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Right on cue, Marco slid his bowl between her arm and waist and into the sink and headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Marco was nothing if not predictable. Today was Monday. Monday was a school day. School days, Marco left the house at eight o’clock with his sister or his dad. At eight thirty sharp, he exited the car, waved, and walked into the building where he would stay until four fifteen when he would open the door of his dad’s car for the ride home. Life would be a lot easier if everyone were more like Marco. She glanced at the hall clock. Eight o’clock. Marco appeared dressed in his favorite Science is Awesome T-shirt and black jeans. Katia opened the door and the two walked out together.

  ****

  Katia pulled into the drive behind Gina’s red Mini Cooper. The car was Gina’s pride and joy. She wouldn’t have left it here if she were going to the beach. And yet she’s dead on the beach. No. In the beach. She swallowed hard. Her goal was to find Elizabeth. She let herself in the front door. Gina’s pale-blue jacket hung on the first hook in the hall. Pictures of Gina and Elizabeth, of Elizabeth as a baby, a toddler, and as a graduate, lined the wall up the stairs. On the small round stand by the door, a copy of Real Estate Weekly lay folded open, the car keys tossed on top.

  Katia ran her finger across the ad on the page. It was Gina smiling her famous real estate smile in front of a beautiful beach house. “Call me for all of your real estate needs,” the print read.

  How can you be dead? Katia realized she was touching the page without a glove and pulled her hand away. She wiped a tear with the hand that still held the key to the front door. Gina gave it to her when the girls were in high school. She never asked for it back.

  Katia could still feel Gina’s arms wrap around her. She smelled like foundation and mascara with a hint of Estée Lauder Pleasure perfume and cinnamon gum. Katia didn’t like makeup or perfume for herself, but she loved the smell of Gina—loved the way the smells mixed perfectly to calm her as she laid her cheek against her shoulder, pressed her young-adult breasts against Gina’s larger motherly breasts, and breathed deep her mixture of smells.

  Gina was one of the prettiest, kindest, and smartest women she had ever known. Katia loved her. And then she died. Katia sighed and clenched her fists so hard her short nails managed to find flesh. Ouch. Fuck.

  She heard Gina’s voice. “Take your shoes off, girls. I don’t need sandy tracks on my clean wood floors.” Katia slid her feet out of her tennis shoes and moved deeper into the house until she stood in the living room where the three of them used to eat popcorn and watch horror movies.

  As Katia slipped on a pair of latex gloves, she spoke aloud, weirded out by the silence. “I don’t know where to start, Momma G,” she said. “Help me. Where is she? There has to be a clue here somewhere. A number. An address. Something.” Katia knew this place like her own, but she never paid attention to where Gina kept her personal items. There was no need. Now she wished she had.

  Opening drawers in the distressed white end tables, Katia was careful to not touch or move anything that might be important in an investigation later. She was aware she shouldn’t be here at all, but that wasn’t an option. Instead, she carefully and repeatedly lifted and replaced items, using only a fingertip or two on each one. She repeated her pattern of sleuthing throughout the other rooms. She didn’t find anything of importance until she entered Gina’s bedroom.

  The room was just as Katia remembered it. She repeated her practice of the two-fingertip, lift-and-replace in the nightstands. She always wondered why Gina had two. Balance, she supposed, though she didn’t understand it. Older people have weird habits. Two lamps, matching. Pain-in-the-ass bed ruffle that always matched the spread on the always-made bed. Her slippers tucked neatly under the edge of the bed. The bottle of water, half-empty, next to her thyroid medicine and vitamin B supplement.

  Katia’s stomach turned, pulled at her insides, and sent a sound up through her throat and out into the air of the room. It was a deep mewing sound, a sound like a wounded animal. How. Can. You. Be. Dead? How? Pain manifested as anger, and anger spewed from every pore. Katia reached for the pillows and flung them across the room, two at a time, until all six soft, fluffy, pink-covered rectangles were on the floor. The muscles in her face tightened and twitched. Fuck a made bed. She was sobbing now, her shoulders lifting and falling to the rhythm of the pain inside. She yanked at the comforter and sheets, balled them up, and threw them after the pillows. Fuck you, Gina. Fuck you, Elizabeth. Fuck you for leaving me to figure this out. I wish you had never moved onto this street.

  She screamed until the words came out as air. She beat her fists against the bare mattress, twirled sideways, knocked the water bottle and pills to the floor. The crying had stopped. Now there was only the quick breathing in and out and the hiccups that come after a hard cry. And anger. She recalled the day they lowered her mom into the ground. She had tried to fall into the hole. She hated her dad for not letting her. Just like she hated Gina right now. Just like she hated Elizabeth. Fuck you all. I hate you. I hate you. I fucking, fucking, hate you.

  A whimper brought Katia’s movements to an abrupt halt. Whatever it was, it was in the bathroom. She listened between hiccups. It came again. And then she remembered. Frankie. She walked slowly to the door, forgetting the anger and hatred of the previous moment. “Frankie,” she said. Katia did her best to offer a calming voice. “It’s okay, boy.” She opened the door slowly. “Hi, boy. It’s okay.”

  The dog was lying in the corner of the bathroom floor. It was obvious from the dry water and food bowls and from the smell of urine and feces that he was there for a few days, at least. She turned the water on in the sink and let the cool liquid fill her hand. “Here, boy. Just a little to start. I’ll get you some food.” Frankie’s tail wagged, tapping out his thanks on the linoleum floor, but he didn’t make any move to stand. “Come on, boy. You’re okay.” She continued to coax the little brown fluff-ball mutt out of hiding. Frankie whimpered, wanting the water but obviously still spooked. Slowly he started toward Katia, shimmying on his belly, until he was close enough to lick the water from her palm. “That’s it, Frankie. That’s it. What happened, boy? What did you see?”

  ****

  It took Katia thirty minutes to calm Frankie and put the room back in order. Now she sat at her kitchen table stroking the furry ball of fluff snuggled hard against her lap.

  “Papi is not going to be happy.” She ran her fingers down the curve of the dog’s back. “We don’t do animals.” She gently pulled one of Frankie’s ears and then the other. “Well, Papi doesn’t do animals. Of any kind.”

  Katia and Elizabeth were ecstatic when Gina brought the small dog home five years ago. He was the runt in a box of matted, sickly looking puppies that a young boy was selling for twenty dollars apiece in front of the local grocery store. She remembered the question Gina asked her and Elizabeth, grinning from ear to ear. “You girls up for a challenge?”

  “She spoiled you rotten, didn’t she, little guy?”

  Frankie wagged his whole body.

  With her free hand, Katia opened the lid on her laptop and entered her password.

  “Settle down, mister.” Katia found herself actually smiling for the first time in two days. “Glad you’re feeling better.” She put her fingers on the keyboard and typed “Elizabeth Grace Dahl” into the search bar. There wasn’t much to go on. Elizabeth packed a yellow-and-black mini Cooper named “Bee,” a graduation gift from her mom, and drove off into the sunset. Katia wished she hadn’t been dedicated to honoring Elizabeth’s wish to be left alone.

  Frankie looked up at her. “I know. I should know. But Elizabeth swore your mom to secrecy.” She felt like the little wire-haired mutt understood. His tail tapped methodically against her leg. “She didn’t want me to know where she was. I was evidently a hindrance to her future.”

  Over the next thirty minutes, the search revealed few useful results. Elizabeth deactivated her Facebook page. She no longer retained a North Caro
lina phone number. Elizabeth Dahl appears thirty-one times in a public record site called Checkmate, but none with the middle name Grace. But there is an Elizabeth Grace Dahl who teaches biology at a college in Ireland.

  Katia had texts out to every friend in the area who might have a new number. Most responded within seconds to tell her they no longer kept in contact. One indicated she received a tweet shortly after Elizabeth moved that said only that she missed the smell of the ocean but not the noisiness of the residents. It was from Elizabeth’s old number. Katia felt helpless. The soft patting of Frankie’s tail against her leg only served to make the feeling of helplessness greater.

  The investigators would begin searching for Elizabeth as soon as a positive ID of Gina was made. Emotionally, that didn’t matter to Katia. She knew in her heart Elizabeth needed her right now. Right. Fucking. Now. She glanced at her phone and tapped the screen. Three fifteen. Still no text from Zahra. What was taking so long? Zahra had promised to give Katia an update as soon as they had positively identified Gina’s body and any of the others they had discovered. Katia pulled Frankie close with one hand and wrapped her fingers of her other hand around her coffee mug. “Might as well get a refill.”

  Chapter Eight

  Wednesday, November 21, 2018, 9:00 AM

  “The lucky five?” Zahra slid the door shut behind her.

  Dr. Webb acknowledged her presence with a nod. “I wouldn’t say lucky.” He paused. “And good morning. I hope you were able to get a bit of rest. It’s going to be a long day.”

  “More than you, evidently,” she said.

  Five of those retrieved from the dunes now lay in the main lab. In front of Dr. Webb, on a shiny silver table, were the remains presumed to be Gina Dahl. As Zahra approached Dr. Webb, his low-spoken words became clearer.

  “I know it’s you,” Dr. Webb said to the discolored female corpse. “I don’t know who all of these other folks are, but I know you.” He looked right and then left, making a sweeping motion with his arm around the room filled with more silver tables. Tags were attached on the recovered bodies, wherever tags could be attached.

  Zahra took in the work already accomplished. “Did you go home last night, Doc?”

  Dr. Webb didn’t answer until he finished removing the sharp edge of silver between nail and nail bed of the woman on the table. “I did, indeed.”

  Zahra reached for a petri dish and held it under the tweezers-like instrument in Dr. Webb’s right hand. Pinched between the two silver prongs was a tiny piece of evidence.

  The doctor held it up to the light and then placed it in the dish. “I woke up thinking about this.” Dr. Webb looked around the sterile room. “So many waiting to tell us their stories. These five obviously offer us the most hope for positive IDs, so we’ll focus here this morning.” He pointed to Gina Dahl. “This one is underway. External examination and sample collection started about an hour ago.”

  Zahra placed the lid on the dish and set it next to the computer. She would begin cataloging as soon as Dr. Webb brought her up to speed on the current decedent. She looked over to the corpse-laden table attached to the far wall and back at Dr. Webb. She’d be cataloging data until her fingers fell off, or until exhaustion took over the doc’s body and he called it a day. First more likely than the second.

  “The rest are next door.” Dr. Webb motioned toward a sliding door that led to a room much like the sterile one they stood in now. “They’re sending an additional forensic anthropologist from Richmond to help with the bones of the oldest. Should be here first thing tomorrow.”

  Zahra said, “I’ll get prelim pics so I can get her cleaned up for round two. Unless you would rather I start elsewhere.” She pulled two blue gloves out of the box labeled “Small.”

  “No. You’re right as rain, Zahra, dear. Get her gussied up for me. I’m going to step out momentarily.”

  Her mentor and friend moved toward the door. His steps weren’t as long, and his back wasn’t as straight as it was when she started working with him. She wondered if he would retire after this case. She knew she would if she could. “Take a deep breath for me, Doc.”

  The banter between her and Dr. Webb would seem harsh to outsiders, but considering the surroundings and the fact that there was a makeshift grave in the dunes of their hometown, it was the only way she knew to withstand the smell of death and rot that invaded their current workspace.

  “Looks like we have all female adults except one, a young male. Teen likely. Perhaps early twenties. All Caucasian.” Dr. Webb threw the words her way as he hung his lab coat on a hook next to the door and reached for his government-issued navy-blue jacket. “We’ll know more in the upcoming days, but that much is clear.”

  Three days ago, fourteen bodies in various stages of decomp were retrieved from a one-mile stretch of Buxton Beach. Dr. Webb and Zahra worked to collect evidence in a makeshift retrieval and containment center at the local high school until yesterday afternoon when the roads cleared enough for the remains to be transported to Greenville, NC. Here, autopsies would be performed by forensic pathologists and anthropologists.

  Zahra and the doctor volunteered to travel the two-and-a-half hours each day to aid the others in the continued collection of evidence until all remains were identified and catalogued.

  Ultimately, Zahra would like to be a medical examiner. She was enthralled with the human body and the tales it could tell about a person’s last hours, days, years. Since graduating from the academy as an officer specially trained in forensic crime scene investigations, she took pictures at most crime scenes Dr. Webb was called to assess, often traveling with him to other counties and states to do so. A few years shy of thirty, with several duty years behind her, Zahra was used to collecting evidence from scenes and bodies, taking fingerprints, gathering hair, blood, and statements. She was even getting pretty good at performing accident reconstructions that mimicked the worst scenes imaginable.

  This case was different. Nothing in her training prepared her for the last four days. There were so many bodies and so many bones. She looked around the room and the steel tables. She thought about Katia’s friend, buried face-up in the dune, her naked legs exposed by the wind of the disastrous tornado—some mother’s child, some daughter’s mother. Her mind filled with images of the child’s body, buried with an older woman. None of this made sense. It was so much to take in. Maybe too much.

  ****

  Katia felt helpless. After the volunteers were replaced with law enforcement on the beach, there was nothing for her to do but wait. She paced her living room. She looked out the picture window in the kitchen at the now calm ocean waves.

  Zahra was in Greenville today. They would officially identify Gina, and Elizabeth would be contacted. Her mind spun thoughts of Elizabeth happily painting, oblivious to the fact that her mom was dead.

  The ringing doorbell jolted Katia back to her current surroundings. She didn’t have the kind of friends who showed up unannounced. Her father often invited his customers to the workshop to look at building-related material, but the workshop had an outside door. Her father never gave a person permission to ring when he wasn’t at home.

  The person at the door wasn’t there for her father. It was Andrew. Katia hadn’t expected him. His tan jacket created an illusion of sand against the blue of the ocean in the background, and his long neck made her think of a turtle stretching toward the sea.

  She cracked the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “Elliot said you wouldn’t be back ’til Sunday. You okay?”

  “Yah. Just, you know. Weirded out a bit.”

  “Understandable.”

  Andrew fidgeted and shifted his weight left to right and right to left. At work, Andrew was confident but quiet, alert to his surroundings but apt to stay in one space until a call came in. As he stood in front of her, he looked like a young schoolboy unsure of his next move. There is no move, Andrew. Not even if you grew a pussy and boobs.
/>   “Can I come in?” Andrew looked over her shoulder into the hallway. “You alone?”

  The hair on the back of Katia’s neck stood up at his words, and a chill ran through her body. Gina is dead. You said you’ve been coming to Avon all of your life to vacation. Who are you really? Why are you here? She didn’t really think Andrew was a murderer, but she also didn’t think she would ever be witness to a sandy mile of beach turned into a graveyard. Someone killed them. “I’m not really up for company.”

  “Up for talking about what happened to you on the beach? I’m a good listener.” His voice was an octave above normal. She wondered if he was trying too hard or if the days were catching up with him. Either way, Katia wasn’t comfortable with him being this close. She pushed the door forward and moved her foot closer to hold it in place.

  Andrew put his tennis shoe in between the door and jamb. “Come on. Really?” His voice sounded irritated. “We work together, Katia. I am not the bogeyman.”

  Katia tilted her head and stared at Andrew, her forehead creasing. “It isn’t like that. I’m tired. My dad and brother will be home soon. I just want quiet to process.”

  “I watched them dig out the other bodies.”

  “And? Why are you telling me this?” Katia felt uncomfortable continuing the conversation and uncomfortable closing the door in his face.

  “Pretty fascinating to watch everyone play their roles, don’t you think?”

  Katia didn’t like the way his voice lowered and his face softened when he said the words. “My best friend’s mother was one of the victims. What the fuck, man? You should go.” She looked down at his foot, wondering what she was going to do if he tried to come in farther. Punch to the throat, Katia. Knee up. Fingers in the eyes. She remembered the self-defense classes she took with Elizabeth. Gina would stand on the sidelines, laughing when they couldn’t get it right, but making sure they tried until they did. “You have to punch harder than that, Elizabeth. Foot forward, Katia.” Laughter. Oh how she missed the laughter.