The Evidence Room: A Mystery (21 page)

But who?

Samba broke the spell by removing the sweatshirt and rags with gloved hands and placing them in evidence bags. Doc had gone back into the autopsy suite, leaving them standing there around the empty coffin.

“You never know, there could still be something here,” Samba said, his voice full of false enthusiasm. “Evidence has a funny way of sticking around, even when you try to hide it. There can be trace on the coffin, even something in the smallest little crack in the wood.” He put an arm around Aurora, whose eyes glazed over. Josh had no idea what to say to her. Where did they go from here?

In his pocket, Josh’s cell phone began to buzz. Boone.

“Sorry, I’ve got to take this.” Outside the filmy moon was barely visible behind the shredded clouds, the bayou’s surface a dark mirror.

“Hey, Boone.”

“Josh, where are you? I can come pick you up. We gotta talk.”

Josh leaned against the building. Had someone seen them paddling out to Weir Island? He would take the fall for all of them.

“What’s this about, Boone?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.”

Liana
. It was always the first place his mind went. If she was hurt, if she was dead, he would know. That was what he told himself; there would be some blip in his consciousness, some flash of terrible knowledge at what happened. After all this time, there was still a connection between them.

“I’m at the morgue.”

“Okay.” There was a question in Boone’s voice. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Josh ducked back inside, where the rest of them looked at him expectantly, still gathered around the empty coffin. For some reason, this angered Josh. Why had they trusted him to be able to solve this case, when he couldn’t even solve his own?

“I need to take care of something,” he mumbled. “Family.” Without giving them a chance to respond, he stepped back outside.

“Josh.”

Aurora was behind him, backlit in the doorway, her hair loose around her shoulders.

“I can come with you,” she offered.

Some crazy part of Josh wanted to accept. She was holding open the door, giving him a way out of his grief.

But he didn’t deserve it. He couldn’t do it. Not yet.

He turned to face the car so she would not see his face; he was not sure if it would betray him.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

*   *   *

In the half-light of the police cruiser’s interior, Boone’s face was pulled into a grimace.

“What’s going on Boone? Just say it.” Josh slid into the passenger seat.

“It’s about your father.”

“I thought this was about my sister!” Josh slammed a hand on the dashboard. “Whatever Doyle’s doing, it can wait. I’ve got better things to do.”

“Hey!” Boone slammed on the brakes and the car bumped on to the shoulder. “I have done nothing but cover for your ass since you’ve been away, Hudson. So now you’re going to listen to me.”

He had never heard Boone raise his voice, not even once. Josh sank back into the seat and listened.

“Your father was picked up on some drug charges, made bond this morning. Ten grand. I asked myself, who on God’s green earth would bail out Doyle Hudson when he’s burned every bridge in this town? So I went down there for you, and I checked it out.”

Josh felt his insides turn to liquid, then stone. The money he’d wired to Pea.

“And do you know who posted bond? That would be Pernaria Vincent. How do you think a drug dealer who turned on her crew finds that kind of money, huh, Josh?”

Pea and his father were closer than he had thought. She’d been working with Doyle this whole time, dangling Liana in front of him, and he’d taken the bait. The pieces began to slide together in Josh’s mind, the realization of what he had done washing over him.

“Shit.”

“Yep, that was my reaction too, buddy.”

“Boone, I—”

Boone held up a hand. “There’s no time,” he said. “I understand why you did what you did, Josh. Something happened to my kin, Lord have mercy, I’d do whatever it took. But you gotta stop this now, Josh. You know I’ll do whatever I can to help you find your sister. These people—people like Pernaria Vincent—they’re not the way.”

“I know,” Josh said. It was a lesson he kept on learning, over and over. The curse of Doyle Hudson. His birthright. “I’m sorry about all this, Boone. I really am. I owe you, buddy. I know that.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll collect on it someday.” The edge of Boone’s mouth curled in a reluctant half smile. “Also, I tried to drive up to the Crumpler place, see what’s going on. You been up there lately? They got that shit locked up tighter’n Fort Knox. I got eyes out for that Crumpler kid, though. You let me know if he comes near Aurora again.”

“I appreciate it, Boone. I’ll probably head on up there myself at some point.”

“You got a death wish or something, Josh? Because even your Tennessee charm ain’t gonna work on those people.”

Josh grinned. “Worth a try, though.”

Boone shook his head. “Laura Jane’s not expecting me for an hour or so. You want to grab a bite to eat?”

It was the second generous offer of the evening, and for the second time, Josh refused. “Another time,” Josh said.

Everywhere he turned, there were more questions than answers. The trace on the sweatshirt from the grave would take forever to process. He knew Mason put his faith in science, but there were answers in other places, in details long forgotten, in overstuffed cardboard boxes.

“Hey,” he said to Boone, “do you mind dropping me off at the evidence room? I can catch a ride home after that.”

Boone raised an eyebrow. “Overtime? You trying to get back on Rush’s good side? Don’t get me wrong, you got a long way to go. But I think he’d respond better to Bucs tickets and a bottle of Maker’s Mark.”

Josh laughed. “Just something I’m working on.”

“So that’s how it’s gonna be, huh? Josh Hudson, covert operations. All right. Well, you tell me if you need help.” Boone tipped his hat, and Josh got out at the curb.

He felt an unexpected swell of emotion at the sight of the evidence room in the dark. He and Samba had done a good job the previous week cutting back the hedge so that the place looked less haunted. He’d start with the interviews from the night of the Atchison homicide and work his way back through missing persons, trying to find a match for the guy in the potter’s field. Maybe have some possibilities for Samba in the morning.

Something shifted in the bushes behind him, and Josh reached for his gun. He took a step and someone hit him from behind, a cheap shot cuffing him and sending him to the ground. A man’s face loomed above him in the darkness, something familiar about the sneer, the way the eyes pulled down at the corners.

“What the hell do you want?” Josh heard himself say the words, heard the man’s low laugh in reply.

“The train that’s comin’ for you, boy? You got no idea,” the man said, and hit him again before the words dissolved into something he could not understand, and then everything collapsed into blackness.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The air above the bayou crackled, ready to burst with the secret of the approaching storm. Inside the house on Cooper’s Bayou, Aurora sat with the locked safety deposit box on her lap.

Royce Beaumont had given her a box full of indexed binders, with a list of all of her grandfather’s assets, but the safety deposit box had not been mentioned, although she had seen it catalogued in her grandfather’s diaries. Papa must have forgotten to include it in the list he’d given Luna Riley. She’d headed to the bank, and after a pleasant exchange with the teller, returned home with the box.

It didn’t seem right to open it without Josh.

She had not heard from him since the previous evening when he’d left them at the morgue. She wondered if it was something to do with his family. Father in jail, sister missing—had one of them turned up somewhere? She’d felt like an idiot, asking to go with him, knowing he would turn her down. But he had hesitated; she’d seen it. All the time since, she’d occupied herself around the house, the thought of him tugging at the back of her consciousness. She’d stopped by the evidence room after the bank, but Samba had no news either. Tomorrow morning, she would call him and make sure everything was all right, and then she would open the box.

Aurora decided against switching on the grand ceiling fan in her bedroom. While it was beautiful to look at, the air it generated was hot anyway, and the noise it produced was akin to a jetliner preparing for takeoff.

She sprawled on top of the sheets, pressing her eyes closed. She would try to sleep for ten minutes, and then if she was still awake, she would do something constructive. Make a list of goals. Floss. Do yoga poses.

Thump.

The first noise could have been an animal. God only knew what critters were out there, with the house practically spilling into the bayou.

Thump.

Aurora fumbled for the tiny silver can of pepper spray that she had brought with her from New York. She’d carried it for years but never used it. It looked almost comically small in her hand. Everyone down South had a firearm. How much time would it really buy her?

Thump.

The Crumplers? Her father?

She was going to have to face this one on her own.

Aurora approached the door slowly, her sweating bare feet sticking to the wood floors. She pressed her eye to the peephole and then slid the deadbolt and threw open the door.

“I’m sorry,” Josh said.

He was almost unrecognizable, peering out from under a stained gray hoodie. His left eye was almost completely swollen shut, the rest of his face cut and bruised. She pulled him into the room.

“Sit on the couch,” she said, her heart still pounding from the fear of opening the door. “First things first. Let’s take care of your face.” She pulled a first-aid kit from under the couch. “I always have one of these around. Habit, I guess. Now hold still.”

“Okay.” He lifted his face to hers, obediently, like a child, and she dabbed at the cuts.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“You got nothing to be sorry for,” she said.

“I wish you’d come with me. But it’s probably better that you didn’t.”

She focused on the cut above his right eye, trying not to let her face betray how stunned she was at this sentence, at the genuine way the words sounded.

“What happened? Who did this? We need to call the police.”

He closed his eyes as she held the gauze pad against the cut. “No police.”

“Josh.”

“I can’t tell them,” he said. “Boone—my partner—I can’t drag him into this.” He was protecting someone again, she could see that. Someone important.

“Is this about Liana?”

He looked up at her in surprise, as though he had forgotten he’d told her the name. “That’s what I thought at first,” he said. “I paid a drug dealer to find her, and the dealer took off with the money. She conned me, and I played right into her hands.”

“You did what you had to do,” she said, surprising herself with this assessment. Dealing with criminals wouldn’t have been her choice, but Josh was the type of person to do anything for his sister, whatever the cost. She could see that now. He would do anything to find someone who was missing.

“So it wasn’t a drug dealer who did this?”

He shook his head. “There was something familiar about the guy, though.”

“Where did it happen?”

“The evidence room,” he said.

“Why did you go back there?”

“I wanted to work on the case. Your case.”

“Why are you doing this, Josh?” The words came out more accusatory than she’d intended, but she had to know.

He turned back to face her, something raw in his expression. “What do you mean?”

“Why are you helping me?” It was the question that had been haunting her since the first day in the evidence room. Everybody wanted something, everybody had an angle, but what could he possibly be gaining from helping her?

“I’m helping you because you can still be helped,” Josh said simply. Aurora added the postscript in her head,
and I can’t
. She remembered waking up that first morning in Connecticut at Papa’s house, the unfamiliar bedroom, the low murmur of their voices downstairs.
There’s nothing we can do except go on
, Papa had said, and so Aurora had done just that. And Josh was doing the same thing.

“Thank you,” she said. “For—you know, for all of this.”

“No need for thanks,” he said, but she saw the beginnings of a smile before he turned back to the window. “What’s this?”

“Safety deposit box,” Aurora said, grateful for something else to talk about. She retrieved it from across the room. “The funny thing is, my grandfather didn’t list it on the information he gave the lawyers, but I found the key here at the house.”

“What’s inside?”

“I was waiting for you.” She removed the gold key from the top drawer in the desk.

“Well, here I am.” The smile was back.

Aurora fitted the key into the lock and slid the cover off the box to reveal the contents: two black videotapes sheathed in plastic.

They stood in silence for a moment.

“Any ideas?”

Aurora shook her head.

“Seems like a weird place to store home movies.” Josh frowned. “Well, let’s fire up the VCR.”

“There’s no television in the house,” Aurora said. “And why would Papa have videotapes?”

“No idea.” Josh ran a finger down the list on the desk, the ledger of Papa’s assets, recorded in his perfect handwriting. “Your grandpa was a perfectionist. Recorded everything. So it’s strange that he would leave this off the sheet, yet give you the key.”

“Like he wanted me to find it.”

“Exactly. We can head to the evidence room. There are tons of VCRs there.”

“Wait a second, Josh.” Aurora peeled the backing from a Band-Aid and smoothed it across the cut. “Do you think what happened to you tonight has something to do with me? With my case?”

“I don’t know.” His eyes fell on the open sheaf of papers from Papa’s filing cabinet. “Did you go through all this? Anything there?”