“A medallion?”
“Right. It has the band engraved on one side and a spectral figure on the other. I have a picture of it on my phone—”
“I don’t need your picture,” she told him. “I have one.”
“Boris, Terry and Lauren were all on that shoot, too,” he said.
“Wow. I guess you and Kevin had a talk.”
“I didn’t need to talk to Kevin.”
“That’s right,” she said. Her voice was hard. “You’re the FBI. You know everything. Well, if you know everything, who the hell killed Cindy!”
He didn’t reply.
“I’m telling you that I know Boris. He’s a good guy.”
“Okay.”
“But he’s still under suspicion.”
He didn’t reply.
“Look, I was practically the star of the damned video. I should be under suspicion. Then again, maybe I am,” she said. “Maybe I spend my days with you so that you can break down my defenses and I’ll admit that I’m really a serial killer, or a procurer, or a criminal mastermind...”
“You done?”
“Yes, I’m done. At least you haven’t had Boris locked up yet.”
That could be coming. He didn’t say it.
Silence fell between them. “Houma. I’ve always enjoyed Houma. There’s a super bookstore in Houma,” she said. “Bent Pages. I spent a lot of time there before and after filming on the video. They chose Houma because it’s where Paul McMasters is from, but you probably know that. The city isn’t too big, and it isn’t too small. There’s also a plantation—Houmas House. Beautiful homes and property.”
“I grew up not all that far from Houma. In fact, the owners of that bookstore probably thought that I was a ghoul. They were always ordering books for me when I was still in high school, books on criminology.”
She was silent again and he told her, “You, Boris and Terry aren’t the only people involved with Christy Island who can be seen on that video.”
“Oh?”
“Julian Bennett was there,” he revealed.
“Oh! I—I never saw him.”
“I haven’t seen the video yet. I just learned about this between the time I left and the time I came back for you. We should watch it again—maybe you’ll notice something.”
“I hate watching.”
“Why?”
“I never watch myself on film—not unless I have to.”
“Why?”
“If I’m horrible or see what I should have done differently, it’s too late to do anything.”
“I don’t think you’re horrible very often,” he said.
“Thanks for the faith.” She sighed. “I wish you had that much faith in Boris.”
“Are you sure that you do?” he asked her.
“You need to concentrate on the family. Or on... I don’t know.”
“They’re being watched,” he assured her.
It took a good hour to reach the outskirts of Houma, a bit more to arrive where they needed to be. Avalon remained wary, but not ice-cold. She obviously cared for her friends.
He didn’t want to talk about the fact that their computer techs had found a copy of what he thought she might have read. Not yet. He needed to go over it, word for word, himself.
Eventually, he had to show it to her.
Once they arrived at the Houma police station, Fin introduced himself at the reception desk and then waited a moment for someone to arrive to help them.
It was a serious older man with a cap of snowy white hair who met them, introducing himself as Captain Wayne Tremont. “Glad to see that you’re taking an interest in this. We bring the case up again at just about every meeting, but we never have a new lead. We don’t have any old leads. As I’m sure you’ve heard, all we know is that she was dressed in one of those Roaring Twenties outfits, which wasn’t a surprise. The Speakeasy is still out there. Mort Jones—who owns the place—was devastated about the girl and almost closed. But here’s the thing—he has a fun place. Young people like it. We’re not a big party town like New Orleans. The Speakeasy allows for young adults to get dressed up in something other than the ordinary. You know how it goes. Some people like a nice quiet bar for a Friday night drink and maybe dinner before they go home. Others are itching for a bit of fun on the weekends. Anyway, I told Morty that you might be out. First, though I’m sure you’ve gotten everything on your email, I thought you’d want to see our records on the case. Pictures and notes as they were taken by the detectives on the case. I’m sorry that they’re not here to help you. One died of a heart attack about a year ago and the other moved down to the Caribbean. Says his excitement now is watching a dolphin jump out of the water and he likes it that way.”
“Thank you,” Fin said.
He’d introduced Avalon as a consultant on the case; she’d accepted the introduction and been polite to the captain, but she was keeping quiet.
He led them into a meeting room. Folders had been strewn across a large table, allowing him easy access.
The crime-scene photos were already up on a large screen.
They were grim.
“She’s still a Jane Doe. I’d have thought that somewhere along the line, we might connect her to a missing-persons case, but it hasn’t happened,” the captain told them.
Avalon stood by his side, staring at the screen. “Are you okay with this?” he whispered. She seemed a little pale but said nothing and displayed no emotion. Fin gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze of support.
There hadn’t been a lot left of the young woman. The flapper outfit was in shreds, barely covering her body.
Much of her flesh was gone; the skull remained, and the bones had detached.
“She was floating in the bayou. A shrimper called it in.”
“Where might we find the medical examiner’s report?” Fin asked.
The captain pointed to one of the folders.
The body had been too degraded for the medical examiner to determine if there had been a sexual assault. Knicks on rib bones suggested that she had been stabbed. The state of decay had prevented him from knowing if she’d had defensive wounds.
There was an image of what the woman might have looked like, done by a forensic artist from the victim’s skull. She had been in her late twenties or early thirties, dark-haired, pretty.
“How could no one know who she was?” Avalon whispered.
“She might have been working the streets,” Fin told her. “Even in Houma. And when young women are working the streets, friends are sometimes afraid to come forward. Even when the police announce that there will be no retribution. And they don’t always keep in contact with their families. She might have been from anywhere.”
“What do you think?” Captain Tremont asked. “I’ve read up on that murder you’re working out on Christy Island. In my mind, that island should have fallen under the jurisdiction of Terrebonne Parish, but... I guess lines were set long ago and it’s not like there was really any kind of law out there...or, until now, any kind of law needed.” He shrugged. “But if you need anything from us, anything at all, you let us know.”
“I will, and thank you,” Fin said.
He sat down to read the files. Avalon sat, as well. She didn’t seem to be able to stop staring at the screen.
“Was she found with any jewelry?” she asked Captain Tremont.
He shook his head. “If she was wearing any, it’s down in the muck, or in the gullet of a seabird of a fledgling gator, I imagine. I guess we’re lucky that...well, that she wasn’t more broken up.”
Fin looked up at Captain Tremont. “What about this restaurant and bar? The Speakeasy. Do they have 1920s displays, any kind of a place where a murderer might have displayed her?”
The captain thought about that.
“Well, when you go in, t
o get to the bar, you go down a little staircase so that it really looks like you’re in the bowels of a 1920s basement. There are sofas and chairs, and it’s dark and the bartenders dress in suspenders and cotton shirts. The women working—bartenders and waitresses—wear flapper dresses and bands with feathers in their hair. But for display...she wasn’t displayed. She was lost in the bayou.”
“How close is this place to the water?” Fin asked.
“Oh, right there. Some of the fishing and shrimping boys like to tie up at the dock and go in for a drink before heading in for the night. There’s a path—just dirt and gravel—that leads from the dock right up to the place.” He hesitated. “It’s estimated that she was in the water from two to four weeks before she was found.”
Fin studied the files a while longer; he was surprised that Avalon quit staring at the screen and started reading through them, as well.
“You’ll excuse me,” Captain Tremont said. “Take your time—all you need.”
There didn’t seem to be much more that he could discover. The detectives had questioned customers, workers and everyone they could think of. They had sent the forensic artist’s likeness for the victim across the country, to be compared to missing-person reports.
They had done all the right things.
But they had nothing.
He looked over at Avalon. She stared back at him, shaking her head.
“How do people do these things?” she whispered.
He stood, shaking his head, then gathered the folders, leaving them in a neat pile. He looked at her. “Let’s go see this place. The Speakeasy.”
She nodded. “Do you really think this can relate? I mean, she was probably dressed as a flapper to go to the bar. We don’t know if she was...assaulted when dead. She was found in the bayou, possibly stabbed. She might have been... Say she was a sex worker—out with a john who got carried away. Maybe she made him angry. This could be nothing—”
“It could be nothing. You didn’t tell me—are you friends with any of the members of Pauly’s Pariah?”
She shook her head. “No. Not really. They were fine, they were nice...and I do like their music. But... Hold on. Paul did give me his phone number and wanted me to know I was welcome backstage if I happened to be in a city where they were playing.” She made a face. “He...um. He was nice enough, and he asked me to join him for dinner, but I was uncomfortable. He’s married and it would have felt wrong—it was just him, not the group. It might have been just dinner, but... I don’t know. I made an excuse. I do have his number.”
“Will you try calling him?”
She nodded. “I will, but...”
“I don’t know what we’ll get. Maybe nothing.”
She nodded. “And out on the island...”
“I don’t know. But if we don’t just keep going, we’ll never get where we hope to go.”
She put through the call. She greeted the singer and reminded him who she was, made a bit of friendly small talk. Then she looked at Fin and mouthed, What do I say?
“Tell him the truth—and that we won’t take much of his time.”
She brought her phone back to her ear, but apparently, Paul McMasters was talking to her. She was nodding, as if he could see her, and she said softly, “Yes, and thank you, and I’m so sorry, that’s why I’m calling. I’m working with an agent on the case and...long explanation, but we won’t take much of your time, if you could just spare a few minutes...yes, we’re in Houma now. We can be there in a matter of minutes.”
McMasters talked on the other end for a few moments and she hung up.
“Apparently, he’d already heard about us. Well, you. His agent contacted him because someone high up had contacted him, and...anyway, he was expecting to see an agent. And he’s happy to see me.”
“Great. Thank you.”
She looked at him. “You had contacts reach out already.”
“They may or may not have worked. We would have had to have gone through red tape and worse—time—to arrange a meeting.”
“Oh. Okay. Aren’t you going to ask me where we’re going?”
He smiled. “I’m the FBI, remember? I already have an address.”
Fin had to admit that while he loved music and had been to his share of concerts, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Pauly’s Pariah had become a popular group. He had no idea how much money they made, if that might have changed an easygoing musician, brought about a lot of security, or what.
But Paul McMasters was staying at his mother’s house. It was a fair-size old farmhouse, but not a mansion by any means.
The man was on the front porch when they arrived. He came down the steps to greet them, giving Avalon a hug when she emerged from the passenger’s seat and then coming around to shake Fin’s hand. He had shoulder-length light brown hair that was well kept, a slim, wiry build and an easy manner.
“I’m not sure how I can help you, but, hey, come on in. My mother makes the best Arnold Palmers in the state and beyond.”
In the house, they met his mother, an attractive woman in her late fifties or early sixties, his teenage sister and his grandfather.
They were offered lunch.
It was nice to see that while Paul McMasters might be all the rage on stage, he was simply Paul when he was home, and he seemed to appreciate his family. He explained that his wife’s dad had just had surgery, and she was over in Arkansas with him for a few days.
There was no polite way to refuse sandwiches and fruit salad.
Not a bad idea, really. They needed to eat.
But the McMasters family also knew that Fin was FBI and that he and Avalon had come for a reason, even if his little sister seemed to be more in awe of Avalon than she was of her brother.
They sat outside on the patio at a tiled table with a little umbrella alone after interacting with the family—all had discreetly left the table.
“So, tell me. How can I help? I didn’t know Cindy West,” he told Fin. “But I do know Boris and Terry and Lauren—and Avalon. We were still starting out and, in this day and age, you have to have video,” he said. “We made a good team—the product was important to all of us. We didn’t have a big budget, and Boris wasn’t demanding. But we were legitimate! And we wound up with a backer, so everyone wound up being paid fairly. And that video helped bring us to the public.” He sat back, serious as he looked at Fin. “Sorry, that was round-about. I just mean that I can’t see how I can help, but I’m more than happy to. This hurt people who were good to me.”
“We’re being careful about what goes out to the press,” Fin said. “But, in truth, we’re afraid that there is a serial killer at work. A young lady was left in a similar way in Mississippi—killed, cleaned, dressed up and left at a historic estate. We’re afraid that a victim found near the Speakeasy might also have been someone this killer—or killers—managed to coerce away with them. In this instance—”
“The Speakeasy Jane Doe,” McMasters said. “I read about it in the paper—they sent out a picture of what she might have looked like a while back. I remember—my mom still has the paper delivered. I remember seeing it on the counter. So sad. You know, we played at the Speakeasy when we were starting out. Have you been there yet?”
“No,” Fin said. “But we will take a ride out there.”
“The owner is a super nice guy—promised him we would do a ticketed event for him sometime in the future. And we will. We never forget the people who helped us when we were a garage band.” He paused to laugh. “We really were a garage band. Or a carriage-house band, I guess. We used to practice in what is now the garage and was once the carriage house and barn. It’s a bit from the house—that kept my parents from going insane when we started playing. Especially when we decided we were getting good enough to test out a few amplifiers.”
“How did you find working with Boris?” Fin asked. He saw Aval
on’s eyes narrow, but she didn’t say a word.
“Boris?” Paul said. “Love him. I don’t believe we’d be where we are now if it wasn’t for that video. Don’t get me wrong—I have faith in our music. But there are many talented people out there, and some will be able to go farther than others with their talent because of luck or good fortune...or good decisions. That video was a chance for all of us. He was amazing to work with.” He was quiet for a minute and then sighed softly. “If he’s in trouble now—I know that he largely financed the movie he was making himself—I’d be more than happy to help him out. So would the band.” He smiled and turned to Avalon. “And this lady was perfection. Well, I can imagine you know that, if you’ve seen the video.”
“He hasn’t seen the whole video,” Avalon said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know about it until earlier,” Fin said.
“Bring it up on your phone. I mean, well, we have a small screening room here now, but if you just want to get a quick look, you know. Pull up YouTube. It’s still the first video that will come up under Pauly’s Pariah.”
Fin nodded, taking out his phone, and did as had been suggested.
It was a good music video; the fantastic with the realistic. A historic home had been used with the set design to create the appearance of a castle. Paul McMasters, singing, seemed to be enjoying the good in life, but longing for the most important thing—the right person with whom to share it. Avalon was in the dream sequence. Beautiful in a flowing ballroom gown, she danced with him in a sweeping circle until he simply held her at the end and the dream sequence faded into reality. Then there was a shot of the band on stage...and the extras dancing by the stage.
Julian Bennett was in that scene, dancing with a half-dozen young women to a different tempo, hot and heavy.
“Avalon was super—she taught me to do the Viennese waltz for that segment,” McMasters said. “And she didn’t whine once when I stepped all over her.”
“Avalon is remarkably talented,” Fin said. The sequence had been amazing, and she’d embodied a sense of beauty and fantasy.
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