The Evidence Room: A Mystery (7 page)

More unnerving were the objects that seemed significant but foreign to Aurora. The side tables, desk, and dining room table were littered with them; tiny jars and vases, some filled with liquid, others clear; bundles of sticks and rolled-up paper tied with string, and rows of bags, cinched at the top.

Aurora jumped at the sound of her cell phone, trilling somewhere in the depths of her bag. A familiar name flashed on the screen. Luna Riley. She picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Aurora. Just wanted to check in with you and see that you made it down there in one piece. Everything okay?”

Aurora turned away from the mantel, where a felt doll crowned in purple feathers leered at her. “It’s not what I expected.”

“Is everything all right?”

“There’s just a lot of—well, I don’t know how to describe it. He has these bags everywhere. They’re kind of like sachets, tied with ribbon.” She knew she sounded insane, but miraculously, Luna Riley hummed in agreement on the other end of the phone.

“Gris-gris,” Luna said.

“What?”

“That’s what the bags are called. They’re for luck. Good fortune. It’s nothing bad, Aurora. I promise. Your grandfather and people like him who grew up on the bayou, it’s just a part of life for them to have those. Like a talisman.”

“Do you know anything about why he’d have these jars? And pieces of paper with string?” Aurora perched on the edge of the satiny yellow sofa. Beside her, the waxy, bubbled remains of several violet candles dotted the windowsill.

“I’m not an expert in that stuff, so I’m not sure,” Luna admitted. “There’s somebody in town who is, though—you can be sure of that. I’ll let you settle in. Mr. Beaumont, that attorney I mentioned, is expecting your call.”

“Terrific, thanks.” Aurora ended the call. Shadows had begun to creep across the ceiling. She walked from room to room, flipping every switch, drenching the house in light. What had Papa been doing with these religious objects? Aurora had assumed that Jefferson meant Papa was reviewing her mother’s case, looking through old files, but the truth appeared to be something more supernatural.

She put the kettle on, the purr of the stove reassuring. Her grandfather grinned at her from a picture magnet on the refrigerator, one of those plastic ones you buy at a gift shop.
World’s Sweetest Grandpa!
the frame in the shape of chocolate bars proclaimed. Tears of recognition sprang to Aurora’s eyes. Papa must have brought it down here on one of his trips back to the bayou. She had bought this for him on their sixth-grade class trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania. The man in the photo was the grandpa she loved, stalwart and solid, a man who handled everything in his stride. It was hard to picture him lighting these candles, tying the bags of gris-gris, summoning the daughter that was never coming back.

Aurora leaned against the counter. For as long as she could remember, she had felt her own sense of responsibility.
Be a good girl, be kind, be the best you can be
. She’d had to do it because Raylene could not, because her mother’s death had to mean something. She had to save people because if she didn’t, what was left? The other part of herself. She was Wade Atchison’s child too. He’d killed her mother and spared her.
What your daddy did casts a long shadow
.

Maybe Papa had stumbled across a dark truth that he could not handle. Maybe that was up to Aurora.

There was nobody else to do it. She was the only one left.

CHAPTER NINE

“They ain’t critter bones. I told you, Doc. I knew it. I was right. Wasn’t I, though?” Zeke Crumpler demanded.

Slowly, in a way that he hoped conveyed the annoyance he felt, James brought himself to a standing position and turned away from the duffel bag and its grim contents.

Zeke Crumpler hovered nearby. Everyone in town had hoped that age would settle the Crumplers, maybe smooth out some of the rough edges, but that had turned out to be overly optimistic. Zeke and the older generation, now no longer able to participate in the petty crimes of their youth, continued to cause trouble by poking into everyone else’s business, running illegal poker games out of the Sunny Land Rest Home, and terrorizing anyone who dared to complain about the herd of barking dogs or incessant four-wheelers on their property outside town. Barred from his brother’s autopsy, Zeke had once called James “a pansy-ass, real light in the loafers.” It had been a long time ago, but then again, it wasn’t the kind of thing you forgot.

“I’m going to need you to step back, Zeke,” James said. He drew his handkerchief across his forehead, an instant sheen of new sweat rising in its wake. Summer in Cooper’s Bayou was getting more brutal with each passing year. Days like this, he wished for more help in the field, but explaining everything to the tech was more trouble than it was worth, so these things had to be borne alone.

James knelt back down. According to Zeke, the neon pink duffel bag had just shown up on the shore, and he’d opened it up to find the bones tucked inside. It was a dubious tale at best, but it was all they had to go on. James surveyed the shoreline. Someone could have tossed it from a boat, or the bayou itself could have deposited it on the beach. James’s father had told him stories as a kid about the magical things hiding in the bayou; skeletons of pirate ships and sea creatures.
Bayou’s dark and deep,
he’d tell James,
but even the bayou can’t keep a secret forever
.

He would have to call the police department, maybe find the name of the forensic anthropologist that he’d spoken with at the medical conference last year. The list of procedures stretched ahead of him, but for now, one fact crowded out all the rest.

It was a child.

He was pretty sure, given the size of the remains. James imagined the forensic artist who would press clay around the skull to re-create the face. Bayou John Doe, or Bayou Jane Doe. It had to be done, but James hated that it would become a sensational news story instead of being treated with quiet reverence as the tragedy it was. Death investigation was the telling of a personal story, not for public consumption, in his view.

James surveyed the area around the body. Whoever had left the bag had done so on a small curve of beach outside Baboon Jack’s, Cooper’s Bayou’s kiddie arcade. James had attended two of his nephews’ birthdays here.
WHERE KIDS RUN WILD
! proclaimed the sign, and in James’s experience, it was true. He recalled the cavernous interior, a maze of blinking video games, yellow plastic slides, and a noise level unmatched by anything he had ever experienced. He was grateful that none of the kids inside had witnessed the discovery.

“How long you think this will take, Doc?” The proprietor of Baboon Jack’s, a humorless middle-aged man named Walter Coggins, hovered over him. “We’ve got a zombie dodgeball tournament in about half an hour.”

“This is a possible crime scene, Walter,” James told him. “I’ve got to call in the troops. Crime lab, police. You probably need to start shutting it down for the day.”

“Aw, hell, Doc. You gotta be kidding me.” Walter raked a hand through the greasy tendrils of his comb-over. “What am I gonna tell these parents? And I ain’t gonna get my money back on these zombies.”

“It’s a potential crime scene,” James repeated and extracted his cell phone from his pocket, turning away from Walter.

Mary Earl, the dispatcher, answered on the third ring.

“Hello there, darlin’.” Her pleasantries always caught him off guard. He’d said to Rush that they needed to answer the phone in a more professional manner over there, but the truth was, he liked hearing the words, even though he never knew what to say back.

“Um, good afternoon, Mary Earl. We’ve got a body here, down by Baboon Jack’s. They’re skeletal remains. I’m going to need whoever Rush has available.”

“Lord mercy,” she breathed. “Rush and Boone went out on a call a while back. Gators in someone’s yard up by Bayou Triste, and some hillbilly shooting at ’em and carrying on.” Her voice faded and then returned. “Hello? Doc Mason?”

“Yes, yes. Sorry, Mary Earl. You know how the cell service is out here. Just please have them get here as soon as possible.” He ended the call.

“You all right, Doc?” Zeke was staring at him.

“Hot day,” James managed.

“Yep,” Zeke continued. “And ain’t none of us getting any goddamn younger, that’s for sure. Well, I best get going, Doc.”

“Zeke, you’ve got to stick around, tell the police what you told me about finding the body.”

Zeke shook his head. “Ya’ll know how to find me. I gotta go. I’m helping Jefferson Gibbs take care of the Broussard place, least until they sell it. I need that cash, you know?”

The Broussard house had stood empty for years, perched on the bayou’s eastern shore, one of the town’s historic landmarks. James drove past it every evening on the way to his own house.

“Hunter’s selling the place?”

Zeke frowned. “Hunter went to be with the Lord, couple weeks ago. They said it was some cancer, but I said it’s that Northern living that’ll kill ya. You didn’t hear about that?”

James hadn’t heard. A memory kicked its way to the surface of his consciousness unbidden, and there she was in his mind’s eye: Raylene Atchison, Hunter’s daughter. The last time he’d ever seen her alive was in his autopsy suite, asking questions about being a nurse. She’d lingered in his doorway then, and even James, adrift in all his cluelessness about the opposite sex, had known she wanted to say more. He remembered the patient who’d been on his table that day, an escaped convict from Craw Lake who’d drowned hiding out in the bayou.
You treat ’em the same, no matter what they done?
she’d asked, pointing to the fragmented cuff that still hung around the patient’s graying wrist. When James nodded, she’d smiled.
I could do that. Wade’s always saying I see the good in people, sometimes when it ain’t even there.
Even all these years later, the memory of that statement sent a ripple of sadness through him.

“So what’s going to happen to the house?”

“Dunno,” Zeke said. “She just got here, but Jefferson said didn’t feel like it was right to ask her on her first day in town. Even though my daughter-in-law Renee, she won’t shut up about it. She’s a Realtor, you know. Got one of them glossy billboards on Route Seven and everything.”

“Who just got here?”

“Hunter’s granddaughter. Aurora. You remember, they took her away all those years ago? I met her yesterday. Good-looking girl, did well for herself up North, she’s a nurse. I’m guessing she won’t be hanging around here long.”

Aurora. So many times James had thought about her since that night, wondered where she was, hoped that she had gone out into the world as fearless as her mother. He felt a little tick of pride at hearing that she was now a nurse.

“Well, keep your phone on you. I’m sure someone will be wanting to ask you some questions.”

“Much obliged, Doc.” Zeke gave him a salute and headed back in the direction of the parking lot.

James sat down by the edge of the bayou. He wanted to stop by the Broussard house, to pay his respects to Aurora, but what if she didn’t want to see him? He was a part of the worst night of her life; he wouldn’t blame her if she just wanted to forget.

James thought about his own father. After his death, James had sought out every one of his father’s shrimping buddies, yearned for stories, anything to breathe life into that memory again. Grief was a funny thing, though; everyone walked along its path differently.

His cell phone buzzed and shifted in his pocket. All these years, and it still gave him peace, knowing that someone was looking for him. It was the being needed that counted, even if it was only dead people who needed him. He answered the call, just as the whine of a distant siren rose above the noise of the water. The police were on their way.

CHAPTER TEN

Josh’s new place of work, a sprawling old wooden warehouse perched on the scorched riverbank, had all the traditional markings of a haunted house.

This far out of town, the bayou was no more than a thin chocolate strand that yawned into a swamp choked with black gum trees and buttonbush shrubs, and the vegetation seemed to be strangling the building itself. Surrounding trees covered the roof in long, gray plaits of Spanish moss, and woolgrass rose in thick clumps around the base of the splintering structure.

The only sign of life was an eggplant-colored Corvair parked at a dramatic angle in the weeds. This had to be his new boss’s car.

Something shifted in the tall grass, and Josh reached for his gun without thinking. Of course, there was nothing in his waistband. He was a member of the Rubber Gun Squad now. Administrative leave in the evidence room.
It’s not permanent,
Captain Rush had said, avoiding Josh’s gaze, pretending this job wasn’t the last stop on the loony-tune express to nowhere.
Use your time there to think.

As if he didn’t think too much already.

“Hello?” Josh shouted in the general direction of the front door and was answered only by the whine of a swarm of insects. The relentless Florida humidity smothered him from all sides. What were the chances this place had air-conditioning?

Josh edged his way around the back of the building to the crumbling remains of a porch, complete with an ancient double-paned white door. Next to the buzzer was a plaque that read
EVIDENCE ROOM, COOPER COUNTY. PLEASE RING FOR ASSISTANCE
.

Josh pressed the buzzer twice. Above him, the leaden sky growled and snapped, a finger of lightning reaching down to touch the bayou. Josh turned the knob and went inside.

“Hello?” Josh was beginning to feel like this whole exercise was a joke. Boone and Donovan were probably crouched in the bushes outside, howling at Josh as he circled the building and then let himself in the back door.

The walls of the massive indoor space were painted in bright pastels like a kindergarten classroom. Rows of metal shelves twenty feet high stretched across the massive warehouse interior, boxes bursting from every shelf. From deep inside the warehouse, Josh could hear the faint lilt of music.