Missing Witness by Craig Parshall

the water for me. I was thinking about wading in. But I’m afraid it may be too cold.”
    â€œTake it from me, it’s too cold.” He flicked some water with his toes toward Fiona’s bare leg.
    â€œNo, seriously. I want you to go in and test the water. Are you man enough?”
    â€œOh—ouch! A deadly blow to the male ego,” Will said with a laugh. “But realistically, can’t you feel how cold the water is? You’ve been wading up to your ankles.”
    â€œI repeat myself,” she said, laughing. “Do you have what it takes to dive in this early in the morning?”
    Will stopped dead in his tracks. His smile melted into a look of steely determination.
    â€œOf course, you know I have to go in now. Of course, you know you’ve made the ultimate challenge. A challenge I cannot turn down. And what I want you to realize,” he said with manufactured solemnity, “is when I dive into this water, into its near arctic temperature…that even though I be in excruciating and infinite pain, I shall do it for you, my beloved. And I will do it with such courage that you will hear no audible complaint from my lips.”
    With that, he stripped the terrycloth sunshirt off his back, dropped his sandals and ran headlong into the surf, taking one final, arching dive to immerse himself in the cold, crashing waves.
    All was silent.
    Then two seconds later, Will emitted a scream so loud that it sent another flock of birds from their stations on the sand…into the blue sky.

9
    A FTER W ILL AND F IONA RETURNED from their walk on the beach, Will climbed out of his wet shorts, showered, and put on some casual clothes. Fiona went out on the little deck that overlooked the ocean, taking her cell phone with her. Then she began a conference call with her concert manager. Meanwhile, Will used the landline inside the ocean cottage to call his office for an update. Hilda, his secretary, had little to report—which was good news to Will. His two associate attorneys, Jacki Johnson and Todd Furgeson, were keeping things well in hand.
    Then Will was on his way to the meeting with Boggs Beckford at the local hospital.
    It was warm and sunny, and Will enjoyed the ride in his ’57 Corvette convertible. From Hatteras through the miles of national wildlife refuge, sand dunes, and open fields of waving sea grass, it was a good forty-five minutes before he reached the Oregon Inlet Bridge. The span took him high up over the ocean, which stretched out to his right. The sea was crystal blue and calm, and he could see through the clean waters to the sandbars that protected the shore of the Outer Banks on the Atlantic side. To his left was the darker blue of the Sound waters.
    On the other side of the bridge he hit the usual heavy tourist traffic—the endless line of minivans crammed with rambunctious children, jeeps, old station wagons with surfboards strapped to the tops, and pickup trucks with multiple fishing rods housed in cylinders attached to their front grills.
    A few minutes later Will was pulling into the Dunes Memorial Hospital.
    He identified himself at the front desk and made his way to Boggs Beckford’s hospital room.
    Beckford was a man in his forties with sandy hair and glasses. Will found him in bed with his left arm outstretched in a cast tethered on a wire from an aluminum pole, and his right leg in a cast. At the tableside nextto his bed there were files and papers stacked high, and the phone was placed on top of the papers.
    Will introduced himself and shook hands with the only functional hand that Beckford had.
    â€œJonathan Joppa told me you were coming in and you’d be meeting with me,” Beckford began. “I urged him to get new counsel. As you can see, I’m out of commission for a while. They promised they’d get me a walking cast and get me ambulatory by the end of the summer. So, what are you going to do…” Beckford said, his