What Washes Up (6 page)

“Okay,” he said cautiously. “So you knew him.”

“No.”

Wyatt said nothing, just looked confused. Maggie blew out a breath. “He raped me when I was fifteen.”

So many different emotions flashed in Wyatt’s eyes at once that she couldn’t identify even one, and she looked away from him, stared at a picture of Sky and Kyle instead. It was one thing to have Boudreaux looking at her, knowing, but Wyatt was something altogether different. She wasn’t ashamed of having been attacked, she was just unaccustomed to it being known.

“What happened?” Wyatt asked quietly.

Maggie still couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She changed her focus to a lamp instead. “I was fishing on the river. Back in the woods, not too far from here. I have no idea what he was doing there.”

Wyatt stood up and Maggie turned away from the lamp and watched him walk to the window by the front door. His shoulders were bunched up, and when he reached a palm out to the window frame, he looked like he was going to slap it, then he just leaned on it, the other hand on his hip.

“You’re angry,” she said. She noticed that her fingers were hurting from holding her wine glass too tightly, and she set it down on the windowsill.

Wyatt shook his head, then ran a hand through his hair and turned around. “Of course I’m angry,” he said.

“I know I messed up—”

“I haven’t even gotten to that part yet,” he said tightly.

“Then what are you angry about?”

“What do you mean—I’m angry because it’s you,” he snapped. “I’m angry because he hurt you! I’m angry—”

He put his hands on his hips and looked down at the floor for a second before looking at her again. “Because you’re my best friend,” he said quietly.

The honesty in his eyes as they looked at each other made her forget to breathe for a moment, and made her forget that there was a lot more to say.

“You’re the only best friend I have left,” she said softly.

“Well, then we’re equally screwed,” he said quietly. Maggie knew he was trying to lighten up a moment that wasn’t going to get any lighter, but she appreciated his effort.

He walked back to the coffee table and sat down again. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” he asked.

“Wyatt, I’ve never told anyone,” she said. “I never even told David.”

He looked down at her hands, then gently took hold of her wrists and rubbed them with his thumbs. Maggie blew out another breath.

“I’m sorry, but there’s more that I need to tell you.”

Wyatt looked up at her.

“Wilmette was there, too,” she said.

“Oh crap, Maggie,” he said, and he let go of her hands and covered his face. “Holy crap.”

“Wyatt, I need you to understand, I didn’t even know about it until after I had the case,” she said.

He took his hands away from his face. “Explain that. Please.”

“I have flashbacks sometimes. Sometimes I have dreams,” she said.

“The old lady chasing you on the beach,” he said.

“How do you know about that?”

“David. David told me.”

Tears welled up in Maggie’s eyes and she blinked them away.

“I know I’ve been keeping things from you. Important things,” she said. “But in almost thirty years, that’s the only thing I ever lied to David about. But he would have killed him. Do you understand?”

Wyatt nodded at the floor. “Yes. Yes, I do understand.”

“There’s no old lady,” she said. “It was always just Gregory Boudreaux. But, after I started working his case, I remembered that there was someone else there. I never saw him. But Gregory said something to him. I never even remembered that until a few weeks ago.”

Wyatt looked up at her. “If you never saw him, how’d you find out it was Wilmette?”

Maggie swallowed and chewed the corner of her lip. “Boudreaux told me,” she said quietly.

Wyatt blinked at her a few times. “Boudreaux told you.”

“Well, he told me without actually telling me,” she said. “When I was interviewing him about Wilmette. I thought about telling you then. I think I was going to tell you. But then David…”

“Of course, Boudreaux,” he said almost sarcastically.

Wyatt sighed and stood back up. He seemed to not know which direction to go in, then walked around the couch and leaned on the back of it.

“Why would Boudreaux tell you? Was it a slip, did he think you knew?”

“No. He just told me.”

“Why?”

Maggie shrugged a little. “I’m not really sure.”

“What the hell is it with you and Boudreaux, Maggie?”

“I think he likes me.”

“Boudreaux doesn’t like people. He collects people. Either he has something
on
them or he does something
for
them.”

“Why are you mad at me?’ Maggie snapped.

“I’m not mad at you!” he snapped back. “How can I be mad at you when you just told me you were raped?” He grabbed one of the couch pillows and slammed it back down. “That’s not true. I am mad at you, but I’m mad because everything you’ve done or found regarding Wilmette is going to be suspect.”

“I know.” Maggie took a deep breath. “And Boudreaux killed Wilmette.”

Wyatt stared at Maggie a moment, his face expressionless. “Why?”

“I thought it was because Wilmette wanted money. For staying quiet about it,” Maggie said. “But I think it’s because he disapproves of rape.”

“Well. That’s nice.”

“He has a moral code, it’s just a little different,” Maggie said, and wondered why she felt the need to defend Boudreaux.

“Evidently,” Wyatt said. “I assume, and I hope to hell it’s true, that if you had some concrete evidence of this, we would have had this conversation already.”

“I don’t have anything concrete, no.” Maggie took a swallow of her wine. “We already knew Wilmette went to Sea-Fair that Tuesday night. Boudreaux told us that. But I can’t find anyone who saw him after that. And this processing room.”

“What processing room?”

“It’s new. Boudreaux expanded into fish. The processing room wasn’t even in use yet when Wilmette went missing. But it’s a perfect place for chopping up a body before you dump it into the ocean.”

Maggie tried not to dwell on the fact that she happened to like someone who she was pretty sure had chopped up a body. The killing didn’t bother her so much; she had killed, too. But the chopping made her skin crawl.

“Wonderful,” Wyatt said. He sighed and looked at Maggie. “You realize this isn’t going to be a secret anymore. If I try to get a search warrant for Sea-Fair, I’m probably going to have to give a judge a better reason than the fact that no one saw Wilmette after that meeting.”

“I know.”

“And if we actually get to indict the guy, then motive comes into play. And the fact that you withheld information.”

“I know,” Maggie said again. “Just…let me tell my parents and the kids first if and when it comes to that.”

Wyatt nodded and looked out the window behind her. “I’m pissed on a professional level, as your boss. I’m pissed on a personal level, too. I understand, intellectually, why you did what you did. But my feelings are hurt that you’ve kept so much from me so easily.” He looked at her. “That scares me.”

“It wasn’t as easy as you probably think,” she said quietly. There was a tickling in her chest, a fear that something that had barely started might end.

Wyatt opened his mouth to say something, but his cell phone interrupted. He pulled it out of his back pocket, saw the call was from Dwight, and put it on speaker.

“Hey, Dwight,” he said.

“Hey, boss,” Dwight said, sounding more flustered than usual. “We need you over on the island, real quick.”

“What’s going on?”

“We got some bodies washed up on the beach,” Dwight said.

“Aw, crap. Which beach?”

“Uh, well…that’s the thing, Wyatt,” Dwight said. “It’s all of ’em. All the beaches.”

M
aggie pulled in right behind Wyatt, parking in the sea grass off of Leisure Lane. Their location was an oceanfront piece of undeveloped land between two sections of vacation rentals. Short roads and driveways had been put in for about six rental houses, then construction had halted, for one reason or another. Those roads and driveways were now packed with police cruisers, Sheriff’s Office cruisers, fire trucks, EMT vehicles, several Coast Guard vehicles, and a few dark sedans of indeterminate governmental origin.

Maggie grabbed her crime scene kit out of the back, then ran to catch up with Wyatt, who was halfway to the beach. Once they climbed to the top of the dunes, she realized with a heart-stopping certainty that she would not be using her kit at all.

The beach was covered in lights for several hundred yards in either direction. Lights from Coast Guard cutters just offshore. Spotlights on tripods scattered across the sand. Lights from emergency vehicles, flashlights, and the back decks of vacation rental homes, where people from Ohio or Georgia stood at the rails and watched. Crossing in front of all the lights were the figures of Coast Guard and responders and Sheriff’s deputies.

Some of them were attending to the two bodies already zipped into gray body bags. Others were bent over four more that were simply dark shapes on the sand where there should be none.

Neither Wyatt nor Maggie said a word. After a moment, Wyatt started down the dunes and Maggie followed. Dwight ran up to them as they walked down the sand toward the largest cluster of activity.

“Boss, I’m sorry,” Dwight said, his eyes wide and his face strained. “We got so…so busy, and I forgot to call you for a little.”

“What the hell happened, Dwight? Did a cruise ship sink out there?”

“We don’t know what happened, Wyatt,” Dwight said, as he fell in step with Wyatt and Maggie. “Coast Guard says there’s been no distress signals or anything, but Lord have mercy.”

He raised his arm and pointed at more lights behind them, just discernible some distance down the beach. “They’ve got at least three down there near Schooner Landing,” he said, then stopped and turned and pointed the other way. “There’s more down there, almost at the State Park.”

Maggie and Wyatt looked at each other. Dwight swallowed hard, and his voice broke as he spoke. “And there’s kids. Little kids. I hear there’s at least a couple of kids, up by the State Park.”

Maggie’s heart lurched, and she wanted to pray, but she didn’t know what to ask. That this would all be gone? That it would un-happen somehow?

“Did you know the Coast Guard is pretty much under Homeland Security?” Dwight asked. “I didn’t know that.”

“What’s Homeland Security have to do with it?” Wyatt asked.

“Well, they’re all Mexican, or Central American maybe.”

“Ah, geez,” Wyatt said, barely audible over the rain and the wind off the water. He started walking again.

Dwight struggled to keep up with Wyatt, whose legs were longer than most of Dwight’s body. “There’s four guys here from the actual Homeland Security, and they say it’s their show, them and the Coast Guard.”

“Which one of them is in charge?” Wyatt asked.

Dwight pointed to a man around fifty years old, with close-cropped gray hair, wearing khaki pants and a dark polo shirt. He was kneeling beside one of the bodies on the sand, tapping into a tablet. “That guy. Thompson or something like that.”

The three of them walked over there, and Wyatt stopped next to the gray-haired man. “I’m Sheriff Hamilton,” he said simply.

The man looked up, then stood and held out a hand. “Agent Tomlinson. Aaron.”

“Wyatt,” Wyatt said, and shook the man’s hand. “This is Lt. Maggie Redmond.”

Tomlinson and Maggie nodded at each other, then Tomlinson turned back to Wyatt. “We’ve got eleven so far. Nine on the beaches and two that the Coast Guard have pulled out of the water out there.”

“Drowned?”

“That’s what it looks like, but of course we don’t know. We haven’t found a boat. There was a hell of a storm out there earlier, though.”

The rain was letting up, and Maggie pulled her wet hair out of her face, looked down at the body beside them. It was a man, definitely Hispanic, and she guessed Central American rather than Mexican. He looked to be in his late twenties.

He was wearing a silver chain with a Catholic medal on it, though she couldn’t tell which one. Twisted around in the chain was a length of what looked like red yarn. Maggie glanced over at Tomlinson and Wyatt, but they were walking away.

Maggie knelt down and peered under one side of the open button-down shirt. There was a round pendant of some kind, maybe an ornament or a button. It looked handmade. Dwight bent over her as she lifted the fabric with one finger.

Maggie looked up as two Coast Guard headed toward them with a body bag. She stood up, blinking warm moisture from her eyes.

“What was it?” Dwight asked quietly.

“Minnie Mouse,” Maggie said.