“Did he say why he was changing plans suddenly?”
“No. All he said was something had come up and he needed to take care of it. Then he hung up. Next morning he goes out in a boat with Ellie and never comes back.”
Lozza considered Rabz in silence.
“Ellie is not what meets the eye, Lozz,” Rabz said. “She might come across all demure and gentle and introverted, but that kind of woman can be the most dangerous when betrayed or wronged, because you least expect it. They can be deadly. Did you know that she stabbed her ex-husband when she caught him having dinner at a restaurant with his mistress? Do you know the police in Hawaii thought she’d drowned her three-year-old daughter in the sea at Waimea Bay?”
Surprise quickened through Lozza. “Her daughter drowned?”
“Ellie took her out into waves that were too big.”
Suddenly Ellie’s odd behavior in the sea took on new meaning. She held Rabz’s gaze, saying nothing, waiting for Rabz to fill the silence again.
“If Ellie knew about our affair . . . I think she could have done something terrible to him.”
“Lozza?” Gregg reappeared in the doorway, an intense look on his face. “I need to speak to you. Now.”
Lozza stepped outside the office.
Gregg kept his voice low. “They found a body. Up at Agnes. Could be him.”
THEN
LOZZA
Thunder clapped above them and Lozza winced. The sound grumbled over the mangrove swamp and rolled toward the sea. The storm had muscled in while she and Gregg had gone up the Agnes River with skipper Mac McGonigle and Barney guiding them to the gruesome find tangled into the lines of Barney’s illegal crab pots.
It was dark now and pouring. And she was pretty sure it was Martin Cresswell-Smith they’d found floating in the little cove without his pants on. The body type and hair were a match. She’d recognized his ring from when she’d swum with Ellie.
Lozza had taken photographs. Gregg had cordoned off the immediate area around the floater in the small cove. They were now waiting for a forensic team, a coroner, and a detective from the murder squad, but the storm was holding them up.
Thunder cracked again and rain redoubled in force and volume. The drops struck the black water in the channel with such force they sent up a stream of backsplashes that looked like a shimmering waterfall under the glare of the boat spotlights and intermittent flashes of lightning. There was only room for two under the boat’s targa cover, so she and Gregg sat out in the rain. Water dripped steadily off the bill of her cap. It ran down the back of her neck. Her hair was sodden. She wiped her face and checked her watch. Just over two since she’d called in the floater.
Gregg’s gaze followed her movement. “That gaff in his chest—that’s like a statement.”
She nodded, thinking of Maya. Hoping she was finishing her homework. “Yeah. Personal. Overkill in those puncture wounds.”
“And the missing fingers? Nothing makes sense,” Gregg said. He sat silent for another fifteen minutes, and Lozza said a personal thanks for that. He’d been jabbering nervously since she’d returned to the boat from the abandoned house where she’d seen the pieces of severed finger, ropes, feces, windbreaker from Canada, and pale-blue Nike ball cap.
Lightning flared. Everything turned white silver. The image of the floater shot vividly back into her mind.
White skin against black water, the empty eye sockets, the nose-less face, the open, lipless mouth. Her brain circled back to the words they’d heard from Rabz shortly before they got this call.
“Ellie is not what meets the eye . . . That kind of woman can be the most dangerous when betrayed or wronged, because you least expect it. They can be deadly. Did you know that she stabbed her ex-husband when she caught him having dinner at a restaurant with his mistress?”
Lozza wasn’t sure Ellie Cresswell-Smith could be capable of this. Did she have an accomplice? Had Ellie had a window of opportunity between when witnesses had last seen her and her husband—the victim—heading out in their Quinnie, and when Lozza had found her on the bathroom floor?
As the questions circled around and around in Lozza’s brain, another half hour ticked down. The rain stopped. They heard the sound of a helicopter behind the clouds.
“It’s them,” said Mac.
She checked her watch again. A total of two hours and twenty-three minutes. She got up. The boat rocked. Soon they heard the sound of an engine coming up the channel. Bright spotlights winked in and out of view behind the tangle of mangrove trees. The radio crackled. Mac responded, guiding the arriving launch into their mooring along the jetty.
Lozza shielded her eyes against the blinding glare of the spotlights as the boat approached in the darkness. She could make out several silhouettes, glimpses of white—crime scene techs had already suited up and were ready to go. The boat moored on the opposite side of the jetty. Lozza climbed out and stood on the dock. Waves slapped and splashed against the pilings.
A man, a black silhouette against the row of spotlights atop the bar of the newly arrived police boat, climbed out. He approached her.
Something in the vestigial caves of Lozza’s subconscious began to stir as the man neared. Something about his movements. Before her brain could interpret the recognition in her body, light fell on his face.
Lozza’s heart stalled. She swallowed. Then swore viciously to herself.
“Lozz,” he said.
“Corneil.” Of all the murder cops from HQ, they had to send this one. Her nemesis. The one detective who’d lobbied hard to have her stripped of her badge after the “incident.” A man who’d been married when she’d had an affair with him. A man she now hated with hot passion.
“Didn’t expect to see you,” he said quietly.
His voice was the same. Flat. Toneless. Like his face. Like his eyes. Unreadable. Expressionless. The homicide detective rarely showed emotion—just those watchful
