Page 24 of Water's Edge

“Okay,” I finally say. “We’ll keep that in mind.”

“One other thing,” Ronnie goes on. “We’re convinced the killer brought her body in by boat. But what if he lowered her over the cliff in a sling?”

I jerk my head toward her.Sling.But who would bring a sling? How much planning would that take? To get the body over those rocks would take an enormous effort. It took two crime scene guys to put her in the boat.

“Robbie Boyd said he’s a rock climber,” Ronnie says. “He might have been able to do it.”

“He’s not as big as we are.” I say it but know not to discount the possibility completely. “Keep talking.”

She nods. “Okay. Then there’s the rock with the symbol on it. Robbie struck me as a little bit of a freak. He immediately wanted to know if he was a suspect. He brought up the criminal justice stuff. I just have a bad feeling about him.”

“All good thinking,” I tell her.

The truth is, I have a bad feeling about him too.

Ronnie beams at me and faces front again, placing her hands in her lap like an excited child. She has totally forgotten where we are headed and I hate to spoil her mood, but we have to go.

I put the crime scene report in the folder with the coroner’s preliminary report and my own summation of yesterday’s events. The sheriff has copies of everything except the crime scene report.

“Did you give the sheriff a copy of the crime scene report?” I ask.

She looks confused. “Should I have?”

“I’ll give it to him when we get back.” I start the engine and pull out of the parking lot.

Ronnie is quiet until we reach the turnoff for the highway south to Bremerton, Kitsap County’s largest city and the location of the morgue shared by three counties. “I’ve never traveled.”

“Where do you want to go?” I ask.

Ronnie lets out a sigh. “Oh, I don’t know. Anywhere, I guess. I’ve never even been to half the places around here. Yesterday was the first time I was on Marrowstone Island. I’ve been to some of the state parks, camping and boating. I guess I’m not adventurous like you.”

I wonder what she means by that. What does she know? I think of how my mom used to say that our midnight moves from one place to the next were a big adventure. How we’d renamed ourselves so many times that I probably couldn’t remember them all. How we had a code word that would ignite our most unexpected adventure. RUN. The word that told me life as we knew it was over. I stay quiet. I’m good at quiet until I get really pissed off.

Ronnie carries on.“I mean, you’ve probably traveled all over the United States. The world, even. You seem so…”

She stops and I press her.

“Sowhat, Ronnie?”

“I don’t know. So worldly, I guess. You’re not afraid of anything. You told that state patrol guy what to do and he didn’t argue. And you made detective pretty quick. I heard you’re the youngest detective with the Sheriff’s Office. Guys are jealous of you.”

My thoughts go back to the beauty of the Northwest and how I was musing that morning that the pretty mountains and thick forests of evergreens is a mask.

Peel back the layer. See what’s underneath.

I’m a lot like that. Underneath the veneer of my tough personality is a girl who would rather strike at a compliment than take it and be grateful for it.

“No one should ever be jealous of me,” I say.

My tone is final. Not harsh. But it plants a big period between the two us, and Ronnie stays quiet for the rest of the ride to the autopsy.

Thirteen

A pickup basketball game is going on in the lot behind the morgue and I recognize Dr. Andrade dribbling across the court and pulling off a perfect layup. I notice him because he is so out of place surrounded by the twenty- and thirty-something lab and comm center workers. Dr. Andrade is wearing scrubs and lace-up shoes where everyone else has stripped off their shirts and are in shorts or sweats with tennis shoes. He is kicking their young asses by the looks of disbelief on some of the faces.

Good for him.

I park near the door to his office. He sees me and comes over. Not a drop of sweat on his brow.

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