Words of Conviction

by Linda J White

  At first, she thought the object she saw in the distance was driftwood covered by seaweed. Still, something about its shape roused her curiosity. She quickened her pace.

  She saw a group of teens, four—no, five—of them, approach the object, then jerk back, shock evident in their action. Kit’s heart jumped. She ran faster, her heels flinging up sand, her mind racing. Sweat broke out on the back of her neck. At the small of her back, the nylon fanny pack carrying her gun and FBI credentials—she was on duty 24/7—slapped her, urging her on.

  The kids began shouting, jumping up and down, waving at her, and as Kit grew closer, she saw why: at their feet lay the body of a child.

  “He’s dead! Oh, God! He’s dead!” a girl screeched. She huddled with her friends, their shoulders hunched, clutching beach towels like shields. The young men, two of them, stood arched over the body, peering at it like curious colts.

  “Don’t touch him!” Kit commanded. “Did you call 911?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The boys shifted back.

  Kit’s eyes fell on the body. The little boy, clad in long, loose pants and a long-sleeved green shirt, was most certainly dead. One big roller of the incoming tide had deposited him up on the smoothly packed sand. Now, lesser waves lapped at him, fluttering his clothes, like fingers trying to grasp him and pull him away. It wouldn’t be long before the sea reclaimed him.

  Dread washed over her. She needed to secure the body. She didn’t want to touch it with her bare hands; neither did she want it sucked back out to sea. She looked at the teens. They seemed frozen, unable to move. “Give me your towel,” she said to a young woman, but the girl just hugged it closer to her chest. Nearby, a laughing gull planted his three-toed feet on a dune and chortled.

  Another big wave hit, knocking Kit off balance and floating the boy’s body. “No!” she breathed, watching the body drift. Germs or no germs, she had to do it. She grabbed the boy’s shirt.

  “Hold on! Let me help!”

  Kit looked up. A thirty-something man with brown hair threw his surfboard down on the sand, put his iPod on top of it, and rushed to her side. “I got it.” The man grabbed one side of the boy. Kit took the other, and together they gently moved the body to dry sand, beyond the reach of the waves. The teens shied away.

  “Scrub off your hands,” the man said as he rubbed wet sand on his hands and arms and dunked them in the surf. “Did you call it in?”

  “He did,” Kit nodded toward one of the teens. “Where’d you come from?”

  “Up north.”

  “Did you see anybody up there?”

  “No.”

  “Any boats?”

  “Nothing.”

  Kit squinted and shaded her eyes as she studied him. Mid- to late-thirties, she figured, about 5’10”, short brown hair, brown eyes, tanned, and fit. Very fit.

  “Here comes your help.” He nodded toward two four-wheel-drive pickups approaching from the south. “You OK now?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Kit looked down at the boy. His skin was pale, a sort of dusky gray. His large eyes stared into nothingness and his mouth hung open. Sand filled his nostrils and spilled out of the one ear she could see, and there were bruises on his neck. Ligature marks? Had he been murdered? Kit’s breath caught. How long had he been dead? Already the flies were gathering. She wanted to shoo them away, to protect him from the ravages of natural decomposition. The body looked fresh. Would the water have preserved it?

  By the time she looked up, the man had picked up his surfboard, and was walking on down the beach. “Hey! What’s your name?” Kit called, but the man didn’t respond, and the white wires running down from his ears told her his iPod had claimed his attention again. “That was a mistake,” she muttered.

  “Ew, gross!” A girl pointed. A seagull had landed on the boy’s chest.

  Kit reacted quickly. “Shoo!”

  Behind the teens, the pickups jerked to a stop, and a man and two women in U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service uniforms climbed out. Kit’s mind raced: her vacation. Two weeks of no responsibility. She could simply identify herself as an FBI agent, tell them what she knew, and walk away.

  But before her lay a little boy . . . possibly murdered!

  But Fish & Wildlife could investigate it. And why would the FBI get into a simple murder case?

  Kit shifted on her feet. The sun blazed on her shoulders. An unidentified body, a child, no less. A child. A little Latino boy . . .

  She didn’t miss the half-smile on the man’s face as the officers approached. She had on a bright blue two-piece swimsuit and athletic shorts. No T-shirt. Sweat beaded on her skin.

  “Where’d that come from?” A stocky, plain-looking woman with close-cropped brown hair stopped in her tracks, about eight feet away from the body.

  “Kit McGovern, FBI.” She flashed her creds at the woman. “Are you the officer in charge?”

  “Yeah. Brenda Ramsfeld, Fish & Wildlife.”

  “Kid fall off a boat?” The leering man strode up to the body and nudged it with the toe of his boot.

  “Don’t touch him!” Kit’s anger surged. She turned to Ramsfeld. “Do you see the marks on his neck?”

  “Like somebody killed him? Cool!” the man responded.

  “We’ve never had a murder here,” Ms. Ramsfeld said, glancing at her coworker, a woman with blonde hair.

  The man laughed. “You’ve seen CSI, Brenda. You know what to do.”

  “You think he died here, on the beach? What about those kids?” Ramsfeld gestured toward the teens.

  “They found the body washing up in the surf. I saw them.”

  “So maybe he was murdered at sea and dumped overboard,” the blonde suggested.

  “Quite possibly,” Kit said, her heart jumping. If the murder didn’t happen on land, the FBI could rightfully claim the case. Thoughts of vacation slipped away like sand. “The lifeguards didn’t report anything?” she asked Ramsfeld.

  “They’re just now coming on duty. Besides, look at the way those waves are coming in.”

  Kit turned. The Atlantic was in fine form today, the three-foot gray-green waves coming in at a slant, breaking about five yards out, sending sea foam sliding up over the hard-packed sand in a gentle caress, then sliding back. She squinted into the sun, scanning the horizon, but saw nothing—no boats, no surfers, no dolphins. She turned back to Ramsfeld. “From the northeast?”

  “Right. The littoral current would be from the same direction. So why would you think lifeguards to the south would have seen anything?” Ramsfeld’s voice dripped disgust.

  She still kept her distance, Kit noted, standing nowhere near the body. “So he probably did die at sea. The Bureau would have jurisdiction.”

  Ramsfeld threw up her hands. “All right, look. You want it, you got it.” She shook her head. “Just my luck,” she said, shooting a look toward the others, “something major happens and the Bureau gets here first.” She put her hands on her hips. “I’m guessing you’ll need the medical examiner.”

  “Right,” Kit said, “and identification from those teenagers. And photos of the body. Do you have a camera?”

  “You want photos with or without the ghost crab nibbling at his ear?” the creepy guy joked.

  Kit glared at him. “Just get the camera.”

  The onshore breeze stiffened a bit, sending a spray of saltwater over the scene as a breaker crashed onto the beach. Kit licked her lips, tasting the salt. “Until the ME gets here, we’ll need to secure the scene.”

  “It’s July and in an hour I’m going to have a beach full of vacationers. You’re not expecting me to provide staff long-term, are you?” Ramsfeld said.

  “If you could spare one person until they get here, I’d appreciate it.” Kit hoped against hope it wouldn’t be the man, who returned with a small digital camera in hand.

  Ramsfeld shot her a look, then she turned to her blonde staff member. “Pat, you stay with her. Joe and I need to get back to work.”

  Ki
t took all the pictures she thought she’d need. Then, waiting for the ME van, she listened to Pat complain about the way things had changed on the job since Brenda Ramsfeld had become their chief. After a while, even Pat wearied of that talk and wandered off, climbing the dunes in search of shade. After she left, Kit had only the sand and surf and sun and one dead little boy to keep her company.

  She sat on a piece of driftwood, watching the tide come into her beloved Assateague. A barrier island off the coast of Virginia, Assateague cradled its smaller sister island, Chincoteague, in the crook of its arm, protecting the humans who lived there from the brunt of the ocean’s force. Kit had been coming to the area since she was a child, drawn by her love for her grandmother who lived there.

  Kit had been on the wild, windswept island in the fall when snow geese by the thousands gathered on brackish ponds, honking and calling, and in the winter, when the wind whipped up sea foam and deposited it in mounds well beyond the dunes. She’d been there in the spring, when migrating birds came again, so many different kinds she couldn’t keep track of them, and the Sika deer fawned, and the wild ponies gave birth to their foals. And in the summer, when long days on the beach called her to an eternal perspective, the timeless pounding of the waves and the endless vista reminded her that her temporal troubles were but a passing phase.

  She needed to hear that reminder again. That was why she’d come.

  The medical examiner, Dr. Scarborough, was a fifty-something, burly man with snow-white hair and a brusque, businesslike manner. His eyes widened slightly when he saw Kit dressed in a bathing suit and shorts, and she felt her face grow warm. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything.

  She watched while he took pictures with a digital camera, and then snapped on gloves and gently examined the body while dictating into a digital recorder. His assistant, a young, thin man dressed in khaki pants and a white shirt, looked on.

  When he finished, Dr. Scarborough stood up and faced Kit, fixing his piercing blue eyes on her. “The boy was strangled. Autopsy will tell us whether that killed him or he drowned.”

  Kit’s gut clenched. “How long ago?”

  “As much as thirty-six hours.”

  “That long?”

  “Cold salt water preserves the body. Again, the autopsy will narrow it down.” The ME looked down at the boy again. “I see no other injuries, except for a few sea-life nibbles. He didn’t bleed out.”

  “Why is he so gray?”

  “All his blood has gone to the center of his body.” Scarborough pulled off his gloves. “My preliminary finding: homicide by strangulation, twenty to thirty-six hours ago.”

  Kit drove to her rental cottage. Scarborough’s words tumbled over and over through her mind. Someone murdered the boy. Strangled him. Sometime in the last thirty-six hours.

  Who would kill a little boy in that way? By strangling him? She tried to imagine it. A mother? She couldn’t see a mother wrapping a cord around a child’s neck and choking him until he died. A mother’s boyfriend? Much more likely.

  So why didn’t she protect him? Kit knew the answer to that without thinking. All too often women were too emotionally dependent on their men to protect their kids.

  She showered, spread an aloe-based cream that smelled like coconut over her sunburn, then dressed in work clothes—khaki pants, a white shirt with a small, stand-up collar, and a navy blue blazer, necessary, even in summer, to cover her gun. While she laced her highlighted, light brown hair into a French braid, her mind worked hard, calculating how she would sell her involvement in the case to her boss.

  Sweat moistened her hand as she pressed her cell phone to her ear. At her boss’s gruff “Hello,” she described finding the child on the beach.

  “I thought you were on vacation,” Steve Gould responded.

  “Yes, sir, but I think this warrants our attention.”

  “Why?”

  “I think we’re the best agency to investigate it.”

  “One kid? Who cares about one kid?”

  She knew he meant that the FBI generally got involved in more complex cases. “If he were kidnapped, we’d care.”

  “He’s not. He’s dead.”

  “Yes, sir, but . . . but his body . . . his body was found on a federal reservation. We can assert jurisdiction.”

  “We don’t want to.”

  “I want to.”

  Kit heard him sigh.

  “Why, McGovern? Just tell me why.”

  Kit squeezed her eyes shut and pictured the little boy on the beach. She realized she was trembling. Why did she care so much? “It’s all about justice, sir. Somebody wrapped something around this little boy’s neck and choked him until he died. Who did it? We have the best resources to figure that out. Otherwise . . . otherwise I can almost guarantee this’ll become a cold case.”

  She could hear Steve tapping on his desk. “This is the way you want to spend your vacation?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” he grumbled. “Call the Assistant U.S. Attorney. If he won’t prosecute, then drop it,” he ordered her. “Otherwise, you have two weeks to convince me you’re not wasting our resources.”

  As she hung up the phone, Kit wondered if her new boss was naturally tough or if he had heard the rumors about her. She was not a loose cannon! She didn’t care what her old supervisor said.

  Kit drove to a vacation-property rental office in town. The agent, Connie Jester, was Kit’s friend, Chincoteague born and bred, a sixth-generation islander who knew every native, transient, and come-here who had wandered over the high, arched bridge and ended up settling down. Her position made her a pipeline for a rich storehouse of information.

  Kit told Connie about the body on the beach. “Well,” the redhead responded, “that makes sense. When I heard the FBI was involved, I knew it had to be you. But aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?”

  Kit shrugged. “I can’t just ignore a dead child.” Momentarily, in her mind’s eye she saw faces, Honduran faces, Salvadoran faces, faces from an adoption website. “Connie, what can you tell me about the local Latino community?”

  “Oh, they come in at times, big groups of them, going over to the beach. Families, mostly, although there always seems to be a bunch of unattached young men.”

  “Where do they stay?”

  “Most of ’em are day-trippers. When they do stay, they either camp or pile people in a motel room.” Connie’s blue eyes flashed. “You know, there are a lot of migrant workers on the peninsula, picking tomatoes and melons, green beans. Some of ’em stay on, working in the poultry processing plants or picking crabs. A few try their hand at making a living on the water, but that’s something few natives can do, much less newcomers.”

  “Is it likely they’d go out on a charter boat?”

  “Have you checked those prices lately?”

  Kit bit her lip, buying time to think. In all the years she’d been coming to Chincoteague, she’d never been out on a fishing boat, never seen Assateague from the ocean. “Who’s the commander of the Coast Guard station now?”

  “Well, that would be Rick Sellers. Nice guy. From New York, but a nice guy, anyway.”

  Kit wrote his name down. “If a child disappeared, why wouldn’t somebody report it?” she mused out loud.

  “Running drugs,” Connie suggested. “Either that or illegal. Nobody’s gonna raise a flag when they’re doing something wrong.”

  That made sense. Kit heard the sound of the office’s door opening.

  “Here’s David O’Connor,” Connie said. “He’s a D.C. cop. Y’all ought to get along just fine.”

  Kit looked up. Coming in the door was the thirty-something man from the beach.

  The man grinned as their eyes met.

  “David took your grandmother’s house for six whole months,” Connie said. “That’s why I couldn’t give it to you.”

  Six months, Kit thought? What was he doing on Chincoteague for six months?

  “It’s a great
place,” he said.

  Kit felt the color rising in her face. Her grandmother’s house was now a rental property. She wished she had the money to buy it.

  Connie smiled at him. “Kit here’s a Fed.”

  “I met her this morning.” Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes.

  “Why were you up on the beach so early?” Kit asked.

  “You don’t surf, do you?”

  She blinked, put off by the response.

  “Low tide came at 8:16,” he explained. “That’s the best time to surf. The waves break farther out, and they’re bigger. I drove over to the island at six, hiked up a ways, surfed until low tide, hiked farther north, surfed some more, and was walking back when I saw you.” He flashed another smile. “FBI, right?”

  How did he know?

  “I could tell by the suit,” he joked.

  Embarrassment sent blood rushing to her face. Kit struggled to regroup. “Not too many cops get six months off. You must be a special case.” She lifted her chin. “I’ll need your contact information.”

  “I was surprised you didn’t ask for it before.” David motioned to Connie, who handed him a pen and he scrawled a phone number on the back of one of her business cards, then gave it to Kit.

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  Connie cleared her throat. “What can I do for you, David?” she asked brightly.

  The two lapsed into a conversation about water heaters and kayaking.

  Kit left. His attitude grated on her like sand. She walked to her car and sat for a moment, trying to shake off her annoyance. She had to lose the emotion and prepare for the conversations she planned to have next. She’d wanted to ask Connie about Brenda Ramsfeld, but she had allowed David O’Connor to deflect her from her mission.

  She was still sitting in the parking lot in her personal vehicle, a green Subaru Forester, fiddling with her CD player, when David O’Connor emerged from the rental office. She clicked off her music and watched him as he opened the lift gate of his own SUV, a battered Jeep Cherokee with an orange one-man kayak and a blue surfboard on a rack on the roof. She saw him rummage through a gym bag, retrieve a dark blue golf shirt, and pull off the T-shirt he’d been wearing. That’s when she saw the scar, an ugly round knot on his left shoulder blade, still a deep, angry red.