Beachcomber (6 page)

Come one, come all,
Luke thought with disgust.
Was there a hot time in the old town tonight or what?

“Where’s the fire?” one of the firefighters called.

“No fire.” Castellano shook his head as they drew near. “That was a mistake. What we’ve got here is a woman reported injured on the beach.” He turned to Christy. “You want to show us where now?”

She nodded and he took her arm. Luke watched with interest as she seemed to flinch, then pulled free
and set off toward the beach without a backward look. Castellano stared after her with a gathering frown.

“You come, too,” Castellano said over his shoulder to Luke as the whole group started over the dunes. “I got a few more questions I want to ask you.”

Great. Now he would be on the radar screen of pretty much half the population, including the local fuzz and the woman he had under surveillance. But what none of them knew, and must not find out, was the truth about who he was and why he was there: FBI Special Agent Luke Rand, hot and heavy on the trail of Donnie Jr., aka Michael DePalma, who’d dropped out of sight two days earlier, right before a supposedly secret grand jury had returned a sealed indictment charging him with, among other things, racketeering and wire fraud. Keeping tabs on the bastard’s girlfriend, who had headed south at about the same time with what sources in the know had claimed was a briefcase full of cash, had seemed like the shortest route to recovering their man.

Unfortunately, things weren’t working out quite as planned. This little disaster was only the latest in a string of screwups. Plan A, which was keep out of sight, watch the chick, and wait for Donnie Jr. to show up, was officially a bust. Right about now seemed like a good time to go with Plan B—just as soon as he came up with it.

3

H
OLY
M
ARY,
M
OTHER OF
G
OD,
pray for us now and at the hour of our death …

Sketching a quick sign of the cross over her chest, Christy turned away as the woman’s body was lifted onto a stretcher. She wasn’t fast enough. An arm, limp and pale, flopped off the side of the gurney, falling out from beneath the white sheet that was being drawn over the victim. Lifeless fingers dangled downward. The same arm that had first caught her eye on the beach? Christy didn’t know—and couldn’t bear to think about it. Dark liquid dripped from the flaccid fingers.

Blood.

As much as she wanted to, needed to, Christy could not tear her eyes away from the gruesome sight. A woman paramedic wearing white plastic gloves took hold of the wrist and returned the arm to the stretcher. Her movements were matter-of-fact as she loosened a strap securing the body, then refastened it to hold the arm in, too. The discreet covering was repositioned, and the body was at last out of view. Death had reduced
the woman to an anonymous bundle, an object, a
thing
to be taken away.

A small dark stain appeared on the white cloth near where the hand had been tucked inside. Unable to tear her gaze away, Christy watched, mesmerized, as the stain slowly grew to the size of a baseball.

So much blood.

“She going to
County Hospital?” asked a paunchy, bald, middle-aged man, who had arrived on the scene at the same time as the ambulance. Mrs. Castellano had identified him to Christy as Aaron Steinberg, the publisher
cum
primary reporter of Ocracoke’s only local newspaper. Standing at the forefront of a shifting crowd of onlookers perhaps twelve feet away, Christy had no trouble hearing what was being said.

“Morgue,” Gordie Castellano replied.

“Cause of death?”

“Can’t say for sure till after the autopsy.”

“Would it be safe to characterize it as a homicide?”

The white sheet had absorbed more of the blood, and now the stain was about the size of a basketball. Christy’s stomach roiled, and although neither she nor the speakers moved, the voices seemed to fade away. Shaken to the core, she closed her eyes and finally succeeded in blocking out the terrible scene, if not the thoughts that went with it. Guilt gnawed at her insides. If she had stayed with the woman, if she had gotten help to her faster, if, if, if…

It was too late for ifs. The woman was dead.

If she had stayed, she might be dead now, too.

Goose bumps prickled along her skin. The memory of that moment when she had looked up to find her pursuer bearing down on her was enough to make her heart start to pound like she’d just run for miles. Turning her back on the stretcher that was still being readied for transport, Christy took a deep, steadying breath and opened her eyes. She pulled her blowing hair back from her face with one hand, then stared determinedly out toward the horizon, where the star-studded night sky blended almost seamlessly into the black sea. Closer at hand, the reflection of the moon made squiggly white lines on the waves.

There was nothing she or anyone could do for the poor dead woman now. She had to concentrate all her energy on saving herself.

“You doin’ okay?” the masculine voice, tinged with a southern drawl, coming as it did seemingly out of nowhere, made Christy jump. Glancing around, she saw that the speaker was her next-door neighbor, the guy with the lost cat, Luke something.

“I’m fine.” Her brusque tone was meant to discourage further conversation.

During the hour or so they’d waited and watched on the beach, he’d stayed in her general vicinity but had said nothing to her. As far as she knew he’d said nothing to anyone, aside from a brief chat he’d had early on with Gordie Castellano. Now he was right behind her, standing far too close for her peace of mind under the circumstances. She stepped away from him dismissively and focused on the sea again.

“Finding her dead like that must have been real upsetting.
You want to try to put it out of your mind.” He was behind her again.

“She wasn’t dead when I found her,” Christy responded compulsively despite the fact that she didn’t want to talk to him, didn’t trust him, didn’t much believe that he’d been looking for his lost cat on her patio. She had told her story over and over, to Gordie Castellano when he had questioned her, to the other deputies, to the paramedics, to the newspaper guy. Saying it aloud was an attempt to ease her conscience, she decided. She guessed she was hoping that if she told the story enough, she would find some sort of absolution for having abandoned the woman to her fate. “She was alive and talking. She said
‘help me.’
And—and something that started with
la
or
law.
”

She couldn’t help it. Her voice shook as she finished.

A beat passed before he replied, in a slightly altered tone. “You did your best. You got help.”

“Not fast enough.” Christy shivered and crossed her arms over her chest. The wind blowing in from the ocean was stiff now, whipping up frothing waves like a whisk beating tall peaks in meringue. It sent the ends of her hair snapping back away from her face and picked up her skirt so that it streamed behind her, fluttering against his legs.

“You’re shivering. You cold?”

“A little. It doesn’t matter.” Cold didn’t begin to cover it. Terrified, heartsick, disbelieving of this nightmare that somehow just seemed to keep on keeping on, was more like it. None of which she could say aloud.

“Yeah, it does matter. You’ve had a shock, you ought
to try to keep warm.” He moved, and a moment later something dropped over her shoulders. “Here.”

Startled, she whipped around, but even before she saw him without it she had already realized what it was: his shirt. It was cotton, smelling faintly of something pleasant like suntan lotion or fabric softener, and warm from his body. It felt so good, so welcome, that for a moment she was almost tempted to keep it on. But under the best of conditions taking favors from strangers went against the grain with her. And this guy wasn’t just a stranger, he was a
suspicious
stranger. Besides, if she didn’t know better—which she didn’t—she would be starting to suspect he was coming on to her.

Under the circumstances, that was something she really, truly, positively didn’t need to deal with.

“Thanks,” she said, shaking her head as she pulled his shirt off and held it out to him. “But no thanks. I’m not
that
cold.”

“O—kay.” His tone told her that he’d finally registered a rebuff. Accepting the shirt, he shrugged back into it. As he did so she narrowed her eyes against the reflected glow of the klieg lights that had been set up at the scene and took her first good look at him. He was about sixone and lean, handsome enough if you happened to like the blond surfer-dude type, which she didn’t, with an angular, square-jawed face, eyes that were probably blue although in the uncertain light it was impossible to be sure, a long, slightly crooked nose, and a mobile, thin-lipped mouth. His hair was too long for her taste and curled in way-too-cute little ringlets around his ears and neck. His shoulders and arms and chest veered almost
into hunk territory, being well-muscled despite his overall leanness, but they didn’t quite make up for the sissy curls. He was deeply tanned, as if he had way too much free time to spend shirtless in the sun for a man who looked to be about thirty. As her personal taste ran toward men who were darker, brawnier, and altogether more macho-looking, she couldn’t give him much more than a seven on her manly beauty scale. Given that he was wearing ancient-looking swim trunks that hung low on his hips and ended at his knees, and his hair looked like it had been finger-combed back from his forehead when wet, Christy assumed that sometime in the recent past he’d gone for a swim. In the ocean? Maybe, although some of the cottages had their own pool. Could he have been the guy on the beach? Watching him button his shirt up again, Christy weighed the possibility. She didn’t think so. The timing was wrong, the vibes were wrong, and he was lean and blond whereas the man on the beach had been bulky and dark-haired.

Unless he’d been wearing some kind of cap. Unless the jogging suit he’d been wearing had been oversized. Unless he’d somehow managed to strip off the jogging suit before he got to her patio
and
beat her back there to boot. Unless the moonlight had played nasty little tricks on her eyes.

That was about four too many
unlesses
for her peace of mind.

“Whatever it was, I didn’t do it.” A slight, crooked smile turned up a corner of his mouth. There was the tiniest spark of satisfaction in his eyes as they met hers. Christy realized that she’d been staring, and he’d interpreted
her attention as interest. Clearly the guy was used to women who were easily wowed. Her brows snapped together.

“You know, I don’t think you have a clear view of the situation: I caught you skulking on my patio in the middle of the night. This does not make us friends. And I really don’t feel like talking right now.”

He held up both hands and rocked back on his heels. “Hey, no problem.”

She turned her back on him pointedly, and resumed staring out to sea. To her annoyance, he continued to lurk behind her. Christy pursed her lips and determinedly ignored him. She would have left then and headed up to her cottage except for the humiliating fact that she was afraid to walk up through the dunes alone and Castellano had asked her to hang around in case he had some more questions for her. Not that there was anything more that she could tell him. He knew everything she did—or, at least, everything she was prepared to reveal.

The terrible thing was, the woman had been dead when their motley band of rescuers had reached her. As far as Christy could tell—and Castellano had insisted she take a good, close look—the woman hadn’t moved since she’d left her except for the shifting of her previously outflung arm. When Christy had returned the woman’s arm had been bent at the elbow and pulled in close to her body. Maybe she’d drawn it in from pain; maybe she’d been trying to crawl. Christy didn’t know, and refused to allow herself to speculate. The major difference in the scene was that the area around the woman’s torso was dark, black almost, stained in an
uneven pattern that resembled nothing so much as the petals of a flower that had just blossomed.

Because of all the blood. Someone—Castellano?—had said that the beach was soaked with the woman’s blood. Like ink on a paper towel, the blood was slowly being diffused through the sand.

There had been no sign of blood in the sand when she had knelt to touch that poor woman’s cold but still-living hand. Christy could still picture the scene in her mind: the beach had been creamy pale. She could barely stand to think that all that blood had poured out of the woman’s body from the time she had run away to the time she had returned with help.

If only she had been quicker… .

Castellano was headed her way again, the pocketsized notebook he’d been using to jot down notes in hand. Although according to his great aunt he was officially off duty, he had more or less taken charge of the scene. While they’d all stood around waiting for the completion of the myriad tasks that the discovery of a dead person called for, Mrs. Castellano had confided in Christy that Gordie had been a homicide cop in Hoboken until six years ago, when on a visit to her and her sister, his grandmother, who was now deceased, God rest her soul, he had met and married an Ocracoke girl. The marriage was now kaput but Gordie was still here and so respected that he was in line to one day replace the sheriff, an amiable man in his sixties whom everybody called Bud. A hard-charging Yankee on a force of laid-back southerners, Gordie, Mrs. Castellano bragged, got things done.