A Thorn Among the Lilies (4 page)

“Well, let's see,” Madame Crystalle said. “I see you are smart in school. This is good. I also see you know it. This, not so good. You would have more friendships if you didn't always act so sarcastic.”

Carry's face reddened. She hated getting lectured the best of times. Now she was being lectured by a psychic whom she got as a birthday present.

Madame Crystalle noticed Carry's reaction and quickly covered. “It's okay, though, you have good heart. See these cup cards? Cups represent love and compassion. You have many. So your heart is in right place. But . . .”

“But what?” Carry asked.

“You get very lonely at times,” Madame Crystalle said.

“No, I don't,” Carry said back snarkily.

“You cover it with your sarcasm or your quick wit. But you wish you had more friends. You also long for a boyfriend.”

We all sort of giggled at that and Carry's face went completely purple. This was turning out to be the best birthday present ever. I started thinking for my birthday I'd get Carry a psychic reading.

“Well, I have good news for you,” Madame Crystalle said. “I see a boy in the immediate future. Someone more than just a friend.”

“He won't be nineteen and drivin' a red Pontiac Sunbird, will he?” my mother asked, referring to a boy we once caught with Carry in the backseat of a car. “Actually, he'd be twenty now.”

“No, but he will be older than you, Caroline. And he'll probably have dark hair. Brown, black, maybe a dark red. And don't worry about your mother. See this card here?” She tapped the Queen of Wands. “This is your mother and she's sitting right beside one of your cup cards. Which means she will be approving of your love choices from now on. So this new boy for sure your mother will be accepting of him. But, I see at first you won't trust her to be, and you will try to hide your relationship. Rest assured this is unneeded. Your mother will not try and sabotage anything.”

There was a little more after that, but that was the main part. That was the part that made Carry happiest (and most embarrassed). I thought it must be weird, living her life now, just waiting for this boy to drop into it who is going to become her new boyfriend.

By the time we left Madame Crystalle, I noticed a change in every one of us. Carry was in deep thought, probably about this new boy. My mother was in deep thought, probably about the stuff she was told that made absolutely no sense to anyone. Uncle Henry had changed because he found out he was allergic to incense. I was quietly cursing myself because I forgot to ask Madame Crystalle about the frog standing outside her shop, and Dewey had changed because he found out that, along with rugs and cats, there were also Persian people.

C
HAPTER
4

T
hat night, Leah lay in bed unable to sleep. Her encounter with the psychic kept rolling around in her mind. What happened earlier had affected her more than she had thought. She didn't really believe in psychics or the ability to “see the future” at all; in fact, she normally referred to it as “hocus-pocus gobbledygook.” But her ad hoc session with Madame Crystalle had been so intense, Leah couldn't help but be touched by it.

The problem was, the woman didn't make any sense. Leah was a logical person, and there was no logic in what she'd been told. It was just a bunch of sketchy details without any definition. And to top it off, Leah kept going back to the fact that she had
told
Madame Crystalle on the phone she was a detective. That part made it a little too convenient for Leah's liking.

Leah remembered every word the psychic told her. She'd gone over the words at least fifty times in her head, and there was nothing there she could do anything with. None of it made any sense. Some of it was downright ridiculous and funny. A maniac tailor who deprives people of their sight. Now
there's
an image that's really hard to conjure up in your imagination. Something about finding a body in darkness with writing on it. The psychic had been unable to say anything about the writing at all.

Yet, writing on a body found in darkness is pretty specific. They aren't just things you pull out of your sleeves. So this was where Leah was torn into possibly believing the woman and attempting to follow up on the clues. But really, what clues did she have? She didn't even have a name or place for a victim. Or any kind of context to put this into.

It was the last piece of evidence Madame Crystalle had given Leah that made Leah consider trying to follow the sparse path of clues; it was the one thing that was tangible and possible to get something out of. The words on the sign: W
ELCOME TO
G
RAY
. . .

It was a partial on a road sign.
That
should be traceable.

This road sign was something Leah might be able to find. But so what if she did? She still had no idea what it meant.

Did she even
want
to know what it meant? And sweet Jesus, if Police Chief Ethan Montgomery ever found out she was hunting around on a case with the sparse evidence she had been given from a psychic, he'd have a heyday with it.

It would probably be the day before Leah had to start looking for a new job.

“I guess you ain't goin' to get much sleep tonight,” she said to herself, deciding her best course of action at this point was to get up and go fix herself a mug of warm milk.

Sliding her feet into her slippers, she stood from her bed and slowly padded her way down the hardwood floors into the kitchen. Opening the fridge, she pulled out a carton of milk. She closed the fridge door and immediately her pulse went up twenty notches and she nearly jumped right out of her slippers. Hank had moved beside the opened door while she was peering in the fridge.

“God, Hank, you tryin' to give me a coronary?”

“Sorry. I guess I'm a little sneaky in my old age. I just heard you walkin' round and thought I'd come check on you, make certain you were all right.”

“Oh,” she said, almost in a sigh. “I'm okay. It's just that psychic has me in a bit of a tizzy.”

“I can imagine. The woman was pretty intense.
I
was almost left in a tizzy, and it wasn't even me she was talkin' to!”

Leah pulled a pot from one of the cupboards and put it on the stove. She turned on the burner and poured in some milk. “Would you like some warm milk, too?” she asked Hank.

“Hmm. Actually, that sounds like it might just hit the spot. Thank you.”

Leah poured more milk into the pot and returned the milk carton to the fridge. Then she came back and started stirring the milk with a spoon as it simmered on the burner. “So,” she asked, “seriously. Why
are
you up?”

“Oh, you know me,” he said. “I don't sleep at the best of times. And your sofa is comfortable and all, but it ain't no bed in no five-star hotel room.” He laughed.

“I'm sorry,” Leah said. “I wish we had somewhere else to put you.”

Hank raised his hand. “No, no, I'm not really complainin', I'm just bein' funny. I don't mind the sofa at all. So, about that psychic lady—you gonna act on anythin' she said?”

“Well, that's just it. Even if I wanted to do somethin' based on what she told me, she didn't actually
say
anythin' I could possibly use to do anythin'.”

“Well, she told you folk are in danger. She told you someone is blindin' them and that he's actin' like some maniac tailor, which could mean lots of disgustin' things when I think it over.”

Leah set two mugs on the counter, took the pot of milk off the burner, and carefully tipped it to fill them with the now-warm milk. “Is that what
you
heard?” she asked Hank. “Because that's not what
I
heard. I just heard a bunch of half-baked facts all rolled together.” She handed one of the mugs to Hank.

“Thank you,” he said. “That's because you chose not to try and form the bits and pieces of information she gave you into somethin' real. You're too analytical. Sometimes you need to fill in the blanks yourself so that you can create—or at least finish—the story. Your story might not always be the right one—fact is, most of the time it probably isn't—but it gives you a place to start. And as you go you can change your story as circumstances change and you gather more facts.”

Leah took a sip of her warm milk. It felt good going down her throat. “Ethan would kill me if he knew I was even considerin' doin' this.”

“Yeah, well, Ethan owes you a lot. He knows that. Hell, half this town knows that. Take chances, Leah. It's the only way in life to push yourself to your full potential, and if we don't all reach our full potential, what's the point in being here?” He took a sip of his milk. “This is really good milk, by the way.”

“It's just milk warmed up in a pot, Hank.”

“Still really good.”

“Thanks.”

A silence followed while Leah thought about what the psychic had told her. “So, say I
do
try and follow this up, Hank. Where the hell do I start? The only thing she gave that's even slightly possible to research is a partial on a road sign.”

“Then that's where you start. The road sign. Then at least you'll know what town she's talkin' 'bout.”

Every bone in Leah's body was telling her not to do this, telling her that following the scattered advice given to her from a Main Street psychic was a dumb idea. And yet, she knew, deep down in the pit of her gut, that was exactly what she was going to do. So she may as well stop fighting it and just give in and get it over with.

“What made you so smart, anyway?” she asked Hank.

“Watchin' you grow up,” he replied.

“We both know what I'm gonna do,” she said.

“Yep, you've decided already,” Hank said.

Leah sighed. “I guess I have. Sometimes I hate my gut instincts.”

“Your gut instincts are what make you good at your job.”

Turned out, this time, she didn't have to listen to any instincts.

C
HAPTER
5

T
he body was discovered washed up on the shore of Willet Lake in the northwestern part of Alvin at approximately 6:55
A.M.
Tuesday, just as the sun was rising. Leah had calls from the station being forwarded to her house, and she took the initial report from a witness named Luanne Cooper. Luanne was a photographer who just happened to be up early in Willet Park. She was taking pictures of winter birds and anything else she could find worthy of picture taking. Willet was a pretty little park, and its lake probably the prettiest in all of Alvin. With everything near on frozen and crystalized, it looked even prettier than usual.

When Leah asked why Luanne was in the park so early, she replied, “I don't want pictures of people, I want pictures of nature. And by eight, even in the winter, people are out doin' stuff. Walkin' their dogs, walkin' their spouses, just goin' for walks. Gettin' in the way of all my good shots.”

Leah asked her to remain at the site but not to touch anything. “If any other member of the public shows up before I do, please make sure they stay well away from the crime scene. The last thing we need is someone corruptin' any evidence we might have.”

Luanne agreed to keep an eye on things.

Leah called Chris, waking him up from what must've been a helluva good dream to make him so cranky. “Why the hell you callin' me at not even yet seven?” he asked.

“We got ourselves a body. Washed up in Willet Lake. Get yourself in uniform and meet me there. Sooner is better.”

“All right. I'm up. I'm comin'. I don't suppose there's any chance of there bein' any coffee when I arrive?”

“Just get there,” Leah said, and hung up the phone.

It took her under twenty minutes to get dressed and make the drive to the park. It took Chris an extra ten or so before he arrived. By the time Leah got there, she could see what Luanne meant about the public starting to come into the park. They'd already begun encircling the crime scene, although Luanne had done a good job keeping them away from anything important.

The body was a woman who had washed up beneath one of the two wharfs that stretched out into the lake. She was lying facedown on her stomach with her arms outstretched, one in the sand on the beach, the other waving in the water. She wore a white collared shirt that floated ghostly. Her blond hair was long and full and matted with algae. From where Leah stood, it looked like the dead woman was wearing a long skirt. Leah couldn't see her feet in the murky water's depths, but she imagined that an outfit like this would probably go with heels, and that heels or any other kind of slip-on shoe would've likely fallen off into the lake.

Leah immediately cordoned off the surrounding landscape with police tape, giving the crime scene a very wide berth. She wanted to keep the public as far away as possible. It was now going on eight and already over a dozen or so had collected to see what all the fuss was about.

Luanne Cooper, a short, slender woman with cropped, spiky, deep red hair and bright green eyes, stood to one side with a Canon camera slung over one shoulder and a camera bag over the other. She had red lipstick that reminded Leah of Christmas. Her ears were full of hoops (four in each); the last two on both ears had crosses hanging from them. The camera had a pricey telephoto lens attached to it. At least from what Leah knew about cameras, she guessed it to be pricey.

Leah tried to pin an age on Luanne, but it was tough. Likely, she was in her late twenties or possibly early thirties.

Chris brought the CSI kit and Polaroid camera from the trunk of his squad car and took pictures of the body from every angle. Then he scraped the fingernails and toenails, and bagged each in separate evidence bags.

Then, while Chris interviewed Luanne, Leah tried to discern different shoe prints in the muddy clay and sand around the wharf. It was hard to make out anything clearly because the location was well trodden. There were, however, four different shoe prints that looked like they'd pressed into the ground fairly recently. Leah made a cast of those, even though there was really no reason to believe that this was the place the body was thrown into the lake. It could've easily floated to this location on its own.

Leah took a look at Luanne Cooper's feet. She was wearing brown boots with a slight heel. “Can you carefully walk down here, along the side of the wharf where there are no footprints?” Leah asked her when Chris had finished taking her statement.

Luanne gave her a look that sort of questioned why she was being asked this, but she did it anyway.

Sure enough, the imprint her shoe made matched one of the fresh ones Leah had just taken a cast of. “I thought you told Officer Jackson you only came to the edge of the grass?” Leah asked.

“I did.”

“Then why does your shoe print exactly match these ones down here?” Leah asked. “You came down here, Luanne.”

Luanne's face reddened. “Okay, maybe I took a closer look. But I didn't
touch
anything.”

Leah eyed her suspiciously but decided to take the woman at her word. She led her outside the police tape and asked her to stay back while they finished examining the scene.

Having taken Luanne's statement and gotten all the DNA data he could, Chris said to Leah, “We gotta turn the body over so I can photograph her from the front.”

Officer Chris Jackson was a tall black man who had at least three inches on Leah. He started with the Alvin Police Department a dozen or so years back, and when he did there had been an uproar on account of his skin color. Since then, he had proved himself and become somewhat of an icon in the community.

Leah helped turn the body over and almost instantaneously she and Chris gasped. What they saw made Leah's stomach clench. The woman's eyes had been stitched shut with thick black thread. Chris's eyes met Leah's, but neither said a word. Most of the view of the body was blocked from onlookers by the wharf. Leah was thankful for this. Keeping things contained made her job a lot easier.

“Look at the buttons on her shirt,” Leah said.

The man's white shirt was buttoned up wrong. The bottom button was in the second to last hole, like it had been buttoned up in a hurry or by someone who simply didn't care. The water made the shirt almost translucent and Chris noticed something else.

“There's something written on her chest.”

“I'll cut the buttons off so we don't destroy any possible prints.”

“Before you do, let me take some pictures.”

Just like before, Chris took pictures of the body from all different angles.

“Okay, go ahead,” he said.

Leah took the scissors from the CSI kit. Carefully, not letting her fingers touch the buttons, she cut around them, removing them from the shirt. They were dropped into an evidence bag and tagged. Chris opened the shirt enough to read the words running across the dead girl's bosom in waterproof Magic Marker. It said:

 

 

“What the hell does
that
mean?” Chris asked.

“What the hell does
any
of this mean?” Leah asked back.

That part of it was exactly as the psychic said it would be. Astonishment took her breath away for a moment. It was impossible and yet . . .

She was brought back to the present by the clicking sound of Chris taking more pictures.

Leah noticed a bulge in the single front pocket of the victim's shirt. Using the tongs from the CSI kit, she extracted a cross, roughly hewn from what appeared to be hickory. “Looks like she came bearin' gifts,” Chris said.

Dropping the cross into an evidence bag and tagging it, Leah and Chris pulled the body completely out of the water. Leah had been right; if the body had had shoes on when it entered the lake, they were long gone now.

Leah looked at all the evidence they had collected. Ultimately, it would be sent down to the forensics lab in Mobile, where the experts would look at it and send back their reports. Alvin simply wasn't big enough to have its own crime lab. At least not yet. The population was growing, though. In the last year, it had seen its population jump near on a thousand people to its current number of approximately 5,300. Good thing there wasn't anything for miles around it. It had room to grow.

Leah looked at the body from the other side and immediately saw the cause of death. “Well, she didn't die from drownin',” she said.

Chris came around. “Entry wound that small couldn't be more than a .22, especially considerin' there's no exit wound.”

“Which means we're gonna have to wait on the medical examiner before we get that round back. See any brass anywhere?”

Chris examined the immediate area. “No brass. No blood splatter. I don't think she was killed here. 'Course he could've been smart enough to bring her into the lake a ways before making the shot and take the bullet casing with him.”

“Let's assume that's just too much work for our guy. Then you reckon she was killed somewhere else and dumped here, or just killed somewhere else on the lake and she floated here?”

Chris shrugged. “No way of knowin'.” He was trying for fingerprints on the buttons and the cross.

“Get anythin'?” Leah asked.

“Nothin'. He must've worn gloves.”

“Try the eyelids.” Taking prints off of skin was tough, but not impossible. And even if you got them, trying to match them was tough, but again, not impossible. “Really?” Chris asked.

“It's worth a try.”

Chris tried each eye and looked up at Leah. “Nothin'.”

“It was still worth a try.” Leah noticed the number of spectators was growing at an amazing rate. “We need to get this body out of here. Wait, what's that around her mouth?”

Chris took a sample of it and bagged it. “It looks like glue residue, probably from duct tape. Whoever did this didn't want anyone to hear her screamin'.” He scraped some off and put it in an evidence bag, where it joined the other bags.

Leah went up to the edge of the road and examined the tire tracks. Four of them looked recent. She made casts of those four.

The medical examiner from Satsuma pulled up to the edge of the lake. “Look at that,” Chris said. “The Death Mobile arrives right on time!” Leah had called Norman Crabtree, the closest medical examiner to Alvin, just after calling Chris this morning. Norman walked down to the shore and took a quick look at what he was dealing with. “Those eyes are somethin' else,” he said.

“You can say that again,” Chris said.

“I ain't seen nothin' like it. And I been doin' this a long time.”

The body was toe tagged and put in the back of the Death Mobile. An expression Leah hated more and more every time Chris used it.

The winter sun was just starting to fill the easterly sky and casting everything in an array of pinks and yellows. All Leah could think of was how much of a stark contrast that sky was compared to the eyes of the victim she had just seen loaded into the back of the Death Mobile and driven away, the sunlight winking off its back bumper and the smell of fresh winter flowers filling the air.