She’d been counting on her fingers, but she let her hand drop to her side and leveled him with a glare backed by all the false bravado she could muster. “So how about you drop the act and stop being deliberately obtuse. Because there’s a dead guy with a gunshot wound through his head, and somehow he ended up in your bay.”
Fighting the urge to blink, Izzy held the doc’s stare. He looked away first, his brows raised in Mia’s direction.
Her partner had settled back against a counter, her arms crossed over her chest, her face impassive. But when the doc looked at her, Mia shrugged. “She has a point.”
The pause that followed was loaded, but then the doctor sighed, and when he spoke, the frostiness that had coated his every word to Izzy had thawed a tiny bit. “I don’t know what he was working on. Never talked to the guy.”
“But your impression?”
The doc glanced down at Twist. “He was squirrelly.”
“Care to define ‘squirrelly’ for us?” Izzy asked, getting the feeling that descriptor would apply to a broad range of behavior when it came to these people. “Not exactly a technical term.”
He lifted a hand in a vague gesture that she couldn’t interpret.
“He’d come into the bar most nights. Had a laptop and a bunch of journals, but he’d hide them real fast if anyone tried to sit with him.” He wiped his palms against the front of his jeans. “Was poking around the lighthouse a couple times.”
Mia coughed. “He was at the lighthouse?”
“Yup.”
“Did he . . . ?” Mia trailed off, a distinct crackle at the edge of her voice. “What was he doing there?”
Sammy chewed on his lower lip. “Don’t know. Jimmy chased him away.”
“Who’s that?” Izzy asked, and their gazes snapped to her, as if they’d forgotten she was there. The air was strange and charged, and Izzy was clearly at least three paces behind in the conversation.
“Jimmy Roarke,” Sammy said, turning toward her. “Our retired handyman slash contractor slash jack-of-all-trades.”
“Does everyone have three or four jobs around here?” So much about this place was foreign to Izzy. Living in Maine, after spending her entire twenty-seven years of life in Dallas, was already a struggle. Everything was harsher—the weather, the accents, the people. They didn’t draw out their vowels, and they didn’t chat at cash registers, and they didn’t know what to do with a six-foot-tall girl with brown skin and a sleeve of tattoos.
She’d be forever grateful to Gina Murdoch for giving her a chance with the job. Izzy had been in a rut at her old station, having stomped on the wrong toes her first week out of training and paying for the misstep for years to follow with shitty shifts and bottom-of-the-barrel partners. When Gina, her father’s old friend, told her about a position she had open on her cold-case team—a rarity in this era of budget cuts and speeding tickets—Izzy hadn’t thought twice.
It just would have been nice if the job had been somewhere that didn’t feel like a different country.
The doc shrugged off her question. “When you have fewer than two hundred people on an island, you have to wear a few hats to make everything work.”
“Did Jimmy say how Twist reacted when he was caught at the lighthouse?” Mia asked. There was an intensity to Mia that seemed out of step with the rest of the mood of the interview. The lighthouse. She had started getting weird once the lighthouse was mentioned.
“Nope, just that Jimmy had to chase him off the property.” Sammy turned around and grabbed a box of latex gloves, then held them out to both of them.
They all took pairs. Izzy always hated the smell of them and the way they never fit her fingers quite right.
“All right, well, here we go.” Sammy bumped Izzy out of the way with his hip. “Robert Twist, TOD sometime between about nine p.m. on Sunday, January sixth and Tuesday, January eighth.”
“Why that range?” Izzy interrupted.
“He left the bar at that time on Sunday, which was the last anyone can distinctly remember seeing him,” the doc said, in professional mode now. “And there are signs he was in the water for about a week. It could push the time of death to Wednesday, but I’d focus on that tighter window.”
“Could he have been held outside for a while and then dumped?” Mia asked. “Would that change anything? Slow down the rate of decomp?”
“That’s a little beyond my pay grade.” Sammy shrugged. “Could be. That kind of thing might need someone from the mainland.”
If this turned out to be a homicide, they’d bring in a professional. But for now . . .
“Best guess?” Izzy pressed.
Sammy’s hand hovered near the back of Twist’s head before dropping to his side.
“I don’t think there was much time between when this wound was created and when he was submerged in salt water.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There’s no frostbite.” Sammy shrugged. “No obvious skin death of that sort. I could be wrong, but I think the salt water staved off any damage from the cold.”
“He could have been kept inside, then? And then dumped.”
“I guess.”
“Apart from the circumstances, are there any obvious signs of foul play?” Mia asked.
“No, not really,” Sammy said slowly. “Any gun residue or particulates in the wound that might have shown otherwise are long gone.”
Izzy had guessed that would be the case. “What do you think?”
The doc tilted his head to each side, clearly hesitant. “The wound is consistent with what you would see if it was self-inflicted.”
Which was what both Izzy and Mia had concluded time and again.
But the idea still didn’t make sense to Izzy. “But how did his body get in the water if he was planning on shooting himself? Was he too close to the cliffs when he did it, and his body fell? Why would he have been out there in the first place if he was just going to kill himself with a gun?”
Rocking back on his heels, Sammy lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “In case the gun didn’t do the trick?”
She couldn’t tell if he was being serious or if it was some poor attempt at humor, but she shook her head anyway. There would be no reason for Twist to double up like that.
“Can you get his blood alcohol levels? That long after death?”
“It’s not reliable.” Sammy stretched an arm out to grab the file from the counter. He flipped it open, his eyes scanning over whatever was written. “But yeah, it was sky high. Lends itself to suicide as COD.”
Not necessarily. But Izzy for once kept her mouth shut.
“Did you do a full toxicology report?” Mia asked.
Sammy tossed the chart back where it had been. “Sent it off to the state. Should get it back in a few days.”
“So if his BAC was through the roof, that could explain the cliffs,” Mia said. “He was drunk, wandered outside with his gun, shot himself. His body ended up in the ocean.”
As Mia spoke, Sammy nodded along, his hands shoved in his pockets.
Izzy could see it to an extent. Drunk guys were notorious for doing stupid things.
The thing was, Izzy knew setups. She’d orchestrated more than her fair share in vice—had been the would-be victim of more than she could count, too. They were hard to pull off perfectly, usually with a sloppy detail or two coming back to bite someone in the ass. A discordant note, something jarring enough to pause over, even if it wasn’t enough to make an arrest.
That’s what this scene felt like.
Maybe her perception was colored by the fact that she would never willingly go outside in that kind of weather in nothing other than a T-shirt and jeans no matter how many sheets she was to the wind. But it was enough to make her stop, wonder. Doubt. Once that snuck in, it was hard to shake.
“Any defensive injuries?” Izzy asked.
“None that couldn’t be explained by his body hitting up against rocks at the base of the cliffs,” the doc said.
“He had no possessions on him?” Mia asked while bending down so that her face was level with the metal table. Izzy mirrored her position on the other side. When Mia tipped Twist’s chin toward Izzy to get a look at the gunshot wound in the back of his head, his eyelids slipped up so that Izzy could see the cloudy blue of his irises. She took a half step back, sucking in air as she did.
Working vice in Dallas hadn’t exactly been an easy gig—there’d been plenty of dead bodies to stumble over. But Izzy had never liked this part: the absent eyes, the pale skin, the lax expression. She was a cop because she liked puzzles; that was why investigating cold cases was so perfect. The reminder of the fragility of life was a nasty side effect she put up with.
“Nothing on him when the guys—that would be Greg Lawson and Brandon Sonder—pulled him out of the water,” Sammy answered from behind them. “Doesn’t mean he didn’t go in with his wallet or phone.”
“Brandon Sonder’s new,” Mia said, and it didn’t seem like a question.
Sammy laughed. “Moved here just after you left. So if you consider being here fifteen years new, then yes.”
Mia’s teeth flashed—a grin that was quick and real. “Don’t you?”
“Of course.” Sammy’s answering smile was one born from a years-long friendship. “Once an outlander, always an outlander.”
That hollow feeling was back, the camaraderie between the two of them unsettling in a way Izzy couldn’t quite pinpoint.
Too close, too close, too close. Izzy got why Murdoch had given Mia the file, she did. It was obvious just seeing the difference in how Sammy acted when he was talking to her. Izzy wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with these people.
But how were they supposed to work the case? They’d both been cops long enough to know that being too close to an investigation amplified all your blind spots.
It was already happening. Izzy could tell Mia wanted to latch onto Sammy’s suicide explanation, despite the holes in the scenario, despite the impasse they’d reached earlier on the ferry. Suicide or murder? Not enough evidence to tell, they’d decided countless times.
When had that changed? Was it when Mia had recognized the man? Or was it that she had an ally backing the suicide theory?
“All right.” Mia straightened, moving away from the body as she did. “That’s a good start. We’ll head over to Mama’s now, drop our bags. I have your number in the file if we need anything else.”
“Sure. I’ll be here till six, then will probably dip into the bar for a beer. If you two are in the mood, stop by.”
Mia nodded, but it seemed like a dismissal more than anything else. “Thanks.”
They all peeled off their gloves, then Mia headed toward the hallway, back to their layers of coats and sweaters and scarves.
Just before they stepped out of the small room, Izzy turned back. “Oh, one more question, Doc.”
Sammy paused while sliding Robert Twist’s body back into the cold chamber. “Yeah?”
“Was there a suicide note?” It seemed odd that they wouldn’t have mentioned it in the report if there had been, but she had to ask.
Sammy’s gaze shifted to a spot beyond Izzy’s shoulder, where Mia must have stopped, and then returned to Izzy’s face. “No.”
There it was again. Izzy on the outside, while the two of them had entire conversations with just a look. She knew she was missing something, and it made her fingers twitchy.
When she glanced toward Mia, the woman was already heading down the hallway back toward their gear.
“Hey,” she said when she caught up. Mia’s hand was tangled up in the arm of her jacket as she tried to shove her foot into one of her boots.
Izzy kept her voice pitched low so that Sammy wouldn’t be able to hear even if he was lurking in the hallway. “What was that about?”
Mia’s eyes flicked over Izzy’s face, and then she sighed, bringing her arm up to her chest, over her heart. She cradled her wrist with her other hand, her thumb stroking the exposed sliver of skin.
“I didn’t leave a suicide note, either.”
CHAPTER THREE
MIA
The house on Baker Street was pale petal pink with a sunny yellow door. A summer garden, Mia used to think while dragging her fingertips along the edge of the siding before racing toward the woods in the back.
Now, in the gray mist that foretold a rumbling storm, it just seemed sad.
Izzy hovered behind Mia where she’d stopped on the sidewalk, impatience radiating off her in swooping waves that crashed onto Mia’s back.
Mia had managed to convince Izzy that the entryway into Sammy’s morgue wasn’t the place to talk further about suicide notes, but she doubted she’d bought herself much time.
She couldn’t think about that now, though. She had to concentrate on making herself take a step toward the house.
That ache was back, the one that was a tangled mess of emotions she couldn’t quite name.
Home.
It had been fifteen years since she’d stood on this sidewalk, since she’d walked through that door. Sweat gathered at her hairline despite the cold. Flee, her body begged.
“Is that little Mia Hart?” a voice called from somewhere to her right. Mia flinched as sound beyond the buzzing in her own ears returned to the world.
In the dim, fading light of an already-dark day, it was hard to make out more than just a shape standing on the stoop of the house next to Mama’s. But Mia knew who it was. “Mrs. Edwards.” She lifted a hand in a small wave, then moved toward the house, keeping her head down.
“You home then, dear?” Natalie Edwards had never been one to be deterred from good gossip.
“A few days.” Mia stopped on the porch. Knocking wouldn’t be appropriate, not on the door of her childhood home. But walking right in after being gone for more than a decade felt wrong, too. Unsure what to do, Mia froze while Natalie’s eyes devoured her every hesitancy.
“For that man who ended up in the ocean, I suppose,” Natalie called.
Mia pivoted just a bit at the question, the delay almost welcome. “You ever see him around, Mrs. Edwards?”
“We all did, didn’t we?” Natalie said in that universally noncommittal way everyone on the island seemed to be born knowing how to do. “A nosy so-and-so.”
Izzy shifted beside her as if she were considering going over and interviewing Natalie. “Did you ever talk to him?”
Natalie’s gaze flicked to Mia before returning to Izzy, and the pause before she answered felt like a lie in and of itself. “About the weather if I saw him in the shop. Nothing more.”
“Who did he speak to?” Mia tried.
“Oh, he tried to talk to everyone, dear.” Natalie’s shoulders relaxed, her fingers loosening. Back in the comfortable safety of vague answers. “No one was too keen on chatting to him, though.”
That, Mia believed. “He never mentioned what he was working on?”
Again, Natalie tensed, her eyes on Mia’s face. “He was real secretive, that one. Not that I’m one to speak ill of the dead.”
“Squirrelly, you might say,” Izzy muttered, low enough so only Mia would hear her.
Mia swallowed a short laugh. “Okay, thank you. If you remember anything else in specific . . . ?”
Natalie flapped a hand in their direction like a promise, but it was one Mia knew was fake. Still, the little exchange had burned off enough of the anxiety holding her hostage that she was able to finally open the door to Mama’s house and slip into the dark entryway.
An empty silence pressed against Mia. It was the kind that came with an abandoned house, even though she knew Mama was there.
Izzy followed in behind her. “So everyone’s a nosy busybody in this place, or just her?”
Grateful for Izzy’s light tone, Mi
a smiled and then started the long process of shucking off her boots and other layers. Izzy followed suit. “It’s a fine balance. They want to know all the gossip but not have to actually give any of their own.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that vibe.”
Once they were down to jeans and long shirts, Mia nodded toward the kitchen, where she knew Mama was waiting for them. The passive-aggressiveness of the nongreeting was the steel in Mama’s spine that kept her upright.
The lights in the hallway were dimmed, the walls lined with photos. Most were the kind that kids were forced to take at school, the ones with jewel-colored backdrops and dead eyes. But there were a few candids scattered throughout as well.
Mia stopped in front of one of her, Asher Lowe, and Cash Bishop.
The three of them were laughing, no space between their bodies to tell where one ended and the next began. Their hips bumped, and their arms knew nothing of personal boundaries as they grasped each other’s waists with careless hands.
Her eyes caught on her own face, tipped up as it was toward Cash. There was a desperation, a raw hunger, in the way she had been looking at him that now flushed her cheeks hot. Back then he’d been the only thing she could see.
He, on the other hand, was looking into the camera, the hints of a handsome face lurking beneath a baby fat softness that had lingered into teenage years. She studied his lean frame, the stance that was steeped in a confidence that came from the money in his family’s bank account.
She’d known that body then almost as well as her own.
Mia’s gaze slid to Asher without permission, and her throat fluttered closed, a breath caught just on the wrong side.
The picture had been taken in the summer, a few months before he’d killed himself. They’d been sixteen, giddy and reckless and cocky, thinking that being on the brink of adulthood actually meant something. Those days had been slow, syrupy, and happy in a way Mia often forgot she’d ever been.
It was the first summer she and Cash had been officially together, clumsily altering the dynamic between the three of them without much thought to Asher.
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