Flight

by Laura Griffin

  “Tell me how you found the boat,” he said. “What were you doing out there?”

  She rested her hands on her hips and gazed at the bay. Her arms were tanned and toned, as though she spent a lot of time in her kayak.

  “I got to the marina about five fifteen,” she said.

  “That’s early.”

  “I was photographing the sunrise.”

  “Okay. And you were coming from where?”

  “The north end of the island. I’m renting a beach house about a mile from here.”

  “All right.”

  “I put in my kayak. Paddled about a hundred yards out, toward the marshes near the nature center. As the sky brightened, I took a series of photographs. Nautical twilight is the best time to get silhouettes. That’s between first light and sunrise.” She looked at him, probably sensing that he didn’t know shit about photography. But fishing he knew, and he understood the different phases of daylight on this bay.

  “Anyway, as I was paddling, I scared up some birds.” A lock of hair blew against her face, and she peeled it away. Joel noticed her hand was trembling. “That’s when I spotted a yellow line.”

  “A fishing line?”

  “No, like a rope. A thin one. It was attached to a canoe hidden in some cattails.” She paused, and a somber look came over her face. “That’s when I saw them.”

  “The couple.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you could tell they were dead?”

  “Yes.” She broke eye contact and looked at the bay again. The wind had picked up, and the water was getting choppy. “There was no mistaking it. I mean, you’ll see when they bring them in.”

  “You know what time this was?” he asked.

  “About six forty.”

  Joel watched her face as she looked out over the water. The boats were coming in, and he could hear the motors getting closer. But he was more interested in Miranda Rhoads’s carefully calm expression.

  “Do you recall any noises?” he asked.

  She looked at him. “Noises?”

  “When you were out on the water taking pictures. Did you hear any gunshots? Or yelling, screaming, anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “Think back. Sometimes seagulls screeching can sound similar to—”

  “I didn’t hear anything like that.” She was adamant. “I didn’t hear anyone or see anyone until I got back to the marina and asked the guy at the bait shop for help.” She turned to look at Randy, who was smoking another cigarette and talking with McDeere. “That guy there, with the beard.”

  “So you didn’t have a cell phone out there with you?” Joel asked.

  “Not on the kayak, no. I keep it locked in the console of my Jeep.”

  “All right. And when you arrived here, did you see any other cars in the lot?”

  She shook her head. “I was the first one.”

  “Any other boats? Fishermen?”

  “No.”

  “What about pedestrians? Dog walkers?” He nodded at the marshland between the marina and the nature center. “Some people use the trails in the morning.”

  “There was no one out when I first got here. At least, not that I saw. Only person I noticed was a cyclist on the highway. He was riding along the shoulder.”

  That caught Joel’s interest. “Where, exactly?”

  She blew out a sigh. “He was on a bike about fifty yards north of the turnoff for the marina. He was heading north. I described him to McDeere. He had on a light-colored T-shirt and a baseball cap. I remember noticing because he should have been wearing a helmet, especially riding in the dark like that.”

  Joel cast a glance at McDeere, who was watching him now with a look Joel couldn’t read. He had no doubt the officer would have taken all this down. A former Marine, McDeere was thorough and paid attention to details. It was one of the things Joel liked about working with him.

  “As I said, I gave all this to the officer already.”

  Joel looked at the witness. Her cheeks were still pink, and she seemed antsy. Like she was itching to leave. She glanced over Joel’s shoulder, and her brow furrowed.

  Joel turned to see the ME’s van swinging into the lot, followed by a white SUV. Both vehicles pulled into spaces near the bait shop. The door to the SUV opened, and Bollinger hopped out.

  Joel checked his watch. Almost an hour since the chief had called the county for a crime scene investigator. Joel gritted his teeth.

  “Detective? Is that all right?”

  He shifted his attention back to the witness. Those caramel-colored eyes looked worried now.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I need to head out. I’m late for something.” She nodded toward the bait shop. “If you have any more follow-ups, your officer there has all my contact information. And he gave me his card.”

  Joel didn’t want to let her go, but he didn’t have a reason to keep her here, either. The boats were pulling in, and Joel wanted to get a look at everything before the ME’s people started.

  “Let me see that card,” he said.

  She hesitated a moment before pulling a card from her bra and handing it over. Joel took out a pen and wrote on the back.

  “That’s my mobile,” he said. “Call me if you remember anything else.”

  “All right.”

  “Thank you for your time today.”

  “No problem.”

  She stepped around him to open the Jeep, and Joel moved out of the way.

  Bollinger was still with his vehicle, zipping into his white Tyvek suit. Meanwhile, the boats had docked, and Emmet was securing the canoe to a cleat.

  Thunder rumbled, and Joel glanced at the sky just in time to catch the first fat raindrops. He looked at the canoe that held two dead young people, along with any forensic evidence he hoped to recover. All of it was going to get drenched.

  Joel started for the dock.

  “Detective?”

  He turned around. Miranda wore a rain jacket now with a hood that covered her head. Wherever she was going, she was about to get soaked.

  “Make sure they bag her hands,” she told him.

  “What’s that?”

  “The female victim,” she said. “She’s holding a feather. You don’t want it getting lost in transport, so tell your CSI to make sure to bag her hands.”

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Miranda pulled off the highway onto the gravel road. Swerving around potholes, she approached the weathered wooden beach house she’d come to call home.

  The place was gray, like today’s sky. It looked small and dilapidated compared to houses in the nearby subdivision, where homeowners picked from a selection of pre-approved colors in a cheery Caribbean palette. Miranda had gathered these details at the neighborhood’s sales office during her first week on the island. She’d also learned that if she’d been in the market for a house—which she wasn’t—the pastel-colored bungalows were well out of her price range.

  She pulled under the rental house and parked her Jeep. Perched on twelve-foot stilts, the house was lower than everything else on the island’s north end. New regulations called for sixteen-foot stilts to protect against storm surges, but Miranda’s place had been built in the seventies. The house didn’t look like much, but she loved the location well off the highway. From the south, it was concealed from view by a sloping clump of oak trees that had been sculpted by countless storms off the Gulf.

  Miranda gathered her cell phone and camera from the console and tucked both under her jacket before getting out. The rain was steady now, with no end in sight, and she was going to have to drag the Jeep’s top from the storage closet before venturing out again. She made a dash up the wooden stairs to the door and was greeted by Benji’s nose against the glass. With Benji on guard, she wasn’t in the habit of locking up
when she went out briefly. That was about to change.

  “Hey, boy,” she said as she stepped inside.

  Benji wiggled and whimpered as she took off her jacket, dripping water all over the floor. She bent down to rub his ears, and his skinny body shook with excitement as he licked her hands. A greyhound mix who looked underfed, Benji wasn’t winning any beauty contests, but for Miranda it had been love at first sight.

  She set her camera on the kitchen counter and plugged her phone into the charger. Pausing by the window, she looked out over the beach. The surf was up, and gray water churned beneath the charcoal sky. Maybe the storm would blow through, maybe not. But either way, she needed to hurry.

  She went to the sink and stood for a moment to get her bearings. She splashed water on her face, then grabbed a dish towel and blotted her cheeks.

  Two vics. GSW. Point-blank range.

  She pictured Officer McDeere beside his patrol car talking on his radio. Then she pictured the detective. Joel Breda. She thought of his wide shoulders and narrow hips, and the stern look in his blue eyes as he’d towered over her.

  You could tell they were dead?

  Miranda shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could get the images out of her head. But of course, she couldn’t. The lifeless bodies were seared into her memory. She was a visual person, which had propelled her career, but sometimes it felt like a curse.

  She tossed the dish towel away and opened the refrigerator. Usually after a sunrise photo shoot she brewed a pot of strong coffee and sat down to pore through her results. But she was wired to the point of being dizzy, and the last thing she needed was caffeine. She had a sudden craving for a cigarette, which made no sense because she hadn’t smoked since college.

  She reached for a bottle of water and took a long swig. Then she grabbed a beach towel off the stacked washer-dryer in the corner of the kitchen. The towel was gritty from her last trip to the beach with Benji, but she wrapped it around her shoulders and went to her workspace.

  The corner of the living room was her office, and her laptop was perched on a rickety wooden card table that she’d found in the bedroom closet along with a stack of jigsaw puzzles. She brought the computer to life and plugged in her camera, then sat down. She checked the clock: 8:28. She didn’t have much time, but this couldn’t wait until after work.

  Benji nudged her knee with his nose.

  “I know, boy. But it’s raining.” She scratched his head. “We’ll go later.”

  He grunted and licked her hand, and she knew he sensed her agitation. He always keyed in on her moods.

  Miranda clicked into the photo software and watched her shots roll in. Thumbnail images flashed at warp speed—a sunset at the nature center, last weekend’s regatta, a series of sand dunes.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” she muttered.

  It had been far too long since she’d uploaded her memory card, and now today of all days, she’d reached capacity.

  Miranda scooted her chair in and watched the screen as her stomach filled with dread. Shuddering again, she pulled the towel tighter around her shoulders. Why was she so rattled? She’d seen bodies before. But that was different. Different place, different context.

  Different everything.

  Finally, today’s fiery sky appeared, and Miranda held her breath. Sky, sky, sky. More sky. And then a blur of green.

  She clicked an image to enlarge it. The great blue heron. The shot was good. Exceptional, even. She scrolled past it until she reached the clump of cattails.

  Start big and get small.

  Her photography instructor’s voice echoed through her head again. That was exactly what she’d done. Even in her panic, she’d fallen back on her training.

  She had several shots of the cattails, with the green canoe camouflaged among the reeds. She scrolled through the images, getting closer and closer until she came to the overview shot.

  Miranda’s chest tightened. The scene took her breath away, even now, separated from the horror of it by time and space.

  She combed through her photographs, studying the legs, the faces, the hands.

  Miranda bit her lip. She pulled the towel tighter. She scrolled and scrolled until there it was—the shot she’d been looking for.

  Early this morning, she’d been totally hands-off, but now she could really look. She touched the screen and spread her thumb and forefinger apart to zoom in.

  Miranda’s pulse picked up. She leaned closer. She hadn’t been seeing things or imagining. It was just as she’d thought.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Nicole stared at the picture taped to the murder board, transfixed by the young woman’s face. Her eyes were half-open, her lips slightly parted. A tiny black fly hovered at the corner of her mouth.

  Nicole tried to envision how those final moments had played out. Had she seen the gun and felt a jolt of terror? Or had she and her companion chosen this as some sort of twisted suicide pact?

  Shifting her attention to the photo of both victims, Nicole considered their clothing. They both wore shorts, no shoes, and their legs were intertwined. The man’s arm was draped over the woman’s bare abdomen below the hem of her short-cropped blue T-shirt.

  Nicole studied the picture, but she couldn’t figure it out. The position of his arm seemed almost . . . sweet. Had he gone out there planning to kill her and dump her body? Maybe he’d felt remorse and killed himself, too? Or had a third party come upon them in an intimate moment and taken them by surprise?

  Joel walked into the conference room and stopped short.

  “Damn,” he said, looking at the murder board. “You’re fast.”

  “I didn’t want to wait for you guys.” Nicole perched on the edge of the conference table. “How’d it go out there?”

  Joel peeled off his LBPD baseball cap and dropped it on the table. His shaggy brown hair was damp with sweat, and clearly he’d been in the sun for hours. After dumping an ungodly amount of rain, the morning storm had moved inland, leaving the island steamy and soggy.

  “We went back to the scene,” he said.

  “You did?”

  He stepped over to the coffeepot and picked up the carafe.

  “That’s been there all day,” she said.

  “Don’t care. I missed lunch.” He poured the dregs into a cardboard cup, then picked up the sugar dispenser and gave a few generous shakes.

  “There are doughnuts in the break room. Tell me about the scene first, though.”

  “No new leads.”

  He downed the coffee and put the cup on the table, then stepped over to look at the board. He’d gone home at some point to change into his usual clothes: a navy police golf shirt, desert brown tactical pants, and brown ATAC boots—all terrain, all conditions—because island law enforcement frequently involved traipsing around in the mud.

  “You got the pictures printed already,” he said, stepping over to a close-up of the female victim’s face. Still no IDs, so for now the victims were Jane and John Doe.

  Nicole watched him examine the photos. His blue eyes were somber. The charming smile he used to disarm suspects and witnesses alike was gone now as he studied the victims whose death it was his job to solve. Joel was the lead detective. He was also her mentor, both officially and unofficially, and she’d worked with him on all sorts of cases, but nothing that came close to this.

  He glanced at her. “What?”

  “Nothing. You guys finish canvassing the nature center?”

  “The nature center, the marina, the park.” He finished his coffee and pitched his cup into the trash. “No one saw the canoe or heard any gunshots.”

  “Damn.” Nicole blew out a sigh and turned to the board. “What about the ME?”

  “Autopsies are scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
/>   “They can’t do them today?”

  He shot her a look. “We’re last in line.”

  Nicole shouldn’t have been surprised. Lost Beach was too small to have its own medical examiner and crime lab. They had to piggyback on the county.

  “I’d really like to get his take on manner of death,” she said. “It’s a bizarre crime scene.”

  “Yep.”

  She studied the photograph again. Bizarre was an understatement. The woman’s braid floated in the water, looking eerily like a water moccasin.

  “Anything new with the IDs?” Joel asked.

  “No, and there’s not a lot to go on,” she said. “No phones, no wallets, no keys, no driver’s licenses. Just the backpack we recovered from the stern of the boat, along with a flashlight. How many twentysomethings do you know who go anywhere without a phone?”

  “It could have been stolen with everything else.”

  She nodded. “So that would make this a robbery on the high seas. In a canoe, no less, which has to be a first for us.”

  Joel sank into a chair and leaned back, combing his hand through his thick dark hair. He looked whipped, and he had to be starving, too. Six-two and muscular, he had a big appetite and tended to get edgy when he skipped meals.

  “With all the drug running around here, piracy’s more common than you’d think,” he said. “People don’t exactly file a police report when their cargo gets grabbed.”

  Nicole crossed her arms. “Okay, but that logic doesn’t add up either. If this was a robbery—as in they took the wallets, keys, phones, and whatever—how come they left the weed?”

  “What weed?”

  She picked up the manila folder on the end of the table and shuffled through the rest of the crime scene pics. She found the one of the unzipped backpack with a half-filled plastic baggie of marijuana. She stepped over and taped the picture to the whiteboard alongside the other crime scene shots.

  “What else you have there?” Joel picked up the folder and thumbed through it. He stopped at an overhead shot of the canoe in which the victims were captured in the frame from head to toe.