“This is going to be a logistical nightmare,” Laurie muttered to herself as they pulled into the station parking lot. It applied more generally as well, but she was thinking of the broadening Harrington investigation. Until forensics reports came back, or definitive evidence from Glen Harrington’s death scene, they were still unable to arrest anyone for Grace’s death. The evacuation would mean that Sandra, Tilly, Mia, and more importantly, Frank and Maurice Randall would all leave the island. It was just possible a court injunction could be imposed to keep Frank under police custody, but with only a circumstantial link to a historic case and with Maurice’s pit bull of a lawyer taken into consideration, that seemed unlikely, especially in such a short space of time.
“Do you have anywhere you can go?” Remi called to her as they battled the wind on their way across the lot.
Laurie looked at him blankly. “Oh, you mean for the evacuation?” she yelled back at him. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay in the shelters if it comes to it.”
“You can count on me to stay too,” said Remi, struggling to hold open the door.
Remi had two children under the age of three, and one on the way, and there was no way she was going to let him stay on the island.
“No, you need to get out of here. Get that family of yours safe. There’ll be enough people staying,” said Laurie, who knew this was a conversation going on throughout the island. Hopefully lessons had been learned since Rita and Ike, when too many people had refused to leave. It was impossible to enforce a full evacuation, even with the threat of immediate loss of life, but surely the destruction and aftermath, particularly Ike’s, would still be fresh enough in people’s minds that they wouldn’t want to stay.
That said, she knew many people would be weighing up the inconvenience of evacuating against the probability of the storm hitting. Too many predicted hurricanes never made landfall. Add this to the stubborn streak of so many BOIs—a stubbornness that occasionally reaches stupidity level, Laurie thought, as she recalled a group of surfers recklessly attempting to catch some breakers hours before Ike had started to wreak havoc on the coast—and she knew many would stay, or at least wait until the last minute to leave.
“Someone in interview room one for you, Detective Campbell,” said the desk sergeant.
“Who?”
“Says he’s your boyfriend or something like that,” said the sergeant with a mischievous grin.
“Good one. Go on up, Remi, I’ll see you in a minute.”
Remi smiled. “Say hi to David for me.”
“Just get going,” said Laurie, giving the desk sergeant her best frown as she walked over to the interview room.
David stood as she entered and for a split second there was an awkwardness between them that she’d never experienced, before he reached over and kissed her. Despite herself, she sniffed his neck, pleased to smell only his familiar aftershave on his skin. “You didn’t say goodbye this morning,” he said, sitting back down.
“Didn’t want to interrupt the snoring,” said Laurie, smiling. Wishing she didn’t know about Rebecca Whitehead, she sat in the chair next to him. She wanted to be happy to see him, but all she could think about was that evening at the coffee shop, the smile on David’s face the same now as it had been when he’d brought the coffees over to the woman.
Whether or not he was having an affair felt irrelevant at that moment. Even if that meeting had been innocent, which the rational part of her brain told her it was, the fact David hadn’t mentioned it was systematic of something wrong in their marriage, as was her continued worrying about it.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Catching up on my sleep, I guess.”
“Anything up?”
David frowned, hesitating before speaking. “I just wanted to see what you want to do about this hurricane. I believe we’re supposed to leave?”
Part of her wanted to come out, here and now, and ask him about Rebecca, but another, more powerful part of her feared what he would have to say. Confirmation of his infidelity threatened to unravel her, and she wasn’t ready for that quite yet. “I think you should go and get Warren. Find somewhere upstate for a few days until it’s safe.”
“I’m not going to leave you here,” said David, placing his hand on hers.
Laurie pulled her hand away, a little more forcibly than she’d intended. “I have no option.”
“Jesus, Laurie,” he said, his hand falling onto the table. “What the hell is going on? What have I done?”
“I’m busy, that’s all.”
“It’s more than that, Laurie, and you know it.”
“Just get Warren safe.”
He gave a hollow laugh. “Warren. You’ve met him, right? There could be a full tsunami yards from his house and he’d still try and stand it down.”
“Sweet-talk him, David. You’re good at that.”
He stared at her for a long, dead moment, then said, very quietly, “What the hell does that mean?”
Laurie lowered her eyes and tried not to think about Milly. None of this would be happening if her body hadn’t betrayed her, and betrayed their little baby. By now, David would have already left the island with his little girl and she wouldn’t have been far behind.
“I need to go,” she said. “Just get Warren off the island. I’ll be fine here. I can stay in one of the shelters.”
“And my dad?”
It was the first time Laurie had heard David refer to Frank as his dad. “I’ll make sure he’s safe,” she said. “You could always check on him before you go.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, turning away from her.
She wanted to embrace him and take away all his pain. So many times, she’d wanted him to open up about his mom, and what Frank had done. Death had permeated David’s life, and it had always felt impossible to talk to him about it. Not that she was any different, she knew. She wasn’t the only one to lose Milly, and she knew she sometimes forgot that. She was guilty of clamming up as much as David was, and now they were at this impasse.
This time, it was David’s turn to shrug her off as she placed her hand on his shoulder. “Just go on, then,” he said, refusing to meet her gaze.
Laurie didn’t know if David wanted his father safe or not, but she told him she’d look in on him before she ducked down into a shelter, if it came to that, then opened the interview room door and left him behind her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Laurie was trembling by the time she reached the all but deserted bullpen; she wasn’t sure if it was out of rage or sadness.
She had to remind herself constantly that she wasn’t to blame for everything. The rational side of her knew it was illogical, and definitely counterproductive, to blame herself for Milly’s death, but it was a constant struggle. Especially when her darker side kept reminding her that it was her body that had failed Milly. And it was that same side of her making her feel guilty for the possibly unfixable state of her marriage. Trying to drown it out was taking all her strength, and at that moment there was just too much going on to put up a credible fight.