Revenant (2 page)

“If you jump to a conclusion, Ms. Lynch, please don't put it in print. There are fools out there who believe what they read in the newspaper.”

“Thanks, Avery.” I was almost relieved to have him back to his normal snarly self.

“I'll stop by and talk to Brandon,” Mitch said. “And you can decide if you want to ride to Angola with me. We could get there by three, back by seven or so.”

“Thanks. I'll think about it.” When I glanced toward my truck, I saw that Riley had returned to his desk job. The forensics team had done its work and was bagging the bodies. I'd seen hundreds of the black, zippered bags, but they still left me feeling empty. Would the families of the victims find peace or more horror? I got in my truck and eased into the moving traffic jam that was the highway.

I
nstead of going to the paper, I detoured to city hall. Biloxi was an old sea town. Fishing was once the heart and soul of the settlement, and the preponderance of business development was right along the water on Highway 90 or on Pass Road, which paralleled the coast through two counties. The population was French, Spanish, Yugoslavian, German, Italian and Scotch-Irish with a smattering of Lebanese. The Vietnamese were the newcomers who had earned an uneasy place in the fishing industry. The population was predominantly Catholic, a fact that figured into how the gravy train of state funding was distributed for many years. With the power base situated in the Protestant delta, the Gulf Coast sucked hind tit. The casinos changed all of that. The coast now had the upper hand. King Cotton and the rich planter society of the delta were passé.

Highway 90 still had remnants of the gracious old coast I remembered. Live oaks sheltered white houses with gingerbread trim and green shutters. There was an air of serenity and welcome, of permanence. I drove through one such residential area and then turned onto Lemuse where city hall was located.

When I asked for the records of building permits issued in the 1980s, I discovered that Detective Boudreaux's minion was one step ahead of me. A police officer had just copied those documents. They were right at hand, and I read with interest that a small addition had been built onto the Gold Rush in October 1981. The parking lot had also been expanded and paved. The five victims had to have been murdered prior to that. I had a place to begin looking and I sped back to the paper.

The newsroom had fallen into the noon slump. Only Jack Evans, a senior reporter, and Hank Richey, the city editor, were still at their desks, and I hoped they wouldn't see me. They were journalists of the old school, and like me, they'd found themselves employed in an entertainment medium. I slunk past the newsroom to my office and was almost there when I heard Jack yell.

“What's wrong, Carson? Vomit on your shirt?”

I couldn't help but smile. Jack was awful, and I liked him for it.

“I just need a little nip from that bottle I keep in my desk.” It wasn't a joke.

“How bad was it?”

I shook my head. “More strange than gruesome.”

“Mitch is talking to Brandon right this red-hot minute. I hear Joey got some good shots of the skeletons.” Jack grinned. “Mitch will have to trade his soul to keep Brandon from printing that.”

“I warned him.” I sat down on the edge of Jack's desk. He was a medium-built guy with a head of white hair and a face that tattled all of his vices. In Miami I'd worked with a top-notch reporter who reminded me of Jack. We'd once rented a helicopter to cover some riots. It had been both harrowing and exhilarating.

“So, what did you see?” Jack asked, patting his empty shirt pocket where his Camels had once resided.

When I'd first started as a journalist, this was a game that had honed my eye. “Five skeletons, all uniform in size, buried side by side. I'd say they died around the same time because of the dirt and the decomposition, and also because the parking lot was paved in 1981.” I frowned, thinking. “There were hair combs beside each skull, which would indicate female gender.” I looked at Jack and decided to risk trusting him. “Not for Brandon to know, but their ring fingers were missing.”

“A trophy taker,” Jack said, leaning forward. “This is going to be a big story, Carson. If you play it right, you could climb back up on your career and ride out of this shit hole.” He shook his head, anticipating my question. “I'm too old. Nobody wants a sixty-year-old reporter. But you could do it.”

I felt the numbness start in my chest. My precious career. I stood up. “If I wanted a real career, I wouldn't be in this dump.” I realized how cruel it was only after I'd walked away. Well, cruelty was my major talent these days.

I grabbed a notebook off my desk and headed to the newspaper morgue, a type of library where newspaper stories were clipped and filed. The murders had to occur before October 1981, so I started there with the intention of working backward through time. October 31, 1981. The front-page photo was of children dressed in Halloween costumes. It was still safe to trick-or-treat then.

Mingled with the newspaper headlines were my own personal memories. I'd been a junior at Leakesville High School that year. I'd met Michael Batson, the first boy I'd ever slept with. He had the gentlest touch and genuine kindness for all living creatures. Now he was a vet, married to Polly Stonecypher, a girl I remembered as pert and impertinent.

The microfiche whirled along the spool. It gave me a vague headache, but then again, it could have been the vodka from the night before. I stopped on a story about Alvin Orley, the former owner of the Gold Rush. He was handing over a scholarship check to the president of the local alumni group of the University of Mississippi. I calculated that was right before his involvement in the murder of Biloxi's mayor. I noted the date on my pad.

Cranking the microfiche, I moved backward through October. It was at the end of September when I noticed the first photos of the hurricane. Deborah. It had been a Category Three with winds up to 130 miles per hour. She'd hit just west of Biloxi, coming up Gulfport Channel. Those with hurricane experience know it wasn't the eye that got the worst of a storm, but the eastern edge of the eye wall. Biloxi had suffered. There were photos of boats in trees, houses collapsed, cars washed onto front porches. It had been a severe storm, but not a killer like Camille. In fact, there were only two reported deaths. I stared again at the story, my eyes feeling unnaturally dry.

The D.A.'s brother, Jeffrey Rayburn, and his new bride, Alana Williams Rayburn, had drowned in a boating accident September 19. The young couple had been headed to the Virgin Islands for a honeymoon when they'd been caught in Hurricane Deborah.

The boat had been found capsized off the barrier islands a week after the storm had passed. Neither body was recovered.

The mug shot of the bride showed a beautiful girl with a radiant smile and blond hair. Dark-haired, serious Jeffrey was the perfect contrast. They were a handsome couple.

In a later edition of the paper I discovered a photo of the funeral, matching steel-gray coffins surrounded by floral arrangements. The slug line Together In Death made me cringe. The newspaper had a long and glorious history of sensationalism. As I studied the photo more closely, I saw a young Mitch Rayburn standing between the coffins. I recognized the grief etched into his face, a man who'd lost everyone he loved. I understood how he'd become a champion for justice as he tried to balance the scales for others who'd suffered loss.

I turned my attention to another short story about the tragic drownings. There was a quote from Mitch, who said that radio contact with the boat had been lost during the storm. As soon as the weather had cleared, search-and-rescue teams went out, but they found only the damaged sailboat.

“The coast guard believes that Jeffrey and Alana were swept overboard and that the boat drifted until it hit some shallows,” Mitch had said. “I appreciate all of the efforts of the coast guard and the volunteers who helped. I can only say that I'd never seen my brother happier than he was the day he set sail with his new bride.”

On more than one occasion, my mother had accused me of being incapable of sympathizing with others, and maybe she was right. I felt little at the deaths of a newly married couple, but for Mitch, the one left behind to survive, I felt compassion. Survivor's guilt would have ridden him like a poor horseman, gouging with spurs and biting with a whip. I knew what that felt like. I lived with it on an hourly basis. I wondered how Mitch managed to look so rested and drug free.

I pushed back my chair and paced the small room, consumed with a thirst for a drink. At last, I sat down and spooled the microfiche backward. Mid-September gave way to stories about the Labor Day weekend, and then I saw the front-page story in the September 3 edition. No Clues In Disappearance Of Fourth Coast Girl. I scanned the story, which was a simple recounting of all the things the police didn't have—suspects, theories or physical evidence of what had happened to Sarah Weaver, nineteen, of d'Iberville, a small community on the back of Biloxi Bay, where fishermen had resided for generations. It was a tight community of mostly Catholics with family values and love of a good time. In 1981, the disappearance of a girl from the neighborhood would have been cause for great alarm.

What the police did know was that Sarah was a high school graduate who'd been going to night school at William Carey College on the coast to study nursing. She disappeared on a Friday night, the fourth such disappearance that summer. She'd been employed part-time at a local hamburger joint, a teen hangout along the coast. She was popular in high school and a good student.

There were several paragraphs about the panic along the coast. Fathers were driving their daughters to and from work or social events. The police had talked about a curfew, but it hadn't been implemented yet. Two Keesler airmen had been picked up and questioned but released. Fear whispered down quiet, tree-lined streets and along country club drives. Even the trailer parks and brick row subdivisions were locking doors and windows. Someone was stalking and stealing the young girls of the Gulf Coast.

I studied Sarah's picture. She had light eyes—gray or blue—that danced, and her smile was wide and open. Was she one of the bodies in the grave? I couldn't imagine that such information would be any solace to her family. If they didn't know she was dead, they could imagine her alive. She would be forty-three now, a woman still in her prime.

In my gut, I felt it was likely that she was the fourth victim. But who was the fifth? There'd been no other girls reported missing, at least not in the newspaper, prior to the paving of the Gold Rush parking lot. I'd go back and read more carefully, just in case I'd missed something.

I took down Sarah Weaver's address and skipped to the beginning of the summer. It didn't take me long, scrolling through June, to find Audrey Coxwell, the first girl to go missing, on June 29. This story was played much smaller. Audrey was eighteen and old enough to leave town if she wanted. She was a graduate of Biloxi High and a cheerleader. She was cute—a perky brunette.

Her parents had offered a reward for any information leading to her recovery. I noted their address.

In the days following Audrey's disappearance, there was little mention of her in the paper. Young women left every day. She was forgotten. No trace had ever been found of her. The reward was never claimed.

On July 7, I found the second missing girl, Charlotte Kyle, twenty-two, the oldest victim so far. The high school photo of Charlotte showed a serious girl with sad eyes. She was one of five siblings, the oldest girl. She was working at JCPenney's.

This story was on the front page, but it wasn't yet linked to Audrey's disappearance. The newspaper or the police hadn't considered the possibility of a serial killer on the loose. This was 1981, a time far more innocent than the new millennium.

I scanned through the rest of July. It was August before I found Maria Lopez, a sixteen-year-old beauty who looked older than her age. In her yearbook photo she was laughing, white teeth flashing and a hint of mischief in her dark eyes. There was also a picture of her mother, on her knees on the sidewalk, hands clutched to her chest, crying.

My hand trembled as I put it over the photo. I could still remember the feel of the strong hands on
my
arms, dragging me away from
my
house. My legs had collapsed, and I'd fallen to my knees inside my front door. A falling timber and a gust of heat had knocked me backward, and the firemen had grabbed me, dragging me back. I'd fought them. I'd cursed and kicked and screamed. And I'd lost.

The door of the newspaper morgue creaked open a little and Jack stood there, a cup of coffee in his hand. “I put a splash of whiskey in it,” he said, walking in and handing it to me. He closed the door behind him. “Everyone knows you drink, Carson, and they also know you haven't contributed a dime to the coffee kitty. The second offense is the one that will get you into trouble.”

He was kind enough not to comment as my shaking hand took the disposable cup. I sipped, letting the heat of the coffee and the warmth of the bourbon work their magic.

“Carson, if you're not ready, tell Brandon. He's invested enough in you that he won't push you over the edge.”

“I can do this.” Right. I sounded as if I were sitting on an unbalanced washing machine.

“Okay, but remember, you have a choice.”

I started to say something biting about choices, but instead, I nodded my thanks. “Where'd you get the bourbon?”

“You aren't the only one with a few dirty secrets.” He grinned. “What did you find?”

“Four missing girls, all in the summer of 1981, before the parking lot was paved.”

“And the fifth?”

“I don't know. Maybe she was killed somewhere else and brought to Biloxi.”

“Maybe.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Mitch wants to see you. He's waiting in your office.”

I drained the cup. “Thanks.” By the time I made it out of the morgue and into the newsroom, I was walking without wobbling.