Authors: Linda J. White
Bloody Point
Epilogue
T
HE September sun was hot on Cassie’s face as she scrubbed the cockpit
in her Alberg 30. The rhythmic movement, the sound of the brush, the slight
breeze was relaxing to her. She was so focused on what she was doing that she
didn’t look up, until a shadow fell across her work. Shading her eyes, she
lifted her head and saw a familiar figure standing on the dock.
“Hey, partner!” Jake grinned at her.
He looked good, in his cargo pants and navy-blue shirt. His
tan had deepened and his eyes looked darker than ever. But it was the
expression on his face that encouraged her. The bitterness was gone and in its
place was the cheerful confidence that she knew so well.
Cassie stood up. “Hey! What are you doing here?” She wiped
her hands on a rag and stepped up onto the dock. She gave him a hug.
“I’m just enjoying my last few days of freedom, before I
become a working stiff again.”
“You’re going back active?”
Jake nodded. “Yep. Oh, they’re limiting me to office work for
now, till this comes back all the way.” He raised his right hand. “But you
know, I can Xerox discovery files with the best of ‘em.”
“That’s great, Jake. I’m happy for you.”
His eyes were bright, sparkling even, in the sun, and Cassie
thought,
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him happy. A long time
.
“Did you get the results of your MRI?”
“All clear. The lesion’s gone. And the docs can’t figure it
out.” He took a deep breath. “What about you, partner? You still a boat babe?”
Cassie rolled her eyes. “I’ve never been a boat babe, Jake.
Just a boat owner.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” He smiled boyishly, feigning innocence.
Cassie tossed her head. “They’re letting me reactivate. I got
my letter yesterday.”
“Whoa! Congratulations!” Jake grabbed her in a bear hug. “Way
to go, girl! I knew they’d want you back!”
“Yes. It was a mistake to resign. I missed it.”
“Oh, so I was right?”
Cassie blushed. “Well, I don’t know … ”
“No, no, I was right, wasn’t I, about you coming back?” Jake
pressed.
She hesitated.
“C’mon, Cass. You can do this. Admit it. I was right.”
Cassie took a deep breath. She was having a hard time not
laughing. He was so silly, and it had been a long, long time since either of
them had felt this comfortable with each other. She trained her eyes on his.
“You were,” she said, “absolutely right …”
“Yes!”
“… although your timing was off. By several months.”
“And a catastrophe or two,” Jake added. “Still, I was right.”
Cassie nodded and laughed, and he gave her another hug.
“You talk to Campbell lately?”
Cassie shook her head. “No.”
“They got some more information on Maxwell. He didn’t leave
the military, he was kicked out. For sexual misconduct. And a woman he was
involved with in Saudi Arabia disappeared. They can’t pin in on him, but he’s
the prime suspect. He had a huge collection of porn, and some strange souvenirs
in his boat: women’s underwear, some earrings, and necklaces.”
Cassie flinched.
“They’re going back to reconstruct every bit of his life that
they can. They’re thinking maybe he was responsible for a bunch of homicides.
Rapes, too.” Jake looked at her, squinting slightly. “You okay?”
Cassie inhaled deeply. She still couldn’t believe she’d ever
trusted that man. How could she be so stupid! “Yes, fine,” she said resolutely,
tossing her head. “He was a scumbag.”
“Yep,” Jake replied. His eyes searched her face. “Y’know,” he
said, “we work well together.”
“Yeah, we do,” she admitted.
Jake cocked his head. “Do you think, maybe, once we’re both
back, maybe we should team up again?”
Cassie looked at Jake, first with her eyes and then with her
heart. She swallowed. There was a lump in her throat.
“We were good, you and me. We did good work. I think we
should do it again.”
“Yes, Jake,” she said, “I think we should.” Then, because her
eyes were tearing, she turned away from him and started to walk down the dock.
He touched her shoulder and turned her around. “You did good,
Cass. You never gave up. Mike would be proud of you.”
“Thanks.” Her voice was soft. “I just feel … stupid.”
“About Maxwell? Don’t even think about it. He was a master at
charming people.”
Cassie cocked her head. “What are you going to do now, Jake?”
“Job-wise?”
“Personally.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I … feel like I need to
go back to Tam and see if there’s any way she’d want to get back together, to
be a family again.”
Cassie nodded.
“She kicked out the guy who was living with her. Still, I
don’t think she’s going to want to have anything to do with me. If nothing
else, though, I need to apologize to her for all the stuff I did wrong.” Jake
kicked a pebble off the dock.
Why was her heart pounding? Cassie tried to still it, but it
was beating wildly.
Jake squinted at her in the bright light. “How about you,
Cass? Think you’ll start dating again?”
She held up her hand. “No, Jake. There’s just no room for
another guy.” That’s one thing this little incident has taught me.” Cassie
tossed her head. “There will never be another Mike.” Brushing her hand through
her hair, she said, “I certainly don’t need a man to be happy. I’m perfectly
fine on my own.”
Jake pursed his lips and nodded, then he walked to the end of
dock. Cassie watched as he stood, head down, staring at the water, his hands
shoved into his pockets. What was he thinking? Then he turned around suddenly
and started back toward her. She looked away, pretending she hadn’t been
watching him.
“Good-bye, Cass,” he said, smiling and giving her a quick
hug. “See you at the office soon!”
“Yeah, sure,” she responded, her stomach churning. She stood
frozen while he walked toward his car, throwing his keys in the air and
catching them, like she’d seen him do so many times before. She saw the bounce
in his gait, the way he carried his shoulders, the shape of his head, the
thickness of his neck, his broad shoulders.
She remembered what it had been like to be in the waters of
the Bay, at night, in a storm, handcuffed, and how Jake had been there for her.
He had always been there for her. She’d helped him, too, when he was so full of
despair he had no hope left.
Suddenly, she could not stand still any longer. “Jake, wait!”
she cried out as he opened the driver’s door. “Wait.” She ran to him. Brushing
the hair out of her eyes, she looked straight into his. Her throat was tight,
her heart pounding. “If you ever want to do something together, just as
friends, you know we could. That would be fine.”
A broad grin filled his face. “Okay, good. Hey,” he said, his
eyes sparkling, “you want to take
Time Out
for a spin?” He nodded toward
her boat.
“You hate boats!”
“I know. But you love ‘em. So, do you want to take her out?”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Cassie smiled at him, tears in her eyes. “Yes, Jake, that
would be fun.”
The wind was out of the south, blowing at a steady fifteen
knots as they left the dock and motored into the channel. The land slipped away
behind them and an osprey nesting on a channel marker eyed them warily. Reaching
the open Bay, Cassie turned into the wind. Jake took the helm while she went
forward to raise the mainsail. “Okay, turn to port,” she called out once she
had it up. As the boat turned, the sail caught the breeze. Cassie returned to
the cockpit and pulled out the jib. Gently the boat heeled over five, ten, then
fifteen degrees. And Cassidy McKenna trimmed the sheets and set a new course.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Linda J. White is a
national-award winning journalist and author of “Bloody Point” (RiverOak,
2005), “Seeds of Evidence” (Abingdon Press, 2013), and “Words of Conviction”
(Abingdon Press, 2014). Her husband, Larry, worked at the FBI Academy for over
27 years. They have three grown children and live in rural Virginia with two
cats and a Sheltie who loves to herd them all.
CONTACT LINDA
Web Site -
LindaJWhite.com
Email -
[email protected]
Blog -
Linda's Blog
Facebook –
Linda J. White Books
Twitter - @rytn4hm
TECHNICAL NOTE
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Readers and apps. Your comments on the functioning of this eBook are welcome. Please
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Thanks,
Larry.
BOOKS BY LINDA J. WHITE
-
Bloody Point
- paperback (2005)
-
Bloody Point
- eBook (2013)
-
Seeds of Evidence
- (2013)
Read Chapter 1 of “Seeds of
Evidence”
, next page.
-
Words of Conviction
(2014) - available in April, 2014
Seeds of Evidence
Sample
Chapter 1
The beach is time, liberated. Sand escaped from an hourglass,
water freed from a pipe, wind unhindered by concrete or glass, Kit without a
calendar or timesheet or meetings, her life measured only by the rhythmic
pounding of waves and the sun’s bold stride across the heavens.
The bright blue, cloudless sky prophesied the day would be
hot. The morning sun warmed the side of Kit’s face as she jogged. Each receding
ocean wave cast a mirrorlike sheen on the wet sand. Ahead, a tiny band of
sandpipers skittered, while behind, the waves washed away her tracks, slipping
her past into the great, gray ocean.
At first, she thought the object she saw in the distance was
driftwood covered by seaweed. Still, something about its shape roused her curiosity.
She quickened her pace.
She saw a group of teens, four—no, five—of them, approach the
object, then jerk back, shock evident in their action. Kit’s heart jumped. She
ran faster, her heels flinging up sand, her mind racing. Sweat broke out on the
back of her neck. At the small of her back, the nylon fanny pack carrying her
gun and FBI credentials—she was on duty 24/7—slapped her, urging her on.
The kids began shouting, jumping up and down, waving at her,
and as Kit grew closer, she saw why: at their feet lay the body of a child.
“He’s dead! Oh, God! He’s dead!” a girl screeched. She
huddled with her friends, their shoulders hunched, clutching beach towels like
shields. The young men, two of them, stood arched over the body, peering at it
like curious colts.
“Don’t touch him!” Kit commanded. “Did you call 911?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The boys shifted back.
Kit eyes fell on the body. The little boy, clad in long,
loose pants and a long-sleeved green shirt, was most certainly dead. One big
roller of the incoming tide had deposited him up on the smoothly packed sand.
Now, lesser waves lapped at him, fluttering his clothes, like fingers trying
to grasp him and pull him away. It wouldn’t be long before the sea reclaimed
him.
Dread washed over her. She needed to secure the body. She
didn’t want to touch it with her bare hands; neither did she want it sucked
back out to sea. She looked at the teens. They seemed frozen, unable to move.
“Give me your towel,” she said to a young woman, but the girl just hugged it
closer to her chest. Nearby, a laughing gull planted his three-toed feet on a
dune and chortled.
Another big wave hit, knocking Kit off balance and floating
the boy’s body. “No!” she breathed, watching the body drift. Germs or no germs,
she had to do it. She grabbed the boy’s shirt.
“Hold on! Let me help!”
Kit looked up. A thirty-something man with brown hair threw
his surfboard down on the sand, put his iPod on top of it, and rushed to her
side. “I got it.” The man grabbed one side of the boy. Kit took the other, and
together they gently moved the body to dry sand, beyond the reach of the waves.
The teens shied away.
“Scrub off your hands,” the man said as he rubbed wet sand on
his hands and arms and dunked them in the surf. “Did you call it in?”
“He did.” Kit nodded toward one of the teens. “Where’d you
come from?”
“Up north.”
“Did you see anybody up there?”
“No.”
“Any boats?”
“Nothing.”
Kit squinted and shaded her eyes as she studied him. Mid- to
late-thirties, she figured, about 5’10”, short brown hair, brown eyes, tanned,
and fit. Very fit.
“Here comes your help.” He nodded toward two four-wheel drive
pickups approaching from the south. “You okay now?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Kit looked down at the boy. His skin was pale, a sort of
dusky gray. His large eyes stared into nothingness and his mouth hung open.
Sand filled his nostrils and spilled out of the one ear she could see, and
there were bruises on his neck. Ligature marks? Had he been murdered? Kit’s
breath caught. How long had he been dead? Already the flies were gathering. She
wanted to shoo them away, to protect him from the ravages of natural
decomposition. The body looked fresh. Would the water have preserved it?
By the time she looked up, the man had picked up his
surfboard, and was walking on down the beach. “Hey! What’s your name?” Kit
called, but the man didn’t respond, and the white wires running down from his
ears told her his iPod had claimed his attention again. “That was a mistake,”
she muttered.
“Ew, gross!” A girl pointed. A seagull had landed on the
boy’s chest.
Kit reacted quickly. “Shoo!”
Behind the teens, the pickups jerked to a stop, and a man and
two women in U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service uniforms climbed out. Kit’s mind
raced: Her vacation. Two weeks of no responsibility. She could simply identify
herself as an FBI agent, tell them what she knew, and walk away.
But before her lay a little boy … possibly murdered!
But Fish & Wildlife could investigate it. And why would
the FBI get into a simple murder case?
Kit shifted on her feet. The sun blazed on her shoulders. An
unidentified body, a child, no less. A child. A little Latino boy …
She didn’t miss the half-smile on the man’s face as the
officers approached. She had on a bright blue two-piece swimsuit and athletic
shorts. No T-shirt. Sweat beaded on her skin.
“Where’d that come from?” A stocky, plain-looking woman with
close-cropped brown hair stopped in her tracks, about eight feet away from the
body.
“Kit McGovern, FBI.” She flashed her creds at the woman. “Are
you the officer in charge?”
“Yeah. Brenda Ramsfeld, Fish & Wildlife.”
“Kid fall off a boat?” The leering man strode up to the body
and nudged it with the toe of his boot.
“Don’t touch him!” Kit’s anger surged. She turned to
Ramsfeld. “Do you see the marks on his neck?”
“Like somebody killed him? Cool!” the man responded.
“We’ve never had a murder here,” Ms. Ramsfeld said, glancing
at her coworker, a woman with blonde hair.
The man laughed. “You’ve seen CSI, Brenda. You know what to
do.”
“You think he died here, on the beach? What about those
kids?” Ramsfeld gestured toward the teens.
“They found the body washing up in the surf. I saw them.”
“So maybe he was murdered at sea and dumped overboard,” the
blonde suggested.
“Quite possibly,” Kit said, her heart jumping. If the murder
didn’t happen on land, the FBI could rightfully claim the case. Thoughts of
vacation slipped away like sand. “The lifeguards didn’t report anything?” she
asked Ramsfeld.
“They’re just now coming on duty. Besides, look at the way
those waves are coming in.”
Kit turned. The Atlantic was in fine form today, the
three-foot gray-green waves coming in at a slant, breaking about five yards
out, sending sea foam sliding up over the hard-packed sand in a gentle caress,
then sliding back. She squinted into the sun, scanning the horizon, but saw
nothing—no boats, no surfers, no dolphins. She turned back to Ramsfeld. “From
the northeast?”
“Right. The littoral current would be from the same
direction. So why would you think lifeguards to the south would have seen
anything?” Ramsfeld’s voice dripped disgust.
She still kept her distance, Kit noted, standing nowhere
near the body. “So he probably did die at sea. The Bureau would have
jurisdiction.”
Ramsfeld threw up her hands. “All right, look. You want it,
you got it.” She shook her head. “Just my luck,” she said, shooting a look
toward the others, “something major happens and the Bureau gets here first.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I’m guessing you’ll need the medical examiner.”
“Right,” Kit said, “and identification from those teenagers.
And photos of the body. Do you have a camera?”
“You want photos with or without the ghost crab nibbling at
his ear?” the creepy guy joked.
Kit glared at him. “Just get the camera.”
The onshore breeze stiffened a bit, sending a spray of
saltwater over the scene as a breaker crashed onto the beach. Kit licked her
lips, tasting the salt. “Until the ME gets here, we’ll need to secure the
scene.”
“It’s July and in an hour I’m going to have a beach full of
vacationers. You’re not expecting me to provide staff long-term, are you?”
Ramsfeld said.
“If you could spare one person until they get here, I’d
appreciate it.” Kit hoped against hope it wouldn’t be the man, who returned
with a small digital camera in hand.
Ramsfeld shot her a look, then she turned to her blonde staff
member. “Pat, you stay with her. Joe and I need to get back to work.”
• • •
Kit took all the pictures she thought she’d need. Then,
waiting for the ME van, she listened to Pat complain about the way things had
changed on the job since Brenda Ramsfeld had become their chief. After a while,
even Pat wearied of that talk and wandered off, climbing the dunes in search of
shade. After she left, Kit had only the sand and surf and sun and one dead
little boy to keep her company.
She sat on a piece of driftwood, watching the tide come into
her beloved Assateague. A barrier island off the coast of Virginia, Assateague
cradled its smaller sister island, Chincoteague, in the crook of its arm,
protecting the humans who lived there from the brunt of the ocean’s force. Kit
had been coming to the area since she was a child, drawn by her love for her
grandmother who lived there.
Kit had been on the wild, wind-swept island in the fall when
snow geese by the thousands gathered on brackish ponds, honking and calling,
and in the winter, when the wind whipped up sea foam and deposited it in mounds
well beyond the dunes. She’d been there in the spring, when migrating birds
came again, so many different kinds she couldn’t keep track of them, and the
Sika deer fawned, and the wild ponies gave birth to their foals. And in the
summer, when long days on the beach called her to an eternal perspective, the
timeless pounding of the waves and the endless vista reminded her that her
temporal troubles were but a passing phase.
She needed to hear that reminder again. That was why she’d
come.
• • •
The medical examiner, Dr. Scarborough, was a fifty-something,
burly man with a snow-white hair and a brusque, business-like manner. His eyes
widened slightly when he saw Kit dressed in a bathing suit and shorts, and she
felt her face grow warm. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything.
She watched while he took pictures with a digital camera,
and then snapped on gloves and gently examined the body while dictating into a
digital recorder. His assistant, a young, thin man dressed in khaki pants and a
white shirt, looked on.
When he finished, Dr. Scarborough stood up and faced Kit,
fixing his piercing blue eyes on her. “The boy was strangled. Autopsy will tell
us whether that killed him or he drowned.”
Kit’s gut clenched. “How long ago?”
“As much as thirty-six hours.”
“That long?”
“Cold salt water preserves the body. Again, the autopsy will
narrow it down.” The ME looked down at the boy again. “I see no other injuries,
except for a few sea-life nibbles. He didn’t bleed out.”
“Why is he so gray?”
“All his blood has gone to the center of his body.”
Scarborough pulled off his gloves. “My preliminary finding: Homicide by
strangulation, twenty to thirty-six hours ago.”
• • •
Kit drove to her rental cottage. Scarborough’s words tumbled
over and over through her mind. Someone murdered the boy. Strangled him.
Sometime in the last thirty-six hours.
Who would kill a little boy in that way? By strangling him?
She tried to imagine it. A mother? She couldn’t see a mother wrapping a cord
around a child’s neck and choking him until he died. A mother’s boyfriend? Much
more likely.
So why didn’t she protect him? Kit knew the answer to that
without thinking. All too often women were too emotionally dependent on their
men to protect their kids.
She showered, spread an aloe-based cream that smelled like
coconut over her sunburn, then dressed in work clothes—khaki pants, a white
shirt with a small, stand-up collar, and a Navy blue blazer, necessary, even in
summer, to cover her gun. While she laced her highlighted, light brown hair
into a French braid, her mind worked hard, calculating how she would sell her
involvement in the case to her boss.
Sweat moistened her hand as she pressed her cell phone to
her ear. At her boss’s gruff “Hello,” she described finding the child on the
beach.
“I thought you were on vacation,” Steve Gould responded.
“Yes, sir, but I think this warrants our attention.”
“Why?”
“I think we’re the best agency to investigate it.”
“One kid? Who cares about one kid?”
She knew he meant that the FBI generally got involved in more
complex cases. “If he were kidnapped, we’d care.”
“He’s not. He’s dead.”
“Yes, sir, but … but his body … his body was found on a
federal reservation. We can assert jurisdiction.”
“We don’t want to.”
“I want to.”
Kit heard him sigh.
“Why, McGovern? Just tell me why.”
Kit squeezed her eyes shut and pictured the little boy on the
beach. She realized she was trembling. Why did she care so much? “It’s all
about justice, sir. Somebody wrapped something around this little boy’s neck
and choked him until he died. Who did it? We have the best resources to figure
that out. Otherwise … otherwise I can almost guarantee this’ll become a cold
case.”
She could hear Steve tapping on his desk. “This is the way
you want to spend your vacation?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” he grumbled. “Call the Assistant
U.S. Attorney. If he won’t prosecute, then drop it,” he ordered her.
“Otherwise, you have two weeks to convince me you’re not wasting our
resources.”