The Evidence Room: A Mystery (11 page)

Aurora felt the weight of it all settling in her chest. She caught sight of herself in one of the antique mirrors hanging to the right of the desk. She resembled her mother, but she was Wade’s daughter too. Was that why Papa could not share this? When he saw her, did he see his treasured daughter but also the man who had taken her away forever?

Clipped to the report was a letter from the police department, informing Papa that every effort was being made to bring Wade Atchison to justice. Her grandfather had circled her father’s name and written a question mark above it. Was he questioning who had killed her mother? Wade was a criminal, a violent man, a jealous man. Who else could have possibly killed Raylene?

The rest of the file contained clippings from area papers. Aurora paged through them. She’d seen the local paper,
The Bayou Bumblebee,
for sale at a gas station she’d stopped at on the way into town. These papers mentioned places she didn’t recognize: Starflower, Kervick, Papillon City. She expected accounts of the murder, but the articles were all about alligators; probably mixed in with some files for his job.

The house phone rang. Aurora had not even known it was connected. Probably Jefferson, checking on her. Reflexively, she picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Time to go home, beb,” a singsong voice warned. She thought of the woman in the cemetery who had used that same word—what had Ernest said her name was? Charlie? This voice was different. Fuller, stronger, angrier. Male.

“Who is this?”

“Go back where you came from, Aurora. Or else you gonna be sorry,” the voice hissed, “just like your mama.”

She slammed the phone down, her heart galloping in her chest. They got calls like this at the hospital all the time, crazies saying vile things. Aurora and Nicky laughed about it, didn’t give it a second thought. Something about being under the bright lights of the hospital made her feel safe, secure, indestructible.

But now she was in this house on the bayou.

By herself.

Get it together,
she told herself. It was just some hillbilly kid with nothing else to do on a Friday night, looking to scare the new person in town. She checked the lock on the front door and resumed her seat at the desk, but the words on the paper seemed meaningless now; all she could hear was the voice from the phone.

You gonna be sorry just like your mama.

Outside, the wind picked up. The tree outside her bedroom window listed to one side, its branches heavy with Spanish moss that fell like a curtain across her view of the bayou. Maybe she should call Jefferson, let him know about the prank caller. But he was an older man; what could he possibly do? Or the police? She’d seen a cop at the coffee place this morning. But what could they do? Everyone in town knew who she was; they either addressed her by name or stared at her when they thought she wasn’t looking. A late-night call to the cops would only fuel the gossip mill. There was nobody in town she could trust to stay quiet.

Go back where you came from
.

“This is where I came from,” she said out loud. There was no way some voice on the phone was going to stop her now. She settled back into the chair, thumbing through the rest of Papa’s files. She was a New Yorker; she didn’t scare easy. Aurora imagined recounting this story to Nicky.
Just me and the voodoo dolls, all alone in the house!
The two of them would laugh about it. Aurora smiled to herself and made a mental note to text Nicky in the morning.

And then the phone rang again.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Josh was breaking into his place of employment.

He realized it on the ride over, chuckling at the thought of how ridiculous his life had become. Was this latest adventure criminal? Probably. A bad idea? Certainly, but he was in the habit of stockpiling bad decisions. What was one more? Sleep was an impossibility. Hope had taken root inside Josh and would not let him rest. He hoped it was Jesse in that bag, and prayed it was not. People said it was always better to know, but ignorance looked real good sometimes.

Josh glanced at the clock. Almost eight. Back in his old life, he’d be doing surveillance on some slimeball crack dealer right now, parked in the shadows, poised to strike. Now he was coming back to the warehouse. All night he’d been thinking about Jesse, about the promise he’d made to his brother that he hadn’t kept. And then he’d realized that his salvation had been surrounding him this whole time.

Evidence.

He needed to look at the boxes again, to learn the stories of the other missing boys, to know them as well as he knew his own story. It was more than a need: it was a raw compulsion. There was something in one of those boxes that would give him the clue he needed to identify the boy in the bag, whether it was his brother or not. Samba was right. He had a responsibility to all the people whose stories were in those boxes, not just his own kin.

Josh cut the engine and stepped into the velvety darkness. There was a charge in the air, a faint sizzle that warned of another thunderstorm creeping across the bayou. Someone had busted all the streetlamps on Spruce, so the only light was from the bone-white moon, draping the evidence room in a patchwork of shadows. The place was ominous in the daytime; at night, its hulking form was downright spooky. Josh closed the distance between his car and the warehouse in a few quick strides, ignoring the twist of apprehension in his gut.

Feeling around the sides of the building, Josh’s fingers finally caught the sharp edges of broken wood where the door had given way after the last big storm. Samba had taped an ancient blue tarp over the hole, and it flexed and crackled in the slight breeze. The recent rain made it slimy to the touch, like a rotting banana peel. With little effort, Josh tugged one corner free and ducked inside.

“Hold it right there.”

Josh froze in a squatting position on the floor, eyes scanning the dimly lit room for the source of the warning. The dusty end of what looked like an old-fashioned rifle was pointed at him. The owner of the weapon took a step towards him out of the darkness.

“Josh?” Samba lowered the weapon, wiping the brow with the hem of his tie-dyed shirt. “Christ on a bike, you scared me.”

“I scared
you
?” Josh slowly stood up, his heart still slamming against his ribs. “I thought you were going to shoot me with … what the hell is that thing?”

Samba admired the rusted weapon, turning it over in his hands like a new present. “I just grabbed it from the weapons aisle when I heard scuffling outside.” He thrust it towards Josh in a careless arc. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

Josh put a protective hand on the barrel and slowly lowered it. “Samba, is that thing loaded?”

“Who knows?” Samba shrugged. “It scared you, didn’t it?” He beamed at Josh. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here! I always love company.” He walked to his desk and grabbed a yellowing stack of takeout menus from one of the piles and thrust them in Josh’s direction. “Do you think the El Cap still delivers this late?”

Josh looked at Samba, bewildered. “What are you doing here this late?”

Samba chuckled. “That young lady, the one who was here earlier. She called me, told me she’d spoken to you about requesting some information on her mother’s case. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Josh had logged the request in his notebook when Aurora had called, figuring he’d get to it in the morning. How could there be something so urgent about a case twenty years cold?

“Sure,” he said. “I wasn’t doing anything else, so I figured I’d come down.” Samba had probably guessed at the real reason, but Josh wasn’t going to let him know that he was right.

“Same here,” Samba echoed. “She seemed like a nice gal, too. Reminds me of my wife. I always had a thing for tall brunettes.”

He led Josh towards the middle of the room, where a white cardboard box sat alone in the center of the metal folding table. It looked just like the boxes Josh opened every day at work, except this one wouldn’t contain fallout from an anonymous crime; this one held the broken pieces of Aurora’s past. Earlier today he had opened his own box, held the plastic container that had a coil of his brother’s DNA. The thought of strangers opening this box, of reducing him from a person Josh loved to a series of tags and numbers, sickened him. And now he stood ready to unseal the horrors of what had happened to Aurora, throwing light on all the darkness she had survived, violating the memory of her mother. There was something sacrilegious about it, and he hesitated in front of the box, his fingers instead brushing the edge of the table.

“I don’t know, Samba,” Josh said. “This is—I don’t know. Private. Maybe we should wait for her.”

“She asked us to, Josh. It’s our job to help.”

He lifted out the first file folder.

Inside was a single eight-by-ten photograph, one of those posed portraits that families get for their annual Christmas card, everyone standing stiffly in front of a cheap blue-sky background. Aurora’s father, Wade, clearly not at ease in a collared shirt, stood behind her mother, Raylene, a sweet-faced woman with puffy white-blond bangs and pink-frosted lips. And in front of Raylene, snug in the circle of her arms, a little girl with pigtails and one of those unabashed kid smiles a mile wide. Aurora.

Samba held a corner of the picture and whistled under his breath. “Geez. She was just a baby,” he said, shaking his head. He flipped through the police report underneath. “Four years old.”

A kid, just like he had been. Josh swallowed. Aurora had been a small child, helpless and innocent, while Josh had been a few years older. Old enough to understand what was going on. Old enough to have done something about it, and yet, he hadn’t.

For the next hour, Josh and Samba stood at the table, thumbing through the pages in the file folders. Samba squinted over his glasses, reading parts of the police report out loud.

“This guy Wade was a real prince,” he muttered. “He takes Aurora and her mom out on the water for an evening on the bayou. Late that night, the cops find Aurora at the mini-mart by herself and her mom laid out on the shore, strangled. The dad took off.” He shook his head. “I gotta tell you, I’m not sure what she’s looking to find here, other than a real sad story.”

“So they never found her father? He never tried to find her or contact anyone or anything?”

“Nope. I guess he’s still out there.”

Josh thought of Aurora, tall and lean, wound tight like a runner on the starting blocks. She could run; she was strong. Her father must haunt her, the way the Shadow Man haunted him. But the Shadow Man was behind bars; Wade Atchison could be anywhere. He imagined Wade, living on the run all these years. By now he could be anything—a homeless man melting into a doorway, an office guy in a suit waiting for a knock on the door. Josh wondered if Wade ever thought about finding Aurora. The idea brought a chill with it. Wade had spared her life that night on the bayou. Would she be so lucky if they met again?

Samba put down the stack of papers and let out a dramatic sigh. “I don’t know about you, Josh, but I’m sta-ar-ving,” he said, stretching the word out as far as it would go. “I’m going to give the El Cap a ring-a-ling, see if they’re still open. You up for a fried grouper sandwich?”

“Absolutely.”

“You know what, maybe we can swing by Aurora’s too, bring her copies of the file.”

“So the evidence room delivers?”

“Sure, why not?” Samba said with a shrug. “You wanna give her a call?”

Aurora answered on the first ring, something breathless in her voice.

“Hey, Aurora. Hope I’m not bothering you—it’s Josh Hudson. Samba and I were wondering if you wanted us to deliver the copies of your file. If it’s too late, we can definitely come tomorrow or whatever works for you.”

“No, tonight’s great,” she said. There was relief in her voice. Well, Josh couldn’t blame her for wanting company out at the Broussard place. It had to be creepy as hell, coming from a big city to a lone house on the edge of the bayou.

“Great,” Josh said. “We’re on our way.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Have you ever saved somebody’s life?”

Samba twisted in the passenger seat, his question hitting Josh’s right temple as sure as a bullet. In the semidarkness, Samba’s quizzical face glowed like a round moon. Josh propelled the Jeep, trembling and shimmying, down the causeway and through the slinging sheets of gray rain. All around them, the bayou churned, greedy fingers of water reaching over the guardrails and grabbing at their tires. It was a matter of time before they closed the road. People around here knew you couldn’t hold back the bayou for long.

“Well? Have you?” Samba persisted.

“Never,” Josh replied. Samba’s question summoned a memory of Jesse, of a closed stall door, a moment for courage that could never come again. “Why, you think this is a life-saving situation? You think she’s in danger?”

“I don’t know, but I bet she’s scared to be back in town. I mean, her pop let her go all those years ago when she was a kid. Maybe she’s afraid Wade’ll come back.”

“After this long? What for? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t have to make sense. Fear doesn’t make sense. She’s probably been looking over her shoulder her whole life, know what I mean?”

Josh knew. He eased down on the accelerator. It was getting harder and harder to see through the rain; the road in front of him was now reduced to a scramble of shimmering dots. Josh searched for landmarks. A smear of bright blinking yellow on their right had to be Crabby Jim’s, a fried-fish restaurant known for its seven-dollar buffet. That meant the turnoff was around the next curve.

“Anyway, I think your answer is a bunch of baloney,” Samba said.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Baloney. I’m sure you’ve saved somebody’s life before. You probably just don’t know it.”

“I think I’d remember something like that.” The back end of the Jeep glided into a slow fishtail, and Josh gripped the steering wheel, bringing the car back under his control. “Why, have you?”

Samba shrugged, his tone casual. “A few times.”