Chapter 23
Jerry Baugh
The liquor store had been picked to the bones by the time the rain started. Hurricane Ida had sent every man, woman, and child
to the shelter of their homes. Everyone, it seemed, besides Jerry Baugh and the pimply liquor store attendant.
Jerry scooped up a case of Bud Light, the only thing left on the shelf of refrigerated beverages. He thumbed through his slender
wallet as the attendant, who Jerry could scarcely believe was old enough to be in this place, let alone run it, checked him out.
“Your total is seventeen dollars and seventeen cents, sir.”
Jerry dropped a sweaty twenty on the counter. “Keep the change,” he said, then, before he could feel too generous, added,
“And stay in school.”
He shouldered through the door. The wind hit him like a slap in the face as he hobbled down the empty street. The marina was
a six-minute walk at most, but it took him ten just to reach the street corner opposite the sea. Palm trees bowed to the authority
of the wind, and Jerry Baugh proved no exception as he found himself stumbling into a boarded-up window. He adjusted the case
of beer. Last thing he needed was a massive gust to knock him over and shatter his chance at an inebriated storm watch.
The crosswalk sign told him to wait as a single truck, its bed overflowing with plywood and Coca-Cola, slid through the intersection. Jerry grunted and glanced at the window he’d run into.
Hallandale Coast Guard Station.
The lettering on the glass was visible between slats of wood. Jerry peered past the letters to where he could make out an
office light deep in the belly of the building.
What kinda cop was still at work filing paperwork in a hurricane?
He knew the answer before he even saw the fist-thick braid of hair and ramrod shoulders. Brenna Madden sat at her desk, typing
away.
Jerry squinted at the rain, which had started to come in sideways, then banged a hand on the door. He waited until Madden
stood in the doorway, confused and displeased.
“Brenna,” he touched his knuckle to his Bass Pro Shops cap.
“God’s sake, Baugh.” She grabbed a fistful of his flannel and pulled him inside, closing the door against the wind. “Unless
one of your jackass fisher friends got themselves tussled up by this storm and needs the coast guard, I suggest you go on
home.”
Jerry skated over the fact that he didn’t have fishing friends, jackasses or otherwise. In his mind, the whole point of fishing
was to put friends and humanity in his lobster boat’s rearview. All Jerry really remembered about being around other people
was how loud it was.
His brother trampling through their trailer home with a BB gun.
His mother wailing as they put Steve’s remains in the dirt.
His wife screaming when she told him she was done.
People were noisy and ugly. There was no such thing as graceful grief or a happy marriage. Happy was a thing that only happened
to Jerry alone at sea.
“Why, um, aren’t you home?” he asked the detective.
“Why aren’t you?”
Jerry showed her his Bud Light. “Essentials. I just, uh, I just figured that you wouldn’t like being stuck in a cubicle until
Ida blows over.”
Madden flinched. She crossed her arms to cover it, but Jerry had already seen. He frowned, feeling the rain dagger through
his Panthers sweat shirt. Ida.
“I have a lotta work to do,” she said eventually.
“Work on the case? Any new updates?”
“No updates. This hurricane’s gonna hide any evidence we mighta found, if we’d had more time anyway.”
Of course it would. Jerry was beginning to think that they might never get answers. But sometimes people drowned, and he supposed
sometimes they just disappeared too, and there was nothing anyone could do to find out why. Even the man’s body they found
might not be connected to this case.
“Well, uh, I s’pose I’ll be getting back to the dock.” Jerry shifted his feet and wondered why Madden hadn’t shooed him out
the door yet. Could she possibly be glad he knocked? She had a funny way of showing it. Or maybe in the midst of a violent
tempest named after Madden’s dead partner, she was just happy to see another human face. And that’s why she couldn’t go home.
“Hey, so, I’m just gonna be drinking on my boat, waiting this thing out. One of my deckhand’s there too. Ricardo left, but
Lainey’s family is out of state so she needed a place. And if you, well . . .” Jerry waved the beer case again. “You know,
if beer’s your thing and you wanted to stop by—”
“Can’t stand the taste of that stuff,” Madden cut him off.
“Oh.”
“But . . . I’ve got an old bottle of gin in my desk.”
Jerry grunted away the smile that threatened to turn his lips. “I’ll see you on Eileen in a few, then.”
Madden gave a curt nod, her hand already turning the doorknob. She paused. “Feels weird to just put my feet up and wait out
the storm in an inactive crime scene.”
“Feels even weirder livin’ in one.”
Madden clicked her tongue. “Well . . . can’t argue with that. I’ll get my coat.”
While rain drummed against The Old Eileen’s portholes, Jerry claimed the corner couch in the salon, leaving Lainey and Madden to sit across from him. The cat paced
the length of the room, whether disgruntled by the storm or the ship, Jerry couldn’t say.
“Lainey, I, uh, hope you like beer, since Madden here seems to be more of a gin gal.”
Madden tipped her entire bottle back, not bothering to retrieve one of the crystal glasses from the galley cabinets.
“Rum, sorry,” Lainey said with a smile.
It registered with Jerry that Lainey was even younger than the guy in the liquor store. She shouldn’t drink anyway. Not that
Jerry was one to judge. He and Steve were sneaking beers before either one of them graduated high school.
Jerry popped the top on his first can and settled back. He flicked through a couple channels before deciding on the weather
one. There was a strange satisfaction watching the hurricane unfold both on his television screen and outside the portholes.
Jerry’s gaze slid occasionally to the bilge panels, just to make sure they were all still in place.
A clap of thunder made him splash beer down the front of his sweat shirt. “Dammit.” He’d meant the words to be gruff, but
his voice broke.
The two women looked at him.
“It’s okay, Jerry,” Lainey said, not unkindly. “It’s just lightning breaking the sound barrier.”
“Who taught you that, kid?” Madden asked.
“My dad. He always had answers like that. He didn’t say things to comfort me, though, just to point out how I misplaced my
fear.”
Madden unscrewed her bottle. “He dead or something?”
“To me.”
Madden snorted. “My pa always said it was God’s angels bowling. ‘The bigger the boom, the better the score.’”
Another clap quieted them all momentarily. Madden lifted the bottle heavenward. “Strike.”
Jerry set his beer on the table, then thought better of it as it careened sideways with the ship. He cocooned it between his
hands and leaned forward. “I ain’t scared,” he insisted, though no one had said otherwise.
Storms reminded him, was all. A stormy sky had been the last one Steve had seen. Jerry wondered, if his brother had survived
that night, whether booms of thunder would have sent him out of his skin for the rest of his life.
He drank deep, settling back again into the seat where the missing family used to sit.
Did the Camerons take their breakfast here? Did they watch TV and fight over the remote? Did they talk about the future like
it was something inevitable? Something already belonging to them?
And, just like Steve, was a storm at sea the last thing they saw?