The Evidence Room: A Mystery (31 page)
Read The Evidence Room: A Mystery Online
Authors: Cameron Harvey
“Well, if that were true, then you would’ve taken her out with a gun like that,” Josh said. “But you didn’t, did you? You put your hands on her, squeezed her neck until she stopped breathing.”
“I told her Wade and I had business to discuss. She wouldn’t leave.”
“And then you threatened Pearline Suggs, a poor teenage girl.”
Royce laughed. “Is that what Pearline told you? She was in on the whole thing. Lionel ain’t a Crumpler. He’s Gentry’s kid. She had her hand out just like everyone else, wanting a big payday. Only she got greedy, just like Wade.”
“So you got rid of her.”
Royce grinned. “Easy with those accusations, Detective.”
“Huh. Well, you should probably know that we found her. She’s at Kervick Hospital right now telling some nice police officer her whole sad story. It’s over, Royce.”
If the news surprised Royce, he didn’t let it show. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. Detective Hudson. I’m just getting started.”
Something moved in the shadows behind Royce, but Josh maintained eye contact until Aurora crept into his peripheral vision, one finger on her lips. She was holding aloft the syringe from her first-aid kit, the one filled with a powerful sedative.
“This is it, Royce. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.”
Aurora plunged the needle into Royce’s arm, knocking him off balance and sending the gun skittering across the floor towards Josh. He kicked it out of reach, and he and Aurora pinned Royce to the ground.
“I hate to see it end this way, Josh,” Royce said, his eyes flickering between Josh and Aurora. “We had so much left to talk about. Raylene. Wade.
Liana
.”
He spoke her name in a sacred tone, like a promise, and then his body went slack between them, his cowboy hat tipping forward as he slumped to the floor.
They gathered to bury Wade Atchison for the second time on a September afternoon in Ti Bon Ange cemetery. He would be laid to rest next to Raylene.
James stood on the bayou side of the cemetery. He had never been much for funerals, but if Wade were able to observe his own festivities from some celestial perch, he probably would have been very pleased. Wade was one of those people who was greatly enhanced by death. They didn’t call it the great equalizer for nothing. There was no mention of the crimes he had visited on Raylene and others, only a celebration of his innocence for the one that had taken her life.
James shielded his eyes against the sun and turned towards the bayou behind him, its blackberry water creeping slow as sludge through the flooded forest. Aurora steered a skiff towards the graveyard and lifted her hand in a wave. She had decided to stay in Cooper’s Bayou and had already started working at the emergency room at the hospital in Kervick.
James waved back, remembering the little girl in the puffy pink jacket from all those years ago. He’d thought he had lost her; but by some miracle, she had returned to him after all these years. If he looked closer, if the light was just right, he could still see Raylene in the curve of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin.
“There we go.” Ruby climbed down the hillside to his right, holding a wreath of Cajun hibiscus blossoms, a perfect unbroken circle. Together, she and Aurora gave it a push and watched it glide down the bayou, past the Broussard house, until it was carried around the corner and out of view.
* * *
Josh stood in the stern and watched Aurora turn the boat in a wide arc towards the cemetery, on their way to Wade Atchison’s final send-off. In the end, Wade’s crimes had been what had led them to the truth. Aurora had accepted his role and forgiven him the rest.
People aren’t just one thing,
she’d said, and it was true. He was even allowing himself to believe it of Doyle, who was once again a free man for the time being, running alligator voodoo tours part-time off Burdette Crumpler’s steamboat. Some disgruntled tourists might still label it a scam of sorts, but hey, at least it wasn’t the kind of scam that would put him back in Craw Lake.
All around him, the bayou waters were retreating, exposing the silver-skinned land underneath, littered with soda cans and castoffs from the shrimping boats. The tide had brought Jesse’s bones back to him, and he wondered about all of the other mysteries it still held beneath its shimmering surface.
In the bow of the boat, Aurora glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him. He believed in voodoo now, he told her, since it was what had brought her to him. When he drove to Kervick late at night to pick her up after her shift, he still circled the blocks east of Pernaria Vincent’s beauty shop, peering out the dark windows of the Jeep at the women melting into doorways, scanning the sea of strange faces for a familiar one.
They came around the side of the cemetery, and Josh reached forward to slip his arms around her, their image stretched out in shadow across the shimmering surface of the bayou.
* * *
The jars containing the souls of her father and mother rattled at Aurora’s feet, and at her side, the canister of Papa’s ashes that had traveled with her from New York. In
voudon,
death was not a cessation of life but, like everything else, a change from one condition to another, Ruby and Bobbie had explained. Before she’d come to Cooper’s Bayou, she would have dismissed such a statement as backwoods black magic, but now she was beginning to appreciate it the way Papa had.
The transition to life in Cooper’s Bayou had been an easy one. Ernest Authement had been right; once the bayou got a hold of you, it didn’t let go. Aurora had surrendered herself, and where had it left her? In the house on the bayou. Happy. Josh Hudson had come over the week after Gentry’s arrest to help with repairs, and they were spending most evenings together.
She hadn’t decided when she’d return to New York yet. She was still paying rent, and had taken a leave of absence from work. Of course she would have to go back sometime; but for now, she was content in the house on Spotted Beebalm Drive. She was making it her own and had even hung the pictures of Raylene and Wade they’d found in Papa’s things. They had spent enough time in boxes.
Aurora maneuvered the boat between the coiled cypress tree stumps at the entrance to the cemetery. She cut the engine and placed the jars on the railing of the boat. When she opened the jars, she would release their souls together, into the land of the dead.
She felt Josh beside her, felt his fingers slide into the empty places between her own, the warm flat of his palm against hers. She had only been carrying the jars around for the past week, but the pain of not knowing what had happened to her parents had been with her for two decades.
She opened the lids and let them go.
I am so grateful to everyone who was a part of this journey. Thank you especially to Kat Brzozowski, for believing in my story and making this book a reality with your generous spirit and insight. Thank you also to my incredible mentor and teacher, Louella Nelson, and the extraordinary members of her writing group, who taught me so much. Mom, Dad, and Alissa, whose boundless love and encouragement kept me afloat, and finally, to the memory of Jayne and Diana, among the stars.
CAMERON HARVEY
is a graduate of Stanford University and UCLA Law School. She was born and raised in New York but fell in love with the bayou during a business trip to a haunted hotel in Florida. She lives in Southern California.
The Evidence Room
is her first novel. You can sign up for email updates
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CONTENTS
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
THE EVIDENCE ROOM.
Copyright © 2015 by Cameron Harvey. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein and Delilah Kimm
Cover photographs: swamps @ Emilio Vergara; house © Susan Fox/Trevillion Images
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-03115-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-03114-3 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250031143
First Edition: June 2015