The question took her back twenty years, to the police station. Detective Rossi. He’d picked her up at the morgue, brought her to a windowless room in the station. She’d sat on two phone books to reach the table, waiting for Nana and Papa to pick her up. Detective Rossi had rolled out a stream of paper and handed Aurora a bouquet of Magic Markers.
Draw what you remember, sweetheart.
What had she drawn? It was a blank spot in her memory, something scrubbed clean by time or by some protective mechanism in her brain.
“I don’t think I gave them anything helpful,” she stammered, unable to keep the emotion out of her voice.
“Hey,” he said, putting a hand on her back. “You were just a kid. Nobody would expect you to remember anything. You did exactly what you were supposed to do—you survived. That’s all we can do.”
She knew it was a speech the police probably gave every victim, but it didn’t feel like empty platitudes coming from Josh Hudson.
“Thanks,” she said. She stood and cupped her hands to peer inside the doorway behind them. “So who owns this place now? I’m the last surviving Atchison, right? How come the Realtor didn’t ask me about this house? Looks like a prime slice of waterfront real estate.” She tried to smile, but the expression on Josh’s face stopped her.
“Your dad.”
Her dad. Alive or dead, Wade Atchison had always loomed over her life, a shadowy presence, the person who had killed her mother but let her live; an act of violence paired with an act of mercy. What did it mean? She thought about the question mark that Papa had drawn above her father’s name on the letter in his office.
“Do you think he’s still out there?”
“I think,” he said, “there’s a lot about this case that we don’t know yet.”
That was the understatement of the year. “I think you’re right.” Everything she thought she’d known about Papa, about her past, it was all unraveling, and she was determined to keep up.
“Aurora.” Josh was standing now, pointing to a spot a few feet away from the front yard where they stood. “Look, right there.”
An eye surrounded by scales broke the mossy surface of the water.
“Oh, my God.”
Josh grinned. “Your first gator sighting in the wild since you’ve been back.” The gator slipped beneath the surface.
“I probably should have seen it first, being the granddaughter of the alligator man and all,” she said with a laugh.
“Maybe you’re just a little out of practice.”
“Maybe,” she agreed. Together they watched the place where the alligator had been, but the surface remained smooth and unbroken. There was something otherworldly about the gators, and she understood why Papa had been so captivated by them. And Wade had been hired to kill them, take away the very thing Papa had worked so hard to protect. “I didn’t realize how huge they were.”
“Some can be nine feet long,” Josh said. “My dad used to say they didn’t get that way by being nice.”
His cell phone began to beep.
“Doc Mason,” he told her, holding up a finger. The medical examiner. Aurora had a flash of memory of a stainless-steel table, a man with glasses who helped her. Nana and Papa had shushed her every time she’d mentioned it later, but the memory of the morgue still popped to the surface. Twenty years later, what did Doc Mason remember?
“Great,” Josh was saying into the phone. “She’s with me right now. We can head on over.” He ended the call.
“Doc’s got something for us, from the autopsy,” he told her, the excitement rising in his voice. “He wouldn’t tell me over the phone.” He whistled for Beau. “You ready?”
“Sure.”
He began to trudge back down the path, but Aurora hesitated a moment on the step, looking back at the house.
“Thank you,” she said to Josh’s back.
“What?” He stopped and turned around.
“For helping me,” she said. “You don’t have to do this. I know that. I just really appreciate it.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“This detective stuff—is this what you did before you worked in the evidence room with Samba?” She caught up with him, avoiding a pile of litter at the bottom of the steps.
“No, I worked narcotics. Undercover drug busts, that kind of stuff.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“I guess.”
“So you’re an undercover cop turned evidence expert who alligator wrestles on the side,” she joked. “What else don’t I know about you, Josh Hudson?”
It was a lame joke, but Aurora saw immediately that she had crossed a boundary, taken a step into forbidden territory. It was engraved on his face, written in the tense way he was now holding his shoulders.
“Not much to tell.” The tightness was in his voice as well, the flirty banter was over. He snapped a branch off a tree leaning into the path and tossed it in the direction of the water. “I’m just like you, born here but grew up somewhere else, then made my way back to the bayou.” They reached the car and he held the door open for her. “We’d better hurry over to Doc Mason’s before he gets called out on a case,” he said, a false brightness in his tone.
She wanted to apologize to him, but for what? What had made him bristle, act so strangely? His words haunted her.
You survived. That’s all we can do.
What had he survived?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The last autopsy of the day always made James hungry.
It sounded gruesome, but it was really no different than a businessman looking forward to coming home to a cooked dinner. In James’s world, there was no homemade meal, but there was a slightly wilted Cuban sandwich Ruby had picked up for him waiting in the fridge. Now that the last autopsy of the day was complete, nothing was standing in the way of his dinner.
Except Glenn.
“You’re going to eat? Now?” Glenn lolled against the open refrigerator in the break room, his round face pink and shiny as a boiled ham. He was like an unwieldy piece of furniture that James was always stubbing his toe on. A brand-new tech fresh from school in Utah, Glenn straddled the border between eager and downright annoying. James ignored him and reached for the sandwich.
“Detective Hudson and his guest are on his way here, Glenn,” James said. “Let’s clean up around here a little bit.”
The truth was, James wasn’t even sure if Josh would bring Aurora. He wanted to see her, to be able to somehow convey what her mother had been like, fearless and compassionate. There was so much he wanted to say; he wanted to tell her how the memory of their meeting had echoed in every child that had been on his table since then. Nobody ever warned you in medical school about the kids, about what it was like to see them laid out on your table, baby teeth and friendship bracelets and socks with little ruffled edges. In every one of those patients, James had seen Aurora, wondered where she was, hoped that someone was keeping her safe. He wanted to tell her this. But James was no good at these kinds of things, and so of course he would say nothing.
“Yes?” Glenn was still standing there, a questioning expression on his face.
“Ruby wanted me to give you a phone message from earlier,” Glenn stuttered. “Captain Rush at the PD returning your call. Also, I have the report from our earlier patient, Jasmine Doe? It’s on your desk.”
One of their earlier intakes had been a prostitute, killed by blunt force trauma, her body a testament to a life of pain and struggle. James had let Glenn take the lead on the exam, watching as he’d combed the limp strands of her hair, collecting evidence. He’d cradled her head like a baby. Glenn wasn’t so bad, James decided. Annoying, sure, but at least he cared about his job.
“Thanks. Nice work today, Glenn.” The tech grinned and gave him an emphatic thumbs-up.
In the quiet of his office, James hesitated before picking up the receiver, running his hands over Raylene Atchison’s file. Asking the police to open a closed case was risky; criticizing the
work of another medical examiner was unheard of. And when that medical examiner was Davis Gentry, who was now a bigwig in the state capital, it was tantamount to career suicide. But Raylene had seen something good in James; she hadn’t been wrong about that.
Rush answered on the first ring. “Cooper’s Bayou PD, Captain Rush speaking.” James had never liked Rush. It was one thing to take your job seriously, but Rush had elevated his position at the PD to the level of a royal birthright.
“Doc Mason here,” James said, trying to sound jovial.
“Doc! Great to hear from you. What can I do for you today?”
“I have some questions about an old case.” James would leave Josh’s name out of the conversation; it seemed Josh had enough troubles of his own.
“Sure.”
“The Atchison homicide,” James said. “I was going through the file, and there are some problems here with the report.”
“Hold on, Doc. You’re talking about Raylene Atchison? That case was closed decades ago. Wade Atchison was guilty as sin. Everybody knows that.”
“I’m not so sure. Looking at these pictures—and given some of the evidence, I think there are some real questions about his guilt.”
There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. “Doc, this case is closed. Leave it alone.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Leave this one alone. Now, if you’re looking for something to do, we’ve still got some cases on the docket here.”
“Captain, with all due respect, I think you need to reopen this case. I’m not criticizing the police work on this matter”—James glanced at the file, half the size it should have been—“but we have some real issues here. Wade Atchison may be innocent.”
“Well, it’s not like he’s in jail, right? Wade’s probably whooping it up someplace in California or, hell, working a margarita stand in Mexico. No harm, no foul, Doc. I ain’t authorizing a reopening of this one. Leave this one be.”
The cavalier tone of his voice rattled James. Wasn’t anyone concerned about justice?
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Captain Rush,” James said. “I’m bound by my ethical obligations to raise a question when there is a discrepancy in the autopsy report.”
Rush laughed. “Well, good luck with that at the DA’s office. A twenty-year-old murder? Some girl from down the bayou? They’re gonna laugh you all the way out of your job, Doc Mason. I’m telling you, the case is closed. Now, I have some paperwork to get to, and I’m sure you do as well. Good afternoon.”
James sank, stunned, into his desk chair. Leave this one be. Maybe Rush was just lazy. Some girl from down the bayou. The careless way he said it enraged James, and not just because he was from down the bayou himself. James looked through the glass separating his office from the autopsy bay. In death, they shed all the trappings of their life with their garments, each one deserving the same justice, the same dignity from his office and from the police. James didn’t believe in God, but he knew it wasn’t for him to judge, and it sure as hell wasn’t up to Clarence Rush, either.
Someone knocked softly at the door.
“Just give me a second here, Glenn.”
“I’m sorry—Dr. Mason?”
A young woman edged into his vision. Brown curls, a cherub face. She was taller, she was older, but James would have known her anywhere. There was so much of Raylene in the set of her jaw, the quiet strength in her eyes. Her little bow mouth was set in the same stubborn line that it had been all those years ago.
“Aurora,” he said. Before he could stop himself, he was on his feet and doing what he had done that July evening so many years before, putting his arms around her in a hug. She squeezed back, resting her head on his shoulder.
“It’s good to meet you,” she said, “again. Josh said you might be able to help us?”
“I’m going to do everything I can,” he said, looking over her at Josh Hudson, standing in the doorway. She ran a finger over the open file, the picture of Raylene on the riverbank.
“I’m sorry,” James said quickly. “Looking at these—I can’t imagine.” He flipped over the photograph to reveal the one of Raylene in life, standing in the front of a pontoon boat. “I knew your mother a little bit.”
“You did?”
“I did. She was extraordinary.”
In the doorway, Josh broke the spell. “Doc, you mentioned that you might have some new information?”
“Right, right. Come through here to the autopsy suite for a second.” He hesitated in the doorway. “Aurora, I’m not sure how you feel about seeing these pictures of your mother this way.”
“It’s all right, Doc,” Aurora assured him. “I need to know.”
Something in her voice told him not to argue. “All right, then.”
He led them through and fitted the picture of Raylene up to the light board, then hit the switch so that darkness enveloped them. He pointed to the bruising on her chest, and Josh leaned in to get a closer look. “Can you see that?”
“Finger marks,” Josh said.
“Exactly. Marks from fingers Wade Atchison didn’t have. His hand was mangled in a shrimping injury.”
“So there’s no way he did this,” Josh said.
James snapped the light back on. “Absolutely not. He could have been involved, sure. But he’s not the one who killed Raylene Atchison. Those are someone else’s hands.”
“Maybe he had help,” Josh mused.
“Maybe. I brought my findings to the police department, but they’re calling it a closed case.”
“That’s what they told Papa,” Aurora said. “He had questions too. He asked them to retest some of the old samples, and they refused. So what do we do?”
“There is another option,” James said. “Sometimes, in the case of an unexplained death, families send evidence out to an independent lab. I have details on a few independent places we’ve used before. I’d just need your permission to release it to them for testing, Aurora.”
“Really? It’s that easy? Just tell me where to sign.”
“Ruby has those forms—you can get them from her. How is the rest of the investigation going?”
Josh was inspecting the toe tag on Jasmine Doe, the prostitute from the earlier intake.
“Doc—do you mind?”
“Sure,” James said, confused about who Josh could be looking for. Was he working another case? “She was brought in this morning. Blunt-force trauma. No ID on her yet.” He watched Josh slide the drawer out, curl back the sheet and stare into the remains of her face, then replace the sheet. “You want me to keep you posted?”
“No, that’s fine. What were you saying about forms?”
“Ruby has them up front.”
“Thanks, Doc. We’ll get out of your way. Really appreciate your help on this one.” He shook James’s hand, and Aurora followed him out the doorway, then turned to face James.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank me yet.” He leaned against the stainless-steel table. “There’s an old saying about medical examiners—we have all the answers when it’s already too late. But I’ll do everything I can on this case.”
She grasped his hand, threading her fingers through his own, the flat of their palms pressed together. The tenderness of the gesture startled him. It was as though she saw something in him, the way Raylene had.
“I know,” she said. “And I have a feeling it’s not too late.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
From inside Praise The Lord Donuts, Jesus Christ was watching Josh.
Not just one of Him, but more than Josh could count. On statuettes and candles, and from a lofty perch atop a cake made entirely of chocolate glazed donuts, the bearded man with the crown of thorns regarded him with a sorrowful gaze. Josh hoped that if there really was someone on high running this shit-show, he would look more like Buddha, a laughing fat guy reminding you that life was great. That was a God Josh could get behind, not some emaciated guy reminding you th
at he was strapped to a cross and it was completely your fault.
Raylene Atchison had worked here, alongside Bobbie Sharpless, her best friend, who still owned the place. There was no statement from Bobbie in the police report, but Josh was willing to bet she had some good information, had shared some kind of silent camaraderie with Raylene the way women did with their friends. It wasn’t much of a lead, but he had to work every possible angle.
There was something familiar about the bluetick hound that blocked the doorway to the shop. He eyed Josh briefly and then resumed chewing a catfish head with slow, lazy bites. Josh gave him a scratch behind the ears before gently easing him aside to open the screen door.
“Miss Bobbie?”
She was behind the counter, her arms elbow-deep in a sink jammed full of soaking dirty baking trays, her apron shiny with streaks of grease. Her homecoming days were long past, but beauty still clung fiercely to Bobbie Sharpless. Her bottle-blond hair was swept into a cheerleader’s high ponytail, with a few strands pulled loose around her delicate face. Sweat from the heat of the ovens had rendered her pale pink sundress translucent, revealing the creamy skin of her chest. Bobbie smiled at Josh, the tired smile of a person who wishes she were somewhere else.
“Josh Hudson,” she said, her voice fluttery in a girlish way. “And why is the law coming to visit me today?” Under the bakery’s fluorescent lights, she looked otherworldly, incandescent. Bobbie shook her hands dry and pulled a cruller free of a congealing pyramid behind the counter using pink tongs. “How ’bout a Lamb of God Lemon Crème, Josh? Fresh today.”
“A policeman can’t say no to a donut. Thank you, ma’am,” he said, pulling it free of the tongs with a napkin and taking a bite before wrapping it up. “I just had a few questions for you about Raylene Atchison.”
“Raylene.” Bobbie crossed herself and sank into an orange plastic chair behind the counter. “Now, there’s a name I ain’t heard in years. I heard that her little girl is back in town. I’ve been meaning to come by, bring her some goodies. I guess she ain’t little no more.”
“No, ma’am,” Josh said. “I’m sure she’d love to meet you.”
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