Chapter Twenty-Nine

The next morning Raven felt so bad about her behavior that she showered, dressed, poured two cups of coffee and knocked on Stevenson’s door. When he opened it, she willed her face blank, handed him one of the coffees and said, “You ready?”

He hadn’t finished dressing, was still buttoning his shirt, his face covered in suspicion. “Is this your way of apologizing for last night?”

She kept her face Floyd blank. It was her way of apologizing. But she wasn’t going to admit that. It wasn’t the threat, because, as Billy Ray would have said, she meant that shit. If he was the one torturing her, she’d make him pay one way or the other. What she was most ashamed of was the thrill that had gone through her at the thought of killing him, and calling him a walking abortion. Instead of answering his question, she raised an eyebrow.

“I didn’t break into your apartment,” he continued. “I hate snakes as much as you do, and I may have done some things I’m not proud of over these past few months, but I’m not a complete asshole.”

His words sounded so sincere that she almost believed him.

“Coffee’s getting cold,” Raven said. “Billy Ray called a few minutes ago. We’re heading straight to Chastain’s. Looks like Mama Anna and them found something.”

“Why? When you know I’m not a cop?”

“Because you did something I thought you’d never make me do,” she said. “Feel sorry for your no-sleeping, little pissant self. Besides, the chief doesn’t know it yet, and I don’t want it distracting him. And I’ll take all the help I can get to find Noe.”

“I swear I wasn’t in your apartment last night,” he said again.

Raven stayed silent. When he realized that there was no use smoothing over old ground she refused to walk over, he smelled the coffee. “Is this poison?”

“Not this time.”

“Okay, apology accepted. But I’m not too sure about getting into a car with you right now. I’ll use my own ride and meet you over there.”

* * *

The excitement along Billy Ray’s slice of Africa in Chastain’s Creole Heaven was like a living thing. The energy buzzed from Mr. Joe to Mama Anna and even to the usually soft-spoken Miss Vera. Mr. Walter was trying to tell all of them to keep it quiet, but no one was listening. When Raven, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Mama Anna at the head of the table, saw him reach for a spoon to bang on the table, she tried on Floyd’s preaching voice.

“Hey now. Come on. It’s all right. Quiet down for a minute. This is important. We need to hear each other.”

The talking didn’t stop all at once, but voices trailed off and pretty soon each old head was turned toward her. Raven didn’t break the silence for a long moment. Finally, Mr. Joe said, “Well, come on, Rev. If you gone preach, you better get on with it.”

“I don’t plan to preach, Mr. Joe,” Raven said. “Detective Stevenson and I just want to hear what you all found on the videos. We can’t do that if everybody’s talking at once.”

“Okay,” Mr. Joe said. “Mama Anna, you first.”

“Why should she go first when I’m the one who found it?” Miss Vera said.

“You found the first one, but Mama Anna found the second,” Mr. Joe said.

“Y’all forget that I found the best of all,” Mr. Walter said.

“Oh God,” Stevenson said.

Raven ignored him and told Miss Vera to go first. Miss Vera set an index finger on the yellow legal pad and read the time, date, and place she had written there, three forty-five p.m. Friday afternoon, bus number twelve going out to Lakeshore. Noe and Clyde had gotten off the bus on Magnolia.

“I showed her how to get some screenshots,” Mr. Bello said. “Billy Ray let us print them on the restaurant’s printer.”

“Let me see, Miss Vera,” Raven said, her hand out.

The photos showed Noe and Clyde getting off the bus. After Raven passed them to Stevenson, Mama Anna said, “So, I got to thinking. Maybe they didn’t get to where they were going from that one bus. So I checked all the cameras on the connecting buses.”

“Go on,” Raven said.

“I don’t like looking at itty bitty screens, either, so I got pictures, too.”

Raven took the photos from Mama Anna. The boys had connected with bus number 21 and gotten off on the corner of Lakeshore and Cypress.

“Now, for the best,” Mr. Walter said. “But y’all have to look at this on video. We found this one about twenty minutes ago, and asked Billy Ray to give you a call right away. You ready for it?”

Raven nodded. Mr. Walter scooted his chair closer to Raven. She could feel Stevenson behind her as he bent down so he could see better, so close that his breath was on her neck. It irritated her, but she kept her mouth shut. As her stepmother would have said, she had acted fool enough with him last night.

“This one has a lot of rain in it, so some stuff you can’t see. Raining like the devil was emptying out his chamber pot. Plus it’s dark,” Mr. Walter said.

Mama Anna said, “Raining so hard even the ducks drowning. In my family, we call that a killing rain.”

Mr. Walter pushed play. The video opened on what looked like a light-colored sedan stopping at a light on one of the few roads that led to the bridge out of town, the same one that Stevenson had taken Raven to on their first date. As was happening lately, Raven couldn’t believe her eyes or her senses. She looked at the road they were on, pointed at the screen, and then she looked at Stevenson, who was now standing a bit straighter and watching with his hands placed lightly on his hips.

The sedan’s hazard lights were on. Raven couldn’t tell the exact make, model or color because with the streaming rain, it looked like she was viewing the entire scene from behind fogged glass. As she watched, the passenger door of the sedan opened. A boy bolted into the rain. The driver’s door opened and another figure in a hooded trench coat raced after the fleeing boy. Soon, they were out of frame, and for a few minutes, the sedan just sat there with rain pounding its roof and both the driver’s side and the passenger’s side door open. If another person, maybe Clyde, was inside the car, Raven couldn’t tell.

Video evidence made Raven feel helpless, frustrated. It should be so simple to step into the scene and stop the pending horror. She thought about that now as she watched. The first fleeing figure could be Noe. It had the shape and build of her nephew. There was not a snowball’s chance in Hades that anyone could have recognized the trench-coated figure. She could see nothing of the face, couldn’t even tell if the person was a man or a woman. Something must have slowed Noe down because after a minute or two the driver came back with a hand on Noe’s shoulder, and one of his arms twisted behind his back.

This was it, Raven thought. The break they needed. She couldn’t keep the exhilaration off her face.

“So,” Mama Anna said. “Good thing we came in early so you’d be ready for this. Did we do good by you young folks?”

Raven yanked the power cord out of the laptop. It had enough battery life for another hour or two.

“Are you kidding me?” Raven said. “Yes, you did spectacular.”

When Raven walked to the kitchen with Stevenson in tow, Imogene was already donning the chef’s apron to relieve Billy Ray. For once on this loser case, they finally had something to talk about.