“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.
He followed the sound down the first row of metal shelving, a creaky ceiling fan sending a plume of hot air down on him. Cardboard boxes, wrinkled with age, slouched on each of the shelves, marked with a case number and a curling piece of colored tape. The boxes gave way to rows of skateboards and then bicycles suspended upside down, their streamers brushing against Josh’s shoulder. All of them evidence; all of them had once belonged to someone who had been the victim of a crime.
The music was louder now, and Josh stepped out of the row into a clearing where a pudgy man with salt-and-pepper curls swayed to the strains of a Dylan song that Josh half recognized.
“Christ on a bike!” the man shouted.
“Sorry,” Josh said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
The older man chuckled. “Not at all! You just gave me a scare. Thought it was those ghosts again.” He extended a sweaty hand in Josh’s direction. “Mike Sambarello. But everyone calls me Samba. And you must be Detective Hudson!”
“Josh. Pleased to meet you.”
“So what do you think, Josh? Is this a cool place or what?”
There was something about this man, with his outward pointing feet, that reminded Josh of a clown, and he could not suppress a grin. “Sure. I like the music.”
Samba grinned. “Hey, you gotta do something to lighten the mood around here, you know? Dealing with this stuff gets kinda … you know. Heavy.” He clicked off the paint-splattered boom box. “So this is your first time here, huh?”
“Yep,” Josh said. “I worked narcotics. Not a lot of cold cases.” Except m
y own, he added to himself.
“Where you came in, that’s where law enforcement comes if they want to request any evidence we might have. Then we have two days to find it. That’s the fun part.”
“Is there an automated system?” Josh hadn’t passed anything resembling a computer.
“Sure is,” Samba said, tapping his wrinkled forehead with his index finger. “It’s all up here. We have almost two thousand pieces of evidence housed here, and I’ve organized it into categories.”
“But what about the state? Don’t they make you log everything in a database?”
Samba frowned. “I don’t trust those state guys,” he said. “I’ve been cataloguing evidence for thirty years. I know how to preserve things right and how to find them. I don’t need a computer. They can send me all the nasty letters they want, I’m not changing.” He lowered his voice, as though afraid someone might be listening. “Fuck the establishment.”
Behind them, Josh heard the high-pitched bleat of a cell phone. Samba ignored it, leading Josh in the other direction.
“Is that your phone?”
Samba laughed. “No. That’s from our electronic evidence aisle. There’s always something chirping over there. You’d be surprised; sometimes these old machines still have a spark in ’em.”
Samba led them down a row of enormous yellowing refrigerators, all buzzing at different frequencies. “This is all the biohazard stuff,” Samba said. “But if you decide to bring lunch—and I know every man’s got his own preference for barbecue, I myself am partial to Piggy Jim’s on the corner—you can put it in the big silver one on the end.” Josh stepped over a puddle of stagnant green liquid seeping from beneath one of the refrigerators. Samba had placed a plastic CAUTION sign next to the spill. Who was he warning, Josh wondered. Did anyone else even work here?
“So how often do you get a request for evidence?”
“Oh, you know, every so often,” Samba said. “I think the last one was two months ago, May. You know, the newer evidence stays with the property clerk of the PD for about a year before they bring it to me here. There’s less demand for older stuff, but I make sure everything is where someone can find it.”
“How long do you keep the evidence here?”
“Eighty years is what the statute says,” Samba confided. “Plus they ask us to dump out anything that’ll get you drunk or high. Those cops are no fun. But I’ve never thrown anything away, and I don’t think the guy before me did either.”
Samba reached the end of the row and plopped down on the arm of an overstuffed paisley sofa with its entire midsection cut out, right down to the foam. “Everything we have in here—every piece of evidence—well, to me it represents an injury to somebody. Just ’cause it’s old, that doesn’t mean you forget about it. It’s never too late to get justice. Believe me, I should know.”
Josh nodded. Here was a person who cared about his job, a custodian of tragedies, his own and others’—a guy who thought that maybe the system didn’t have all the answers. A guy who worked in a warehouse full of unsolved crimes and somehow still believed in justice.
Josh’s second cell phone, the throwaway, began to vibrate in a circle on his abandoned table.
“One of your girlfriends, I bet.” Samba winked, and Josh reached for the phone.
“Bonjour, Josh.” Pea.
Josh ducked behind one of the rows of boxes. “Hey. I’m at work. I can’t really—”
“I have a lead on Liana.” He heard her quick intake of breath, a split decision not to finish the sentence.
“What is it?” The desperation was naked in his voice. Pea was free; he had nothing left to barter with, and she knew it. Still, there was a goodness in her, he could see it. She wanted to help him.
“Pea, please. Whatever it is—I need to know. I need to find her.”
“She’s in trouble, Josh. She’s involved with some bad people. You need to be careful.”
When they were kids, Liana was the one who had first disobeyed the rule to stay on their block. She had shrugged off their parents’ attempts to control her. In his mind, he could still see her balancing on the roof of their house, tempting the fates. Walking the line. Taste death live life, she had written on her forearm in green Magic Marker. His sister, imperious and wild. He had never imagined it would lead to this.
Josh reached into his jeans pocket for the spiral notebook he always carried. “Just tell me,” he told Pea. “Where is she?”
On the other end of the phone, there was silence.
“Hello? Hello? Pea?”
The line went dead.
“Goddamnit,” he swore. She was playing him. He knew it. But what the hell was her endgame? None of it made sense. Josh swallowed his anger. First day at work, he reminded himself. He couldn’t fuck this job up, or who knew what the next stop was on the one-way train to career suicide?
“Sorry, man. Family stuff,” he began, expecting to see Samba around the corner, but there was no sign of his boss. Josh walked towards the front entrance, where he heard Samba’s voice on the phone.
“… each one. Got it. I can do that, yes, sir.” The older man’s voice was no longer the jolly tone of earlier; this was all business. Samba turned and raised a hand at Josh. “Yes. I’ve got help here, so I should be good. We will let you know when we’ve got something. Okay. Thank you.”
“I’m glad you’re here, Josh,” Samba said before Josh could ask the question. “We’ve got a case.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The bayou invaded Aurora’s dreams that night.
She woke to the sound of a paddle being dipped and pulled through creamy swirls of earth-colored water. Aurora crooked a finger and pulled aside the gauzy white curtain by Papa’s bed, revealing the violet swath of bayou outside her window. Mist hovered above the water, punctured by the knuckles of sunken cypress trees. A lone figure nudged a skiff in a wide arc around a sunken cluster of plants with leaves that reached skyward like upturned palms and then settled the boat against the opposite shoreline, resting the paddle across the bow of the boat. There was something unearthly about the landscape, especially at this time of the morning, so otherworldly that you could believe there was truth in those old bayou stories about ghost lights and mists that drew people deep into the patchwork of sloughs and never released them.
Aurora slid on shorts and a T-shirt and pulled on one of Papa’s old baseball caps. The things she should do scrolled through her mind, a crisp and orderly list. Go through Papa’s desk. File papers at the courthouse. Maybe put the house on the market. The real estate agent’s glossy business card beckoned her from the desk. Renee Trosclair, the card proclaimed below a picture of a woman with an aggressively spiked blond haircut and a teeth-baring smile. Look no further—you are home!! There was something oddly disconcerting about the phrase.
The bedroom was blissfully free of the voodoo items filling the rest of the house. Here, framed pictures surrounded the oak bed covered with one of Nana’s quilts. Aurora’s mother and grandmother beamed at her, not from stiffly posed photographs but candid shots, their mouths open, their eyes shining, standing behind birthday cakes and reaching for each other across a sea of opened Christmas presents. All her life, Aurora had wished for something of her mother’s: a talisman, a reminder that she had existed as more than a story, more than a forbidden topic of conversation. It was a request that she had never had the courage to make, too afraid of upsetting the careful equilibrium in her grandparents’ home. And now here she was, surrounded by talismans, whether she liked it or not.
Between the frames were strewn souvenirs from places with names Aurora had never heard of: a thickly spotted seashell from Bayou Sauvage, a coffee mug with a faded logo that advertised a place called Baboon Jack’s, an apron that bragged of the best barbecue in Hambone.
Aurora had expected neat stacks of paperwork, another version of Papa’s office back home, legal pads and a tightly ordered file cabinet. She could handle paperwork; she did it every day. But
Papa had left her with so much more than that. There were things here she needed to understand. If there were questions surrounding her mother’s death, they needed to be answered. She wasn’t ready to dismantle the house. Not today. Not yet.
A Mass card was fitted into the corner of one of Raylene’s photographs, the faded image of a mournful saint on the front. Internment, Ti Bon Ange Cemetery, 9 A.M. A thickness rose in Aurora’s throat. Had she been allowed to attend the burial? Had Papa ever visited the grave?
The man in the skiff was moving again, floating past her house now, his oar laid across his lap, his head tipped back in the sunshine. She opened the front door, crossed the latticed porch, and made her way down to the boat ramp.
“Excuse me, sir?”
The man did not sit up but tilted his head in her direction. She was learning that nobody in this town did anything quickly, something that set her off balance after the frenzied rush of the emergency room. He wore a filthy T-shirt tucked into a pair of ragged cutoffs, one tanned bare foot dangling in the sun-dappled water.
“I was wondering if you could help me, sir,” Aurora began, surprised at the timid note in her own voice. “I’m looking for Ti Bon Ange Cemetery.”
This got the man’s attention. He hoisted himself to a sitting position and shaded his eyes to give her a closer look. “You Hunter Broussard’s granddaughter? Raylene’s girl?”
“Yes.” She was surprised at the hitch in her voice. She was part of something here; linked to this unfamiliar landscape in a way she did not yet understand. “Yes, I am.”
He nodded. “Ernest Authement. Your grandfather, he used to buy shrimp from me. He was a fine gentleman.” He crossed himself and pressed a thumb to his lips. “He buried in Ti Bon Ange? I know he was coming back to visit. Bayou gets a hold on you, it won’t let go.”
“No,” she said. “My mother is.”
“For true,” he said. There was a warmth in his creased eyes, a kindness that made her believe her family had meant something to him. “Well, you gonna need a boat to get there.”
The Evidence Room: A Mystery Page 6