The NightShade Forensic Files: Echo and Ember (Book 4)

by A. J. Scudiere

  Jordan and Jillian had executed protocol—aside from skipping putting “Quarantine” tape across the doorway—and passed a cooler with supplies in and out. Eleri was confident they bagged the cooler in biohazard plastic before they even touched it. Then, her brief interlude with old friends was over and she was left, still stuck in this room with four other people.

  It took three hours before Jordan called her. Eleri answered the phone with a calm-sounding “Hello,” that covered all the panic in her. What if Dana was right? She shouldn’t be. It was just an overkill precaution, but what if she was right?

  “You’re clear.” Jordan had done this before. He knew the best “Hello” was an “all is well.”

  “Me or all of us?”

  “All of you, though Christina has a high white cell count and may be coming down with something. But there’s no evidence of anything nefarious.” There was a smile in his voice.

  “Hallelujah.” She transferred the information to everyone else, though they had already deduced the good news from her reactions. “We can leave?”

  “We are standing right outside the door.”

  Hanging up, Eleri threw the door wide open and hugged first Jordan then Jillian. One deep breath later she noticed the others shaking hands—that was probably the more professional thing to do. She didn’t care.

  Eleri turned to Dana. “Can we get them to check the bodies? We don’t have anything but we should still find out if the bodies did.”

  Dana was nodding. Better to have the CDC on it than to try to run complex and expensive tests at each region. Eleri already had her bag packed and knew Christina did, too.

  “Thank God,” Dana announced skyward before rounding Drs. Brookwood and Abellard up to check out the bodies. Then she told her team, they all had two hours to themselves before they had to regroup. Eleri spent five minutes moving her things back into her old hotel room. The one she had by herself. All by herself. Just setting down her bag felt good. Then she walked right out the front of the hotel into the sunshine, the rest of them be damned.

  She needed to untangle her brain.

  Grandmere said the house she dreamed of was a common dream for those who were called. Though for most the house was empty. Donovan had filled in a few gaps for her, too, since he’d been googling Grandmere, thinking he was gathering information Eleri already knew.

  She hadn’t.

  Grandmere was just Grandmere. She made biscuits and beans in the middle of summer, somehow never breaking a sweat over the oven despite the lack of air conditioning. Grandmere was the one who gave the best hugs. She was better than Eleri’s own mother at soothing a scraped knee or a bee sting. She had old quilts and old furniture, beds and floors that squeaked, and a room filled with knick-knacks.

  Only they weren’t knick-knacks. As Eleri opened her eyes to all the things that had been filed away incorrectly by her childish brain, she saw the voodoo high priestess for the first time. Donovan had a better grip on her Grandmere than she had. Slowly, pieces were falling into place, the family stories fleshing out.

  Grandmere’s daughter, the first Emmaline, was missing. She was a drug addict who’d brought her infant daughter—Eleri’s mother, Nathalie—home and then disappeared. Grandmere had raised Nathalie as her own. To this day, Eleri’s mother called Grandmere “Mama.” But the first Emmaline wasn’t just a druggie who’d disappeared. She was a daughter of the Remy line, drunk on her own magic and mixing it with heroin and hallucinogens. Grandmere believed she was dead, because she’d felt Emmaline’s power slowly fade away over the months after she’d dumped baby Nathalie and run off. That had all been news to Eleri.

  Nathalie had denounced the family magic, but according to Grandmere she carried it in her blood and there was nothing she could do about it. It was in the second Emmaline, Eleri’s little sister, that Grandmere found her successor. Apparently, she’d questioned that possibility with Eleri, but knew it for a fact the first time she held baby Emmaline. Nathalie had given her the what-for when Grandmere had asked to train the girls.

  All of this was news to Eleri. At thirty, she was only just now learning about her heritage. Grandmere had waited for her to ask, and Eleri wished she’d done it sooner. It had all poured out as they walked through the neighborhood. Somehow the Lower Ninth Ward looked beautiful and necessary through Grandmere’s eyes. Though Grandmere loved Nathalie, she laughed at her, too.

  “That girl was always trying to be normal. Hair like this. Clothes like that. Then she went off and married Thomas Hale Eames. Man, she stepped in it with that move! Thought she got herself a nice, normal man. Instead, she doubled down on you girls.” Before Eleri could ask what that meant, Grandmere continued. “She has no clue. But you have to come to this on your own. It can’t be forced or even given. It must be taken. Are you ready?”

  It was the strangest question Eleri had ever been asked, and she’d spent time in a psych ward. But she trusted Grandmere and answered a clear, “Yes.”

  She’d been confused when Grandmere had simply nodded. No great wise advice. No beginning of an education. Only the simple words, “It will come to you now. You already have some, but you have only the very beginnings. You have threads. You will inherit a tapestry. You have much to do.”

  It was then Eleri realized that they had walked a loop and were back in front of Grandmere’s home. Back to the tiny shotgun house where Donovan slept. Each time Eleri started to ask a question, Grandmere told her something else.

  “There’s lobomau in these parts. Your friend doesn’t know enough of his history to stay away from them. They smell it on him. He’s a target.” A sage nod of her head set Eleri as Donovan’s protector.

  Again, as Eleri opened her mouth, Grandmere filled in the words. “It’s in our blood. Can you feel it?”

  And she did. It felt as though her very circulation had a mild electric charge. In the psych ward, the therapists told her it was delusion—the idea that her thoughts might mean more than just an active imagination. They told her the zing of recognition was a misfiring of nerves. Now here it was, and Grandmere asked her if she felt it. Eleri did.

  The call had come in before she could do any more. Then the quarantine. Then Jordan and Jillian, and more questions pressing on her. She dreamed of the house again when she slept those brief hours in quarantine. She dreamed of Leroy Arvad. As though she stood where the killer was, she heard the words, “I’m sorry.” She’d heard the killer’s voice.

  Her feet moved under her, walking through the small town of Alexandria. Her stomach grumbled and she got dinner to go, eating something she didn’t even taste as she walked back to the hotel. Despite the humidity, it felt far too good to be outside and free. If she hadn’t been so caught up in her thoughts, she might have enjoyed it.

  With an active effort as she approached the hotel, Eleri turned her brain back to the case. Despite thorough investigations of all the cars and license plates entering Burt Riser’s neighborhood, nothing seemed out of place. The plates were registered to homeowners, except for one evening when a handful of non-local plates came up. But they all turned into one particular driveway or parked along the street within the boundaries of the entry camera. A house on the main street was having a party. So none of them went up the street and around the curve toward Burt Riser’s house. Five cars did go that way—three with single men in them, one with a single woman, one family with two children in the back, the one visible through the window was a blond girl. In each case, the name on the plate matched the name of a homeowner in that area of the subdivision. They’d even checked driver’s licenses and pulled pictures to match to the drivers. Everything checked out. So how had someone gotten into Burt Riser’s home?

  Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she broke down and called Donovan. She’d sworn she wasn’t going to speak to anyone during the break, but here she was, already back on the case.

  “Why are you calling me?” Donovan’s voice rang over the line. Apparently, he’d had the same thought
s as she had.

  “Because I’m an agent to my very core,” she sighed. “We need to figure out how she got into Burt Riser’s house. Nothing shows on the video from the gate. We also need to check with the other homeowners in the community. It’s pretty ritzy. We should see if anyone has their own security cameras.”

  “Who would still have that footage?” He asked her, into the conversation now. Maybe he was an agent in his bones now, too—his not-quite-human bones.

  “A place like that, your neighbor goes up in flames, you never know. Someone may have kept something.” She shrugged to herself, almost back to the hotel, her food trash still dangling from her fingers. “I’m thinking you and I do it. Jordan and Jillian can finish testing the bodies with Dana.”

  It was a nice idea, but she was no longer in charge. Still, she was a toxicologist. Eleri had a chemistry component to her degree, but this wasn’t a poisoning, it was a possible infectious disease. And, honestly, she was convinced Dana was chasing her tail on that angle. But Eleri was used to being lead, and as such, sometimes you chased your own tail just to cover your butt.

  Donovan had been silent on the phone, but just then he spoke. “Oh shit. I guess I’m like you, too. I’m out on the back patio—being outside—but I’m reading what came in from the analysts. You have to come back here. They found something.”

  17

  “You aren’t going to believe this.” Donovan stood up as Eleri came into the pool area. The place was empty, leading him to think he could have had his unnecessary quarantine outside at least. His only consolation was understanding Dana’s need to not be responsible for spreading a deadly infectious agent. Drs. Jordan Abellard and Jillian Brookwood were already at the morgue locally checking on that.

  “What am I not going to believe?” Eleri walked up, clearly her break had come to an end, too, even though the clock told them they had more time. The job got to you that way. She shoved her trash into the can as she walked by, not even looking at it.

  “The analysts found a connection to Gennida Orlov. Remember her daughter lives out in the general area where the first bodies were found?”

  Eleri nodded and even recited the daughter’s name. “Wilemina Orlov Aroya.” The case was definitely getting to her.

  “Well, she’s married to one Peter Aroya. They married twenty years ago. He’s a bit older than her. We’re still pulling up records of whether they have kids. It initially appeared they did, but the records on the kid isn’t panning out.”

  Eleri crossed her arms. He understood. He hadn’t gotten to the good stuff yet.

  “Peter and Mina Aroya? They’re missing.”

  “What?” Her head tipped forward. “Have you told Dana?”

  “No. It just came in before you got here.”

  “Shit.” She shook her head. She swore a lot for a rich Southern girl, but he liked it. It made her more human. “Let’s go.”

  He agreed, but shuddered at the thought of heading back into the hotel. Or maybe it was about heading back under Dana’s thumb. He didn’t dislike her so much as he simply didn’t know her well enough to like her, and the situation sucked ass. He and Eleri had been in high pressure situations before, but there was something about following a serial killer, about not knowing the why, or the where, that ate holes in his stomach.

  “We still need to find out how she got into Burt Riser’s house.” Eleri commented as they climbed the stairs, a silent, mutual agreement keeping them away from the elevator.

  Dana wasn’t in either the suite or her original single room.

  “Maybe she managed to take her break seriously.” Eleri mused.

  If she had, then she was better at it than any of them.

  Christina was walking up to the door of Dana’s old room. Wade appeared down the hallway, heading their way.

  “Looking for Dana?” Christina asked.

  Donovan refrained from saying “no” just to be ornery. Instead, he nodded.

  “Me too.” Christina missed any expression he might have made and just launched in like they were friends. Then again, maybe she was Eleri’s friend now. “We need to check out how she got into Burt Riser’s house.”

  She kept her voice low, in case the zero other people in the hallway could hear her. Eleri didn’t manage to cover her surprise.

  “I thought of the same thing.”

  Christina shrugged. “It’s logical. If the cars all check out, then either one of his neighbors did it or our suspect got in another way.”

  “I can’t make the fire work.” Wade announced, not keeping his voice low.

  Donovan held in a snort, but asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I’m having a mathematical problem with it. I can’t get the fire to burn as hot as the markings suggest it did without hitting the kind of flashover that burns everything.” He shook his head as he talked. Donovan thought there might not be anything Wade liked better than a puzzle.

  “Are you sure?” Eleri looked at him closely, as though she might read it off him.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. Fire’s not my thing.”

  Christina looked at him oddly and Wade continued. “I do kinematics. Some sub-atomic physics. Nuclear. Lots of trajectory work. I do thermal systems—I mean they apply, but only a little, in the case of actual house fires.”

  Christina looked more and more confused as Wade kept trying to list something to make her understand. Eleri hopped in.

  “Christina’s a math and business person.” Then she turned to Christina. “He studies mechanics mostly—where would a shooter be if a bullet wound up where it did at the angle it did. How fast could a bomb go off and how much of a building could a certain chemical mix take out. But he doesn’t calculate burn rates.”

  “Not on natural and exposed multi-synthetics.”

  As Donovan watched, Eleri gave Wade the you’re-not-helping stare.

  Jumping in, Donovan tried to put it to rights. “You still can’t get it though?”

  “Not accounting for the fact that I don’t know how the fire was started—”

  “Hydrogen.” Christina said.

  But Wade shook his head. “Smells like it. But I can’t come up with a reasonable system to have that be the fuel. Not in a hand-held or backpack style container like this. And I can’t figure out how to get it so hot in some spots and yet not catch the things next to it on fire.”

  Dana walked up behind them then and Donovan checked the time. She was on the dot. It was clear as they headed into the room that the feeling of it bothered all of them.

  Dana closed the door and announced, “Drs. Abellard and Brookwood have done some preliminary work on the two bodies we have here and it doesn’t appear there’s any infectious disease at work.”

  “Wouldn’t you have sensed it? Isn’t that your thing?” Wade asked her, making Donovan glad he hadn’t had been the one to ask it.

  “One would think.” Dana inhaled deeply. “But since I didn’t sense anything, I was concerned. I don’t like these bodies.”

  As if anyone did.

  It was then they all jumped on her, the four of them suddenly shoving ideas at her of what each of them thought needed to be done. Dana held her hands up and for a moment Donovan saw her as a mom, calming her brood. “Okay, morning Christina and Donovan head off to check the truck and the woods.”

  Donovan frowned, thinking he’d be paired with Eleri or at least Wade.

  “You need Christina.” Dana looked at him pointedly. “What if someone sees you? Eleri can shoot them, but Christina can erase it.” Then she turned to Wade. “You and Eleri are heading to Wyoming to check out back yard access to Burt Riser’s house. I want you to try to break in, then do some knock-and-talks in the neighborhood this evening. See if any of the neighbors remembers seeing or hearing anything.”

  Dana looked pointedly at Eleri. “See if you sense anything.” Then she turned to Wade. “Sniff around. The two of you see if you can get us something we can use.” Then, before anyone could say anyt
hing, she continued. “I’ll stay on the lines with the analysts. Donovan got a connection to Gennida Orlov’s daughter in Wyoming. She lived close to the bodies, you say?”

  Donovan nodded, pulling out his phone. “She has lived in both Casper and in Rosedeer.”

  He watched as Dana almost gasped. Leona Hiller’s house was in Rosedeer. Burt Riser was from Casper. And there was someone in the “maybe” list, a schoolteacher who’d been killed over a year ago, who was also from Casper, Wyoming. No coincidences there.

  “Are we looking at Mina Orlov as our killer?” Dana asked him.

  “I don’t see how we can’t be.” He answered, feeling like the case was finally coming together.

  ELERI HAD MANAGED to sleep on the small, chartered plane that had brought her and Wade here. Leaving before the crack of dawn hadn’t changed her attitude about the case. She stood at the back of Burt Riser’s yard, thinking how she hated tall, wooden fences. Chain link was at least climbable. Had they found chain link, they would have declared it a done deal—at least a possibility—and left it at that.

  Nope. No chain link for this neighborhood. Not even the adobe-esque cinderblock that was more common out west. She could pop up and over that. This place went with wood. Who had wood in this humidity? It was already starting to give way and Riser’s house wasn’t that old.

  “Shit.” Eleri felt her hands fist and perch on her hips. The bugs were trying to eat her, and she was grateful it was too early in the season for a full insect-fest, but there were enough to be annoying. She waved her hand in front of her face. “We should have interviewed the neighbors first. We’re going to look like we were breaking into someone’s home.”

  “Technically, we are.” Wade pointed out even as he reached out and tried one of the boards of what had to be a seven-foot fence.

  It was the same fence that was behind all the homes on the street, or Eleri would have questioned the choice. It was solid pickets, no spaces to peek between. If it hadn’t been rotting away to the point they could pull one of the boards aside and see the back of the house, they might have mistakenly broken into the wrong one. The houses did all look a lot alike.