Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838) (7 page)

“Whales.” David laughed. He grabbed a pole for himself, repeated the process, and stood balancing in the boat, moving his rod, winding in line, and waiting. The vast darkness invited conversation. Soon they were trading law enforcement stories. Then he explained about the fish teeming below them in the deep ocean, and she pointed out constellations and star clusters.

They idled for a half an hour, fishing and talking and not catching anything, and as midnight rolled around she began to wonder if they should give it up. Then she saw David look once, then a second time, to his right. His expression changed,
and he began winding in his line. “What's up?” she asked him as he laid his rod down in the boat.

“I thought I saw something.”

Kit brought in her line and secured her rod. David turned the boat so they were headed straight into the waves. Some broke over the bow, sending spray back toward the helm. Kit shivered at the shock of the cold water.

“Yes, there,” David said suddenly, pointing.

Kit could see it now, outlined against the horizon, a dark, fast-moving boat, running without lights. Their paths would cross if they both stayed their courses. David dropped the throttle back so they were barely making headway. “What can you see?” she asked.

The boat screamed northward, maybe one hundred yards away from them. David and Kit heard voices carried on the wind. Shouting. “What'd they say?” she asked.

“I can't make it out.”

Suddenly, the boat's motor changed pitch, and the bow turned in their direction. David uttered a sharp expletive. “Get down, get down!” he said. He grabbed Kit and pushed her low in the boat and swung the vessel around. He jammed the throttle full forward and Kit lost her balance. She peered over the transom, saw muzzle flash and then heard the shot. “Stay down!” David commanded, as another shot sounded.

Kit's heart hammered in her chest. She unzipped her fanny pack and drew out her Glock. The engine of the Grady-White roared in her ears. She could see David crouching as low as he could get over the wheel. She peeked over the stern again and saw the boat pursuing them, then more muzzle flashes.

She couldn't line up a shot, not in that pitching boat, and not at that range. “Stay down and hang on!” David yelled.

“I'm not a kid!” she wanted to say, but realistically she could do nothing to help. She felt David change the boat's course,
swinging it back and forth in irregular arcs, trying to be as difficult a target as possible. Then they hit a wave awkwardly and the Grady-White shuddered and faltered, wrestling with the sea. A wave broke over them, drenching them, and a sudden fear gripped Kit. Would they, too, end up as bodies on the beach?

K
IT FELT THE BOAT
'
S HESITATION AS A LARGE WAVE KNOCKED IT SIDEWAYS
. David adjusted its course and the boat began to make headway again. Four more shots rang out in a staccato burst, and Kit heard David cry out. She looked one more time at the pursuing boat, and then her heart jumped. “He's leaving! He's leaving!” she said.

David turned, saw the same thing, and straightened their course, heading directly for the Chincoteague Channel. Another large wave broke over their stern and doused them, one last parry from the sea. Kit glanced over her shoulder twice more. The pursuers were definitely giving up. She moved up into the seat next to David. “Are you all right?” she asked, but he didn't respond.

The lighted buoy marking the entrance to the channel appeared. As David swung north, cutting below the tip of Assateague, Kit got out the chart and flashlight and started guiding David through the marker buoys. Once they were well in the channel, David switched on their running lights again. That's when Kit saw the blood.

David stood over the sink in the Main Street house, his hand gripped in a tight fist, blood dripping from a cut on his arm.

The bullet—Kit presumed it was a bullet—had scored his arm and dug a little deeper into the flesh just behind his wrist.

“I think we should go to a hospital,” she said.

“No.”

“This is a gunshot wound.”

“No, it's not.”

“It has to be reported.”

“No way.”

Kit stared at his face, trying to read it. “David . . .”

“There must be some sharp metal on the boat. A burr or something. I just ran into it, that's all.”

Yeah, right. Kit didn't buy it. “It could be cut to the bone.”

He didn't respond.

“Does it hurt?”

“I just need to wash it.”

But his hands were shaking and he seemed frozen, staring at the blood, so Kit took over. She found a minimal first-aid kit and a washcloth in the bathroom, soaped up the cloth, and gently washed the cut. Then she made David sit down on a kitchen chair, and she laid a bead of Neosporin along the entire wound. She used butterfly bandages on the deepest portion to bring the edges closer together, and then covered those with large adhesive bandages. While she worked, she was aware of the feel of his skin, the sound of his breathing, and the smell of Irish Spring soap. At one point he leaned forward to see what she was doing, and his cheek brushed her cheek, and she felt the faint bit of stubble on his face, and she remembered what it was like when she was married, to have that intimacy with a man.

When she finished, he said, “I am really sorry. I never should have taken you out there. I put you at risk.”

Kit rolled her eyes. “I'm an FBI agent. I'm supposed to chase criminals. What do you think I do for the Bureau? Knit bulletproof vests?”

That drew the hint of smile.

“And anyway, this is my case, remember? You think I'm going to solve it sitting in an office?” She threw the paper trash away and began rinsing the washcloth out in the sink. David got up. He seemed to catch his balance on the kitchen chair; then he walked into the living room.

Kit plunged her hands under the faucet stream. It was the very sink in which she'd washed dishes when her grandmother lived there. It was so odd, being in this house—so familiar, but different. Same squeaks in the floor, same old hot water heater, same sink . . . but different paint and furniture and carpeting and curtains—and people.

When she finished, she dried her hands and walked into the living room. He sat on the blue couch, his arms resting on his knees, his eyes riveted to a spot on the floor.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He startled. “Sure. Yeah.” He sat up straight.

But Kit saw something in his eyes. Her heart twisted. “What's going on?”

“Nothing. I'm fine.”

“You've just been shot for the second time, in how long?”

He looked at her sharply. “I wasn't shot!”

“Maybe not tonight. But I saw the scar on your shoulder. It looks fresh.” She saw him take a deep breath. “How did it happen?”

He looked down.

“David?”

The air seemed heavy around them. Finally, the story began to trickle out. “My partner and I were coming back from our sixth homicide in five days in northeast D.C.” David's voice sounded low, distant. “We hear the dispatcher put out the call for a pedestrian down, hit-and-run, white Chevy Tahoe. Suddenly, my partner, Russ, sees the Tahoe up ahead. I'm thinking, we should just call it in. But I'm frustrated and I want some action, so instead, I flip up the blue light and chase him. Russ is yelling ‘Go! Go!' We follow the guy into an alley. We don't know the other end is blocked by a delivery truck. So now the suspect is trapped. He bails, and I can see he's young, maybe sixteen, if that. Just a punk kid. Russ and I jump out, yell at him to put his hands up, and the kid . . . the kid draws on us.”

Kit stayed quiet but her heart pounded.

“Our guns are out, too. So we shout, ‘Put the gun down! Put it down!' But he doesn't. I can still see him standing there, his hand shaking so hard. Then somebody fires and all hell breaks loose. The sound in that alley is incredible. His gun, our guns . . . I get tunnel vision: all I can see is the kid. Everything seems like slow motion . . . as though I can almost catch the bullets coming toward me. My gun is roaring in my ears. Then I feel a white heat rip through my shoulder and I realize I can't pull the trigger anymore. So, I switch to my right hand and fire again. It went on for what seemed like a long time. In reality, it's like seventeen seconds. And in the end, the kid is dead, and I am standing there with blood running off my arm.”

Just like tonight, Kit thought. Her heart thumped. “And Russ?”

“He's fine.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“March.” David sighed.

“Sounds like it wasn't your fault.”

“I should have let the uniforms handle it. If I had, the kid would be alive. He was young, that's all, young and scared.”

“He'd just committed a hit-and-run!”

“He was an A-student, headed for college. Some dudes had been bullying him; that's why he was carrying a gun. He'd never been in trouble before. Didn't have a record. He was scared and he overreacted. And we killed him,” David snapped his fingers, “just like that.”

Kit knew that typically after a police shooting the department takes the officer's gun, puts him on administrative leave, and tells him not to talk about the incident. Those actions convey a presumption of guilt, which, more often than not, imprints itself on the officer's conscience. Even a later finding that the shooting was justified sometimes can't erase those feelings. “Did you go through an inquiry board?”

“Sure.”

“And?”

He shook his head. “We were cleared.”

“How's Russ dealing with it?”

David shrugged. “He doesn't seem to have a problem with it.”

“He's still on the force?”

“Yeah.”

“When's the last time you spoke with him?”

“I tried calling him a week or so ago. Couldn't get him. Somebody told me he and his wife have been arguing. I think she may have kicked him out.”

Kit bit her lip. Didn't David see the connection? “What have you done to try to let go of this? Counseling?” she asked.

“I did the mandatory counseling. It didn't help. So I figured I'd quit. My boss suggested I take a break. Somebody told me about Chincoteague. It seemed like a good idea.” He rubbed
his hand on his leg. “I don't know why this one bothered me so much. I mean, I've seen a lot of death.”

“But you'd never shot anyone?”

“Not a kid.” David's eyes seemed focused far off. “You don't treat kids like that.”

Kit didn't sleep that night. She kept feeling the ocean tossing them, kept hearing the gunfire, kept seeing the blood dripping from David's arm, kept rolling David's words over and over in her mind.
You don't treat kids like that
. He sounded so . . . lost.

As the clock crawled past five, she sat up in bed. At one time, she would have had half a dozen verses to encourage a person in David's situation. Verses like, “I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the L
ORD
; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope.” And “Trust in the L
ORD
with all your heart; don't rely on your own intelligence.”

But somehow those verses were now caught in her throat, tangled in the tight web of her emotions surrounding her divorce. They seemed like platitudes, not promises—wishful thinking, not the word of God.

Moved by her uncomfortable thoughts, Kit slipped through the darkened house and stepped out on the deck. The fingers of dawn were spreading over the marsh, summoning the day. Shafts of pink and blue light emerged from the east. Across the Assateague Channel, the lighthouse still blinked its ancient warning: shoals ahead. A heron took off from the shallows just twenty-five feet from her, his huge wings beating a slow rhythm as he skimmed just above the water. Off in the distance, someone started an outboard motor.