Mermaids in the Pacific (Peyton Brooks, FBI Book 2)

by M. L. Hamilton

  Tag glanced over at him. “You do?”

  “Yeah. No worries.”

  She tried to slap Jake again, but he sidled away from her. “He’s got plans, idiot,” she hissed at him.

  “I heard him,” but he gave Marco one of those searching Jake looks.

  “Night, Captain,” Cho said, pushing open the door.

  Tag followed him.

  Still Jake lingered. “We could catch a movie?”

  Marco sighed. “Go to Peyton’s, Ryder. I’m not going to a movie with you. You’d want to hold hands or something.”

  Jake gave him a faint smile. “Fine, but I’m free tomorrow. We could get a pedicure or a wax.”

  Marco laughed. “Get out of here.”

  With a final backward glance, Jake followed the other two out of the precinct. Marco moved to the counter, watching them go. He’d never been excluded from dinner at Peyton’s before. Even when he was trying to keep distance between them, he’d always been first on her guest list.

  Closing his eyes, he fought himself. He wanted a drink. He wanted to dive into a Jack Daniels bottle and search for oblivion. He wanted to forget for just a few minutes.

  And because he wanted it so bad, he pulled out his phone and thumbed it on, but he hesitated, looking at his contact list. His finger hovered over his brother’s name. He could call Vinnie and Vinnie would be there for him, but that would mean taking him from his family, his wife and kids. He didn’t need a younger brother pulling him down.

  Marco’s fingers closed over the phone. A bottle of Jack Daniels would be less trouble. There wouldn’t be any questions or demands. There wouldn’t be any guilt, until tomorrow. But knowing that everyone was going to Peyton’s house made drinking a really bad idea. The last thing he needed was to show up there and plead for entrance.

  He pressed the icon for Vinnie’s number.

  “Hey, little brother,” came Vinnie’s enthusiastic voice. “I’m so glad you called.”

  “I was wondering…” His voice trailed away as he thought of Peyton’s house filled with all the people who meant most to him in the world. And there she’d be in the midst of them, drawing them together with that unconscious charisma she possessed. “I was wondering if you had a few hours to kill.”

  “Name it and I’m there.”

  Marco thought. Where could they go that wouldn’t put him at a disadvantage, tempt him with alcohol?

  “Remember when we used to hang out at Ocean Beach?”

  “Yeah, I’ll meet you there in half an hour.”

  Marco reconsidered. He didn’t need Vinnie of all people grilling him for answers. “Look, forget…”

  “I’ll see you at Ocean Beach in half an hour. Make sure you’re there.” Then he was gone.

  Marco stared at the display, thinking to call him back and cancel, but he knew that come hell or high water, Vinnie would go to Ocean Beach.

  * * *

  All three of his brothers were waiting for him when he arrived. They’d picked a spot above the beach, perching themselves on boulders that lined the parking lot. Marco limped over to them and allowed them to give him rough hugs. Bernardo shoved a can of soda in his hand.

  Marco looked at it wryly. Once they’d meet out here, sneaking beers from their father’s stash in the garage. Leo always commented that someone was filching his beers, but he never accused his sons. Later, Marco realized he knew what they were doing all along.

  He awkwardly propped himself on a boulder, wedging the cane next to him, and popped open the can. The roar of the waves, the damp of the ocean air, and the smell of seaweed brought back so many memories for him.

  He could see gulls wheeling over the surf and out a little farther he spotted the laborious pump of a pelican’s wings before it tucked them into its body and dropped out of the sky into the ocean like a stone. He smiled.

  He liked it out here.

  People strolled up and down the beach, bundled against the late day chill, walking dogs, following small children who darted in and out of the surf. Some of them held hands. One couple stopped to look at the horizon, then turned toward each other and the woman lifted on tiptoes to kiss the man. Marco looked away. He and Peyton had spent days wandering the beach when they took their trip to the islands. Mostly they sat in the sand, his arms wrapped around her, his cheek resting on her shoulder.

  “Do you remember Brad Peterson?” asked Franco, looking back at him.

  “Captain of the football team?”

  “Yeah, when you were a freshman and he was a senior?”

  Marco nodded. He remembered him. Because of his size, Marco had been moved to varsity his first year, playing guard for Brad. Marco hated Brad. He was always snapping his towel at Marco’s ass in the locker room, calling him Pretty Boy, and making kissing sounds whenever he was around.

  “Didn’t he play for the Bills?” asked Bernardo.

  “Yeah, for a number of years. He was dating that Carol...um…”

  “Carol Talone,” Marco said. He also remembered Carol. Carol had taken it upon herself to educate him in all things female. Senior girl, freshman boy, he hadn’t been in a position to complain, especially because whenever Brad pulled his shit, Marco knew he had something over him.

  “They got married, didn’t they?” said Vinnie.

  “Yeah, still are. They just moved back to the Bay Area. I ran into Brad at the grocery store.” Franco leaned closer. “He’s bald.” He motioned to his own thick, black hair. “He has this horrible comb-over.”

  The brothers laughed.

  “Just shoot me if I ever do that,” said Bernardo.

  “Same here,” said Vinnie, clicking his soda can against his brother’s.

  “You remember Wendell Williams?” said Bernardo.

  “Weasel Williams?” said Vinnie and Franco together.

  Marco smiled.

  “Yeah, the little guy who’d wet his pants at school.”

  “I remember him picking his nose and eating it,” said Franco with a shudder.

  “He’s a millionaire.”

  “No?” said Vinnie. “He used to come by the house, looking for you guys.”

  “He’s the reason I passed Calculus,” said Bernardo with a laugh. “Yeah, he’s a millionaire. He got in with one of these startups in San Jose, and bam, he made it big.”

  “Shit. Weasel Williams a millionaire. I’m definitely doing something wrong,” said Franco with a sigh.

  Marco gave him a nod of agreement.

  “Would you look at that sunset?” breathed Bernardo.

  Marco looked out. A ray of sunlight had pierced through the cloud cover and shown down on the blue-grey of the ocean, painting the undersides of the clouds a brilliant pink fading to pale orange. The sound of gulls carried to him over the pulsation of the waves and a dog barked.

  Vinnie draped an arm across his upper chest, pulling him back against him for a moment and kissing his temple. “It’s gonna be okay, baby brother,” he said in his ear.

  CHAPTER 14

  Saturday/Sunday

  Peyton grabbed the paper out of her printer and hurried from her office, turning left to circle around to Tank’s overflowing space. Few people were in on a Saturday, but a smattering of agents milled around the cubicle jungle and talked on phones.

  Tank stood by the window, a book in hand, studying something on a page. He looked over at Peyton as she rounded the corner and stopped before his desk. “Peyton, nice to see you. Is Radar ready to go?”

  Peyton held up the paper. “Not yet, but Lance Corporal Daw’s evidence box arrived downstairs. You wanna look at it with me?”

  He closed the book and moved to the shelf replacing it. “Of course I do. Do we have time?”

  Peyton shrugged. “We can stall. If Radar can’t find us, what’s he gonna do?”

  “Get angry. Have you seen the way that vein bulges in his forehead? I’m always afraid it’s going to blow.”

  “Vein?” Peyton considered that. She hadn’t noticed it bef
ore. Hm.

  Tank grabbed his suit jacket and swung it on, moving around the desk. “Lately, I’ve seen it a lot. When Arthur was alive, it didn’t happen so much, but after he died, Radar’s jaw was so tight it looked like a rope running across his forehead. We were all glad when he got therapy.” Tank led the way out of the office and they circled toward the elevator. “But the last few weeks, it’s been back again.”

  Peyton stopped walking. The last few weeks? Since she’d come on-board? Shit, was she giving Radar an aneurysm?

  Tank glanced back at her. “You coming?”

  She jogged to catch up, watching as he punched the button for the elevator. Studying the paper, she wondered if they should leave the evidence box until they returned from Santa Cruz, but she quickly stuffed that thought away. It didn’t hurt Radar to wait. He could do his meditation crap for a few minutes.

  The evidence room was in the basement, which seemed a bit of a cliché to Peyton. It reminded her of those obligatory scenes in movies when a clerk takes a box of important evidence and begins walking down long aisles of storage as the camera pans out to reveal the vast horde of stuff being ignored by some government agency.

  A very short man with wispy grey hair stood on a platform behind the counter. He wore a bowtie and his white shirt sleeves had been rolled up to his elbows. He had a small face, small eyes, button nose, and a tight, small mouth. He looked like an elf. Peyton fought a smile as she produced her writ of access to look at the box.

  He eyed it, then eyed her, then reached for a pair of half-glasses, perched them on his button nose and eyed the paper again. Then without a word, he hopped off his platform and disappeared into the aisles behind him.

  Peyton smiled up at Tank, rocking on her heels. “So…he’s friendly.”

  Tank gave her a wry smile in return. “He doesn’t deal with people very often.”

  “I got that,” she said, tucking her hands into the pockets of her suit trousers. “Lots of boxes. LOTS of boxes.”

  “Shhh,” hissed the little man, appearing at the end of the aisle. He glared at Peyton as he carried the box to the counter.

  Peyton gave him a sheepish look and reached for it as he hopped up on his platform again. He yanked it away, settling it on a counter to the right of him. Grabbing a clipboard, he slapped it down in front of Peyton and pointed at a line.

  “Sign.”

  Peyton reached for the pen attached to the top of the clipboard. It was chained to the hole in the clip. “Does it run away a lot?”

  He cocked his head at her and gave her a piercing look. His eyes were a summery green. “What?”

  “The pen. Does it run away? Is that why it’s on a leash?”

  Tank made a choking sound, drawing the little guy’s attention.

  “People are always walking off with it.”

  Peyton nodded and signed her name. He grabbed the clipboard and turned it around, studying her signature. While he did that, Peyton shoved her hand under his nose. “Peyton Brooks. I’m new here. It’s nice to meet you.”

  He studied her hand a moment as if it might bite him.

  She kept it extended, giving him a beaming smile. “I’m sure we’re going to work together a lot and personally, I’m looking forward to it.”

  He hugged the evidence box with his right arm, but he grasped her hand with the fingers on his left hand and gave her a little squeeze. “Myron Hammersmith.”

  “Myron Hammersmith? Now that’s a heroic name, to be sure. Like a Viking or something.”

  “It’s British,” he said.

  “Technically,” answered Tank, “it means one who smiths hammers. In medieval times, names often designated a man’s trade or some such.”

  “Exactly.”

  Peyton smiled. These two were perfect for each other. “Good to know.” She reached for the box and Myron finally relinquished it. Carrying it to a table perpendicular to the wall with the door, she settled it and peeled off the lid.

  A pair of jeans and a t-shirt in a sealed plastic bag lay on top, followed by a run-down set of sneakers in another bag. Peyton lifted them out and looked them over, while Tank loomed behind her. Setting them aside, she picked up three more bags. Inside each was a napkin with numbers written on it. Two napkins had six numbers and one had only a single set of three.

  “What are those?”

  “I don’t know, but they were in Mark Turner’s file too.”

  “Mark Turner was the first investigating agent?”

  “Yep.”

  “What did he think they were?”

  “He didn’t know.”

  “Combinations?”

  “Probably, but to what?”

  Tank shrugged, taking one of them from her hand and turning it over to look at the back.

  Peyton settled the other two bags to the side and rose on tiptoes to look into the bottom of the box. It was empty.

  “What the hell!”

  Tank glanced into it as well. “Where’s the coin?”

  “I don’t know.” She tilted the box and looked at the label on the front of it. The clothes, the shoes, and the three bags with napkins were listed, but the coin was not. “It’s not listed on here either.”

  She picked up the clothes and turned the bag over, trying to see if the coin had wound up inside of it by accident, but nothing shook loose. She did the same with the shoe bag, then she went back to the clothes and pressed them against the table, trying to feel for the coin hiding in the fabric.

  Tank laid the napkins out on the table in a line and studied them. “What would these be a combination for? A safe? But where?”

  Peyton distractedly shook her head. She could feel nothing in the clothes except the stitching where the jeans had been sewn together. She turned to Myron. “There’s something missing from the box.”

  “Is it listed on the manifest?”

  “No, but I know it was in here. Agent Turner took a picture of it and included it in his file.”

  “What was it?”

  “A gold coin.”

  “If it isn’t on the manifest, it wasn’t in the evidence box. Evidence is handled with extreme care and is never out of the sight of a sworn evidence clerk at all times, once it leaves the chain of custody.”

  “But I’m telling you it was here. He had a picture of it in the file.”

  “Maybe it belonged in another file.”

  “No, it had the case number stamped on the back of it.”

  “If the coin is not on the manifest, it was never part of the evidence for this case,” persisted Myron.

  Peyton opened her mouth to protest, but her cell phone rang. Myron gave her an arch look and put a finger to his lips, indicating silence. Peyton snatched the phone out of her pocket and thumbed it on, glaring at him. She’d give him silence!

  “Yeah!” she barked into the phone.

  “Just what I need on my Saturday morning, Sparky, attitude.”

  Radar. “Sorry, what’s up?” She forced false brightness into her voice.

  “I thought we were heading out to Santa Cruz. Bambi’s here, but you’re not, and I wouldn’t want to go anywhere without your sunny disposition beside me.”

  “Okay, we’re coming.”

  “We’re?”

  “Me and Tank.”

  “You have Tank with you? Where are you?”

  “Evidence.”

  “Evidence? What are you doing down there?”

  “Researching a cold case.”

  “Well, we have a live case right here. You wanna give that some of your attention?”

  “Okay, just give us a minute. Do some of your meditation or something? Tank’s worried about that vein in your head.”

  “What vein in my head?”

  Tank gave her a frantic shake of his own head.

  Peyton patted his shoulder. “We’re coming now, Radar. Sit tight.”

  “What vein in my head?”

  “See you soon, buddy,” she cooed into the phone and disconnected. Putting
everything back in the evidence box, she smoothed her hands over the clothes Lance Corporal Daws had worn just before he died. Such a small amount of nothing to leave behind. Such a small amount of nothing. What the hell.

  * * *

  “What’s this cold case you’re so fixated on?” asked Radar as he drove down the coast toward Santa Cruz.

  Peyton stared out the window. She liked this drive. The ocean glimmered blue-green in the morning sunlight and cypress trees twisted their way along the bluffs. Green valleys appeared before them, rolling into the harsh lines of the cliffs where the surf had eroded away the land.

  “Lance Corporal Isaac Daws. He died in a sleazy motel room of a drug overdose two years after being discharged. He had a purple heart and numerous commendations for service and bravery.”

  “Who had the case first?”

  “Mark Turner.” She looked over at Radar, but she couldn’t see anything behind his mirrored glasses. “You know him?”

  “Nope. He’s not in our office.”

  “Las Vegas.”

  “Ah, is that where Daws was found?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why do we have it?”

  “He grew up here. His parents didn’t accept the medical examiner’s conclusion, so another autopsy was done. That one turned up some troubling results.”

  “Who did the second autopsy?”

  Peyton tried to remember.

  “Cecelia Gaston,” said Tank behind her.

  Peyton held up a hand to indicate he was right.

  “He was found with a strange coin in his pocket, but when we looked at the evidence box, it wasn’t in there. Turner took a picture of it and put it in the file, but I felt everything in that box and looked at the manifest, but it was gone.”

  “What kind of coin?”

  “Not sure.”

  “The professor’s doing research on it,” offered Tank.

  Radar gave a short nod.

  “Ooh, I like a mystery,” said Bambi. “You need my help on this?”

  Peyton started to answer, but Radar held up a hand. “We have a case. We need to focus on that. Put the Daws case away until we’re done with this, then we can all take a look at it.”

  Peyton gave Bambi a smile and turned back to the front. “How can evidence go missing, Radar?” she asked.