Blessed Are Those Who Mourn Read Free

probably about seventy-­five altogether.
    A shiver trips down my spine as I look at the looming carcasses of once-­great warships. I’m sure they must all be haunted by the souls of all the dead sailors who once lived there.
    â€œEver gone out there, Giovanni?” the cameraman asks, seeing where I’m looking.
    â€œWhat? How?”
    â€œThey did a media tour back in 1990 for some big anniversary of one of the ships. Got to see inside. Trippy. Some of the cabins still have books and beds, perfectly preserved from the 1970s. It was like a ghost ship. I could almost hear eerie music filtering around and the cannons blasting.”
    I knew it.
    â€œMust’ve been before my time at the paper,” I say, returning my gaze to the beach behind the crime-­scene tape. “Wish I would’ve been able to go.”
    He readjusts the tripod his heavy camera rests on and fiddles with some cables as he talks. “You could launch a rubber dinghy at the slough in between Coast Guard patrols. They are usually every half hour. See the station over there? They are supposed to guard the ship against squatters. You have to pull your boat up on the ship or you’re busted.”
    â€œYou did that?”
    He chuckles and adjusts the focus on the camera lens he has pointing toward the dead body on the beach. “Nah, not me. I’m not that dumb. But I grew up in Benicia. This was our backyard. A kid I knew snuck onboard in high school. Claimed it was a cool place to party. There used to be more than three hundred ships here then, so it was easier to get away with. Plus it was before nine-­eleven. There was only one old beat-­up patrol boat, and the dude was probably drunk half the time anyway. You’ve got to go a few rows in, though, or they could see you from the Coast Guard station.”
    I study the dead woman’s body through my binoculars again. I can’t figure it out. She’s not bloated and gruesome-­looking like a drowning. She looks like she’s resting from a swim. How did she wash up on this forgotten little island?
    â€œWho found her?” I ask. A fisherman, most likely, since the channel nearby is a popular fishing spot. But even then, what were the odds someone spotted her on this shore?
    â€œTipster,” the cameraman says.
    I’m glad I decided to stand near this guy. He’s obviously got some good insider information from a source. Crime scenes can be like happy hours. While reporters wait for an official to give us details, we gossip about off-­the-­record info we’ve heard. But never with the competing newspaper, only with the TV ­people, and never anything that is truly a scoop. I eye Andy Black, from the San Francisco Tribune . It looks like he’s trying to charm information from the well-­endowed Channel 4 reporter. Like always, he looks like a hair-­and-­makeup crew on a movie set just finished touching him up. Guess that’s what you look like when you work for the biggest paper in town. I cringe thinking I ever found his preppy good looks attractive.
    â€œWhat else did you hear?” I ask.
    â€œDoesn’t your cop husband give you the skinny?” the cameraman asks, squinting at me sideways.
    â€œHe’s not my husband.” I’m glad the dark hides the heat flaring across my cheeks.
    â€œWell, then your baby daddy or whatever you call him?”
    I’m opening my mouth to answer when the crowd clears and Rosarito Police Sergeant Beverly Anne Fazio heads our way in her navy blue police uniform, her sleek auburn bob ruffled by the wind. She sees me and offers a quick smile before growing serious and professional.
    All the reporters stop talking and cluster around her. She stands so the orange skies of the Martinez refineries lit up in the dark are behind her, puffy clouds of refinery smoke billowing out at regular intervals.
    â€œAt eighteen hundred hours we received word that a body