Joel’s frown deepened, and he watched her. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
A young server stepped up to their table. She was tall and slender and had a mane of curly blond hair.
“Evening.” She looked at Miranda. “Something to drink?”
“Um . . .” She picked up the menu tucked behind the condiment bottles and glanced at Joel. Was he on duty or off?
“I’ll have a Dos Equis with lime,” she said.
The server jotted it down and glanced up. “Joel?”
“Just water, thanks.”
“Are y’all ready to order?”
“What’s your rec today?” he asked.
“The snapper, hands down. It’s just off the boat.”
He arched his eyebrows at Miranda.
“Sounds great to me,” she said.
“Make it two snapper dinners.”
“You got it. I’ll have those drinks out.”
When she was gone, Miranda looked at him. “Everybody knows you.”
“Yeah, well. I grew up around here.”
Miranda wanted to know more. She wanted to ask about his family and his job and what it was like growing up in a beach town. But she hadn’t come here for small talk.
“So, what’s up?” he asked. “You sounded upset on the phone.”
“Not upset, just . . . concerned.”
“Concerned?”
“One more question about the autopsy,” she said. “Did they remember to bag their hands?”
He nodded.
“So, they preserved the feather?”
“The ME collected it with other trace evidence. Nail clippings and all that. It went off to the lab. Why?”
“In terms of evidence, the feather is unusual.”
He frowned slightly. “I figured it was from a seagull or some other scavenger bird.”
“Maybe. But it wasn’t the only feather at the crime scene,” she said. “There was the other one caught in the zipper of the backpack.”
His gaze narrowed. “The long black one.”
“Not black.”
“No?”
She took her phone out and opened a digital copy of the photograph that she’d sent to herself. “The color is indigo.” She opened another photograph. “In this shot, you can see it has a tinge of green. See?”
She offered him the phone, and his fingers brushed hers as he took it. He stared down at the image.
“I thought this was from a buzzard that found the bodies before you did,” he said. “Scavengers come quick out here.”
“This feather isn’t from a carrion bird. We’ve tentatively identified it as coming from a macaw.”
His gaze snapped up. “Who’s ‘we’?”
“I stopped by the nature center this morning to talk to their ornithologist, Daisy Miller. She wrote a book about birds of the Texas coast. Anyway, she thinks this feather is from the indigo macaw, or Lear’s macaw. It’s a rare parrot native to the Amazon.”
“A parrot.” He sounded skeptical.
“There are only about twelve hundred left in the wild. They’re on the endangered species list. Here.” She took the phone back and brought up a picture of the macaw. “Here’s one in its natural habitat. Which is a tropical rain forest, by the way, not a coastal wetland.”
Joel stared at the picture, his expression unreadable.
“I don’t know how this artifact came to be at that crime scene,” she said. “But it’s strange, don’t you think?”
He scoffed. “There’s so much strange about this case I don’t know where to start.”
Miranda put her phone away as the server stopped by to drop off their drinks.
“Have you had problems around here with exotic-animal trafficking?” Miranda asked when the server was gone.
“We get trafficking, yeah—drugs, people, counterfeit goods from Mexico. But animals? Not that I’ve heard about.”
Miranda squeezed lime into her beer. “Here’s the other thing that’s weird. Daisy told me last year a detective came to her with another exotic feather he found at a murder scene.”
Joel’s eyebrows shot up. “Where?”
“Corpus Christi.”
“Who’s the detective?”
“Henry Lind.”
“I know him.”
Joel looked away, shaking his head, and his frustration was palpable.
“I’ve got two victims, no IDs, no suspects, and no apparent motive,” he said. “And now I’ve got clues at the crime scene that don’t make sense. Thirty-six hours into this case, and I’m nowhere.” He gave her a sharp look. “Don’t repeat that, by the way. That’s between us.”
“I understand.”
He was treating her like an insider in the investigation, and it gave her a little buzz. She liked that he trusted her.
“Thanks for telling me,” he said.
“Of course.”
“I’ll give Lind a call. See where things stand on his case.”
“I think it’s still open,” she said. “I’m not sure, but I did some searching online and couldn’t find anything about an arrest. The victim’s name was Mark Randall.”
“I remember the case. A shooting, right?”
“That’s right.”
“They never arrested anyone,” he said. “I would have heard about it.”
The waitress returned with two huge platters of pan-fried fish, French fries, and coleslaw. She set down a bottle of tartar sauce and a basket filled with hush puppies, then beamed a smile at Joel. “Enjoy!”
Miranda blinked down at the food. “How on earth can anyone eat all this?”
“You’ll see.” Joel dipped a hush puppy in ketchup and popped it into his mouth.
The conversation faded as they settled into their dinners. It was a nice evening to be outside. The breeze floated over them, and she shifted her attention to the birds as they flapped around the docks, vying for scraps from the boats.
Miranda tried to recall the last time she’d been out to dinner alone with a man. Not that this was a date. But she couldn’t deny how attractive he was. Every time she looked at him, she felt a warm pull.
She glanced up and caught him watching her.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re good at this.”
“At what?”
“Investigating. You’ve got an eye for detail. Any chance you come from a family of cops?”
She smiled. “No. My dad was an engineer and my mom was a teacher. They’re retired now.”
“Are they in San Antonio?”
“Nope. I grew up in Corpus, but they don’t live there anymore. They retired down to South Padre Island.”
“Not too far from here.”
“Yeah, they love it there.”
She dipped a fry in ketchup. Despite the ridiculous portions, she’d somehow polished off half her plate.
“So, why’d you quit CSI work?” he asked.
The word quit bugged her, but she shrugged it off. “I don’t know. I wanted a change.”
He pinned her now with those intense blue eyes. The look put a knot in her stomach. He knew she was lying. The man was a detective. He was skilled at reading people.
“Call it burnout,” she said.
“That covers a lot of ground. What happened, specifically?”
“Specifically . . . I needed a break.”
It wasn’t a lie, really—just an incomplete answer. It didn’t encompass the panic attacks and the night sweats and the constant low-grade anxiety that had permeated her life those last few months. She’d escaped all that when she’d left her CSI job and moved down here.
At least, she’d thought she had. Yesterday had rattled her.
Joel was still watching her, probably waiting for he
r to say more. For some reason she felt compelled to open up, which wasn’t like her at all, especially with someone she barely knew.
“My specialty is forensic photography,” she told him.
“You have a degree, right?”
“In criminal justice.”
Apparently, he’d read her online bio on the college website.
“I’ve been doing nature photography for years, just on the side, selling pieces here and there,” she said. “I heard about a calendar project for the birding association, and it sounded interesting, so I submitted a portfolio. They offered me the project, and the timing worked out, and so I moved down.”
He nodded. “And you got down here when? April?”
“March. Just in time for the spring migration. My deadline is in August, so I signed a six-month lease.”
The server was back to clear the plates and drop off a check, and Miranda was relieved by the interruption. She didn’t want to talk to him about why she’d come here and when she planned to leave.
They split the bill and walked back to the parking lot. As they reached the Jeep, a flock of roseate spoonbills flew over in a V formation.
Miranda tipped her head back. “Look.” She glanced at Joel, and he was smiling at her. “What?”
He shook his head. “Tourists.”
Okay, so maybe she was a tourist. But he didn’t realize how lucky he was to live on an island, surrounded by birds and beaches and beautiful scenery. Everywhere she looked there was something to photograph.
They drove back to the police station as the sky turned dusky pink and the sun disappeared behind the sand dunes. Miranda figured he was going back to work tonight. Day two of a homicide investigation, he would be working round the clock.
She glanced at him beside her.
“You ever think about going back?” he asked.
“What, you mean CSI work?”
“Yeah.”
All the time.
“Not really,” she said. “I like what I’m doing.”
He nodded slowly, but she didn’t know whether he believed her.
She turned into the police station parking lot, relieved for his sake that the reporters had cleared out. She pulled into an empty space beside the flagpole.
He turned to look at her. “My offer stands.”
Nerves fluttered in her stomach. She didn’t want to have this conversation again, but she’d brought it on herself by getting involved in his case.
“With the high season coming, we could really use your help,” he added. “Our pay is consistent with big-city departments. You can look it up on our website.”
“I’m only here through the summer.”
“We could use you through the summer, then.”
She sighed. “You’re persistent, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Why are you so determined to convince me? I’m sure you could find someone else who’s qualified.”
“I’ve seen your work. I want you.”
His words hovered between them as he looked at her. A warm tingle filled her stomach. She wanted to reply, but she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“The job’s yours if you want it.” He opened his door. “Think about it, all right?”
Before she could respond, he was gone.
CHAPTER
SIX
Nicole tugged her ponytail loose and drove with the windows down, letting her hair whip around her face. The wind felt liberating after hours stuck in the airless conference room, poring through reports and bickering with her team about next steps. It was good to get into her pickup and just drive through the darkness, letting the endless yellow stripes on the highway numb her brain. As she neared home, thoughts about the case were replaced by dreams of a long hot shower and the leftover pizza waiting in her refrigerator.
She passed the marina, and her food fantasies gave way to worries about the investigation again. Nicole’s shoulders tightened. She hated bickering. Tempers were short today, and throughout the department frustration was running high. Everyone from Chief Brady on down was tense and snappish, and the army of reporters camped out in front of the station this evening hadn’t helped.
Emmet and Owen wanted to keep the investigation tight. They opposed reaching out to other agencies, especially off island. They’d even been reluctant to involve the fire department’s search-and-rescue crew, although that decision was a no-brainer. Aside from that, not one person on her team—even Joel, who was usually pretty reasonable—had wanted to involve outside departments. But now that they were nearly two days in with no IDs, keeping the investigation close was becoming untenable. It was time to enlist help.
We should set up a task force, maybe get the sheriff’s office to lend us a couple people, Nicole had suggested.
But Emmet had balked. What, so they can come down here and take over? We can handle this ourselves.
Since day one of the police academy, Nicole had become used to being surrounded by pushy alpha guys. She hardly even registered them anymore, except for times like today, when she went head-to-head with one of them.
She’d lost the argument, of course. As the department’s sole female detective—not to mention a detective still in training—she had been outnumbered and outvoted by everyone. It was a waiting game now. If something didn’t break soon, there would be no getting around the fact that the Lost Beach Police Department was in over its head with this one.
Nicole thought of the crime scene photos taped to the murder board. She couldn’t get them out of her mind—and it probably didn’t help that she’d spent half the meeting staring at them. The pictures were horrible. Gruesome. But as gruesome as they were, they didn’t fully capture the chilling feeling of being there in person, looking down into that boat. The entwined victims had looked so posed, as if they’d arranged themselves for some macabre portrait. And now that the case had been classified as a homicide, Nicole knew the pose wasn’t part of some bizarre suicide ritual. No, the killer had done that to them.
A shiver of fear went through her. The scene was . . . taunting, somehow. There was no other word for it. But who was the killer taunting? The investigators? Or was it a message for the general public? Either way, there was something sick about it. Something sadistic. Something utterly at odds with the friendly little beach town where Nicole had grown up.
Since the moment she’d seen the bodies, Nicole had had a deeply unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach. It had her on edge. She hadn’t slept well, and she was constantly looking over her shoulder.
Suck it up. You’re a cop.
She’d be mortified if anyone on the job figured out how much this case had spooked her. She needed to stop obsessing. It wasn’t the first disturbing crime scene she’d been to, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Nicole passed the sign for the Windjammer Inn. McDeere had been by there again tonight, and still no sign of an abandoned vehicle or guests who’d overstayed their reservation. Ditto the island’s two high-rise hotels. Officers had been to every motel, campground, and RV park twice now, with no luck. Nicole’s last task of the day had been to print out a map of Lost Beach rental properties. There were sixty-six houses and condos for rent on the bay side alone, and tomorrow they were going to have to start going street to street, knocking on doors.
A trio of flickering campfires came into view as Nicole neared Laguna Vista Park. On impulse, she turned in. An officer had been by here already, but what the hell.
She pulled up to the gatehouse, where an attendant sat with his feet propped up on the desk. He opened the window as Nicole rolled to a stop. The guy had long hair and eyebrow piercings, and she didn’t recognize him.
“Evenin’.” She held up her police ID. “How’s it going tonight?”
He dropped his feet to the floor and clicked out of whateve
r he’d been watching on the computer, probably porn. “Quiet so far.”
She put her ID away. “You guys full?”
“About half, I’d say.”
“Any abandoned vehicles or tents?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Anyone who didn’t check out on time?”
“No. Don’t think so.”
He sounded wary now. He either hadn’t heard about the double murder that had rocked the island—which was unlikely—or hadn’t put it together that the victims might have spent the night here before they died.
“So, no problems, then?” she asked.
“Nothing, really. Just a noise complaint on 12, but that’s been it tonight.”
“Good enough. I’ll just take a lap around.”
He nodded and reached for the button to lift the gate. Nicole drove through.
The island had three campgrounds—White Dunes, Lighthouse Point, and Laguna Vista, which was the only park facing the bay. Fifty percent occupancy meant twenty-two campsites occupied, and they were situated on two rows, with bayfront sites going on a first come, first served basis. She started with the row closest to the shore because wherever the victims had been staying, they’d managed to put a canoe in the water in the dark of night.
She passed several tents lit up by lanterns or computer screens. Even camping, people never really disconnected. She passed a pair of empty campsites and then an RV where a man sat outside in a plastic chair. He had a tackle box at his feet and was fiddling with a fishing pole by the light of a flashlight. A few more tents and RVs and Nicole spotted the sign for 12.
Site 12’s occupants had pitched a large blue tent beside a black pickup with the tailgate down. Two men and a woman lounged in chairs around a campfire. All of them turned to look as Nicole rolled to a stop and parked her truck. She grabbed her Maglite and got out.
“Evenin’.” She held up her police ID. “Lost Beach Police.”
The two men exchanged looks.
“Hi,” one of them said. He wore khaki shorts and no shirt and had a tallboy beer in his hand.
Nicole turned to the other man, whose feet were propped on a cooler. “That your Igloo?” she asked, beaming her flashlight at it.
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