What Washes Up (21 page)

She needed to make a decision. There was no way she’d be able to pull back the slide without him hearing it, and if he heard it, he wasn’t stupid enough to walk around the corner and let her blow him away. He would wait, and he would be far more ready than he already was. He could wait indefinitely, but Wyatt was in there somewhere, and she could not.

She got as low as she could on her hands and knees, sliding the Glock along on the carpet. When she could go no further that way without the gun hitting tile, she eased herself into the lowest squat she’d ever managed, the gun in both hands on her chest, listening as she heard the rustling of cloth.

Then she didn’t need to make any more decisions. In the space of a heartbeat, she heard Wyatt groan, heard Patrick cry out, then heard the hammer of a revolver.

She pulled the slide as she jumped up, and was already aiming when she cleared the breakfast bar. Patrick was in the middle of swinging his gun toward the floor.

She shot him three times. The first one went into the middle of his back, and as his body jerked around from the impact, she shot him twice more in the chest. He looked up at her between the second and third shots, and he looked more irritated than surprised.

M
aggie stood on the foot rail of the stool, trying to see what was happening on the floor, but even if she had been tall enough, she wouldn’t have been able to see Wyatt past the backs of the two EMTs.

There were too many people in Wyatt’s small kitchen. In addition to Wyatt, Patrick and the two EMTs, Terry Coyle was taking pictures of the scene, as one of Larry Davenport’s assistants examined Patrick’s body.

A handful of deputies and PD walked in and out of the house, and she understood another handful were outside, keeping the street clear for the EMTs and keeping the neighbors at bay.

Maggie had given a brief initial statement to Terry and handed over her weapon, but he had left her pretty much alone for the duration. Maggie checked her old Timex and saw that it had only been twelve minutes since she’d called 911, and only nine since the EMTs and the first Apalach PD car had arrived. Dwight, and then Terry, had been one or two minutes behind.

To Maggie, the nine minutes had seemed like an hour. She had been yelled at twice already for asking why they weren’t just going to the hospital, had been told sharply by Carl Rosen, one of the EMTs, that Wyatt needed to be stabilized.

She had stopped asking when she heard the other EMT bark something about Wyatt’s blood pressure dropping, then heard them use the paddles on Wyatt. She had felt the current in her own chest.

“Okay, let’s go,” she heard Carl say quickly. “James, give us a hand?”

The assistant medical examiner stood, and the three men lifted the board on which Wyatt was lying and grunted as they placed him onto the gurney that waited at the end of the breakfast bar. Maggie got a quick look at Wyatt’s pale face before Carl got in the way.

“I’m going with you,” Maggie said.

“No, you’re following, Maggie,” Carl said as he unlocked the wheels with his foot. “No room.”

They rushed past her, and she saw Dwight coming back inside. She snatched up her purse as he walked up to her.

“Is there anybody behind my Jeep?” she asked, rushing past him and making him pivot mid-stride.

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“I need to get out,” she said.

“Hey, uh, we called Boudreaux. He’s out there.”

“I don’t care,” Maggie said as she rushed out the screen door.

“I’m just saying,” he said as he followed.

Maggie wasn’t sure how many vehicles were outside. Red and blue lights swiped across her black Cherokee from every direction, but there was one PD car parked behind her in the driveway.

“I need to get out!” she shouted to the yard in general, as she hurried down the walkway. One of the Apalach uniforms looked over at her and rushed to the driver’s side of the patrol car that was blocking her.

Maggie looked at the street in front of Wyatt’s house. Little pockets of people lined the sidewalk across the street, some of them in uniform. A little old lady in a purple bathrobe looked at Maggie in horror, and Maggie looked down. Her hands were smeared with Wyatt’s blood, and her shirt was covered with it. She had a flash of the night, just a few weeks ago, when she had looked down and seen that David’s blood had drenched her tee shirt. The déjà vu almost made her vomit, and she pushed the memory away.

The EMTs roared off toward Weems Memorial, and as they did, she saw Boudreaux across the street. He was facing her, hands on his hips and looking down at the sidewalk, as a uniform spoke to him.

He looked up as Maggie reached her Jeep. He looked right at her, and their eyes met for just a moment before she jumped into the Jeep.

She waited for the cruiser to back into the street, then she pulled out. As she stopped and put the Jeep in drive, she looked out her window. Boudreaux was right there on the sidewalk, just five or six feet away. The tears on his cheeks looked almost yellow in the light from the streetlamp behind him.

Maggie hit the gas and pulled away.

Two days later, Maggie sat in the recliner next to Wyatt’s hospital bed, as she had the night he’d come in, as she had the day before. She had left the hospital only to go to her parents, hug the kids, shower, swallow something, and return. Her Dad had been running to the house to feed the chickens, and Coco was content in her parents’ back yard.

She was, for the second time in less than two months, on administrative leave until the investigation of the shooting was completed. There was nowhere else she needed to be.

The night he’d been brought in, Wyatt had been in surgery for more than five hours. The bullet had done a great deal of damage to his left hip, as well as his small intestine. He had lost a lot of blood.

As Maggie understood it, an orthopedic surgeon had worked on the hip once the small intestine had been virtually removed, spliced, and put back in place. Wyatt’s doctor had explained to her that it was essential for Wyatt’s hip to be completely immobile, so they were keeping him under anesthesia for a few days. They’d put him into a medically induced coma.

Despite the fact that they assured her they would call and let her know when they were bringing him out of it, Maggie preferred to wait. It wasn’t until the second day that Maggie had learned that Wyatt, when he’d been treated in the ER last year for a concussion, had listed her as his next of kin.

She’d sat there staring at his still hand for more than five minutes, wondering how this beautiful man had come to be so alone that she was his next of kin.

She’d wondered a lot of things during the hours that she had sat next to Wyatt’s bed.

She knew that she had lost her ability to work effectively, to think effectively, as a cop. She had, for a time, confided more in a known criminal, one whose motives were a mystery, than she had in the man who had become more than her closest friend.

From the moment she had walked onto the beach on the island, and looked down at what was left of Gregory Boudreaux’s shattered face, she had been changing, drifting away from who and what she was. She felt like the frog in the pot of slowly boiling water. It had been so gradual, so imperceptible, that she had let it happen, had given her consent by virtue of the fact that she hadn’t run.

Maggie sighed and leaned back in the recliner, trying to find some position that she hadn’t already worn out. She couldn’t, so she stood up and stretched her back, looked at her watch. It was almost four in the afternoon, and she would need to leave soon.

She heard the door swish open behind her, and looked to see Dwight coming in, wearing jeans and a button down shirt.

“Hey, Maggie,” he said quietly.

“Hey.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s the same. His vitals are good. They scanned his hip earlier, and they said it’s looking good.”

Dwight put a hand on the bed rail and looked at Wyatt. “He’s gonna be pissed about that nightie they got on him.”

Maggie smiled. “Yeah.”

“Uh, so, Tomlinson’s looking for you,” he said.

“I’m on leave,” she said.

“Yeah, I know, but he wanted to talk to you. He said to call him and he’d meet you.”

Maggie looked over at Wyatt. “All right.”

“The service is tomorrow night,” Dwight said. “You comin’?”

“Yeah.”

John Solomon, her former colleague turned Chamber of Commerce exec, had rallied local business owners, churches and civic groups, and in a matter of two days enough money or other donations had been collected to give the Guatemalans a proper burial, albeit a very basic one.

The florists, William and Robert, had donated simple posies to be tossed into the sea from the beach. A local hardware store had donated most of their stock of emergency candles. The donation money had gone toward the actual burials. Since there weren’t enough spaces in one section of the cemetery, a graveside service was impossible, so they were doing a memorial on the beach instead.

Maggie looked at Dwight. “I was getting ready to leave, anyway,” she said.

“When are they waking him up?”

“Tomorrow some time. But they won’t let anyone be here,” she said. “They said it’s better if he doesn’t have company.”

“Oh. Well, I figured I’d hang out a little while today,” Dwight said.

Maggie smiled. “That’s cool, Dwight. Thanks.”

“You should try to take it easy maybe tomorrow. Not to hurt your feelings, but you don’t look so hot.”

“Awesome, thanks,” she said.

She picked up her purse and turned to leave.

“Hey, Maggie?” She turned around, and Dwight licked his lips nervously before he spoke. “It’s good, you and Wyatt. You know?”

Maggie blinked at him a couple of times. “He’s my boss. And my friend.”

“Look, I’m a simple guy, but I’m not stupid,” he said gently. “It’s good, you and Wyatt,” he repeated.

Maggie tried to find some other words to say that they were just friends, something that wasn’t a lie and wasn’t a straight out confession that it had started to be good, but was probably done. She couldn’t come up with anything, so she just nodded and walked out of the room.

Maggie met Tomlinson on the patio at Caroline’s, a restaurant overlooking the river just a block from his hotel.

He waited until he’d been served his coffee and she had her sweet tea, then he leaned on the table and folded his hands.

“So, we’re sending the boy home day after tomorrow,” he said without preamble.

Maggie’s stomach turned over. “Sending him back? They won’t let him stay? He’s just a kid.”

“He doesn’t want to stay, Lieutenant. He wants to go home to his grandparents.”

Maggie sat back, feeling deflated and maybe even just a little bit rejected.

“But you said it’s terrible where his people are,” she said weakly.

“It’s not great,” he admitted. “But the kid just lost his parents and his only sibling. He doesn’t care that it’s not great. He doesn’t give a crap about what the US has to offer him at this point. He just wants to go home to people that know him.”

“Is he coming to the memorial service?”

“No. But he does want to stop by his family’s graves before he leaves.”