Free Hatteras Blue by David Poyer

He nodded.
    They left Mercy Baum facing the window, immobile in the sunlight, watching the wind ruffle the beach grass at the top of a dune. Tiller looked back once at her, along a corridor polished like the morning Albemarle, and thought: If you were eight years old, barefoot, you could scramble to the top in a minute. And see for a long, long way.
    Outside Keyes opened the car doors and flicked on the air-conditioning. He looked across the shimmering roof at Tiller. 'You get anything useful out of all that ancient history?"
    "Maybe a little."
    "What? I got zip. She knows, all right. But she's still sharp enough to clam up on this one subject. If I could get five minutes with her without those nurses around—"
    'You'd what?"
    Keyes glanced at him. "Nothing."
    Galloway looked at him for a long time. At last Keyes grinned faintly and got into the BMW. But Tiller didn't; only bent down, a little, to look in at him. "You'd what?" he said again.
    "I'd ask her again—very politely."
    "That's right," said Galloway. 'You try any rough stuff with these people, you'll have me to deal with. Understood?"
    "Sure."
    Galloway got in. Keyes started the car and a moment later they were rolling down out of the dunes, back toward the highway. After a time Tiller said, "We got more than you seem to think."
    "What's that?" said Keyes.
    "She let those names drop. The men with her husband on the beach patrol that night. Tolson, Hooper, O'Neal, and Aydlett."
    "Hell, that was a long time ago. They're probably all dead."
    'Yeah. They are. Except for the last one. Aydlett."
    'You know him?"
    "Sure do," said Tiller. "I used to work for him when I was a kid."
    "Great! Well, let's go see him."
    "I don't think it's going to be that easy."
    "Why not?"
    "He hates my guts."
    "Why?"
    Galloway said, staring ahead at the road, "Because I killed his son."
    ILLER! YOU ABOARD?"
    JL Bernie looked around the dock, shivering. She was dressed in mid-length navy shorts, a T-shirt, and a light windbreaker, and it was seven in the morning, and a light mist had not yet burned off the water of the inlet.
    There was no answer. She swung her tennies over the transom and rapped at the companionway hatch, listened for a moment, then slid it open. The main cabin was empty. She paused in the galley, noting silently two torn packages of instant oatmeal, two half-finished mugs of coffee, still slightly warm to the touch.
    She closed the hatch and plopped herself on one of the lockers in the stern. She dangled her legs absent-mindedly and threw her hair back. She reached for a cigarette, then stopped; she'd promised herself to cut back.
    She'd planned to spend the day on the boat, perhaps checking in on Jack that afternoon at his parents' home in Waves. Now an empty Saturday yawned. She had paperwork to do, but the thought of the office appalled her.
    That was one good thing about her job—you weren't tied to a desk. Mr. Moulton, the supervisor, had told her that a good parole officer spent time with clients. Sometimes it was rough. You had to deal with people
    society had junked. You had to understand them, what had gone wrong inside them, and try to help it go right. It wasn't easy and it didn't pay much, but you could make a difference; you could help people sometimes. And that was what she wanted to do.
    Specifically, she thought she could help Tiller Galloway.
    Sitting there, trying consciously not to think of a cigarette, she turned the case over in her mind once more.
    Tiller Galloway was a felon. A drug smuggler, his record said; convicted under the 800 series of 21 US Code (A), Illegal Importation of Controlled Substances. She knew that the recidivism statistics on druggies were appalling, especially those in the management side. For most of them release was like returning from vacation. The lure of easy money, vast quantities of it, was too great, the deterrent of three to five years in prison too weak.
    But Lyle Galloway III didn't fit the norm. He seemed to be making