Mel turned around even as Baby caught up with her, walking back toward the car. The girl’s eyes were bright and merry. The little interlude must have done her good, because she looked even healthier than she had before. Something more of the child she should be showed in her face.
Tugging Mel’s splinted hand, Baby’s warm fingers brushed her cold ones. The temperature difference made the contact strange. The girl skipped a few steps and said, “Let’s run!”
Laughing at her enthusiasm, Mel jogged forward, trying not to spill her icy drink. Baby glanced over her shoulder, shouting. “You can do better than that, Mel. I’ll race you!”
With that, she took off toward the parking area, leaving Mel to struggle to keep up. As they paid their parking fees and left the park, an ambulance coming into the lot nearly clipped them. Mel craned her neck to follow the progress, but Baby said, “I should get back before dinner at the group home. They don’t like to feed us after meal times.”
Mel nodded, her lips thinning at the idea of Baby in a group home, then set the car to drive.
Not That Body
“Any word on the body I asked about?” Mel asked, tossing her purse onto her cluttered desk. She leaned against it, eye-balled Paul, and sipped her soy-creamer laced coffee.
He barely glanced up from the computer screens arrayed across his desk. With a grunt, he said, “Not that body, but I got a different body. I got about a hundred female bodies on beaches just in the past two years. That’s going to take more work. This one I got is different, but interesting.”
“More bodies? My my, we are busy.”
This time he did look up, but only to scowl at her. He stabbed the touchscreen once more then leaned away from the computer. “Go grab that off the printer, will you?”
Saluting him with her cup, Mel went to stand by the rattling printer. It sounded like it was wheezing. Papers shot out into the tray in spurts, like each page took the poor machine real effort. Rather than be nosy, Mel brought the uneven short stack back to Paul’s desk and slapped them down on the clear space.
“Your papers, sir.”
He snorted, then sniffed. “That coffee smells good. Can’t be from here.”
She grinned and pulled the cup out of his reach. “It’s not. Don’t even think about it. Also, thanks for the tip on the soy creamer.”
He quirked an eyebrow, so she knew he was about to tease her. She deserved it. “Oh, so you don’t think the soy lobby dosed you with anti-dairy germ warfare anymore?”
Mel rolled her eyes and dragged a squealing chair around the desk to sit near Paul. “No, but who knows. It’s more than a little odd that I can’t eat dairy of any kind all the sudden. I’ve got an appointment for my hand in a couple of days, so I’ll ask about it then.”
Examining her face, Paul asked, “You’re not kidding? That really happened? You really can’t eat any dairy at all? That’s pretty much all I’ve ever seen you eat.”
She leaned back and looked at her light brown coffee, then shrugged. “It did and it happened all at once. No ice cream, no cream, no milk…nothing. It all tastes like vomit combined with dirty socks. No clue why.”
Paul shuffled the papers on his desk until he had two neatly squared sheaves, handing one to her. “Well, that’s freaking weird and now I’m paranoid too.”
Mel grinned. “Good. Paranoia has an evolutionary purpose you know. Sometimes there is someone watching you from behind a tree and drooling.” Glancing at the papers, she saw the North Carolina state police logo. “What’s this?”
“That body I mentioned. You ready? This is weird, maybe not connected, but it tickled my spider senses so I thought I’d run it past you.”
Setting down her cup, Mel flipped through the pages. Pictures of what looked like a seedy hotel, lots of text, then an image of a body on a beach. A body in really bad shape. She made a face.
“Okay, hit me with it.”
“Right,” Paul said, then leaned back in his chair. “So, the boss set me to researching locations. Some of the girls mentioned they traveled a route, but it was slightly different each time and they were never told where they were. Still, they saw signs and so on. With me?”
“Sure.”
“So, that girl Lydia said they often went near seaside places. She also said she remembered signs for the Outer Banks, which is in North Carolina.”
“Okay,” Mel said.
“There’s an alert out for information on the case, but it’s sparse since we’re not giving much in the way of detail. The alert is for groups of RVs that seem suspicious, a few model numbers, unattended children. Honestly, I didn’t think we would get much, but I got a call from a detective on an Outer Banks case that saw the alert. He had an interesting story.”
Paul reached over and took her papers, then shuffled them and handed them back. On the page was a photo of a man in late middle age with a nice face centered on a solid background. It was probably from his driver’s license or some other identification.
“That’s Gregory Ramone Smith. He was found washed up on the beach on one of the Outer Banks islands about six weeks after a hurricane. This was three years ago, when they had those two Cat 5s in a month?”
“He the guy in the other picture?” Mel asked, thinking of the mangled thing in the other image.
“Yep.”
“So? Hurricane victim?”
Paul raised his eyebrows as if things were about to get interesting. “That’s what they
