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“Point taken. Don’t worry, boss, we’ve got it.”

  “I know you do. Just don’t overwork yourself while I’m out, okay? Don’t be afraid to delegate, and that includes the individual squadron intel officers—I’ll call them in for a quick update in the next day or two.”

  “Are you going to tell them why you won’t be here?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t even tell you, did I?” She winked at her right-hand sailor and went back into her own office. She only had a minute to get out to the parking lot to meet Miles.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MILES HAD SEEN his share of gore during his wartime assignments, but never an autopsy. He wasn’t sure how he was going to feel about seeing Petty Officer Perez’s, but it didn’t matter—he’d procured himself and Ro a front-row seat in the mortuary. Smoothing the waters with Detective Ramsey, he’d scored points for him and Ro. While he didn’t think the autopsy would reveal anything major, one never knew. And it would help the commodore rest easy to know that he and Ro had witnessed the procedure. Miles was privately grateful that they’d be there, if only to accompany Perez’s body through this hurdle. It was customary for the military to remain with the deceased until burial.

  He cast a glance at Ro. She was quiet and beautiful in the afternoon light, black eye notwithstanding.

  She looked out her window in the passenger seat of his truck as he drove them down to Coupeville.

  The coroner’s office was located in the heart of the little town that was situated south of Oak Harbor and twenty minutes from the naval air station. The beauty of Puget Sound’s deep blue waters and majestic Cascade Mountains was so contrary to what went on in the nondescript office building.

  “Have you had any new insights since last night?” All he’d thought about was why he’d let her go home when all he’d wanted was to spend the night making love to her.

  Ro didn’t answer at first but kept her eyes straight ahead. “Nothing other than conjecture on my part.”

  “Such as?”

  Did he have to pull everything out of her?

  “I don’t know if I should be saying anything without facts to back me up.”

  He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  “Ro, this isn’t an operational intelligence brief. This is what we’re supposed to be doing—digging around and inspecting it from all angles. We’re just brainstorming here. I’m not going to hold you to a sworn oath.”

  “And here lies the difference between you and me, Warrant. I don’t just shoot my mouth off to get what I want. I wait until I have all the facts.”

  “You’re right, Commander. You sit around to the point where you miss out on a target of opportunity simply because you don’t want to say anything that can come back to haunt you.” He shook his head. “Typical intel—you’re so afraid to say ‘boo’ that the ghost escapes out the freakin’ front door every time.”

  “Not every time, Warrant.” Her voice was quiet, her hands clasped in her lap.

  “You’re right. Every now and then one of you—” again he referred to navy intel types “—makes a great prediction, a great early warning about potential enemy offense. But more often than not, it’s what I already said. You’ve got to let go of that training, Ro, or we won’t get our job done right.”

  “So it’s all on me as to whether we do this unofficial official investigation correctly?” She took her turn to shake her head in mockery of him. “So typical of an operator, and especially an EOD type. You’re willing to take all the credit and glory for a job well done, but at the first hint of a screwup you blame intel. Nice.”

  “I’m not blaming you for anything. You have to admit that if you can’t share your thoughts with me, no matter how impossible they seem, we stand less of a chance of knowing how Perez died.”

  She snorted.

  “So I’m supposed to tell you what I’m thinking and you hold all the cards? What about you, Miles? What do you think is most likely responsible for Perez’s death?”

  “I’m thinking this seems like an awful lot of rigmarole for a straightforward suicide. Usually the coroner calls the cause of death if it’s obvious and an autopsy isn’t necessarily required. But there’s definitely going to be a full autopsy, and when I drove by the beach this morning there was a full team of Island County sheriff’s staff still sweeping the scene.”

  “You were already there this morning? Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I was taking my friend’s dog for a run, and I needed a long one today. West Beach was as easy as any other route, and I figured I might get some information. I would’ve called if I’d known you wanted to get up and run that early, honest. I thought you needed some rest after getting yourself clocked last night.”

  He would’ve loved to be the one who woke her up while she lay next to him in his bed....

  “I was up early.” She let out a low chuckle. “I did sleep like the dead, though. Solid until the sunlight started peeking through my blinds. I didn’t even remember I had a black eye or stitches until I’d been awake for a few minutes.”

  “You don’t have blackout curtains for this time of year?”

  “No—I know I should get some, at least in my bedroom. But I do like getting up early and watching the sunrise. They’re always so beautiful here, at least when the fog’s not in.”

  “Yes, they are. I have to admit I haven’t lived in a more beautiful place, and I’ve seen a lot of places in this country and the world.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  The Island County government offices came into view. Their small talk was over.

  * * *

  RO WANTED TO hold Miles’s hand during the autopsy, it was that bad. She’d worked through the most intense wartime scenarios while on board the aircraft carrier, had been inside the most secure communications buildings in the world, working out ways to keep U.S. and Allied soldiers, airmen and sailors alive.

  She’d never felt the need to grab anyone’s hand or receive physical assurance that she was going to get through it. She’d pressed on and done her duty and, when all else failed, prayed.

  But Miles had opened something up in her gut. In her heart. They’d been on this case together for less than forty-eight hours, but he’d been in her mind’s peripheral vision for the past year. As if he was waiting for her to crack.

  Anita Perez’s punch to her face hadn’t cracked her. Krissy showing up, pregnant, on her doorstep hadn’t put her over the edge. Even having to deal with Dick first thing this morning seemed trivial to this.

  Seeing a body that was alive only a day ago, splayed open like a gutted fish—that did it.

  She breathed through her mouth, refusing to allow her nostrils to take in a whiff of the air. She thought they’d have to smear stuff under their noses like she’d seen in the movies but nothing had been offered.

  Nausea wasn’t imminent, but passing out was.

  She kept her knees loose, rocked back and forth on her feet. She and Miles were only observers, period. Neither of them had any kind of medical expertise to chime in with, anyhow. She knew Miles had no doubt seen worse—his friends being blown to bits by enemy IEDs was a horrifying reality for him. In truth, she had no idea what he’d seen, how much he’d suffered.

  She was out of her league when it came to near-death experiences.

  You aren’t impenetrable.

  It was so difficult for her to admit she was wrong, or that she’d made a bad decision, and she wasn’t proud of it. Equally difficult was facing the fact that she didn’t know it all—even as a scrupulous intel officer. Things got overlooked. Miles was right; she and her intel cohorts didn’t have the last word on everything.

  She didn’t have the same type of wartime experience as Miles.

  Not too long ago that would have bothered her.
Today, it felt more like a relief to be able to admit, if only to herself, that this autopsy—maybe even this case—was beyond her capabilities. Certainly it was beyond her training.

  “Hang tight.”

  It was a soft whisper spoken under the din of the coroner’s nearly constant dictation into the digital voice capturing system. She turned her head and met his gaze.

  If it was possible to convey strength, compassion and pure grit through a glance, Miles did it. She gave him a slight nod and turned her head back toward the surgical table.

  You don’t have to look at the body. Just listen to the coroner.

  It took several minutes, but by the time the coroner started describing the inside of Perez’s thorax, she was able to home in on his voice and listen for anything that sounded out of the ordinary. She might not have a medical background, but she was a pretty good judge of others’ emotions. Growing up with her emotionally abusive mother and the constant chaos that had been her home had trained her early to pay attention to the slightest change in cadence or tone of a speaker’s voice.

  “The neck bones are fractured, combined with a blunt trauma wound to the base of the skull, consistent with death due to immediate respiratory cessation.”

  Ro heard that. So the fall had killed Perez—not some mysterious killer. Most of the coroner’s description droned on like the buzz of a worker bee. Blah, blah, blah.

  He’d gone up in pitch at the end of his last word, and now paused as he looked at an area behind Perez’s right upper arm.

  “There are two visible marks that indicate mosquito or similar insect bites. Definitely not injection sites.” The coroner held the arm up and studied it more closely. Then he let the arm drop and went back to the heart that he’d left on a metal tray.

  “The heart muscle appears normal and healthy. Cardiac disease is not an apparent cause of death. This is consistent with death by broken neck/spinal cord and subsequent respiratory cessation. Must be cross-checked and validated with blood and urine samples but appears victim died from the effects of a fall from twenty feet or more.”

  Great. So they had nothing more than what they’d walked in here with. Ro studied Miles. His expression was fixed on Perez’s face, pale and otherworldly under the fluorescent lights.

  In the midst of her own anxiety she’d forgotten that this could trigger Miles if he suffered from any kind of PTSD. She honestly didn’t know anyone who’d survived a war tour who didn’t have PTSD in one form or another. She’d had nightmares to deal with for her first few months back. They’d faded, as had her initial overreactions to orders from the commodore for more detailed intelligence. This was a shore tour, and she wasn’t providing direct, actionable intelligence to operators in the fleet.

  Miles had been there for a much more prolonged time. It was feasible that he was still living with the aftereffects.

  He didn’t appear anxious or upset. With his relaxed profile and intent gaze on Perez, he looked like a man paying his last respects to a shipmate.

  * * *

  “COME ON UP to my office, folks.” Detective Ramsey motioned at Ro and Miles after the autopsy concluded.

  They followed him up a short flight of stairs and into a modernized, spacious work area. He led them to his small but classic office and pointed to the break counter just outside his door.

  “Help yourselves to coffee or tea. I think there might even be some of that good hot chocolate from the shop down the street.”

  “Thanks, Detective.” Miles went straight for the coffee machine.

  There was no use talking to each other as everything they said would be overheard by Ramsey. Besides, words failed Ro at the moment.

  Ro used the time it took to brew her tea to mentally review what they’d found out.

  While it was clear that the fall had indeed killed Petty Officer Perez, it wasn’t common for someone who wanted to commit suicide to do so by jumping, unless it was from a high bridge that would guarantee no chance of survival. Because of this fact, the sheriff had dispatched his homicide detectives, and upon inspection of the area from which Petty Officer Perez had supposedly jumped, several sets of footprints had been found.

  Most of the prints were too eroded by the rain and wind from the storm that passed through the morning after he’d died, but Detective Ramsey said they hadn’t given up hope yet.

  “I don’t know how much you two know about suicide, but it’s highly unlikely that Perez killed himself.” Ramsey sipped from his mug of coffee as they sat in his office.

  Miles drank his own coffee while Ro had ginger tea. She’d been grateful to find the bag in the box next to the hot water tank. Ginger was her go-to herb for nausea, ever since she’d experienced a bout of sea sickness on the ship.

  “The coroner said the fall is what killed Perez. There were no indications of any other foul play,” Ro pointed out.

  Ramsey looked at her as though she was twelve years old.

  “The coroner can determine the cause of death—yes, the fall was the cause of death. To be specific, the impact of Perez’s head on the beach boulder is what killed him. But how he came to fall off a private cliff in the middle of the night is the question I want answered.”

  Ramsey put his mug down. Ro noticed that he didn’t have any piles of paperwork on his desk—just a huge computer screen and an iPad. She’d be willing to bet he had endless notes stored on both.

  “We’re going to have to wait for the toxicology report, but I won’t be surprised if there was some sort of substance in his blood. It doesn’t make sense that a man who was asking about career possibilities turned around and committed suicide within twenty-four hours. He hadn’t shown any indication of PTSD in his medical evaluations, either.”

  “Most sailors don’t volunteer that they’re suffering from PTSD until their symptoms get unbearable, Detective.” Miles set his mug on the edge of Ramsey’s desk. “It is feasible that he was struggling with it but didn’t tell anyone.”

  “True.” Ramsey nodded. “It’s been a tough time for all of us. A good number of the men and women on our detail are reservists—they’ve all seen combat action in one form or another. Combine that with the stress this kind of job can bring and PTSD has become all too common right here in Island County.”

  Ro and Miles were quiet.

  Ramsey leaned back in his chair.

  “I’m going to need help from both of you when we get more definitive information from the forensic scrub at the top of the cliff. Neither of you are leaving the area anytime soon, are you?”

  “No.” They responded in unison, and then looked at each other.

  “I suppose you’re both stuck here until this is all resolved, huh?” Ramsey’s expression was unreadable but Ro had a definite sense that he thought they were more than a professional couple. At the least, he was poking around to see if they were.

  Why should he care?

  “Good. I’ll be in touch. And as I told you on the beach, what we say to each other stays here, among the three of us. I know you’re reporting to your commodore, and I know you work for Uncle Sam. But we’re all working to get Petty Officer Perez any justice he may deserve.”

  “Got it.” Miles answered for both of them. He stood up. Ro finished her last swallow of tea before she put down her mug and also stood.

  “Please call us if you get any new information, Detective.” Ro felt like herself again. All she needed was a good lunch and she’d be back in fighting form.

  “One more thing, folks.” Ramsey got to his feet. “Have either of you heard anything to the effect that Perez was a problem drinker? More specifically, that he was out drinking the night he died?”

  Here it was. The payback for getting them into the autopsy.

  Ro smiled at Miles.

  He ignored her.

  “Yes, we heard f
rom Anita Perez that he’d had a problem with alcohol years ago, but had been sober for a very long time. She didn’t believe he committed suicide, and made it clear that if anyone said it was an alcohol-related death she’d take it as a fabrication.”

  Ro felt a twinge of betrayal toward Anita Perez but Ramsey had asked the question, and they were all out for the truth.

  Ramsey looked at Miles, then Ro.

  “That’s interesting, because I have a witness who saw Perez leaving the base club and he appeared to be intoxicated.”

  Ro shook her head. “I know you can’t tell us who your witness is, but I’d consider the source, Detective. Anita Perez had no love left for her soon-to-be ex-husband, but she was adamant about his sobriety.”

  Ramsey nodded thoughtfully.

  “Could you ask around at the local AA meetings?” Ro felt her idea was a stroke of genius.

  Ramsey shot her down faster than the thought had entered her brain.

  “No, it’s not something that’s done. Yes, I could poke around a bit, but I’d be asking a group of people who value anonymity at all costs to talk about one of their own. But thanks for the suggestion, Commander Brandywine.”

  “Sure.” She felt like a girl who’d thought dressing her cat up in baby doll clothes was a good idea.

  “We’ll be in touch if we hear any more, Detective. Thanks again for getting us into the autopsy.” Miles brought the meeting to a neat conclusion.

  Ro’s mind was numb as she and Miles left the building. The autopsy had taken only a few hours but their brief conversation with the coroner afterward, followed by the meeting with Detective Ramsey, had given them both a lot to think about.

  They could work for weeks, months, on this and never have an answer. Meanwhile, Perez was dead and his children had lost their father.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AS THEY EXITED the Island County government offices, Ro and Miles were hit by the strong rainstorm that had whipped up from the north.

  Ro shivered.

  “Ready?” Miles stood under the awning with her. They were both poised to make a dash for his truck.