The Evidence Room: A Mystery (30 page)

“All right, then. Let’s each take a direction. Anybody sees one with the lock still on it, give a shout,” Josh said.

“I’ll take this way.” Aurora headed north, Samba east, and Josh to the west. A coil of unease unwound in Josh’s gut. They’d come here straight from the evidence room without a map or a plan. He patted the gun, its reassuring weight heavy in his waistband, filmy with sweat. It was the middle of the afternoon; they weren’t likely to run into anyone out here. But if someone was already watching Aurora’s house, how easy would it have been for them to follow her?

“Holler if you need anything, guys,” he shouted in their general direction.

For the next half hour, the only sound was the scattering of bugs and the shriek of the metal doors sliding open. Josh opened the last door and stepped into the pot-scented interior, empty save for a broken stick of incense and a torn couch cushion, its fluffy innards strewn across the ground. None of the units in his section were locked, and all were empty. Josh sagged against the wall and removed the key from his pocket. Had they once opened one of these empty lockers? Had someone beaten them to it, the same way they’d beaten them to the body of Wade Atchison?

“Over here, I got something!” Aurora shouted. Josh sprinted in the direction of her voice. At the end of the hallway, she stood in front of a red door, a lock still attached to its hinges, bearing the skull and crossbones insignia. Samba trotted towards them, breathless, a few moments later.

“I think we might have hit the jackpot,” Samba said.

As if in reply, a muffled squeak came from the interior of the locker.

“Please tell me that was a possum,” Aurora breathed.

“Stand back everybody.” Josh removed the gun from his waistband and rapped on the door. “Whoever’s in there, this is the police. Open this damn door right now.”

Silence.

Josh slipped the key out of his pocket and held it out on his palm to Aurora. Soundlessly she slid it into the lock and the three of them inched the door upward, revealing the cavernous, musty interior, boxes stacked against the back wall. He swung the gun around to each corner. Empty. It had to have been an animal.

“Hello?”

In response, a flurry of sound came from the back right corner, and a cold realization washed over Josh. It wasn’t someone lying in wait to kill them. It was someone who needed help.

Aurora must have had the same insight. “Hang on,” she called out. “Hang on. Help is coming.”

All three of them rushed to the back corner of the room, desperately trying to locate the source of the sound. Aurora tossed aside the cardboard carcasses of boat supply boxes and threw back a tarp to reveal the hulk of an old steamer trunk looming in the corner. The sounds were getting louder.

Someone was in the trunk.

“I’m just going to smash the lock,” Josh shouted. “If you can, just keep your hands away from this side, okay?”

Aurora held it steady and with one well-placed hit of the gun, Josh shattered the lock and threw it open to reveal a shuddering and terrified Pearline Suggs.

He froze, and Aurora leapt into action.

“You’re all right now. You’re safe now. You’re safe.” She repeated these words like a mantra, all the while removing the duct tape that was plastered around Pearline’s wrists and the neon yellow slash of tape that covered her mouth. “Samba,” she said. “Help me get her over to the grass.”

“She’s in shock,” Aurora called over her shoulder to Josh. “We need to get her to the hospital. Fast.”

Josh stared down into the depths of the steamer trunk, the layers of material that had bound Pearline Suggs. There was a plastic paisley tablecloth, the tattered remains of a baby blanket, and then something below it, something wrapped in a familiar-looking blanket, the kind they had in the back of their police cars for trauma victims. Something tightened in Josh’s chest. He unfolded the blanket.

Cooper County Medical Services.

He peeled it away to reveal a cluster of brown bones. It was not a blanket. It was a shroud.

“I found Wade Atchison,” he said.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

In the backseat of the Jeep, Aurora sat with Pearline’s head in her lap. At the Jolly Roger, Aurora had done a quick assessment. Pearline had a few minor abrasions, but was otherwise unharmed.

Josh was speeding down a dirt road shortcut to the interstate, and each time the Jeep shuddered, Pearline groaned and closed her eyes. Aurora thought about her first-aid kit. There was a sedative in there, but then Pearline would be knocked out before they reached the hospital. What if she could tell them something?

“You guys still okay back there?”

Samba poked his head between the seats, and Aurora gave him a thumbs-up.

“Pearline, just relax. Keep breathing. In and out. In and out. We’re almost at the hospital,” Aurora soothed. She stroked the side of Pearline’s head, tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re safe now.”

Pearline nodded, her eyes still closed.

“Can you tell us who did this to you, Pearline?” Josh called from the front seat. “Anything? We could really use your help.” His voice was thick with the desperation that she felt; she guessed they were all feeling it. So close, and yet the answers seemed to keep slipping through their fingers.

“Easy, Josh,” Samba said. “She’s been through a lot.”

Pearline’s eyes snapped open.

“He was going to kill me,” she whispered, her eyes focused on Aurora, wild with terror. “Davis. He thought I was going to tell, but I wasn’t. I
wasn’t
.”

Pearline began to convulse with sobs, wheezing and sputtering words that Aurora could not make out. She looked at Samba and shook her head no. Pearline was not in a condition to answer any questions. Not now. As much as they needed the information, they couldn’t press her.

“It’s okay. You’re safe now. He can’t hurt you now.” Aurora looked out the window, where the bayou was drifting by, reduced to a caramel blur behind the mist and clouds. The truth was, they had no idea where Gentry was. He had the Crumplers in his back pocket; who knew what other connections he had around Cooper County? Aurora thought about the shattered front windows, the writing on her car. If he could kill her parents in cold blood with no repercussions, what was there to prevent him from coming after her?

“Gentry must have gotten wind of us being on the case through Malachi,” Josh reasoned from the front seat. “He moved Wade Atchison’s bones from Weir Island to the storage unit, to throw us off, make us think there was a chance Wade was still alive. He had the Crumplers believing it too.” He whistled under his breath. “All this time, they were afraid of a ghost.”

In the end, Wade Atchison had helped them.

Aurora thought about her father meeting Gentry that night on the bayou. They’d found the storage locker key in the lining of his sweatshirt. Had he stolen it from Gentry unnoticed, left it as a clue to his killer? They would never know. She wondered at what point he had known the game was up, that he had been lured out to the bayou not for a payoff, but to be slaughtered. Had he tried to save his wife and child and saved only one of them?

She looked down at Pearline, but there was nothing inscrutable in her expression, just horror. She had kept everything she had seen that night a secret, stayed quiet while everyone blamed Aurora’s father. She had even taken a payout for her troubles, straight from Gentry himself. Still, she had been a sixteen-year-old kid in a small town, the mother of the child of a Crumpler. She probably didn’t see another way out.
The lady led me to the steps,
Aurora herself had told the police on the night of the murder. Pearline had helped her, maybe even saved her life, and now she was returning the favor.

“Almost there,” she murmured, and when Pearline opened her eyes, Aurora gave her the most encouraging smile she could muster.

*   *   *

“Pearline Suggs might not be an innocent victim here.”

James had never been one to dance around the delivery of bad news.

On the other end of the phone, Josh unleashed a stream of expletives and then a series of rapid-fire questions. Cops were so predictable, it was tiresome.

“One thing at a time,” James told him. “I told you there was female DNA in the sample we collected from the grave. Malachi let me know this morning that there was a match in CODIS. Apparently before Pearline was an upstanding legal secretary, she had a brief but prolific career in forgery and credit card fraud. The DNA was Pearline’s.”

“What about Ash Gentry?”

James removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Aurora was right about her. She’s clean. Other than poor taste in husbands, there’s no evidence to support her being there that night, and nothing to link her to Wade Atchison except town gossip.”

“So you think she—you think our suspect helped kill Wade Atchison?”

“I can’t say. But she was definitely present when that body was put in the grave.” James consulted Pearline’s rap sheet, which Malachi had attached to the report. “She’s pretty petite. I can’t imagine she overpowered anyone. She definitely didn’t strangle anyone.”

“So someone else was definitely there that night. One of the Crumplers?”

“Maybe.” They were Gentry’s henchmen, his personal redneck Mafia. But something about it still bothered James. The autopsy photos. Strangulation.

This was personal.

“What if we’re looking at this the wrong way round? What if this wasn’t just about Wade? What if this was about Raylene?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, maybe there was someone besides Wade who had it in for her. She was a beautiful woman who liked bad men.”

On the other end of the line, Josh sucked in a breath. “Thank you, Doc,” he said. “I think I know exactly who we’re looking for.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Josh and Aurora were headed back to the evidence room. They had delivered Pearline safely into the hands of the doctors and nurses at Kervick Hospital, who told them she would be all right. Samba had stayed behind so there was someone to meet Lionel when he arrived from rehab to see his mother.

Davis Gentry’s assistant had told Boone that he hadn’t been in the office; the guy could be on a plane to Brazil by now, but Josh doubted it. Sick bastards like Gentry couldn’t resist sticking around to see the results of their mayhem. Josh would bet he was still in the state, maybe even still in the county.
Suspect is to be considered armed and dangerous,
Josh had added to the report.
Do not approach without backup
.

“I think Samba’s right,” he told Aurora. “The answers are all there, in the evidence.”

“This was about my mom. Not my dad.” It was amazing, the way she could distance herself from what was happening.

“It was about Raylene,” he agreed. “Whoever met them out on the bayou that night had a connection to her too. I’ll show you what I was thinking about.”

Back in the evidence room, he pulled out the accordion file containing the records of interviews.

“Margie Belle,” he proclaimed, lifting out a red file. “The older lady at the mini-mart. Remember, I went and talked to her. She mentioned that Raylene had a boyfriend before Wade.”

“That’s right. Bobbie said something about some guy bothering her too, right around the time of the murder,” Aurora chimed in. “Maybe that guy is the key to this whole thing.” She upended the file, spreading out the witness statements so they blanketed the table. “You’re right. He’s got to be in here somewhere. I’ll pull the rest of the file. Samba had it over in the other workspace.”

“Good idea.” He spun through the statements in front of him. Would Raylene have taken up with one of the Crumplers? It seemed unlikely, given their feud with her grandfather, but then again, she had gone for the dangerous types. It wasn’t out of the question.

A shuffling sound interrupted his thought. Aurora, with the boxes.

“What do you think about the Crumplers?” he said to the space between shelves where the noise was coming from.

“Never liked ’em.”

A man in a cowboy hat stepped out of the shadows. A man with a very large gun pointed directly at Josh.

Josh reached a hand into his waistband, and the man fired a warning shot above his head. Josh heard the bullet strike one of the old metal fans, then clatter to the ground. In the interior space, the noise was deafening.

“Hands in the air, Detective Hudson. I ain’t gonna tell you again.”

The man took a step forward, and his features came into focus. Cowboy hat, oversize belt buckle, every country song clich
é
come to life.

Royce Beaumont.

Josh raised his hands. “Well, hey there, Royce,” he said. “What brings you over here to the evidence room? Any files I can pull for you?”

Run, Aurora
. He tried to will her with his mind. There was an emergency exit between two of the rows of boxes at the back of the building. She would have heard the gunshot; she would have time to escape. A white-hot dread scorched his throat dry. She had to be all right. Had to be.

Royce chuckled. “You’re a funny guy, Josh. You know, I liked you. Before you started digging into all this shit. You should have stuck to lost dogs and patrolling the state fair, and we would’ve never had any problem, you and I.”

“Oh, well, now, I don’t know about all that, Royce,” Josh said. “I have a problem with a man who lays his hands on a woman.”

“You got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“If that were true, I don’t think we’d be in this little situation right now, do you? So tell me, Royce. I understand why you killed Wade. You were just following orders from Gentry, right? But why Raylene? That wasn’t about the gators, now, was it?”

“Shut the hell up, Hudson.”

“She wasn’t supposed to be there that night, was she?” Josh pressed on. He hoped he was buying Aurora time. “So you must have been real surprised when she showed up with Wade and her kid. That must have really pissed you off.”

“It wasn’t about that. She would have turned me in. I couldn’t risk it.” Something wavered in his voice, and Josh knew he had hit the jackpot.