Damaged (Maggie O'Dell #8)

Scott noticed empty hands and no splatters. He restrained a sigh of relief. Instead he glanced into the embalming room. Clean. So what was he smelling?

“I probably won’t see you until after the storm,” Joe told him, slinging a backpack over his shoulder.

“Making a run for it?”

Joe laughed. “You might say that. I have one more pickup and then I want to get my boat out of harm’s way.”

“You have a boat?”

“I told you that.”

But Scott knew he hadn’t. He would have remembered.

“Makes it a lot easier,” Joe explained, “to get around afterward when the roads and bridges are out. But I need to move and dock it at least a hundred miles west of here.”

“Biloxi? New Orleans?”

“In that vicinity.”

“I just heard it’s moving in a lot faster than they predicted.”

“Gotta go, then. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

Scott watched him leave and found himself wishing Joe had invited him along. Then he started hunting for the source of the smell. At one point he even sniffed himself, pulling his shirt open and taking an inside whiff. He checked the walk-in refrigerator but the scent didn’t grow stronger. Maybe once he got to work he would be able to ignore it.

He rolled out a stainless-steel table with the cardboard box containing Uncle Mel. He still needed to embalm the guy. Just as well do it before the storm. He’d sold the family an expensive casket even though they didn’t want it open for the memorial. Actually the expensive sell was always easier with families that didn’t want a traditional viewing. It was their way of compensating for their guilt of not wanting to take one last look.

Scott arranged everything he needed in the embalming room. He gowned up and opened the cardboard box, ready to begin.

“That son of a bitch.”

Uncle Mel’s knees were cut away and both of his hands were missing.





CHAPTER 48





From the bedroom balcony Maggie could see that things had changed drastically overnight. The waves churned higher, crashing farther up the shore. The sky had turned into a thick gray ceiling, several layers of clouds, low and moving, each layer at its own speed. Not even noon and the heat was stifling, the humidity oppressive. She had just dried her hair and it was already damp. Her shirt stuck to her skin.

She found Platt and Wurth in the suite’s living room, eating doughnuts. One of them had made coffee and the scent filled the room. Before she had a chance to sit, Platt was up getting her a Diet Pepsi from the minibar while Wurth unwrapped a chocolate doughnut to set in front of her. She held back a smile as well as any comments about the men waiting on her.

“Outer bands may start hitting the area as soon as one this afternoon,” Wurth updated her. “Landfall is definitely gonna be tonight. Probably after dark.”

“Isn’t that sooner than predicted?” Maggie asked.

“Yep. Storm’s picked up a little speed. No more islands to slow it down.”

Platt had stayed drinking his coffee near the desk and now something distracted him. Maggie saw him pick up the plastic bag she’d left on top of her file folders. He was fingering the scrap of metal inside.

“That’s what the coroner plucked out of the severed foot,” she told him, looking at the doughnut in front of her.

She loved chocolate doughnuts but she hadn’t eaten one since that day at Quantico, less than a year ago, when a box of doughnuts had been delivered with a terrorist’s note at the bottom. Charlie Wurth couldn’t possibly have known when he brought over breakfast that his gesture would threaten to crack the seal on one of her leaky compartments. She broke the doughnut in half and took a bite.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Platt said, pointing at the hotel phone.

“There’s a message for you.”

She looked at Wurth.

“Not me. I have your cell phone. Though I understand you probably weren’t answering that last night, either.”

She wanted to laugh at his insinuation but he wasn’t joking. No raised eyebrow. No typical grin. Was it possible Charlie Wurth was jealous? She shook the thought out of her mind, took another bite of the doughnut, pleased that it actually tasted good to her. Then she went to check the message.

“It’s Liz Bailey,” she told the men. “I’m going to call her back on my cell.” She left them to retrieve the phone in the bedroom. She hadn’t heard a ring last night. She really must have slept hard.

Before she could dial, her cell phone rang.

“This is Maggie O’Dell.”

Hesitation, then a woman’s voice. “FBI agent O’Dell?”

“Yes.”

“I was given your number by the Escambia County sheriff.” A pause. “About my husband. I’m sorry I didn’t even tell you my name. I’m Irene Coffland.”

The torso’s wife, Maggie thought before she could stop herself. But after a while it was hard to not think in those terms.

“Mrs. Coffland, thank you for calling me.”