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 cliché 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.
“Well, if that were true, then you would’ve taken her out with a gun like that,” Josh said. “But you didn’t, did you? You put your hands on her, squeezed her neck until she stopped breathing.”
“I told her Wade and I had business to discuss. She wouldn’t leave.”
“And then you threatened Pearline Suggs, a poor teenage girl.”
Royce laughed. “Is that what Pearline told you? She was in on the whole thing. Lionel ain’t a Crumpler. He’s Gentry’s kid. She had her hand out just like everyone else, wanting a big payday. Only she got greedy, just like Wade.”
“So you got rid of her.”
Royce grinned. “Easy with those accusations, Detective.”
“Huh. Well, you should probably know that we found her. She’s at Kervick Hospital right now telling some nice police officer her whole sad story. It’s over, Royce.”
If the news surprised Royce, he didn’t let it show. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. Detective Hudson. I’m just getting started.”
Something moved in the shadows behind Royce, but Josh maintained eye contact until Aurora crept into his peripheral vision, one finger on her lips. She was holding aloft the syringe from her first-aid kit, the one filled with a powerful sedative.
“This is it, Royce. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.”
Aurora plunged the needle into Royce’s arm, knocking him off balance and sending the gun skittering across the floor towards Josh. He kicked it out of reach, and he and Aurora pinned Royce to the ground.
“I hate to see it end this way, Josh,” Royce said, his eyes flickering between Josh and Aurora. “We had so much left to talk about. Raylene. Wade. Liana.”
He spoke her name in a sacred tone, like a promise, and then his body went slack between them, his cowboy hat tipping forward as he slumped to the floor.
CHAPTER FIFTY
They gathered to bury Wade Atchison for the second time on a September afternoon in Ti Bon Ange cemetery. He would be laid to rest next to Raylene.
James stood on the bayou side of the cemetery. He had never been much for funerals, but if Wade were able to observe his own festivities from some celestial perch, he probably would have been very pleased. Wade was one of those people who was greatly enhanced by death. They didn’t call it the great equalizer for nothing. There was no mention of the crimes he had visited on Raylene and others, only a celebration of his innocence for the one that had taken her life.
James shielded his eyes against the sun and turned towards the bayou behind him, its blackberry water creeping slow as sludge through the flooded forest. Aurora steered a skiff towards the graveyard and lifted her hand in a wave. She had decided to stay in Cooper’s Bayou and had already started working at the emergency room at the hospital in Kervick.
James waved back, remembering the little girl in the puffy pink jacket from all those years ago. He’d thought he had lost her; but by some miracle, she had returned to him after all these years. If he looked closer, if the light was just right, he could still see Raylene in the curve of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin.
“There we go.” Ruby climbed down the hillside to his right, holding a wreath of Cajun hibiscus blossoms, a perfect unbroken circle. Together, she and Aurora gave it a push and watched it glide down the bayou, past the Broussard house, until it was carried around the corner and out of view.
* * *
Josh stood in the stern and watched Aurora turn the boat in a wide arc towards the cemetery, on their way to Wade Atchison’s final send-off. In the end, Wade’s crimes had been what had led them to the truth. Aurora had accepted his role and forgiven him the rest. People aren’t just one thing, she’d said, and it was true. He was even allowing himself to believe it of Doyle, who was once again a free man for the time being, running alligator voodoo tours part-time off Burdette Crumpler’s steamboat. Some disgruntled tourists might still label it a scam of sorts, but hey, at least it wasn’t the kind of scam that would put him back in Craw Lake.
All around him, the bayou waters were retreating, exposing the silver-skinned land underneath, littered with soda cans and castoffs from the shrimping boats. The tide had brought Jesse’s bones back to him, and he wondered about all of the other mysteries it still held beneath its shimmering surface.
In the bow of the boat, Aurora glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him. He believed in voodoo now, he told her, since it was what had brought her to him. When he drove to Kervick late at night to pick her up after her shift, he still circled the blocks east of Pernaria Vincent’s beauty shop, peering out the dark windows of the Jeep at the women melting into doorways, scanning the sea of strange faces for a familiar one.
They came around the side of the cemetery, and Josh reached forward to slip his arms around her, their image stretched out in shadow across the shimmering surface of the bayou
.
* * *
The jars containing the souls of her father and mother rattled at Aurora’s feet, and at her side, the canister of Papa’s ashes that had traveled with her from New York. In voudon, death was not a cessation of life but, like everything else, a change from one condition to another, Ruby and Bobbie had explained. Before she’d come to Cooper’s Bayou, she would have dismissed such a statement as backwoods black magic, but now she was beginning to appreciate it the way Papa had.
The transition to life in Cooper’s Bayou had been an easy one. Ernest Authement had been right; once the bayou got a hold of you, it didn’t let go. Aurora had surrendered herself, and where had it left her? In the house on the bayou. Happy. Josh Hudson had come over the week after Gentry’s arrest to help with repairs, and they were spending most evenings together.
She hadn’t decided when she’d return to New York yet. She was still paying rent, and had taken a leave of absence from work. Of course she would have to go back sometime; but for now, she was content in the house on Spotted Beebalm Drive. She was making it her own and had even hung the pictures of Raylene and Wade they’d found in Papa’s things. They had spent enough time in boxes.
Aurora maneuvered the boat between the coiled cypress tree stumps at the entrance to the cemetery. She cut the engine and placed the jars on the railing of the boat. When she opened the jars, she would release their souls together, into the land of the dead.
She felt Josh beside her, felt his fingers slide into the empty places between her own, the warm flat of his palm against hers. She had only been carrying the jars around for the past week, but the pain of not knowing what had happened to her parents had been with her for two decades.
She opened the lids and let them go.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am so grateful to everyone who was a part of this journey. Thank you especially to Kat Brzozowski, for believing in my story and making this book a reality with your generous spirit and insight. Thank you also to my incredible mentor and teacher, Louella Nelson, and the extraordinary members of her writing group, who taught me so much. Mom, Dad, and Alissa, whose boundless love and encouragement kept me afloat, and finally, to the memory of Jayne and Diana, among the stars.
The Evidence Room: A Mystery Page 24