Chapter Twenty-Two

Raven removed her scrubs and threw the disposable apron and sleeves she had worn during the autopsy into a biohazard container. Dressed now in her jeans and jacket, she studied her reflection in the morgue’s bathroom mirror. For a second Floyd’s face flashed in the glass, the bright green and blue peacock feather in the fedora’s hatband, his one green eye and one blue eye staring at her intently, a playful smile on his thin lips. It was as if any second he was going to wag his finger and say, I know you, Birdy Girl, but do you know you? The next second his bloody grin faded away.

And it was just her face.

Tired. Haunted by seeing Clyde cut up like that even though it was necessary and it wasn’t her first autopsy.

“What have I done to deserve this?” she asked out loud, but in a whisper.

And though she asked no one in particular, Floyd was fast and ready with an answer. Oh I don’t know, Birdy Girl, he said, maybe shoot a man down in cold blood. And then he was gone again.

She twisted open the faucet and threw cold water on her face.

It wasn’t any surprise that she was going a little crazy with everything that had happened. It just wasn’t fair. She pulled several paper towels from the holder to dry her face. When she looked in the mirror again, Floyd stood next to her. She would have sworn that she could feel his rough whiskers against her face.

Now, ain’t we maudlin? Put your big-girl panties on and go out there and do what you do.

For once the old man was right.

She shoved down the feeling of helplessness and made her way to the conference room they were using as a command center for the case. The command center turned out to be just a rectangular room with cheap aluminum blinds covering the tall windows. She wasn’t surprised to see the chief sitting at the oblong table. The case was too hot for him not to be all over it. What did surprise her was that Delbert Stevenson sat across from the chief. Stevenson looked so uncomfortable Raven wondered if he were sitting on a cactus.

“I thought you were on your way home,” Raven said to him from the doorway. “Didn’t your daddy call you back so you can take your punishment?”

“Don’t start, Raven,” Chief Sawyer said.

Stevenson turned to look at her. She could tell by the muscle jumping like a tadpole in his jaw that he was trying his best to keep his handsome face still and unbothered. He waved a hand at the chief. “Your boss asked me to sit in.”

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” she asked.

Chief Sawyer shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Breaker’s out.”

“What?”

“Couldn’t handle it. Quit the case.”

“What do you mean quit the case?” Raven said. “You saying he went back to Major Crimes? You let him just walk out on you like that? Who runs things around here, Chief?”

“You don’t understand,” the chief clarified. “He quit the case and the force. On top of that he left town, got out of here so fast you’d think he stole something.”

“Holy crap on a cracker,” Raven breathed, coming into the room. She found a chair as far away from Stevenson as she could get. “There isn’t anybody else in the entire BLPD except this bucket of guts?”

“Hey,” Stevenson protested.

“You got Billy Ray?” the chief asked.

Raven ran her hands over her face. “No, I don’t got Billy Ray. He thinks Noe’s dead. He wants nothing to do with this.” She glared at Stevenson. “What about someone else on the force? That IA guy, Goldie, he seems….”

Chief Sawyer raised an eyebrow. “Friendly?”

“Chief….” She stopped.

No, he didn’t seem exactly friendly, but he did seem competent.

“We’re tapped. If you want a partner, Stevenson’s it. He says his boss agreed to let him help out for a while.”

“His rogue cop? His troublesome, on-the-lam rogue cop who goes around sleeping with suspects on murder cases? Who’s doing who a favor? I bet the minute Stevenson steps back into town his boss is going to send him to hell on scholarship. All they’re doing over in California is damage control. Buying time.”

“That’s not what she told me, Raven.”

“And on top of that, he sucks.”

“Why?” Stevenson challenged. “Because I couldn’t catch you? I’m not giving up on that one. You’re going to pay for what you’ve done whether I’m still a cop or not.”

“But I dated you,” she said. “Isn’t that payment enough?”

“Okay, okay,” the chief said. “Can you two just put aside your differences and help us find this guy?”

Grief and desperation were plain on the chief’s face. The hair at his temples looked even grayer than before. He ran a hand over his head. “They’re killing children, for God sakes.”

Raven looked at the man she had known as Wynn Bowen. “I don’t even know what to call it.”

The chief sighed tiredly. “For fuck’s sake, Raven. Aren’t you listening to me?”

“It’s a problem,” Raven said. “Do I call it Wynn? WynnDel? DelWynn? What?”

“You can call me Stevenson. Detective Stevenson.”

She didn’t turn his way. Instead she kept her eyes on the chief. “I like WynnDel. Has a certain ring to it.”

“You saying you’ll do this?” the chief asked.

“I’m saying I’ll do anything to find Noe,” she said. “Who else is on the team?”

“You’re it,” the chief said. “You’ve got Rita, of course, for a sounding board. You two always worked well together. There are rookies you are welcome to use to canvass, take statements, that kind of thing. You can have Officer Spangler, too.”

“Fine,” she conceded. “So, I gathered what I could from the autopsy. You want to give me what you’re thinking so far?”

“I told you a lot of it already at the restaurant, and you saw the deal at Memorial,” the chief said. “I can’t tell you anything more than what you already know. All we’ve got is a pile of fucking bodies.”

She opened a file folder from a stack on the table. “Still using paper,” she said. “You’d think Billy Ray was here.”

“I thought he would be, so I asked Spangler to make hard copies,” the chief said.

She read the label on the folder. Henri Toulouse, the boy from Memorial. A picture with that name beneath it was fixed to a magnetic whiteboard at the end of the long table.

The chief saw her looking. “Judge Toulouse’s kid.”

Raven raised an eyebrow. “Got that much from the scene. What about a connection between Toulouse and the other victims. Or the site?”

“They couldn’t find any. Victim number one was Michele Jean Baptiste,” Stevenson said. “I was reading the files before you got here. As you can see, Toulouse is a redhead, Baptiste has dark hair – I mean the hair that’s not dyed blue. Different builds. Tall, lanky. He’s not from money, either. His mother is a dealer at the Four Leaf casino.”

“Is Baptiste the one that was found in the doorway of the bank?” Raven said in a voice she hoped was all business.

“Yes,” the chief said.

“Didn’t you say you had video from that scene?”

“I also said it was useless. The killer busted it before stepping into the frame. All these boys, naked, throat slit, and bled. Wrapped in a blue and white blanket like all of them.”

There was that word again – bled. Bled like he was being slaughtered for meat.

Raven stood up and walked to the whiteboard with the boys’ pictures on it, glossy eight-by-tens just like Billy Ray liked them. The chief was really expecting her old partner. She looked at each one of the photographs, paused to study them individually. She didn’t want to think of these boys as victims or bodies. She wanted to think of them as living, laughing with their friends, going to high school, being obnoxious with their girlfriends and later regretting it, spending too much money on tennis shoes, not doing their homework, or sweating about upcoming college entrance exams if they were lucky enough to afford college. She wanted to remember them and catch the monster who stole their lives.

One of the victims, Elroy Malay, had a gap between his teeth that made him proud. His smile was just too big. If the ball cap pushed back on his head was any indication, he was fond of the LSU Tigers football team. Henri Toulouse was pictured in a light blue sweater with his arms folded. He looked like money and wanted everyone to know it.

Raven touched her fingertips to her throat, cleared it and turned back to the chief and Stevenson.

“No semen or saliva detected on the bodies?”

The chief shook his head. “You said you just came from the Darling autopsy. I’m sure Rita already told you no. Asking it again isn’t going to get you a different answer. Clean as newborn babies. That is, until Toulouse and Darling. Until now, the only thing linking them was their race.”

Raven nodded but didn’t say anything. She could feel Wynn – no, Stevenson – looking at her, but she didn’t acknowledge it. She thought about when Floyd killed. It didn’t appear that he did, but he chose his victims very carefully. He stalked them, and sometimes would even get to know them. He said it made the surprise better, and whew boy, how he loved a surprise. There were a couple of deaths that weren’t on his radar, usually people he killed because he believed that it was necessary, or because they pissed him off. Those killings looked different, no fires like he was also fond of doing when he had the chance. The deaths were quick. Clean, without flames or ashes.

“What do you think, Raven?” the chief said.

She was back at the table. She opened another file folder, flipped through a couple of pages before looking over at Stevenson, who still eyed her, his face baleful and accusing.

“What do you think, lover?”

Stevenson thrust his hands in the air and sat back.

“Raven,” the chief said.

“Sorry, couldn’t resist. Right now, I don’t think anything. I need to take this in. You must have your theories.”

“Nothing that’s getting us closer to finding this guy.”

“You pulled the finances on the families, right? The phone records of these boys, and checked their social media, just like we’re doing for the Darlings, Cameron and Noe? Talked to their friends? Tried to find out if they knew each other?”

“All of that. Read the statements, and then read them again. Maybe something will stick out to you a second time around. Lord knows it didn’t for Breaker. He wasted so much time that it made me sick,” the chief said.

“I see,” Raven said idly while flipping through one of the file folders. “And the video?”

“Aren’t you listening?” Stevenson said. “Chief Sawyer just told you.”

“What video are you talking about?” the chief asked.

Raven fixed the chief with a look, and then Stevenson. “All of it,” she said.

“I don’t understand—” Stevenson began.

“You mean surrounding businesses where the bodies were found?” the chief asked.

“Maybe that’s what I mean.”

“I’m sure Breaker did that,” the chief said.

“Are you? The man who just ran home back to his mama?”

“You even sound like your father,” Stevenson said, disgusted.

Raven walked over to Stevenson, her fingers lightly trailing the table. She leaned in when she got close to him. “Does that scare you?” she asked. “That I sound like my daddy? Why don’t you go ahead and follow Breaker? Run along on home. Maybe your wife will take you back.”

She felt a hand on her shoulder. She straightened to see the chief standing beside her.

“What do you mean all of it?” he asked, the question bringing her back to the room and the problem at hand.

“I mean all of it,” she said, walking back to the stack of folders. “Every last bit of it from the surrounding businesses and maybe even within a five-to-ten-mile radius. I would start with the high school, the last place Noe and Clyde were seen. Check the city buses, too. Places they liked to go.”

“We don’t have enough people for that,” the chief said.

“Find the people.”

“How?”

“What about recruits from the academy?”

“We couldn’t fill a class this year. There aren’t any academy recruits in this hell hole.”

“Besides, some of these murders are months old,” Stevenson said. “Most of the videos are probably recorded over.”

“Even if they aren’t recorded over, that would take way too many resources. I’m not even sure it’s necessary,” the chief cut in.

Raven unzipped her backpack and stuck the file folders inside. “I’m getting kind of tired of you two telling me what you can’t do,” she said. “I thought you said you were desperate.”