“Hello?” Nate called, stopping at the gangway leading up to the boat he assumed had to be the one. It was marked out with more crime scene tape, though a quick enough glance at the front from Laura left her shaking her head as to the presence of a body.
“Hello,” someone yelled back, and a face appeared over the top of the upper deck. It was wearing a Sheriff’s hat. “You the FBI?”
“Yes,” Nate called back up, taking his badge out and holding it up. “Special Agent Nathaniel Lavoie.”
“Special Agent Laura Frost,” Laura added beside him.
“Sheriff Joshua Landyn,” he called back, his head disappearing from view. “I’ll come right down.”
There was a pause. Nate exchanged a look with Laura. If they were going to have to tear this guy a new one for the level of his investigation, it would be better to do it without a public audience. Still, there wasn’t a lot of room around here thatwasn’tpublic.
The Sheriff appeared at the top of the gangway shortly and made his way down it. “We’re glad to have you here,” he said. “I was already putting in a request when the new body was found this morning. It’s good you were able to get here so fast.”
“We want to hit the ground running,” Nate said, reaching out to shake his hand. He was a little overweight, perhaps in his early fifties or late forties, his hair hidden entirely by his hat. When he tilted his chin up at Nate, however, he saw steely blue eyes. “I take it this is the crime scene?”
“That’s right.” The Sheriff reached out to shake Laura’s hand, and she did so. Nate noticed a look come over her face almost immediately—like she wanted to recoil from his touch. Or throw up. Possibly both. “You alright there, agent?”
“What? Yes,” Laura said, extracting her hand and offering a brief, tense smile. “I’m a little squeamish around the water.”
“Best get over that fast,” the Sheriff chuckled.
Laura’s smile drew even thinner and more tense.
“This area isn’t being protected,” Nate complained, figuring it was a good idea to get right to it. “Why have the public been allowed so far up the walkway?”
“This is a working dock,” the Sheriff grunted, hooking his fingers through the loops of his belt. “We had to make sure people could still get to their boats as far as possible.”
“This is the only way to get to the boats, right?” Nate asked, gesturing down the walkway in the direction they’d come from. Right toward the group of people gathered around the tape.
“That’s right,” the Sheriff said, with no shame whatsoever.
Nate ground his teeth.
“There could have been valuable evidence which will now have been trampled and lost,” Laura complained. “This whole area should have been closed off in the first instance of the discovery of the body. We also just walked right through the tape—where are your deputies?”
Sheriff Landyn gestured over his shoulder with a toss of his chin. “On board.”
“Send one of them to guard the tape right now,” Nate told him.
The Sheriff paused, looking right at him.
“Now,” Nate repeated again, making sure to enunciate very clearly.
The Sheriff nodded gruffly and turned to go up again. Laura touched Nate’s arm lightly and exchanged a look with him again. Shock. They were going to have their work cut out here if this was his standard of professionalism.
Nate took the lead up into the ship so Laura wouldn’t have to, following the Sheriff over to where a group of men—mostly in their twenties, by appearance—were standing around in deputy uniforms. One of them was elbowing another one, both of them leaning as far over as they could as if daring each other to lean further. Nate grit his teeth again. A lazy Sheriff and a bunch of boys. This was going to be fantastic.
He ignored them for now as the Sheriff handed out orders and went instead to the front of the ship to try to get a look at the figurehead. There wasn’t much to see up here, but this must have been where she was tied up. Nate was looking less at the scene—since the body had already been taken down anyway—and more at the logistics of it. Had the killer climbed down from up here? If so, he would need to know his way around a ship. It looked like a daunting task. To do it without safety gear, at risk of falling into the water, whilst also carrying a dead body—that would have been no easy feat.
Or had he been down there, in the water? Nate leaned over to look. There was enough room for a small craft to pull up beside the larger vessel. A small craft with a ladder in it, or something else to help him get up higher? Was that the answer?
“Alright,” the Sheriff said, trundling over to them. “That’s taken care of.”
If he was expecting praise for the job that he should have done in the first place, he was going to be waiting a long while.
“What can you tell us about the case?” Laura asked, in tones that suggested she wasn’t expecting much.
“There’s not a lot to go on,” the Sheriff said. “We sent a briefing to the FBI, didn’t you get it?”