Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838) (5 page)

“Right. No water in his lungs. Someone wrapped something—a cord or a rope—around his neck, killed him, and dumped him overboard.”

“What about those marks on his wrists and his arms?”

“His right wrist looks like someone grabbed him like this,” he demonstrated with his own hands, “like adults do sometimes. His fingernails are broken, which could indicate he defended himself, but could also just mean he's an active boy or that he's involved in manual labor.”

“Like ag work?” Kit asked. “Could he be a farm worker?”

“At age eight? He's not supposed to be.”

Kit tapped her pen against her leg, caught up now in possible scenarios.

“I'm ruling it a homicide,” the ME said.

Kit's mind whirled. “How far would a body travel in the ocean in twenty hours?” she asked, trying to pinpoint where the boy might have fallen off of a boat.

“I'd suggest you ask an oceanographer about currents. Try the Virginia Institute for Marine Sciences over in Gloucester.” He pronounced it “Glosster.”

“I'll do that.”

“Oh, Agent McGovern, one more thing.”

Kit refocused on him.

“My assistant found some interesting things in the boy's clothing. You know how he had his sleeves rolled up?”

Kit nodded.

“There were some tomato seeds caught up in them. It's not very likely they would have been deposited there in the ocean. And you heard me when I said I'd found lots of tomato seeds in his gut, like tomatoes were a major source of food. Also, the kid had acorns in his pocket. Six of them. I'm thinking you might do well to have a forensic botanist take a look at those things. We'll bag them for you.”

A forensic botanist. Kit pondered that idea. As she walked out of the ME's office, exhaustion swept over her, and she realized her entire body had been tense for hours. She pulled out her cell phone. The Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mark Handley, had told her to call him with the autopsy results.

“Look,” she explained, sensing his resistance after she gave him the basics, “this isn't just a little boy. We found his body on a federal reservation. He was murdered. Why was a Latino boy out on the ocean? Why did someone kill him?” She took
a deep breath. “I think we may be looking at something bigger than just one murder. Maybe it's trafficking in drugs. Maybe the kid knew something he shouldn't know. Maybe it's illegals, coming in by boat.”

She waited during a long pause. Kit's heart drummed. Then the AUSA indicated he would conditionally accept the case. She could proceed. Kit hung up her cell phone. Overhead, a crow in a pine tree cackled.

Where had the boy been dumped into the ocean? The ME had suggested the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences might help. And the only problem with consulting with VIMS was the institution's connection with the College of William & Mary. And the only problem with William & Mary was its association with one Eric Allen Sandford, J.D. PhD, assistant professor of ethics at the school's Marshall-Wythe School of Law.

Eric was Kit McGovern's ex-husband.

They had met at the University of Virginia one spring morning when the gardens near the Lawn were in full bloom and all the world seemed to be in love. They were both pre-law, and like most UVA students, they loved Charlottesville, deep discussions, and Greenberry's coffee. Justice was their mutual passion, but their paths had taken different turns after graduation. Kit went on to get a master's in forensic psychology while Eric went to law school at George Washington University. When she accepted a job as a police officer trainee in the Fairfax Criminal Justice Academy, they had a salary they could live on and so they married.

Seven years of hard work followed. He didn't understand her decision to enter law enforcement rather than the law. Still, her choice of career certainly paid the bills and so he
didn't complain. Then she applied to and was accepted by the FBI, went through the Academy, and was assigned to the Washington Field Office. He continued his education, first attaining a J.D., then going on for more graduate work in philosophy. It seemed to Kit he enjoyed studying the law more than practicing it, but she recognized his years as a student couldn't go on forever: his PhD in legal ethics was within reach.

By the time he finished his dissertation and attained that coveted degree, they had been married seven years. She was six months away from being thirty years old and well aware of her biological clock. She looked forward to having children, maybe even adopting as well, giving a child from Latin America a home.

If she'd sensed a growing distance in their relationship, she'd chosen to ignore it. Degrees in hand, he obtained a teaching position at William & Mary, the culmination of a long-held dream. And that's when he told Kit he really didn't want to be married anymore.

The shock of his announcement, and the trauma of the next year, left Kit reeling. Her entire world felt like it was tilting, like the
Titanic
about to slip into the sea. She tried to get her husband to go to counseling, tried engaging the help of their minister, even tried petitioning his family to help. And what about their faith? Christianity was part of the glue of their marriage . . . had he forgotten the tenets of their faith? Their vows? But Eric had made up his mind, and no one could talk him out of the split.

Her divorce was Crisis No. 1, and two years later, she still grieved the loss of their marriage and her hopes for a family. Someday, her minister told her, God would make everything right. That seemed little comfort to Kit.

She dealt with her feelings of rejection in her usual way: she sucked up her gut, put away her desire for children, and poured
herself into her calling as an agent of justice in this life. She felt privileged to be with the FBI, but her passion, coupled with a complete disregard for political correctness, had precipitated Crisis No. 2, in which she'd taken an unpopular stand on a high-profile criminal case, pursuing a suspect her boss thought irrelevant. She was sidelined, forbidden to follow her instincts, and she had no choice but to back off. Then a reporter began asking questions along those same lines. Her boss accused her of leaking information, which she hadn't. Still, it was clear she had lost her boss's trust. When she found out Norfolk needed a scuba-certified agent, she had applied for the job and been accepted. Now, here she was, pursuing justice in Crisis No. 3, justice for a little boy delivered into her path by the pounding surf of the Atlantic.

And where was God during all this? She had no idea. She'd almost stopped asking.

Dr. Harry Light, an oceanographer at VIMS, had spent his career studying currents in the mid-Atlantic. He stroked his beard. “No one's ever asked me before how far a 54-pound body might be carried in typical August sea conditions off of Assateague Island,” he said to Kit.

He walked over to the overstuffed bookshelves in his office, and began thumbing through a thick volume. “Let's see,” he murmured. “We could create a 54-pound dummy, equip it with a transmitter, drop it overboard . . .”

“But sir,” Kit said, “that wouldn't simulate a real human body, would it? I mean, a corpse begins emitting gases even in the early stages of decomposition, and wouldn't that make it rise and fall in the water?”

“Yes, yes . . . and then the currents at various levels . . . oh, posh,” Dr. Light said, slamming his book shut. “I'm not sure we could get a good match.”

“I'd be happy with a rough estimate.”

The professor look relieved, calculated the average velocity of the currents in the summer in that area, scratched a number down on a piece of paper. “Try this,” he said.

Kit started to leave.

“You've checked with the Coast Guard, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So then you know about IOOS.”

Kit stopped in her tracks. She turned around.

“The Integrated Ocean Observing System. Coast Guard uses it, along with NOAA. It tracks ocean currents by high-frequency radar. Invaluable for search and rescue, oil spills . . . gives quite a bit of data. Real interesting if you're into that sort of thing.”

“Is it operational in the Mid-Atlantic?”

“Sure! MARACOOS, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Association Coastal Ocean Observing System, collects data for the whole area, from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras.”

“So like, if something is in the water, they could predict its drift?”

“That's right.”

“Do they keep historical data?”

“Oh, yes. What I gave you there,” he nodded toward the paper, “is an average of currents in the area. But they'll give you specifics for the date in question. You said you talked to the Coast Guard. Didn't they tell you?”

Why hadn't Rick mentioned IOOS? Surely he knew about it! Kit jabbed her key into her car ignition.

Fuming, she called the administrative assistant for her squad, and got her to track down the Coast Guard's Mid-Atlantic Search and Rescue Unit which, it turns out, was in Norfolk. Kit went to that office, and within thirty minutes, had the probable range of latitudes and longitudes from which the child had been dropped, based on the ME's estimate of the time of his death, and the speed of the currents in the area within that time frame.

Of course, that area now was empty ocean.

And Rick? She'd confront him later. Why hadn't he told her about IOOS?

As Kit drove over the causeway leading to Chincoteague, she tried to spot her grandmother's house, a game she'd played since childhood. The buildings on the island's Main Street were stretched out like pearls on a necklace in the distance, far across the channel. Kit had found if she could find the large, barn-red house and count two to the left, that would be her grandmother's.

When she finally nabbed it, she saw the sun glinting off some object next to the house. Curious, when she got to the island, she turned down Main Street. What she saw when she got to the house made her jerk to the side of the street and jump out of her car.

“What are you doing?” she said, approaching the ladder leaned up against the siding.

David O'Connor had his iPod going and didn't even look down. Kit tapped on the ladder, then shook it. That got his attention. “Hey!” he said, climbing down, paintbrush in hand. He pulled his earbuds out.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. Her face felt hot.

He looked at the house, then back to her. “Painting?”

“Blue? Blue? You can't do that!”

He smiled like an amused parent. “OK,” he said. “But you tell the owner.”

“It's always been white!”

“I think you'll like it. It's almost the color of your eyes.”

Kit flipped open her cell phone, turned her back on David, and called Connie.

“That's what the owner wanted,” she told Kit. “Look, honey, David's doing a lot of work on the house in exchange for reduced rent. He's going to save that house, Kit.”

Kit snapped her phone shut, her jaw still tight.

“Everything OK?” David said.