Excerpt of A Killer in the Cordgrass by Brian Thiem

Wednesday

                                                               Chapter 1

Sean Tanner picked up the soggy tennis ball and shook off the sand. Annie, his yellow Lab sat in front of him, her entire body quivering in anticipation. Sean tossed the ball about a hundred feet into the surf. Annie sprinted across the fluffy sand and into the shallow water until it got too deep for her feet to touch. She then dog-paddled out into the Atlantic Ocean, crashed through the small breakers, and made it to the calmer water. Annie looked right and left then headed with laser-like focus toward the small yellow ball bobbing in the water.

The sun crept over the horizon, appearing as a thin red line above the water. It was two days after Labor Day and the Spartina Island beach was deserted this early, most of the summer tourists back at their jobs up north and their kids back in school. Annie grabbed the ball in her mouth, paddled in a small circle, and headed back to land. Her nose barely cleared the water, and her otter-like tail trailed like a rudder. She bobbed with the ocean’s swells until her feet touched the sand, then she splashed through the surf and onto the beach where Sean waited.

Annie dropped the ball at his feet and shook, spraying a gallon of water onto Sean. Although his Northern friends figured summer was over after Labor Day, summer weather lasted well into October in the South Carolina Lowcountry, so Sean didn’t mind Annie’s shower. They had arrived at the beach at first light, a half hour before sunrise, and Sean had walked nearly a mile with Annie walking, running, and swimming three times his distance.

The red line on the horizon broadened, until the sun popped above the horizon as if it were rising out of the ocean. Sean pulled his sunglasses from the pocket of his shorts and was sliding them on when his phone rang. He looked at the screen: Sergeant Charlotte Nash.

“Morning, Charlie,” Sean said.

“How are you feeling?”

Charlie had called him last week and suggested they get together. A date maybe. He wasn’t sure. They had met a month ago when one of Sean’s neighbors was murdered, and they worked together on that case and a forty-year-old cold case. He felt something for Charlie and sensed she felt something for him too. But after having been married to the same woman for thirty years, he wasn’t sure precisely what he felt and whether Charlie actually felt something for him or was just being a friend. So when Charlie had called and asked him out—if that was what she was really doing—he’d panicked. He told her he had caught the flu, instead of leveling with her that he was in a deep depression over the one-year anniversary of his wife’s death.

“Great, I’m back to normal,” he said, referring to his faked illness, not the sadness over losing his wife.

“I’m out on a homicide, a body dump on the beach, and was wondering if you’d like to take a look, make sure we’re not missing something.”

When Sean’s neighbor was murdered last month, Lieutenant Billy Green, Charlie’s boss, asked Sean to examine the crime scene, utilizing his decades of experience as a homicide detective to help the less experienced detectives of the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office. Although Charlie was royally pissed that a retired California detective was being allowed to enter her crime scene, they eventually became great work partners and even friends.

“I’m out on the beach with Annie and not dressed appropriately.”

“Come as you are. It’s just me and some deputies here. I’m texting you the address. That’s where our cars are parked, so you’ll need to walk from there down the public access walkway toward the beach.”

Sean copied the address and pasted it into Google Maps. It was a half mile down the beach. “My car’s a mile back the other way, but I can walk down the beach and be there in ten minutes.”

Chapter 2

Charlie stood alongside Deputy Don Hicks in the loose sand ten feet from the body. Hicks was one of the department’s crime scene technicians. He was a few years from retirement, but he loved his job and would do whatever was asked of him to avoid being sent back to patrol, where he’d have to write traffic tickets, handle family fights, and chase down bad guys. The wind blew his comb-over, making it look like he wore a flag on top of his head. “Not sure what else I can do here,” Hicks said.

The woman was lying in a slight depression in the coastal sand dune that separated the beach from the hotels and condos. Her body was surrounded by American beachgrass and sea oats, the native grasses that kept the sand from eroding. The sand was so soft that Charlie’s feet sank down several inches with each step. The beach access pathway that connected the beach to the public road was twenty feet away, and a dozen people—the citizens who found the body, firefighters, paramedics, and deputies—had already trampled the route from the path to where the body lay.

“After the coroner picks up the body, you can do a better search under and around her,” Charlie said. “Maybe get your metal detector and go over the entire area.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hicks said. “I got lots of photos but haven’t found anything that might look like evidence.”

A uniformed deputy was telling a few people who wanted to walk down the access path they’d have to find another way to the beach. Another deputy had stuck some poles in the sand and strung crime scene tape on the beach side of the pathway to keep curious people away.

The victim was a small woman with long black hair. Although law enforcement officers were not permitted to search the body of a deceased victim until the coroner’s deputies arrived, the paramedics had removed a phone from the back pocket of her shorts. In a sleeve attached to the back of the phone was an Illinois driver’s license that identified her as Courtney Evanson, thirty-five years old, five feet tall, and weighing one hundred pounds. Next to the license was another picture ID card, known as a CAM card, issued by the Sea Island Plantation Community Management Association.

Charlie’s phone buzzed and showed Detective Sherman Todd on the screen. “Hey, Sherm.” She had sent him and Detective Jay Garcia to canvass the two-story condo building just south of their scene.

“Hey, Sarge,” Sherm said. “I finally got a call back from Sea Island Plantation security. They have no record of Courtney Evanson in their vehicle registration system, and their resident directory shows no one with a last name of Evanson.”

“Of course not. Sea Island is an active adult community, so people have to be at least fifty-five to own a house there.”

“I thought there were exceptions, and some could be as young as fifty to buy there,” Sherm said. “Our friend Sean Tanner isn’t yet fifty-five is he?”

“Not quite,” she said. Sean was fifty-four, ten years older than she was.

“Security said if Courtney was just visiting, she would only have a guest card, but since she has a regular picture CAM card, they assume she’s a relative of a resident and staying there for longer than thirty days.”

“They must know what resident is sponsoring her,” Charlie said.

“Security said the community association office would have that information, but they don’t open until nine o’clock.”

Charlie looked at her watch—7:15. “Thanks, Sherm, I guess we’ll have to wait until then to get some background on her. Let me know if you find someone on your canvass that knows anything.”

Charlie’s attention was drawn to the deputy blocking the beach side of the path forty yards away. “Stop right there, sir,” the deputy said loudly.

Charlie saw Sean Tanner standing calmly on the other side of the crime scene tape. He was a big man, around six-four, with an athletic build. He wore a blue T-shirt, foam green shorts, and a khaki-colored baseball cap. Annie, the best trained dog she’d ever met outside of police canines, sat next to him. Charlie began walking toward them and said, “It’s okay, deputy, this is Sean Tanner, a member of the cold case team. I asked him to come.”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Tanner,” the deputy said. “I didn’t recognize you, but after everything you did on those homicides last month, we all know who you are.”

Sean smiled. “I’m retired now, so just call me Sean.”

“Thanks for coming,” Charlie said.

“Anytime.” Sean gave Annie commands of down and stay, and she dropped to the sand by the deputy, but kept her eyes on Sean.

Charlie led him up the pathway, out of earshot of the deputy. “How’s your mother doing?” Sean asked.

“She’s still wearing the soft cast but started physical therapy this week.” The weekend after they had arrested Beth Laughlin for three murders, Charlie invited Sean to join her and her brothers for a day trip to Charleston on her boat. She had figured a group excursion like that was casual enough that it wouldn’t appear like she was asking Sean on a date, something her mother’s Southern upbringing would cringe over. But on Friday, her mother fell off a stool while rearranging the top shelves of her pantry and broke her wrist. For the next two weeks, Charlie spent all of her off-duty hours taking care of her mother.

“I’ll bet she was grateful to have you around.”

“If you knew my mother well, you’d know saying thank you is not in her vocabulary. I’m sorry it ruined our outing.”

“I’m sorry I then got sick.”

“Thank God we have another murder to bring us together,” Charlie said.