Sand Sharks (23 page)

“I noticed it when I got here this morning,” she said.

“I thought he didn’t come to work yesterday.”

“He didn’t.”

“But the bike—?”

“I figured he caught a ride home from work Sunday and just hasn’t had a chance to come back for it.”

“No. Hank Barlow said he drove Kyle and the bike both to his apartment Sunday because it had a leak in the tire. So Kyle must
have ridden it back here sometime between Sunday evening and this morning.”

“Whatever,” the young woman said, evidently becoming bored with his speculation and heading back inside.

Edwards followed. “When did you last see him?” he asked.

“Friday maybe? When the shifts changed? He usually works the four-to-eleven dinner shift and I work the eleven-to-four lunch
shift. Weekends can get a little crazy, y’know? Sam barks a lot but as long as everything’s covered and we keep up with our
hours, he doesn’t really care if we switch off or double up. My girlfriend got married down in Southport this weekend, and
Kyle and the others covered for me so that I could be off. He was supposed to work the dinner shift yesterday and he never
showed. I thought maybe he’d gotten his time mixed up. Is he in trouble?”

“I’m afraid so. You and he friends?” She shrugged and her twin ponytails swayed back and forth. “I guess. As much as anybody
here. He isn’t much of a people person, y’know? Besides, I’ve got a boyfriend and Kyle… ? I don’t think he’s into girls very
much.”

“Gay?”

“I don’t know about gay. Just not very interested either way. He really, really wants to get into television. That’s pretty
much all he talks about, but he’s not doing much to make it happen, y’know? Doesn’t take classes. Doesn’t try out for an internship.
He does go on casting calls, and then he’ll spend the rest of the week griping because someone always beats him out.” She
hesitated and her pretty little brow furrowed. “It’s weird, though.”

“What?” Edwards asked.

“He’s really fussy about this bike. Keeps the frame waxed and everything oiled so it won’t rust, y’know? It’s not like him
to leave it out in the rain without a cover on it.”

Upon being asked, no one admitted seeing Kyle or his bike after Hank Barlow dropped him off in front of his apartment before
coming back to work the Sunday evening shift.

When the final member of Saturday night’s waitstaff checked in shortly before four, she could add nothing to what had already
been said.

In the end, Edwards was left with the picture of a fiercely closeted, narcissistic loner and not a single hint as to why he
would have killed Judge Peter Jeffreys.

To be learned in the law (jurisprudentia) is the knowledge of things divine and human, the science of the just and the unjust.

—Ulpian (ca. AD 170–228)

U
sing his car’s GPS system and the address Kyle Armstrong’s aunt had given him, Andy Wall navigated the narrow roads that branched
away from River Road, deeper into a swampy area of Brunswick County, and turned at last into a rutted drive that curved through
a tunnel of live oaks and yaupon made even darker by the rain clouds overhead. The branches scraped along the side of the
car and made him wince for the paint job.

If the GPS had not sounded so sure of itself when it said “Arrive at destination on right,” he would have backed out and tried
somewhere else. Eventually the tunnel opened up into sky and water and a grassy yard in bad need of mowing, and he caught
his breath. This was exactly the sort of lot he hoped to buy when he retired next spring: isolated, no near neighbors, on
the Intracoastal Waterway so that his boat would have easy access to the Atlantic, yet sheltered from the worst of hurricanes
and high water by one of the barrier islands.

A single-wide house trailer sat squarely in the middle of the yard and was shaded by five or six live oaks. If this were his
lot, though, his first act of ownership would be to tow that trailer to the nearest landfill. There was a burn barrel off
to the side, but trash was everywhere—cans, plastic bottles, sodden cardboard boxes, fast-food cartons. Dozens of flimsy plastic
bags had caught in the bushes around the edges of the yard, and the trailer itself had a forlorn dilapidated air of neglect.
The storm door had either fallen or been torn off its hinges and now stood propped against the side, a couple of screens lay
on the ground, and one broken window had been patched with duct tape.

No red Geo. No car of any kind and no sign of life.

He drove across the yard, following faint signs of car ruts right up to the door, where he rolled down his window and blew
his horn.

No response, but at least he was on the leeward side of the wind so that rain did not beat in on him.

He blew the horn again and this time he leaned on it for a full thirty seconds. Out on the waterway, a hundred or so feet
away, a huge white yacht sounded its own horn as it passed, evidently thinking the detective’s land blast was some sort of
greeting.

Wall waited till the yacht had moved out of sight, then blew his horn again. At last the door cracked open and a gray-faced
woman peered out at him with bleary eyes. Mrs. Rudd had told him that her daughter was the same age as Kyle Armstrong.

Twenty-six.

This woman looked to be at least forty.

“Ms. Rudd?” he called. “Ms. Audrey Rudd?”

“Yeah. Who’re you? Mama send you? You got somethin’ for me?”

As he got out of the car and started up the shallow wooden steps, she drew back and began to close the door. He quickly pulled
out his badge. “Detective Wall, Ms. Rudd. I need to ask you some questions about your cousin. Kyle Armstrong.”

“Kyle? What about him?”

“Could I come in and talk to you a minute?”

She shook her head. “No, you don’ wanna come in here.”

From the odor of stale bourbon and general decay that met his nose, he was ready to agree with her. There was an overhang
above the door. Too small to be called a proper porch roof, it did keep the worst of the rain off and he decided it was better
to get a little wet than to have his clothes permeated with a smell it would take dry cleaning to get rid of.

“Can you tell me when you last saw your cousin, Ms. Rudd?”

She looked at him blankly. “He’s not here.”

“I know, but he was here this weekend, right?”

“Mama give you some money to give me?” With dirty fingernails she scratched at her scalp and her unbuttoned shirt fell open
to reveal a chest so thin that every detail of her collarbone and upper rib cage could be seen above a pair of flaccid breasts.
It could have been the chest of a starving refugee in Darfur.

“No, Ms. Rudd,” he said gently. Disgust mingled with pity. “But she told me she sent you some food and things when your cousin
came a couple of days ago.”

“Oh, yeah… tha’s right. Kyle.”

“Did he talk to you about his job? About the restaurant?”

“Jonah’s. He’s a waiter at Jonah’s.”

Wall took a deep breath and willed himself to be patient. “That’s right, Ms. Rudd. He works at Jonah’s. Did he talk to you
about it when he was here?”

“I gotta sit down,” she said and pushed past him to lower herself to the top step.

She seemed oblivious to the rain and he realized that she was probably too deep into her alcoholic haze to give him anything
useful. Nevertheless…

“Where was he going when he left here, Audrey? Did he say?”

She lifted her face to the warm rain and smiled; and for a moment, he could almost see the young woman inside this physical
wreck.

“What did he tell you, Audrey?”

After a long career on the force, he should not have been shocked by the string of profanities that spewed from her mouth,
but he was. Equally unexpected was the way her face crumpled with grief.

“Tha’s what he said I was,” she wept. “Tha’s what he called me. And then he got in his car and said he was never coming back.
Never—ever—
ever
.”

“Let me help you back in the house,” he said, taking her arm. “You’re getting soaked.”

She flinched away from him. “Go away!” she sobbed. “Leave me alone.”

She drew her skeletal legs up under her chin and buried her face in her arms. The rain beat against her bowed head and turned
her unkempt hair into snakelike strands that seemed to writhe in the wind and wet.

With nothing to be gained by staying, Andy Wall got back in his car, turned it around, and drove out of the yard. Just before
the tunnel of yaupon and live oaks closed in around him, he glanced back in his rearview mirror. Another big expensive boat
was passing, but she hadn’t moved.

He gave a weary sigh, knowing that one of these days the Brunswick County sheriff’s office would get a call that buzzards
were circling this trailer and “y’all really need to send somebody out here to take a look.”

Whenever a judicial investigation cannot be made without injury, the course should be adopted which is productive of the least
unfairness.

—Javolenus (ca. AD 86)

B
etween the rain and the tourists, it took Detective Edwards longer than usual to clear downtown traffic and get onto the MLK
Parkway, the quickest route out to Wrightsville Beach. Once on it, he had just set the cruise control when the lanes ahead
started to back up. Bad wreck or fender bender? He queried the dispatcher, but nothing had been reported yet, so he inched
along, playing the usual mind game: get off at the next exit or hope it would soon clear? Happily, the cause was around the
very next bend—a shiny new Prius hybrid with warning lights flashing. Its hapless driver and passenger were pushing it onto
the shoulder. No smashed fender, no second car involved.

Edwards put on his own flashers and pulled alongside the tall white-haired man who was puffing from exertion, and lowered
his window. “Out of gas?”

“Yeah, dammit! It was supposed to get at least another twelve miles.”

“Need help?”

“Not unless you’ve got a gas can,” the man said, wiping rain from his face with his wet shirtsleeve. “It’s okay. I’ve called
somebody.”

Edwards notified the dispatcher in case anyone else called in about the delay and waited with his lights flashing till they
had the car completely off the highway and well onto the shoulder before he accelerated past. He grinned as he remembered
a friend up in Raleigh who had called Triple A when his new hybrid conked out on him several miles from home. Jim was embarrassed
as hell when the wrecker showed up and its driver declared that there was nothing mechanically wrong with the car, only that
it was out of gas, several miles per gallon short of what his indignant friend expected. The driver gave him a gallon of gas,
more than enough to get him to the next station, but Jim was sure it would be enough to get him back to his favorite service
station.

It wasn’t.

It should comfort Jim to learn he was not the only one who suffered from a syndrome Edwards was starting to call hybrid overoptimism.

According to the conference schedule Judge Knott had shown him, the judges were due to adjourn for the day at 5:30, so there
was no need to speed along Eastwood, which naturally ensured that he would catch green lights all the way. As he pulled into
the parking lot at the SandCastle Hotel, his pager went off.

“Hey, Gary,” Andy Wall said. “Just got a call. They’ve located our red Geo with the South Carolina ‘Share the Road’ plate.”

“Yeah. Where?”

“North of town on I-40. The Castle Hayne exit. Sounds like it ran off the westbound ramp and crashed into some trees. They
haven’t ID’d the driver yet, but he’s dead.”

Expediting with lights and siren, Gary Edwards got to the Castle Hayne exit only a few minutes after Andy Wall. Whether it
was the rain or the inconvenient location, the usual curiosity seekers were missing when he arrived. He parked his car behind
one of the cruisers and half-walked, half-slid down the steep incline to the crash site, unimpeded by rubberneckers. The grass
was so wet and slippery that he almost lost his balance a couple of times before reaching level ground. Despite his umbrella’s
broken rib, it served its purpose with a certain dignity; but the troopers who wore standard rain gear seemed much amused
by Andy Wall, who sheltered beneath a dainty floral umbrella with a pink ruffle that lent a rosy glow to his face.

It was so reminiscent of the parasols carried by the Azalea Queen’s court that Edwards couldn’t resist. “Gee, Andy, I thought
the Azalea Festival was two months ago.”

“Don’t you start, too,” he groused. “My wife took my umbrella this morning and this is the only one I could find.”

“So what’ve we got?”

“The troopers think he must’ve gone off during last night’s heaviest rain,” Wall told him as they looked down on the twisted
and crumpled pile of red metal, all that remained of the little red hatchback.

“Yeah,” said the nearer officer. “Looks like he misjudged the angle of the curve and was accelerating instead of braking.
Either that or the brakes didn’t catch and he just hydroplaned over. No skid marks. Not that we’d expect them with all the
rain we’ve had.”

They automatically glanced upward. The rain had finally begun to ease off and they could see a patch of blue through an opening
in the western clouds. Wall furled his frothy umbrella and used it as a walking stick as they eased themselves down closer
to the car, half hidden in a tangle of yaupon and sturdy pines.

A lifeless body was tightly pinned between the steering wheel and the roof. Through the crushed windshield they could make
out part of the face, which was cut and torn.