What Washes Up

A Sweet Tea Press Publication

First published in the United States by Sweet Tea Press

©2015 Dawn Lee McKenna. All rights reserved.

Edited by Tammi Labrecque

larksandkatydids.com

Cover by Shayne Rutherford

darkmoongraphics.com

Interior Design by Colleen Sheehan

wdrbookdesign.com

What Washes Up
is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to any person, living or dead, is merely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

For Kat,

Who may one day open this book

I
t was a windy night out on the bay, very windy for a late-July night without any tropical storms in the area.

Maggie Redmond’s long, dark brown hair kept trying to fly out of its clip, and she struggled to get it all tucked and out of her way one-handed. Her right arm, the one she really had a close relationship with, was still in a sling, after she’d been shot by some low-life on her own property.

She gave up on the clip and grabbed onto the portside rail, then looked up at Wyatt Hamilton, who was towering over her, holding binoculars to his face as he looked out to the bay.

She, Wyatt, and Dwight, one of the deputies who worked with them at the Sheriff’s office, had taken her Dad’s fishing boat out past St. George Island to do a little sunset fishing. Wyatt had just been reeling in a nice-sized redfish when they got the call.

It probably wasn’t especially appropriate for them to respond, given that Dwight had had a few beers, Maggie was on leave and one-armed, and Wyatt didn’t look especially official in his cargo shorts and red Hawaiian shirt. However, they were already halfway to the location, and would beat the Coast Guard by at least five minutes.

“Can you make anything out yet?” she yelled over the Chris Craft’s engine.

“Not really,” Wyatt barked. “It’s too dark. But they’re right, it is on fire.”

Michael Vinton and Richard Farrell, two shrimpers that Maggie knew only passingly, had come upon it as they were headed out for the night’s work. They’d called the Coast Guard and the Sheriff’s Office, and someone at the office had called Wyatt.

Dwight was with them, so it wasn’t technically their second date, but Wyatt was a little put out nonetheless.

“Let me look,” Maggie yelled up at him. She was short to begin with, but being one-armed besides made her feel even smaller next to Wyatt, who, at six-four, was more than a foot taller than she was.

“No,” Wyatt said. “You have one hand and Dwight’s hitting every damn wave like he was getting points for it. You’ll drop my binoculars.”

“No, I won’t. Let me look.”

“I said ‘no,’” Wyatt told her.

He took the binoculars down, looked at her, and gave her an eyebrow waggle. “My mom got me these.”

Maggie and Wyatt had worked together at the Sheriff’s Office for six years and had become good friends over time. They’d only started seeing each other over the last several weeks. It was, of course, forbidden by the department, so they’d been keeping it quiet. This was fairly easy thus far, as most people thought they acted like an old married couple anyway.

Wyatt had lost his wife to cancer shortly before moving to Apalachicola, and Maggie’s friendship had helped him heal. Maggie had lost her ex-husband, who was also her best friend, just a few short weeks ago. Wyatt was helping her heal, too.

Nevertheless, she thought he was a jerk.

As they got closer to their destination, Maggie could see Michael and Richard in the lights of their trawler, anchored just yards away.

A few minutes later, Dwight cut the engine, and they coasted up to about ten yards from the flames. The shrimp boat’s engine was silent as well, and the only sounds Maggie heard were the hiss and pop of the flames and the lapping of the wake as it slapped at the sides of the boat.

“What the hell?” Wyatt asked, as he and Maggie walked to the starboard rail and looked at what they’d come for.

Maggie didn’t recognize the old wooden skiff, and the name had been scratched or blasted off of the stern. But the lack of a name, and even the fact that it was on fire, weren’t the details that stood out the most. The man hanging from the front of the cabin, and currently aflame, was more of an attention grabber.

“Now what?” Maggie asked.

“Well, we don’t get too many Viking funerals around here,” Wyatt said. “So I don’t think it’s that.”

He grabbed one of the long metal fish hooks from its holder and poked at the burning skiff to keep them from bumping. Then he bent over sideways, to look up at the face.

Meanwhile, Dwight began looking like a cat with a hairball, and Wyatt heard him coughing into his hand.

“You all right, Dwight?” Wyatt asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, but, uh, the smell.” Dwight gulped, looked away from the burning body. “I’m a vegetarian, you know?”

“Well, don’t worry. We’re not going to have to taste it.”

Dwight took two steps to the port side and threw his beer up over the rail.

“Sorry,” Wyatt said.

Maggie sniffed the air. Aside from the rather horrid odor of burning flesh, she could pick up no propane or other fuel that might have been used as an accelerant. That would help explain why it was burning so slowly.

“Well, that’s kind of an interesting thing,” Wyatt said, standing up.

“What is?” Maggie asked.

“That’s Rupert Fain.”

“What?”

Rupert Fain was the drug dealer that was suspected of blowing up her ex-husband on his shrimp boat at the town’s 3rd of July celebration. They’d been looking for him since.

“It’s Fain,” Wyatt said, frowning. “I memorized his damn mug shot.”

“He’s from Gainesville. What’s he doing out here?”

“Confirming the existence of karma, primarily.”

The remainder of Maggie’s and Wyatt’s second date was attended not only by Dwight, two shrimpers and a burning dead guy, but also a dozen Coast Guard and assorted folks from the Sheriff’s Office.

The fire was put out, the body brought aboard the Coast Guard cutter, and the oyster skiff, which had begun to sink, hauled ashore.

Terry Coyle was meeting the cutter at the marina in back of Sea-Fair Seafood, where the SO kept its boat. This would be his case, partly because he was, aside from Maggie, the only other Investigative Officer for the SO, and therefore on duty, and partly because Maggie wouldn’t have been allowed to work the crime scene, anyway.

Rupert Fain was believed to have killed her ex-husband and she wasn’t going to be allowed within twenty feet of the case.

Maggie docked her father’s boat in its slip at Scipio Creek Marina, then she and Wyatt walked the half-block distance to the docks behind Sea-Fair. Dwight opted to skip a visit in favor of going home and inhaling a quantity of both Vick’s and Budweiser.

Once she and Wyatt got to the docks, Maggie headed for the gurney on which the body of Rupert Fain was being placed.

“What are you doing?” Wyatt asked as he followed her.

“I just want to see,” Maggie answered.

“See what? You already saw it out there,” Wyatt said.

“I want to see his face.”

“You have his mug shot on your desk,” Wyatt countered. “I catch you looking at it all the time.”

Maggie and Wyatt arrived among the group of EMTs and SO personnel near the gurney. Terry and the elderly medical examiner, Larry Davenport, were bending over the body.

“I want to look him in the face, Wyatt,” Maggie said firmly.

Maggie could see enough of Fain’s profile to know that his face was smoke-stained and perhaps just a little singed. Dirty-blond hair cut very short.

Larry was on the opposite side of the gurney from Maggie, and was inspecting the head. Maggie tried to peer around Terry’s back to get a better look, but one of the EMTs was in her way, as well.

“No, I’d say he was already dead when he was set on fire,” Larry was saying, peering over his bifocals. “One shot from what looks like it might be a .22, some small caliber, at any rate.”

Larry turned the head so that the face was pointing toward Maggie. “No exit wound. Definitely a small caliber. I’d say it turned his brain straight to pudding, rattling around in there. Merciful, I suppose.”

Maggie slapped the EMT on the waist, and he turned to look at her. “Hey, Bret,” Maggie said. “Can you scoot over a little?”

He stepped aside just a bit and Maggie looked at the face of Rupert Fain, just a few feet away. He had a slightly surprised expression, and a neat bullet hole dead in the center of his forehead.

Maggie stood and looked at him for a long moment while Larry talked primarily to himself and secondarily to Terry. So this was the man.

This was the man they suspected of blowing up her ex-husband. Her kind and gentle ex-husband, who had made the mistake of getting into the pot transportation business when his shrimp boat was repossessed after the BP oil spill, and then made the mistake of getting out of the business just last month.