by Jeff Abbott
‘Wait here with me,’ she said. ‘Please.’ She was shaking, her freckled arms folded over each other, her hair a mess from having dragged her fingers through it nervously.
‘I can’t, sweetie. I got to be down there.’ He was justice of the peace, and because Encina County didn’t have its own medical examiner, he also served as coroner. If there were bodies he’d order the autopsies, rule on cause of death, conduct the inquest if it was needed. His chest felt sucked dry at the thought of Patch and Thuy murdered and buried. But he didn’t like the vacant, broken look in Lucy’s eyes.
He put an arm around her and turned to Deputy David Power. ‘Maybe I should wait with Lucy.’
David made a dismissive noise. ‘You’re supposed to be down there,’ he said, as though comforting relatives of the dead was second-class duty compared to forensic investigation.
‘You don’t need me until you find bodies,’ he said, and he felt Lucy’s skin prickle under his fingertips.
‘Sure, Judge, whatever.’ David Power turned and headed down toward the thick copse of oaks.
Lucy watched him leave. ‘Well, he’s an asshole. Lots of negativity.’
‘He doesn’t like me,’ Whit said. ‘I’m friends with his ex-wife.’
‘Maybe you should go down there,’ she said. ‘I’ll be okay.’
‘I’ll stay here as long as I can.’
He and Lucy sat in Patch’s den, a dark room covered with thick brown paneling in turn covered with fishing trophies and a fake muscled marlin. He held her hand and watched All My Children to avoid thinking about what the shovels might be unearthing.
Lucy stared at the screen. ‘I cooked dinner for the two of them last week. Meatloaf. I burned it a little ’cause we got to talking and I was drinking too much beer. It tasted like a shingle. They didn’t complain, ate it with a smile.’
Whit squeezed her hand.
‘I should call Suzanne,’ she said. Her cousin, her only family other than Patch.
‘Let’s just wait and see.’
They watched a commercial offering tarot card readings for a call-per-minute charge while an energetic woman with a doubtful Caribbean accent proclaimed the future to amazed callers.
‘That approach is so misleading,’ Lucy said. ‘Look at her. She’s hardly listening to that caller – she’s just slapping those cards down.’ Her voice was flat as she pretended the searchers weren’t tearing up her uncle’s land.
‘I’m sure your psychics do a better job, sweetie.’ Lucy owned the Coastal Psychics Network, which, as she put it, served the needy and the bored across Texas.
‘At two bucks ninety-nine a minute, that is robbery.’ She fingered the amber crystal on her necklace. ‘I at least run a clean ship. Maybe I ought to advertise more. I’m cheaper than Madam Not-Reading-the-Cards-Right.’
He hugged her a little closer, gave her a tissue for her nose. ‘Need to tell you something about Patch.’
‘What?’
‘He was the one suggested I call you for a date.’
She laughed but it was half tears. ‘Did he now?’
‘Called me up after you were in my court. Said I had given you too heavy a sentence for those unpaid tickets.’
‘Not unpaid. Ignored on principle.’ Same argument she’d used in court. A little more effective with him now. Patch had settled her five hundred dollars’ worth of fines. She’d done her community service, Whit checking on her a little more than needed.
‘He said I ought to even it out by taking you to dinner.’
‘Old men playing matchmaker is a bad idea.’ Lucy wiped at her eyes. ‘Because they won the war they think they know everything.’
A deputy – young, sunburned, blond buzz cut bright with sweat – appeared in the doorway. ‘Judge Mosley? Could I speak with you?’ His mouth barely moved as he spoke.
‘Are they dead?’ Lucy asked. ‘Is it them?’
‘Yes, ma’am. It looks like it’s them. I’m real sorry.’
Lucy put her face in her palms. ‘Well, shit. It was a bad vibe,’ she finally said from between her hands.
4
Claudia Salazar let the sun warm her closed eyes. She had dozed on the pool lounge chair, the water evaporating off her skin, thinking, I could get to like this.
Claudia’s past few days had been a bitch: finally closing out a series of burglaries on Port Leo’s south side, aimed squarely at the tourist condos, by arresting a repeat offender who sadly had three kids and was bound back to jail; covering two extra late shifts for a patrol officer friend who was down with a bad summer cold, because the whole Port Leo police department was short-handed; and then the terrible Gilbert/Tran murders, which were beyond Port Leo’s jurisdiction but the sheriffs office and the police department helped each other with high-profile cases. David Power, her ex-husband, had politely declined the police department’s help and her thought had been: Pride goeth before a fall. It was the most biblical thing she had thought in years. She wondered, without ego, if he was too irritated with her to want the department’s help.
She decided not to care. As of today, she was officially on vacation.
She opened her eyes, sat up on the lounge chair, watched Ben standing by a table between the pool and the French doors, fiddling with a stubborn cork on a wine bottle.
‘What a rotten guest I am,’ she said. ‘I fell asleep.’
Ben Vaughn pried the cork out and grinned. ‘You’re exhausted. Don’t worry about it.’
She smiled. If she’d gone swimming with David, drunk wine in the early afternoon, then dozed, he would have used it as a basis for analysis: Did I bore you? What’s wrong with me? Ben just let her be, and she was grateful for that.
Claudia stood, feeling self-conscious in a new purple bikini a bit too adventurous for her, pulled a long T-shirt over her head, and smoothed it out along her hips. 'No more wine. Two glasses is my limit.’
‘You’re on vacation,’ Ben said. ‘I made lunch. Hope that’s okay.’
‘I’ll find it in my heart to forgive you. So what can I do to help?’
‘Just sit. You’re my guest.’ Ben disappeared back into the house.
The deck for the pool ran along the edge of St Leo Bay, and in the summer heat the bay water looked green as old glass, the waves like white lips rising to the surface for a kiss, then vanishing. She put on her sunglasses. Vacation. Well, a few days off and then back to the grind. But sitting on a multilevel deck, with a private dock, backed by the house that had to be approaching seven thousand square feet… well, it was better than eating takeout and watching old movies on video, which was how she’d spent her last vacation.
Ben returned, carrying a tray. Two huge shrimp salads, the shrimp firm and pink, perfect crescent-morsels, slices of avocado, a small crystal pitcher filled with a homemade dressing, rolls steaming. He set the lunch down in front of her.
‘Where’s the chocolate?’
‘Ingrate.’ He poured them each wine again, held his glass aloft in a toast. ‘To a great vacation for you. And to old friends.’
‘To old friends,’ she said, clinking her glass against his. Friends. Funny word, she thought. It could cover too much ground. They’d been lovers long ago but she couldn’t look at him and think ex-lover. He was too different now from the shy, gangly boy she’d known.
‘And we didn’t even have to catch the shrimp,’ Ben said.
‘Sometimes I’m relieved by that. Other times I think it’s a shame. My dad’s the last Salazar who’s still shrimping.’ The smile dimmed slightly on Ben’s face and she set down her fork. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up an unpleasant memory…’
Ben smiled again. She liked his smile, warm and happy, with a front tooth slightly crooked. ‘It’s okay. My folks have been gone a long time, Claudia. I miss them but you keep going on.’ His parents had been lost in a sudden storm on the bay’s edge, their shrimp boat swamped. Ben had been sixteen at the time, his brother, Stoney, just starting college. ‘I might have made a good shrimper.’
‘You would have gotten bored.’
‘But you’re your own boss.’ Ben took a small sip of white wine. ‘Out on the water, out in the sun. Now Stoney, he would have sucked at shrimping.’
Claudia glanced around the deck, the private dock, the too-big-for-her-taste house. ‘It wouldn’t have paid the mortgage on this place.’ She liked the pool, the lunch, being with Ben, but felt an awkward consciousness of being in his brother’s house, as though she were trespassing. She had kept glancing at Ben, trim in his modest swimsuit, with his nice hands and his smile, and wanting to kiss him, but she wouldn’t. Not here. If she kissed him she might not stop and his brother might walk in at any moment. ‘What exactly does your brother do? You said investments?’
‘I can never quite figure it out. He did venture capital work out in California for a while, got a little singed in the dot-com meltdown, decided he wanted to come home. He does a lot of consulting for financial services firms in Dallas and Houston. He’s trying to get me into his business.’ He shook his head. ‘stoney used to steal my allowance, set up a lemonade stand with our money, give me a cut. We’d make more than our allowances put together. I think he’s still following that business model.’
‘It seems to be working.’
‘He has expensive hobbies. Cars. Boats. Treasure hunts.’
‘Treasure hunts?’
‘He’s financed some treasure dives in the Florida Keys – you know, galleons that wrecked in shallow water, got buried by the sands on the bottom. Takes a team to recover them. It’s his obsession. Crazy-ass way to risk your money. You got to make the big bucks to play that game.’ His tone went wry.
‘And you’re not interested in the big bucks?’
Ben grinned again. ‘me in finance? I’d be doomed. The clients would be doomed.’ He shook his head. ‘I like teaching, but the pay sucks, and too many of the kids are unmotivated and the parents care even less. I’m starting to think you seriously got to have a call to teach, like being a priest.’
‘Or a cop,’ she said.
‘Or a cop,’ he agreed. ‘You ever think of giving it up?’
‘Last year, briefly. But no, not seriously.’
‘Living here with my brother – well, Stoney’s spoiled me.’ Ben speared the last fat shrimp in his salad, pushed it through the little pool of dressing in his bowl. ‘But I don’t have a talent for making money.’
‘Money’s not everything.’
‘It can sure buy a whole lot of it.’
‘Still.’
‘You’re right. And God knows Stoney’s not what you’d call happy. He’s nervous. Jumpy. I don’t want to think what he was like when he worked in a high-stress job.’
‘Let’s talk about something other than your brother,’ Claudia said. The three glasses of wine and lazing in the summer sun made her suddenly feel a little playful. That was a delicious lunch. Thank you. I didn’t know you could cook.’
‘I knew you’d had a hard week,’ Ben said. ‘Least I could do. Citizens should support their officers in blue every way they can.’
A tease colored his tone and she skimmed her toetips along the muscle of his calf, just to flirt back a little. She stopped as the French doors opened. A man came out, tall and brown haired like Ben, but a little thicker in the shoulders and the stomach, dressed in a summer khaki business suit, but no tie, the shirt buttoned to the throat. His hair was gelled, combed to Ken-doll perfection, and he didn’t smile until Ben turned toward him.
‘Hi, bro,’ Ben said. ‘Come on out.’
‘Don’t want to interrupt,’ the man said.
‘It’s your house,’ Ben said. ‘You can’t interrupt. Claudia, this is my brother, Stoney. Stoney, Claudia Salazar.’
Stoney Vaughn offered Claudia a hand with nails manicured as smooth as pearl. His grip was firm but the flesh of his palm was soft. ‘Claudia. I remember you from school. I was a few years ahead of you. Nice to see you again.’ His gaze went quickly down her, to her breasts, her hips, back to her face, quicker than a blink but she saw it and was glad she had on the T-shirt.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘You have a lovely home.’
‘It’s comfortable.’
His modesty was so false she almost laughed. Instead she said, ‘Will you join us?’
‘I can’t today. I’ve got to do some work up in my office. But you two enjoy yourselves.’
‘Claudia’s taking some time off from work,’ Ben said. ‘She’s an investigator with the Port Leo police.’
Two beats of silence. ‘Really. That must be fascinating work,’ Stoney said.
‘If you find burglaries riveting.’
‘Claudia likes to fish,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe tomorrow morning we could take the Jupiter out into the Gulf, have some fun. Why don’t you take the day off, come along? Bring one of your girlfriends. Who’s on the A list this week?’
‘None of them. I’m in the doghouse. I’ve been too busy to call. Work’s just been a bitch lately. Y’all go, though.’
‘No, do come,’ Claudia said.
‘Yeah,’ Ben agreed.
‘Sure,’ Stoney said. ‘That sounds great. Claudia, lovely to meet you. Enjoy the pool. Have fun.’
They shook hands and Claudia watched him hurry back in. She had the oddest feeling he wished her and Ben gone, out of his sight, out of his house.
5
Whit grabbed his forensics kit and followed the young deputy down past the manicured lawn, through the thick growths of wildflowers and the high grass. Ahead was the wide bowl of St Leo Bay; Black Jack Point occupied the northernmost stretch of the bay’s reach, with Port Leo south and at the middle of the curve. The bay breeze shuffled the hot, sticky air, and on the wind Whit heard the murmuring voices of the deputies, of the Department of Public Safety crime scene crew. For a moment, the crowd out of sight, the voices sounded ghostly, even in the eye-aching sunlight. He remembered being here as a boy, Patch telling the local kids he let fish and swim off his little dock, You know, Black Jack Point’s haunted by old Black Jack himself, and by pirates and Indians and settlers that got scalped, got their throats cut. Be sure nothin’ don’t grab your foot while you’re swimmin’. It won’t let go. They like a young soul best. Taste goooood. And the safe thrill of being scared and being fairly sure that Patch was joking. Mostly sure.
They hadn’t moved the bodies. The hole was deep, nearly six feet, the soil threaded with torn grass. He knelt at its edge while the DPS crime scene tech snapped off photos. The group was silent now, the buzz of the mosquitoes the loudest sound.
Patch Gilbert lay on his back, arms spread, dirt still covering most of him, his mouth open wide and loam pooling between broken teeth. His face was ruined, beaten into pulp, a plane of graying hair askew on his scalp, little broken tiles of bone peeking through his forehead. Thuy Linh Tran lay atop one of Patch’s arms, as though he cradled her in a comforting hug. Dirt was scattered on her bloodshot irises. A bullet hole marred her forehead.
Whit slipped plastic bags over his shoes, carefully stepped down into the grave, touched Patch’s throat, then Thuy’s. He wrote down the time on his death scene form. For the record. Suddenly the promise of tears burned at the back of his eyes and he wanted to cry for this funny, good old man and this generous woman, but he didn’t want to lose it. Not in front of this crowd. He felt David’s stare against his back.
Whit stepped back out of the grave. He began his work of detailing the scene for the inquest report and the autopsy orders, keeping his eyes on the papers. It was easier that way.
David knelt down by Whit. ‘I think the man got hit with a shovel. Hard. Repeatedly. Probably even after he was dead. Wonder why the killer shot her, though. Maybe broke the shovel on him, couldn’t use it on her.’
‘Patch would have fought hard,’ Whit said.
‘He’s an old man,’ David said.
With about ten times the heart and guts you’ll ever have, Whit thought.
‘Makes me think of a case I read
,’ David said. ‘Up in Oklahoma, ’65 or ’66, old couple got killed while out walking, buried right off a hiking trail…’
Whit tuned him out. David loved to recite old police cases from true crime collections as though they held all the beauty of love sonnets. All the details and none of the context. Whit bit his lip. When David paused for breath, Whit asked one of the techs to take extra photos of their faces, of their wounds. The techs did, and measured the depth of the bodies, carefully clearing more dirt back from the corpses when one of them gave a little cry of shock.
‘What is that?’ The tech stepped back from where Thuy’s feet still lay partly buried and Whit saw two curves of brownish skull exposed.
‘Look here,’ another tech said, clearing away dirt next to Patch’s knee. A crooked brown bone of finger, bent as if to beckon. ‘Old bone. Real old.’
‘Don’t touch it,’ Whit said. ‘stop the digging.’
‘Why?’ David asked.
‘There’s other remains buried with them. I got to call the guy in San Marcos. This closes down everything.’
‘We’re not stopping. This is a serious crime scene-’ David began.
‘They talked about site analysis in JP training. You have to stop the dig.’
David took a breath of infinite patience. ‘What guy in San Marcos?’
‘Forensic anthropologist. I don’t remember his name. But he’s got to check out the site. They must’ve gotten buried in old unmarked graves.’ Whit wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘You can’t move ’em until the FA’s here with his team.’
‘Judge Mosley’s right, David,’ one of the DPS techs said quietly. ‘He’s talking about Dr Parker. He can be here in forty minutes. DPS sticks him on a chopper and rushes him down here.’
‘Fine,’ David said. His lips went thin as wire. ‘Get this guy here, then, quick.’ He turned away from Whit to confer with the DPS team.
Whit took out the notepad he used at death scenes, jotted down descriptions of the bodies, talked in a low voice with the DPS photographer while she snapped footage, told her what angles would help him at inquest. He tried not to look at Patch and Thuy’s broken faces.