Free Point No Point by Mary Logue Page A

looked out of place. When they got to the dock, they took a few steps down it, peering into the water on either side.
    “I’m guessing he worked with his hands, our bloated floater,” Bill said. “He was a big guy. Construction. Maybe a farmer, but I doubt it. Otherwise he’d be known around here.”
    “The medical examiner did say his hands were well callused. So good guess.”
    “Hey, not a guess. I can play Sherlock Holmes too, noticing the odd detail, figuring out the occupation of said dead body. Just put a big hat on me and stuff a pipe in my mouth and I’ll tell you what’s what.”
    “I’d rather not.” Amy laughed. “I can see construction being a possibility. He did something that caused him to get cut up from time to time. The ME showed me a couple deep cuts on his hands that had healed over. So whatever he did, he’d been at it for a while.”
    “Weird that he was naked.” Bill scuffed his shoe on the wooden slats of the dock.
    “Maybe he was naked when he was killed.”
    “What, like he got caught in the act?”
    “Can’t rule anything out yet. But I guess I figure that whoever dumped him just didn’t want us to be able to figure anything out from his clothes.”
    “At least they didn’t cut his fingers off.”
    “Well, that’s for sure.” Amy walked to the end of the dock. Stretching out into the water about forty feet, it was a removable dock that was taken out of the water in late fall and stored someplace. Boats were not permanently moored there, but visitors to the town often tied up to the dock for the day. Fishermen would tie up and wander up to Ole’s for a brew. She checked the wooden planks carefully although she didn’t expect to find anything. The wind and people’s feet would have knocked any evidence into the water.
    When they reached the end of the dock, Bill grabbed her and acted as if he was going to push her in.
    “Don’t you dare.” She squirmed in his strong hands.
    “I’m your superior officer. If I say jump, you have to jump.” He held her close to the side of the dock.
    “Only if there’s a good reason.”
    “I’d come up with one mighty quick.” He leaned down and kissed the back of her neck, then let her go.
    She had asked Bill to not be intimate with her during work hours so she forced herself to ignore his kiss. “Did you bring the binoculars?”
    “In the car. Along with my polarized sunglasses,” he said. “As my sub-ordinate, I think you better run and get them.”
    “Okay, but don’t find anything without me.”
    “I’ll wait.” He sat down at the end of the dock and took his shoes off.
    When Amy came back with the binoculars and glasses, Bill was dangling his very white feet in the water. She stood above him, scanning the shallow bay that formed in the curve of Maiden Rock. While the binoculars cut the glare on the water, they could do nothing about the green algae that was crowding into the area.
    She wished she could tell how the water circulated in the harbor. “What if we got a small buoy, put it in the water about twenty or thirty feet out and watched which way it floated? That might give us some idea of the current here and we could extrapolate backwards and find the weight he was tied to.”
    Bill laughed. “Great idea, but I doubt it would work. Too many factors. I’d say we look around the shore a little more, then head back to Durand. I think our little field trip is going to be a bust, Amster.”
    “Do you think there’s any chance that the sheriff could be persuaded to dredge the bottom of the bay?”
    “No and no,” Bill said as they stepped off the dock. “First, he wouldn’t. Secondly, so what if we found the cement block or whatever, what does it prove? We still got nothing.”
    Amy pulled away from him. He was right and she knew it. One of her fantasies about being a deputy was that she would find just the right thing at the right moment to put the whole case together. She kicked at the sand and still all she