What Washes Up by Dawn Lee McKenna Read Free Book Online Page A

he said.
    “Hey, boss,” Dwight said, sounding more flustered than usual. “We need you over on the island, real quick.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “We got some bodies washed up on the beach,” Dwight said.
    “Aw, crap. Which beach?”
    “Uh, well…that’s the thing, Wyatt,” Dwight said. “It’s all of ’em. All the beaches.”

M aggie pulled in right behind Wyatt, parking in the sea grass off of Leisure Lane. Their location was an oceanfront piece of undeveloped land between two sections of vacation rentals. Short roads and driveways had been put in for about six rental houses, then construction had halted, for one reason or another. Those roads and driveways were now packed with police cruisers, Sheriff’s Office cruisers, fire trucks, EMT vehicles, several Coast Guard vehicles, and a few dark sedans of indeterminate governmental origin.
    Maggie grabbed her crime scene kit out of the back, then ran to catch up with Wyatt, who was halfway to the beach. Once they climbed to the top of the dunes, she realized with a heart-stopping certainty that she would not be using her kit at all.
    The beach was covered in lights for several hundred yards in either direction. Lights from Coast Guard cutters just offshore. Spotlights on tripods scattered across the sand. Lights from emergency vehicles, flashlights, and the back decks of vacation rental homes, where people from Ohio or Georgia stood at the rails and watched. Crossing in front of all the lights were the figures of Coast Guard and responders and Sheriff’s deputies.
    Some of them were attending to the two bodies already zipped into gray body bags. Others were bent over four more that were simply dark shapes on the sand where there should be none.
    Neither Wyatt nor Maggie said a word. After a moment, Wyatt started down the dunes and Maggie followed. Dwight ran up to them as they walked down the sand toward the largest cluster of activity.
    “Boss, I’m sorry,” Dwight said, his eyes wide and his face strained. “We got so…so busy, and I forgot to call you for a little.”
    “What the hell happened, Dwight? Did a cruise ship sink out there?”
    “We don’t know what happened, Wyatt,” Dwight said, as he fell in step with Wyatt and Maggie. “Coast Guard says there’s been no distress signals or anything, but Lord have mercy.”
    He raised his arm and pointed at more lights behind them, just discernible some distance down the beach. “They’ve got at least three down there near Schooner Landing,” he said, then stopped and turned and pointed the other way. “There’s more down there, almost at the State Park.”
    Maggie and Wyatt looked at each other. Dwight swallowed hard, and his voice broke as he spoke. “And there’s kids. Little kids. I hear there’s at least a couple of kids, up by the State Park.”
    Maggie’s heart lurched, and she wanted to pray, but she didn’t know what to ask. That this would all be gone? That it would un-happen somehow?
    “Did you know the Coast Guard is pretty much under Homeland Security?” Dwight asked. “I didn’t know that.”
    “What’s Homeland Security have to do with it?” Wyatt asked.
    “Well, they’re all Mexican, or Central American maybe.”
    “Ah, geez,” Wyatt said, barely audible over the rain and the wind off the water. He started walking again.
    Dwight struggled to keep up with Wyatt, whose legs were longer than most of Dwight’s body. “There’s four guys here from the actual Homeland Security, and they say it’s their show, them and the Coast Guard.”
    “Which one of them is in charge?” Wyatt asked.
    Dwight pointed to a man around fifty years old, with close-cropped gray hair, wearing khaki pants and a dark polo shirt. He was kneeling beside one of the bodies on the sand, tapping into a tablet. “That guy. Thompson or something like that.”
    The three of them walked over there, and Wyatt stopped next to the gray-haired man. “I’m Sheriff Hamilton,” he said