Dead Low Tide by Eddie Jones

McDonald felt obligated to entertain those questions, even if he did view me as a nuisance.
    “Can you check to see if someone else called 911 before Mom did?” I asked. “Is that possible?”
    Ignoring the question, he kept reading. “Says here in the murder of Bill Bell, you bungled the investigation. Messed things up so badly that the trial judge threatened to postpone the case until a hearing could be held concerning the circumstances surrounding the suspect’s arrest.”
    “The man shot two people. I got a taped confession. How’s that not grounds for a murder charge?”
    “Innocent until proven guilty. Just because
you
say he shot two men and
you
secured a taped confession doesn’t make it so. This wouldn’t be the first time an innocent man was wrongly accused. Not that it matters much now.”
    “Well, it sure does matter.”
    His face bunched into a scowl of concern. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on the desk. “Thought you knew. From the way you acted last night at the creek, I thought you knew everything.”
    “Knew what?”
    “The judge set bail at half a million dollars and released the deputy, Patrick Gabrovski, pending a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding his arrest. A few weeks later, Gabrovski was involved in a fatal traffic accident.”
    “He’s dead?”
    “Went off the road at a high rate of speed and slammed into a bridge abutment. Truck caught fire. They identified him from dental records.”
    Suddenly a coldness gripped my heart. Gabrovski’s case was the first I’d cracked using our Crime Watchers formula, and the editor at
Cool Ghoul
had hired me primarily for my detective work in Deadwood Canyon. Calvin had made it clear that when Gabrovski’s case went to court I would be featured on the home page of the website and maybe even sent back to report on the trial. Now Gabrovski was dead. In a strange way, I felt responsible. If I hadn’t been so eager to secretly coax a confession out of him, I never would have messed with the case and he might be sitting in jail still awaiting trial.
    Trying not to sound too disappointed, I said, “What does any of this have to do with you finding my sister?”
    “Just this. We’re doing all we can to find your sister, same as we would for anybody else. And what we don’t need right now is you playing detective and making a mess of things … like you did in Deadwood Canyon. That’s why I asked your parents to keep you away from the creek, the reporters, or anyone else involved with your sister’s search.”
    Officer McDonald picked up the phone. He punched a button and asked to have the emergency call log brought to him.
    He hung up and said to me, “Anything else I can do for you?”
    I wasn’t sure if I should push the issue. The conversation definitely had not gone as I’d hoped. “Your cousin, does he still work at WSAV?”
    McDonald’s eyebrows arched. “Come again?”
    “I know your cousin is or did work as the radio host at the station. I also know about what happened with the Hank Cash interview.”
    The corners of McDonald’s eyes twitched. I’d seen the same irritated look from the marshal in Deadwood Canyon and the officer in Transylvania, North Carolina.
    “What’s your point?” McDonald asked.
    “I’ve been thinking that if your cousin really wanted to improve the ratings for his show, planting a make-believe dead body on Palmetto Island the week before Savannah’s big zombie festival would create a lot of buzz.”
    His neck muscles swelled. “Careful, son. You’re real close to getting tossed out of this office.”
    “And wouldn’t it be convenient if someone posing as a zombie snatched a body the night before the event was to start? Something like that would make news, I’m sure. You know, get people talking about the event who had never heard about a zombie festival? You were in the military, right? As a Marine Diving Medical Technician? Did you have anything to do with my