that way, to never get to the point where he wasn’t okay anymore. But then she took a shaky breath and tapped it again.

  Suddenly a big gray blur flew into the shot, everything went shaky, and Maggie heard the .22.

  In her mind’s eye, she could see herself three blocks away, paying their bill and telling Lynn that Dwight was getting promoted in less than an hour. Looking up quickly as the shot reached her ears.

  In the video, kids were screaming. Little kids. The camera stopped jerking around, though it wobbled a little. Dwight was standing there with a look of amazement on his face, blood already seeping out between his fingers as he held his hand to his stomach. Maggie put a hand over her mouth as Dwight looked over at the camera. Ryan ran off to the right, the gun still in his hand.

  Dwight looked toward the bus, then raised his free arm and yelled. “Sam, go on! Go on around the corner!”

  The bus started moving, and Maggie could still hear the kids screaming as Dwight took a few steps, like he was about to run.

  “It’s okay, baby,” he called. “Daddy’s okay.”

  Maggie felt a wave of nausea, felt her throat thickening as Dwight staggered a bit.

  “Daddy’s okay,” he was yelling, and then he fell face first toward the ground, but the camera suddenly jerked away and then went dark. Maggie never saw Dwight hit the ground.

  She jerked open the door to the chicken run and just made it out before she threw up her sweet tea.

  Maggie stuck her head under the spray of beautifully hot water and started running her hands through her hair to rinse out the conditioner. “What?” she asked.

  Wyatt took his toothbrush out of his mouth. “I said, Amy just texted. They’re going ahead with the surgery. 7am.”

  “Okay,” Maggie answered. She opened the curtain enough to look out at him. “Remind me to send her a text when I get out.”

  Wyatt looked away from the phone on the vanity and went back to brushing his teeth. Then he turned the faucet on.