Awash (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 6) (21 page)

“I swear, man,” the bald guy said. “I barely know the dude.”

Wyatt sighed and looked at Bret. “Can you get IDs and license plates?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Bret answered.

“Maggie, Dwight,” Wyatt said, and they followed him out the front door and into the yard.

“You buy what they’re saying?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t know that I buy what he told them,” Wyatt said.

“Me, neither,” she said.

“More than likely, he is hauling ass. I just don’t like that we don’t know that.” Wyatt looked at Dwight. “Dwight, go on back to the office, see if we can get a license plate for this guy’s motorcycle. Then go ahead and file a preliminary and go home.”

“Gotcha, boss,” Dwight said. “This was fun and all,” he added as he headed back to the woods.

Wyatt looked at Maggie, who was chewing on the corner of her lip. “What’s on your mind?” he asked her.

Maggie shook her head. “I don’t like that he delivered the pizza,” she said.

“Talk to me about that.”

“Would you have delivered a pizza?”

“I don’t think they get to pick their deliveries, but no. And yeah, it’s troubling.”

“I’m wondering if this guy isn’t a typical rapist,” Maggie said.

“Because he came back?”

“I think maybe the possum was convenient, but it wasn’t alone,” she said. “And I think he fully expected to have to deliver another pizza over there. He wanted to.”

“You think his thing is to mess with her head?”

“I keep going back to the leaves,” Maggie said.

“Okay,” Wyatt said.

“Dr. Callahan said it could have been some kind of repair, like he was trying to undo taking her virginity, like he was putting it back,” Maggie said. “But what if he was putting it back so he could take it again?”

Wyatt looked at her and sighed. “We think a lot of sick crap,” he said.

“We know a lot of sick crap,” she said.

Wyatt put his hands on his hips and huffed out a breath. “I’m gonna wait on the guys and see about keeping this place under eyeballs for a bit,” he said. “Finch could come back, or one of these Stanford applicants could try to go see him.”

“Okay,” Maggie said. “I need to get back to Zoe. I feel bad. I know she feels out of place.”

“She’s safe,” Wyatt said.

“Yeah,” she said. And Zoe was; Daddy could work that .38 revolver of his just as swiftly as he did a shucking knife. “Okay, I’ll see you later.”

“See you later.”

Maggie crossed the yard, heard Wyatt going back up the trailer stairs, as she stepped into the wooded lot.

The wind had picked up some, and the tall, skinny pines were all whispering the secrets that trees tell. 25
^th
Avenue was quiet, and Maggie listened to her boots crunching through the pine needles, pine cones, and dead leaves as she made her way through the woods.

She looked up through the trees, saw the moon glowing above her. She thought about Zoe lying in the dirt looking up through the treetops, looking at the same moon. Thought of herself lying in different woods, at a different time, staring up at the cloudless, blue November sky and wishing she was looking at it from somewhere else.

She brushed at her arms, quickened her step, and hurried through to the other side.

W
hen Maggie got back to her parents’ house, most of the house was dark except for the kitchen, where Gray sat at the table playing cards with Zoe. Her dad was up by five every morning and in bed by ten. Maggie knew he’d stayed up for Zoe, and she loved him for it.

They both looked up as she walked into the kitchen.

“What happened?” Zoe asked. “Is he in jail?”

Maggie put her purse down on the counter and sighed. “No, I’m sorry. He isn’t,” she said. “He might have left town.”

Zoe just sat there, eyes wide, and Gray gently laid a hand on her shoulder. “Wyatt and Maggie will find him,” he said.

Maggie knew that very well might be a lie, and she wished he hadn’t said it, but she knew he felt he had to say something.

“Everybody’s looking for him, Zoe,” she said quietly.

Zoe nodded, and Gray patted her shoulder and pushed back his chair. “I’ll let the two of you talk,” he said as he stood. “Try to get some sleep tonight, Zoe. You’re okay here.”

Zoe nodded. “Thank you, sir,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Maggie watched Gray walk out of the kitchen, then Zoe stood up. “I need air,” she said.

“Okay. Come on, we’ll go out on the deck,” Maggie said.

She unlocked the sliding door and stepped out first, looked around. The grass beyond the deck started out a light yellow-green from the deck lights, then faded out into a circle of black. Zoe stepped out onto the deck behind her, and Maggie led her to the steps.

Once they’d both sat down, Maggie reached out and gave Zoe’s hand a squeeze, then let it go. “I know you’re scared,” she said.

Zoe opened her mouth to say something, then stopped. She twisted her hands on her knees and shook her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again.

“I’m not scared. I’m…I just hate!” she said. “I just feel hate!”

Maggie watched her, let her say what she needed to say.

“He smiled at me! He smiled right at me, touching my food and…smiling!” she spat out. “He made me sick.”

“I know,” Maggie said.

Zoe whipped her head around. “He shoved a bunch of leaves in me. Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“Like I was a trash bag or something, like I wasn’t even a human being,” Zoe said. “I keep thinking about him standing there, smiling at me like he was a normal person, and I want to stab him in the face!”

Maggie waited. Zoe lifted her hands from her knees.

“My hands are shaking, I hate him so much!”

Maggie reached out for Zoe’s hands, but the girl jerked them away.

“No! I can’t stand feeling so much hate, but at least I’m not standing in the corner like a baby! I don’t want it to stop!”

Zoe looked away, up into the trees in the wooded lot next door.

Maggie stood up and walked down the steps. Zoe watched her as she opened the doors of a low shed beneath the deck, and pulled out a softball hitting stick. The bright yellow-green knob at the end had seen better seasons, and was patched with duct tape. Maggie reached into the shed and rummaged through a few aluminum bats before pulling out one of the dark, wooden Louisville Sluggers that had belonged to her late husband.

“Come on,” she said quietly to Zoe, and started walking away from the deck. After a moment, she heard Zoe descend the deck steps.

Maggie stopped in the middle of the well-lit circle and turned around. Zoe stopped a few feet away, looking unsure. Maggie bopped the end of the batting stick against the ground a few times.

“Remember this?” she asked Zoe.

“Yeah,” the girl said.

Maggie held out the wooden bat. “Aluminum bats suck. Nothing feels as good as swinging a wooden bat,” she said, as Zoe reached out and took it. “That was my husband David’s. Do you remember him?”

Zoe nodded. “Yeah, Coach.”

“He could really swing,” Maggie said. She spread her feet a little, dug in, and raised the batting stick. “Let’s go. Let’s see what you got in there.”

Zoe looked at her a moment, then got into something of a batting stance. She swung once and missed, then immediately swung a second time and connected, but Maggie barely felt it.

“Come on, swing all the way through,” Maggie said. Zoe took another swing. “Again.”

Zoe widened her stance a little, swung again, connected.

“Come on, Zoe,” Maggie said, not unkindly. “Get your weight on that back foot. Bend your knees.”

Zoe dug her back foot in a bit, swung again, hit a little bit harder.

“Swing with your hips, not your arms.”

“I am,” Zoe said, frustrated. She swung again but grazed the target.

Maggie raised the end of the batting stick up to Zoe’s eye level. “See this?”

“Yeah?”

“Smiling right in your face!” She slammed the end of the stick onto the ground a couple of times, then held it up for Zoe. “Use your hips. All your power in your hips. Do it again.”

Zoe swung again, and Maggie felt the hit speed up the length of the stick and vibrate in her shoulder muscles.

“Good. Do it again.”

Zoe swung again, and grunted as she connected with the target.

“Again.”

The wooden bat thumped against the end of the batting stick over and over and over. Occasionally, Zoe grunted with the effort, but Maggie said nothing else.

In the open sliding glass door, Gray stood and watched, his hands in his pajama pockets, the breeze blowing his graying hair into his eyes.

The Florida Seafood Festival was in full flux when Maggie and her family arrived in the early afternoon. Thousands of people were in attendance, and Battery Park was virtually unrecognizable. There were rows of vendor booths set up, selling every variation of local seafood, snacks, tee shirts, beer, and other cold drinks. Many of the booths were donating proceeds to local charities; all were doing a brisk business.

The air was filled with music from the concert stage, announcements over the loudspeaker about the day’s schedule, and the sounds of children shouting to each other and parents shouting at them. On the bay side, carnival rides blared out their own music, accompanied by the screams and laughter of the people riding them.

The day was bright and dry and fairly cool; a perfect Saturday for this, the largest annual event in Apalach.

Maggie stayed by Zoe’s side throughout the afternoon, except for the few times when the girl was persuaded to ride something with Sky and Kyle. Maggie didn’t do rides that left the ground, but she waited and watched until Zoe was back on the ground and back by her side. Maggie watched as Zoe sometimes seemed to be able to forget for a few moments that her life had changed. She watched as she always, eventually, remembered, and her eyes looked tired again. She also watched as she saw Zoe watching, her eyes darting and her head turning as she surveyed the crowds, searching for bleached blond hair.

Wyatt joined them only now and then, as he was essentially working, helping Sheriff’s and Apalach PD officers with crowd control and lost kids, misplaced wallets, and misplaced sobriety.

He stood with an arm around Maggie’s shoulder as they all watched Kyle participate in the kids’ crab races. Maggie always felt bad for the crabs. Five minutes of people screaming at them, and then even the winner went into some vendor’s pot.

She followed her parents, Sky, and Zoe as they went to congratulate Kyle on his 2
^nd
place win, and John Solomon took Maggie’s place at Wyatt’s side.

“Hey, Wyatt,” John said.

“Hey, John,” Wyatt said.

John had been with the Sheriff’s Office for twenty years before he’d retired to become the Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce. The Seafood Festival was his baby, and the high point of his entire year.

“If you want some of my fried oysters, you better get over there pretty soon,” John said.

John’s third love, after his family and the festival, was cooking. Every fundraising event in Franklin County featured John at a grill or a fryer.

Wyatt sighed. “How long have we known each other, John?” Wyatt said.

“Uh, let’s see…ten years?”

“And we have some variation of this conversation every year,” Wyatt said. “I can’t stand oysters.”

“Oh, yeah,” John said, frowning. “I guess I just like you so much that I keep forgetting you’re a moron.”

Wyatt grimaced at him, and John gave him a wink, then took a drink of his bottled water.

“Good crowd this year,” he said. “New record.”

“It always is,” Wyatt said. “You did good.”

“Team effort, my friend. Team effort,” John said. “Hey, I saw the thing in the paper the other day. I didn’t actually believe you were gonna do it, man.”

“Yep,” Wyatt said.

“Good for you.”

Wyatt raised his plastic cup of Mountain Dew at him. “You got any advice?”

“Yeah, don’t sleep with the detectives,” John said, smiling.

“I’ve never slept with Terry,” Wyatt said.

“I’m sure his wife appreciates that,” John said.