Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

by a single missed or mishandled piece of evidence.
     
    Caleb knew. But there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
    Rain and tide threatened the point. If he didn’t conduct a detailed search soon, his crime scene would be irretrievably contaminated, the evidence swept or washed or blown away.
     
    95
    I need what he took from me , Maggie had said.
     
    He wanted to find it.
     
    Whatever it was.
     
    Five hours later, Caleb sat at his desk with a mug of bitter coffee, working his way through the paperwork required by the state lab as methodically as he’d worked his way across the beach.
     
    His eyes were gritty with sand and ash and lack of sleep. His leg throbbed. His stomach growled. He hadn’t stopped for breakfast. Sliding open his desk drawer, he groped under the files and procedure manuals for the brown prescription bottle that held his painkillers.
     
    The doctor had said Maggie wasn’t supposed to take aspirin because of the risk of bleeding into the brain. Had Lucy remembered?
     
    He reached for the phone with his other hand, punching in the number from memory. His sister answered on the second ring.
     
    “How is everybody?” he asked.
     
    “Maggie’s fine. We’re both fine. We’re about to have lunch. Where are you?”
     
    “No nausea? Headaches?”
     
    Muffled voices carried over the line.
     
    “She has a bit of a headache,” his sister reported moments later. “I gave her some Tylenol.”
     
    “Good,” Caleb said, feeling foolish. “That’s good.”
     
    “Maggie wants to know when you’re going to take her to the beach.”
     
    “Later.” He glanced at the window, where a cold, gray rain lashed the glass. “It’s raining.”
     
    “Do you want to talk to her?”
     
    96
    He tapped the plastic bottle on the desk. He shouldn’t feel like a damn fifteen-year-old calling a girl and then hanging up because he had nothing to say.
     
    But he had nothing to offer her. Not yet. He looked from the piles of crap on his desk to the piles of crap on the floor.
     
    “I’ll call back,” he said, and hung up.
     
    Cradling the pills in his hand, he squinted at the bright warning labels: Do not take on an empty stomach. May cause drowsiness. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery .
     
    His hand clenched in frustration before he dropped the bottle back into the drawer.
     
    He needed Vicodin and about twelve hours of sleep. He’d settle for a shower and a cigarette. Instead, he took another sip of cooling coffee.
    He’d managed to give up smoking in the hospital, and no amount of frustration was driving him to go through that again.
     
    He rubbed his eyes. What he really needed was a body. Or a weapon.
    Clothing. Hell, even footprints or tire tracks. But the wind and the tide had destroyed any obvious marks, and the beach had been disconcertingly, discouragingly bare. Not even a cigarette butt. Well, except for the firefighters’, carefully restricted outside the perimeter.
     
    Caleb was—had been—a good investigator. He’d combed and sifted the scene, photographed and preserved everything, however apparently insignificant. But he’d found nothing to identify Maggie.
     
    Or her attacker.
     
    A rap sounded on his office door.
     
    “Come in.”
     
    Edith poked her head inside, curiosity flashing behind her glasses.
    “Detective Sam Reynolds.”
     
    Caleb seriously considered not getting to his feet—his leg hurt like a son of a bitch—and then did it anyway. “Detective. ”
     
    97
    Reynolds had smooth brown hair, quick eyes, and neat whiskers. A field rat, rather than a lab rat.
     
    “Sam. CID.”
     
    Like Caleb needed to be told. He raised his eyebrows. “You’re it?
    You’re my Evidence Response Team?”
     
    The investigator smiled, revealing large white teeth. “Somebody die that I don’t know about?”
     
    “Nope.”
     
    “Then I’m it.” He sat in the molded plastic chair that was all the town of World’s End could afford for its visitors. “What’ve you got for me?”
     
    “Food wrappers, beer cans, one rubber flip-flop, a couple fishhooks, and a load of fire debris.” Caleb didn’t need the look on the other man’s face to tell him he had squat. He nodded to the sealed cartons on the floor behind him. “It’s all in there. Taped, dated, and labeled. Agency number, item number, description, and source.”
     
    “You’ve done this before.”
     
    “Major crime division,” Caleb explained briefly.