Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838) (10 page)

He wanted to talk? Kit tried to read the intonation in his voice. Maybe needed to talk? Could she spare the time? “OK. Sure. I can be there in half an hour.”

Kit threw on her swimsuit, added shorts and a T-shirt, grabbed a towel and her fanny pack, and left for the beach. Driving over the bridge to Assateague, she saw a collection of snowy egrets in the trees near the road. A herd of wild ponies stood a long way down the salt marsh, grazing. How she'd loved watching them when she was a kid! And Pony Penning, when the firemen would round them up, swim them over to Chincoteague, and sell off the colts—that was sheer heaven to her as a young girl. She rolled down her windows, let the soft salt air swirl into the car, and inhaled deeply.

She parked at the south beach lot, away from the surfing area. The absence of commercial buildings on Assateague was part of its charm. There were no boardwalks or hotels or restaurants or T-shirt shops, no cotton candy or caramel corn. Just a small museum, restrooms and the beach. David had said to meet him in the vicinity of the last lifeguard stand.

Crossing the dunes, she could see the ocean was calm this day, two-foot waves breaking close to shore, the waves sliding up over the sand, foamy-moustache edges leading the way. Some of the beachgoers were packing up to head back for dinner. To her left, some kids flew a kite that looked like a great green dragon. Kit turned right, heading down toward the tip of the island, away from the surfing area, away from the place she'd found the little boy, toward the end of the island set aside as a nesting area for the endangered piping plover.

Every family she passed reminded her of her case. White, black, Hispanic, Asian—who could possibly lose an eight year old and not report it? Not miss him? Maybe his mother couldn't report it because . . . because why? Fear? Kit ran through the possibilities as she locked her fanny pack in the glove box of her car.

Down the beach, she dropped her towel on the sand, put her ID and keys down and threw her T-shirt on top of them.
David hadn't arrived yet, but she felt hot, so she plunged into the waves, diving through the breakers, her eyes smarting from the green, salty water. She swam out beyond the surf line, and then turned on her back and floated, then swam again, sliding through the waves, feeling the tug of the ocean like an embrace. “God,” she whispered, “thank you for this. Thank you for the sea and the sky and the sun, for a place that touches me so deeply.” The spontaneous prayer surprised even her. Could the familiar beauty of the barrier islands and the embrace of the sea seduce her back into the love for Jesus she once knew?

She swam north, parallel to the shore, then turned south again. She felt the littoral current pressing along the shore and she let it pull her along for a while, thinking of the little boy, and his body's journey. Did he travel along the bottom? In the middle of the current? Did the surf turn his body over and over as it washed in?

Kit treaded water, looking out at the waves coming toward her, thinking about the victim. Suddenly, something grabbed her leg. Panicked, she jerked around. David O'Connor surfaced, grinning, water streaming off of his face.

“David!” she cried. “Oh! That is so middle school!” Kit cupped her hand and sent a sluice of water shooting toward him.

“But I got you, didn't I?” he said laughing.

“Oh, big deal! Big deal! So you can swim underwater!” Smiling, Kit swam over to the beach side of David, talking all the way, capturing his attention so that he didn't see the huge wave coming before it broke over his head. Deftly, she dove through it, and he came up sputtering.

“All right,” he said, shaking the water off his head. “We're even.”

“No way!” she said, and she shoved him down into the water.

The two played for half an hour, maybe more, bodysurfing in the waves, diving and laughing, swimming against the current, and floating on top. Then they let a strong wave take them in to the beach. “How'd you spot me?” Kit asked as they walked out of the surf.

“You were the only swimmer pretending to be a dead boy,” he said, grinning.

Kit bent down and picked up her towel. “Very funny.”

“Seriously. I saw what you were doing out there, and I thought, now there's a girl who needs to play.”

“Well thank you, Dr. O'Connor.” Kit sat down on the sand and David did as well. He had on blue and white boardshorts. The large bandage on his arm was gone; only the butterfly bandages remained. “How's the arm?” she said, nodding toward it.

“It needed a salt water bath,” he replied.

The tiny stubble of his beard glinted in the afternoon light. “What have you been doing?” she asked.

“I went kayaking, and I saw this bird,” he paused, and squeezed his eyes shut as he reached for the name, “a great egret. Very cool.”

Kit laughed softly.

He told her about the woman he'd met, and about the photograph on the wall of the Main Street house.

“I've heard of her, but never met her!” Kit said. “Her art is all over the place. Not just photographs, but incredible oils, too. She's wonderful.”

The breakers rolled in, relentlessly pounding the sand. A flock of brown pelicans flew parallel to the shore, their wings beating the air. “Hey, your friend Sellers came by to see me.”

Kit arched her eyebrow. “He did?”

“Yep. Asked me all kinds of questions. Why had we gone out on the ocean, how long had I known you, was I helping
you with the investigation, what did I do in D.C. . . . he was really nosy.”

“That's weird.” She blinked. “Did you tell him where I'm staying?”

“No way!” David ran his hand through the sand. “My guess is he is going to file a report and he wanted to cover all of his bases.”

That made sense. Rick had shown her the paperwork. Even given her copies. But how did he and that reporter find out where she lived?

The sound of the breakers murmured a refrain. David glanced toward her. “Kit . . .”

She turned.

“How long were you married?”

The question caught her off guard. She hesitated. “Seven years.”

“What happened?”

“That's pretty personal.”

“So was my shooting incident.”

She couldn't argue with that. Kit picked up a small shell, a white, ridged scalloped shell, fingered it, and tossed it into the sand. She gave him the outline. “By the time he got his PhD, Eric didn't want to be married anymore.” She hated the fact that tears formed in the edges of her eyes. She stared straight ahead at the sand, hoping he wouldn't notice.

“He left you.”

“Yes.”

“That stinks.”

She let that comment ride for a minute, secretly agreeing with him. Then she pulled out the response she'd memorized: “I believe God will take care of it somehow.” Did she even believe that anymore?

The muscles in David's jaw flexed. He threw a little shell off into the sand. “Law enforcement's pretty hard on relationships.”

But what had she done wrong? She'd asked herself a million times if she had neglected Eric, put her career ahead of him, failed to be a good wife. Kit felt her neck tightening up. Off to her right, a kid kept trying to get his mother's attention. The mother, apparently lost in her own thoughts, ignored him.

“It seems like you have to choose one or the other; law enforcement or marriage. The two just don't seem to mix.”

Kit bristled. “I don't believe that.”

David picked up a handful of sand and let it drain through his fist. “It's hard. It's a consuming profession. A lot of times, spouses don't understand.”

“I think it could work. I've seen it work, in fact.”

“Not sure it's worth the trouble.”

“Sounds like you like being alone.”

“Pretty much.”

So what was he after? Why did he call her?

Out on the ocean, two kayakers paddled in rhythm. David inhaled deeply. He turned to look at Kit. “I, uh, I wanted to tell you that I just can't get involved with your case right now.”

He was pulling back.

“I understand.”

“That first day, after I helped you move that boy, I didn't stay because I came here to get away from law enforcement, you know?”

“Sure.”

“I was intrigued by the boy, and by Jimmy's story, but then,” David stroked his arm, “I realized I . . . I can't do this. Not now. And I'm sorry . . .”

Kit's emotions were swirling. “It's OK. Look, you've already helped me a lot, so don't worry about it. Take care of yourself, OK?”

He nodded and squinted as he stared out over the ocean. His feet burrowed down into the sand. “Do you have any new leads?”

Should she tell him what she'd learned about the littoral currents of the ocean? Or the ag industry on the Eastern Shore? She decided not to feed the law enforcement addiction. “A few,” she responded vaguely.

He nodded and continued staring out over the ocean. “The important thing is, keep at it. Somebody intentionally killed that little kid, somebody bigger and stronger. He put something—a cord or a rope—around his neck and watched him as he died. That's no way to treat a kid.” He gestured with his hands as he spoke. “There's nobody to speak up for that boy now, nobody but you to bring him justice. It's a sacred trust, you know? Don't let anything get in your way.”

K
IT STOOD IN THE GREAT ROOM OF HER COTTAGE, STARING OUT OVER THE
channel. A group of five or six gulls were fighting over some crab shells someone had thrown out, swooping and diving, picking up bits of crab and stealing them from one another.

The house was quiet, too quiet, and loneliness had settled like an ache in her bones. David was right. It was best not to mix law enforcement and marriage.

But what about children?

The call from the forensic botanist from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington distracted her. “I did some initial testing on that material you sent me,” the professor said. “You have time to talk about it?”

“Sure!” Kit slid a pad of paper in front of her on the table and picked up a pen.

“What is it you were hoping to learn?”

Kit filled him in on the details of the case. “So I'm wondering: is there a way to use the seeds or the acorns to figure out where the boy was before he died?”

Kit waited during a long pause. The botanist, Dr. Timothy Hill, was one of a tiny handful of people in his specialty who applied his science to criminal investigations. “Unfortunately,”
Dr. Hill said, “tomatoes of this kind are ubiquitous. Now if they'd been heirloom tomatoes, those we could do something with. But these are just simple, common tomatoes grown commercially all over Delmarva, and their DNA would not be traceable.”

Kit's hope sank. “I thought that we could link DNA to individual plants.”

“It's true, we have done that. Actually, we've been doing it since the early '90s. The first case involved a murder in which the body was found near a palo verde tree out in Arizona. The investigating officer picked up some seed pods. Then, they identified a suspect, and found similar seed pods in the back of his truck. A DNA scan showed that all the pods came from the same plant, thus putting him at the place of the crime.”

“And that won't work for tomatoes?”

“Not with these tomatoes. Besides, in the Arizona case, there were two samples to compare: one from the crime scene, one from the suspect's truck. You only have one. But here's something else to consider,” Dr. Hill said. “That little boy had been eating tomatoes out the wazoo. According to the medical examiner's report of the number of seeds found in his gut, I'd say he'd ingested a dozen or more in the twelve hours before his death. Either this kid's mother had a heck of a kitchen garden, or his parents are ag workers with lots of access to free tomatoes.”

“Which still doesn't answer why he'd be out on the ocean in a boat.”

“That's a question outside the field of botany,” Dr. Hill said, chuckling.

“So you can't trace the tomatoes . . .” Kit said, pensively.

“The acorns now . . . they're more distinctive. We might be able to work with that. We can often trace those to an individual tree.”

“What kind of tree are we talking about?”

“
Quercus virginiana
. Southern live oak. Common from Norfolk south, in sandy-soiled coastal areas.”

“Norfolk south? What about the Delmarva Peninsula?”

“They're not native to the Eastern Shore. If they're there, someone planted them.” Dr. Hill paused. “Then again, that could work to your advantage, assuming, of course, the little boy had been living on the peninsula. If he hadn't, well, you're totally out of luck.”

Kit pressed her phone to her ear. “Let's assume he lived on the peninsula. How can the acorns help?”

“Well, think about it: if we were talking about a red oak or a white oak, they're all over the place. We would find it very hard, probably impossible, to find the mother tree. But live oaks don't grow up there naturally. People plant them as ornamentals.”