She was supposed to be in the attorney, Royce Beaumont’s, office right now, but she had decided that could wait. It was something about the voodoo woman’s voice. She’d known Papa, known something about what he was doing. He had confided in her for some reason, and Aurora was going to find out why.
The entrance to the pharmacy was almost completely obscured by a wooden statue of an American Indian grasping a sword, his lips pulled into a leering smile. A cheap dish towel adorned with a map of the state of Florida was tied around his hips in an attempt at modesty. Glass jars, opaque with age, lined the sides of the room, labeled in spindly purple handwriting and filled with seeds and grains of all shapes and colors with magical-sounding names that suggested strains of psychedelic drugs rather than ordinary houseplants. Mustard spinach tendergreens, Aurora read, Squash crookneck blues, Pepper California wonder.
“Need some help?”
It sounded like more of an accusation than a question. The speaker was a woman in her seventies, her hair piled high and secured with a paisley scarf on her head. Her eyebrows were penciled in thick violet eyeliner and curved upward at a spectacular angle.
“I’m looking for Charlsie. Is she here?”
“In back,” the woman said, and turned away. Aurora followed the woman down the aisle. Half-melted votive candles flickered on every available surface, illuminating rows of bottles and canisters. Next to the cash register, a black felt doll with two gold fleur-de-lis pins for eyes hung from a coat hook, a knitting needle protruding from its crotch. A tiny charm hung around its neck and Aurora recognized the palm with shooting stars that she had seen in Luna Riley’s office engraved on the front.
The woman followed her gaze. “To scare shoplifters,” she said matter-of-factly, and then pointed behind a beaded curtain. “She’s back there. You got an appointment?”
“No. I just—I’m a friend.”
“Friends, neighbors, enemies, they all gotta pay,” the woman shrugged, regarding Aurora with pity. “Ain’t nothing in this world for free.”
Aurora dug in her pocket and unfurled a twenty-dollar bill.
“Charlsie,” the woman sang out in a bright tone, “your ten thirty’s here.”
Behind the beaded curtain, Charlsie appeared to be in a trancelike state, her eyes focused on the wall in front of her. It took Aurora a moment to realize that she was watching a small television in the corner. On the screen, Diane Keaton, in round sunglasses and a white power suit, was berating a balding man in a restaurant.
“Romantic comedies,” Charlsie muttered. “Love them.” She aimed the remote at the screen and powered it off, pointing a ringed finger at a chair across from her, a flimsy lawn chair draped in a thick curtain. Aurora sat.
“I knew you’d be coming to see me, beb,” Charlsie said. Her fingers worked a set of cards, softened and yellowed with age.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Aurora protested. “I don’t need a reading. I just have some questions.”
“We all got questions, as long as we brave enough to hear the answers. I’m glad you came here, beb. I’m gonna tell you what you want to know.”
“My grandfather.”
“Your grandfather,” Charlsie echoed, “the alligator man. A good man.” She placed a shiny green pebble the size of a cough drop on top of the card. “He help people in need, he never judge anybody too hard. That’s why I helped him when he was in trouble, you understand?”
“Trouble? I didn’t know he was in trouble. I thought he came to you to try to reach my mother. What kind of trouble was he in?”
Charlsie ignored the question and instead fiddled with her necklaces, then held out a simple gold chain with a browned tooth on the end. “You know anything about alligators? He teach you?”
Aurora shook her head and for the thousandth time wished that she could remember being a kid here, sitting in the plastic pool with the baby gators, anything before the house in Connecticut. Some mornings she’d look out onto the bayou, the sun slicing through the sunken cypress, and a memory of her mother would grip her so fiercely she had to sit in the woven chair on the porch and rock back and forth until it subsided. Back home, her mother had existed only in objects; a photograph, a piece of jewelry. But here on the bayou, she was as real as anything alive, so real that Aurora felt the boundlessness of her loss in a way she had never before experienced.
“They been here millions of years, them gators,” Charlsie continued. “This tooth, your grandpapa gave me this tooth. It brings strength. And the head, it means wisdom, power. My people, we respect those creatures, like your grandfather did. But not everyone respects them.”
Charlsie clicked her tongue. “Your father saw some bad men out on the bayou, hurting the alligators. Killing them to take their heads.”
“Bad men?”
“Men who twist voudon, who turn it into something ugly.”
Aurora thought about the felt doll next to the cash register. “So it’s not about putting spells on people, or talking to people who have passed on?”
Charlsie chuckled. “Ah, no, chère. I don’t put spells on people. I don’t do nothing that endangers my soul or my Social Security benefits. I help people, do good when I can. But there are some who work with both hands.”
“What did you do for him?”
“When he came to me all those years ago,” Charlsie murmured, “he was already sick. His complexion was darkening, his faith was shaken. I did everything I could to help.” Aurora’s mind was already racing to a diagnosis. Her grandfather was unhappy with his daughter’s boyfriend, Wade. He was dealing with alligator poachers. He was depressed. He’d always had problems with arthritis. The voudon explanation was ridiculous.
“So you cured him.” Aurora played along. This woman was a crook or an idiot. Or both. But maybe she knew something.
“I did everything I could,” Charlsie said. “But it was not enough. Two weeks later, he lost his daughter. Your maman.” She reached across the table and squeezed Aurora’s hand. “We can call upon the orisha to do things for us. They can throw stones in our path or make them clear. All we can do is ask.”
Aurora dipped a hand inside her purse and pulled out one of the gris-gris bags. “I found these all over the house. He must have kept them. Are these what you gave him?”
Charlsie unwound the small flannel bag and dumped the contents on the table, drawing a finger through them. A strong aroma, a mix between cinnamon and cough drops, rose from the small pile of dirt and sticks.
“Dried toadstool top,” Charlsie murmured. “Piece of High John the Conqueror root. This is from me, for true. I gave this to him when he came to see me a few months back.”
“A few months ago?” The fishing trip, the last one before he’d gone into the hospital. He had been in Cooper’s Bayou. He had been here. “Why did he come to see you then? For luck?”
Charlsie shook her head. “This gris-gris is not for luck. It’s a powerful one, for protection from danger. Whatever your grandfather was afraid of, it was still here.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Stop it! That tickles and it’s way too cold. You gotta warm it up next time.”
This wisp of conversation floated through the beveled glass doors of the medical examiner’s office, where Josh hesitated on the cracked concrete steps. Doc Mason would have access to Raylene Atchison’s complete file. Josh wondered what Aurora hoped the information might lead to. Exoneration of her deadbeat father? Not likely. Closure? It didn’t exist, as far as Josh was concerned. Being here was a gamble anyway. The only thing Doc Mason hated more than an alternate theory about a case was anything that questioned his judgment.
“Hello?” Josh pressed the buzzer and peered through the door, but all he could see was a distorted image of the lobby, with its plastic ficus plants and shiny paisley chairs. This misguided attempt to make the place inviting had only made it more creepy. It was like they were trying to distract you from the fact that it was the gateway to infinity and that most people c
ame in through the back entrance on a stretcher.
Josh gave up on the intercom and pushed on the door. It swung open under his fingers.
Ruby, Dr. Mason’s receptionist, was reclining in her swivel chair, her head tipped back, the cloud of her curls tumbling over onto the desk. A husky guy in his twenties, with an unruly mass of cashew-colored hair, knelt, head bowed, at her feet.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Josh said, unsure what he was witnessing. Ruby Contreras had something of a reputation in Cooper’s Bayou. A Cuban-born bombshell of indeterminate age, she was beautiful in an almost terrifying way, a woman who brandished her power over the opposite sex like a weapon, who wore her man-eater title with pride. There wasn’t much that happened in Cooper’s Bayou without Ruby knowing about it. Josh had gone to her for info on cases a few times, and she’d never disappointed him.
Ruby laughed, and the blond kid scrambled to his feet, swaying like a cornstalk. He looked like some hick linebacker who’d gotten lost on the way to football practice. “Ruby’s helping me study,” he mumbled. “Anatomy exams.”
“I’m sure she’s an excellent teacher.”
“No, you don’t understand,” the guy stammered. “Ruby’s letting me write the names of the major arteries and veins on her body so I can learn them for my exam.” He held up a glitter felt-tip pen. “See? But my pen was on top of the blood fridge, so it was too cold, and she made me stop.”
Ruby lifted a shapely, caramel-colored leg onto her desk and wiggled her peach painted toes at Josh.
“Arcuate artery,” he read on her foot.
“Glenn’s got a couple more to go,” she said. “Enough for now, though. You’d better get back to work.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Glenn replied, scurrying back into the autopsy suite.
Josh racked his brain for some medical knowledge. “Great saphenous vein?”
Ruby grinned. “Nobody’s labeling that one until they buy me a drink. So tell me, Detective Hudson, how’ve you been?”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard, I’ve been put on a bit of a mandatory vacation by the PD.”
She frowned. “I did hear about that. I heard the reason why, too.”
“My sister.”
She nodded, a fierce look coming over her face. “I’m really sorry about that, Josh. I know what it’s like to miss somebody like that.”
“I wish you didn’t.”
“Well, we’re all carrying something, ain’t we.”
Josh thought about Aurora, about Samba’s question. Are you here about your mother’s case?
“That’s true,” he said.
“So they gonna let you back anytime soon?”
“In a while,” Josh said, even though he had no idea. “For now I’m working in the evidence room.”
“No shit,” she said. “You tell Samba that I said hello. I love that crazy old man. He’s like you, a true Southern gentleman. And believe me, y’all are a dying breed.”
“That means a lot to me coming from a fine woman like you.”
Ruby snorted. “Well, I know you didn’t come down here to stand there and pay me compliments, as much as I’d like to think so. So what’s your business here, Detective Hudson?”
“I need to see Doc Mason. It’s important.”
“Huh. Well, I guess you don’t listen to your scanner no more, or you’d know there was a big pileup on the causeway this morning. We’ve got a full house back there. And let me tell you, Doc had four cups of coffee this morning, and he’s still got his nose out of joint.”
“Please. Can you just try for me?”
Ruby put a hand on the phone. “All right, I’ll buzz him, because I like you. But if he fires me, I’m moving in with you, Hudson, you understand? And a woman like me—I am not low maintenance.”
She picked up the phone and hit a button, and in a professional voice that sounded to Josh like it came from someone else, spoke clearly into the phone. “Detective Josh Hudson here to see you urgently, Dr. Mason.” Josh barely detected a reply, and then she hung up.
“Go on back.” Ruby beamed at him.
Josh was incredulous. “He said he would see me?”
“Yeah, he did. You must be one of his special favorites. Don’t forget to suit up.”
“You’re the best,” Josh told her. He grabbed a paper face mask and blue smock off the wall and pushed through the swinging door to the autopsy suite.
Behind the glass in the autopsy suite, Dr. Mason was leaning over a body. Josh figured that he had once been somewhat tall, but age was pulling his body towards the horizontal, so that he had the appearance of always being on the verge of taking a bow. He stared at Josh from behind goggles that made his stern eyes look comic-book huge and held up a finger.
Josh had always gotten along with Mason. He wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but he’d give you the straight story, and he was thorough. Josh had complete faith in his opinion of the Atchison case. Still, even though Josh had built up some measure of goodwill over the years, he knew he was probably one poorly phrased remark from being kicked out of the autopsy suite.
“Detective Hudson. I figured I’d be seeing you today,” Mason said, peeling off his gloves. He was accompanied by the smell of the autopsy suite, a minty stink with undertones of something darker. Mason reached behind Josh and pulled a plastic bag from the drawer.
It was not the greeting Josh had expected. He chuckled and gestured towards the row of steel drawers. “Really? That’s not good.”
Mason paused, and Josh saw for the first time the bag he was holding, with its clear plastic cylinders and white swabs, already labeled with his name, just like his brother’s box in the evidence room. Hudson, J. And then he understood without asking.
Jesse.
“I’m so sorry, Detective Hudson,” Mason was saying. “I just assumed … someone from the station had contacted you.”
“It’s all right. I understand.” He avoided Mason’s gaze.
Across the room, feet stuck out from one of the stainless-steel drawers. Women’s feet. Josh moved closer, unable to stop his mind. Would he recognize Liana’s feet, after all this time? And where were the bones? Would he know by seeing them that they belonged to his brother?
“Where are—the remains?”
He saw the relief in Mason’s face; here was a question he could answer. “They’ve been sent to the forensic anthropologist up in Kervick County. Dr. Fontaine.”
Josh imagined a laboratory, a woman with a paper face mask running a gloved hand over the bones. He remembered a case a few months before, when caskets from the old part of Ti Bon Ange Cemetery had floated away in the storm, how he and Boone had pried them back from the bayou’s fingers, how he’d heard the bones rattling inside when they’d pulled them onto the shore.
“I don’t have anything with me. Of Jesse’s.” The box of his brother’s things was in his coat closet, sealed up since the day of his mother’s death, an old wound waiting to be split open. “I could get something, though. If you needed me to.”
Mason shook his head. “It’s for you. Mitochondrial DNA, passed through your mother. We can extract it from the bones and then compare it to a sample from a family member.”
Josh opened his mouth and Mason swirled the cotton swab inside his cheek.
“So if you weren’t here to ask about your brother, what brought you here?”
“I’m here to ask for some information as a personal favor.” It was as good a time as any to ask about Aurora.
“I’m listening.”
Josh took a deep breath. “Homicide, back in 1989.”
“Unidentified vic?” He had Mason’s full attention now.
“No, no. The case was closed.”
“So you’re here to question my report?” Mason frowned. “I’d like to think you had better things to do with your time, Detective Hudson.
“That’s the thing, Doc. It wasn’t you. The name on the autopsy report was a Dr. Gentry.”
Josh had done his research. He kn
ew that Doc Mason had worked alongside Gentry in the eighties. He was also willing to bet that Dr. Mason wasn’t a fan of the other medical examiner and preferred working solo.
“Oh, Dr. Gentry. Well, he didn’t last long,” Mason sniffed. “Not everybody has what it takes to do this job. I wouldn’t be surprised if the report is a mess. Gentry was sloppy. But I can’t just review a closed case, Josh. Not without a court order. Those are the rules.”
“I’m not asking you to reopen the case,” Josh said, “just to take a look at the file. She really wants to see it.”
“She?”
“Aurora Atchison. She’s the surviving daughter of the vic.”
Mason inhaled sharply and steadied himself, but not before Josh saw the look that crossed his face. He had some connection to this, to Aurora. Josh was sure of it. He pressed on.
“Listen, Doc. She deserves to know everything. I just want to be able to give her the right information, some kind of peace.”
Mason exhaled, the silence thick between them.
Josh saw something shift in his expression. “I’m familiar with the case. Let me see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Doc. How soon will I know—about the bones, I mean. How long will it take them to find out if it’s Jesse?”
The expression on Doc’s face was oddly tender, and he looked past Josh to the bayou out the window behind him. Josh vaguely remembered hearing about some tragedy in Mason’s own past. Everybody’s carrying something.
“Not long,” Doc said. He cleared his throat. “I am familiar with your brother’s case. I’m so sorry for what you went through. For what you survived.”
Josh nodded. He was lucky to have survived, to have been returned home to his family, to have been spared by the Shadow Man. He should have been grateful, he should have spun his life into something noble, something memorable, some homage to Jesse. Instead he was still chasing ghosts, his own and now Aurora’s. He’d survived, sure, but he hadn’t escaped.
The Evidence Room: A Mystery Page 10