Junior Deputy-Sheriff Joliet swore as the cruiser stalled and lurched to a stop in a plume of dust far from the murdered woman’s house. Davey ground the key in the ignition. The engine refused to turn over. It was midmorning and he was so late, the prospect of further delay pushed him to the border of freaking out.
“Come on. Come on!” He pummelled the steering wheel. “Piece of junk.” The air-conditioning gave an anaemic wheeze and stopped working. “Excellent,” he grumbled, cracking a window. Cloying humidity seeped into the cabin.
Heat rippled the view over the bonnet where at least ten vehicles zigzagged gravel outside huge, ornately grilled entrance gates. Why had they all stopped here, even the coroner? How would they get the body out? And some of his colleagues were as likely to walk as don a tutu and perform a pirouette, resembling that Disney dance of the hippos. He’d driven as far as he could. Davey undid the seatbelt and reached for the doorhandle, confused by a bizarre mechanical glitch that seemed unanimous.
The car door stuck, obliging a shoulder barge. The vehicle had been in working order when he’d collected it from the auto-pool this morning. With a final disgruntled shove, he spilled out onto the tarmac and staggered upright.
A cloud of bloodsuckers swarmed for the smorgasbord. He’d forgotten repellent and slapped irritably, hitting himself more often than any of the stinging gnats. The allegedly ‘cool and breezy’ uniform (never believe the packaging blurb) clung like his stalker ex-girlfriend. At least she’d been cool and breezy in the beginning. Ecru had never been his colour. Was it anyone’s?
Davey groaned. A long, sweaty hike to a place he didn’t want to go beckoned. The monstrous ante-bellum pile crouched on the hill, as though waiting in ambush. Whenever the gossips at the BI-LO mentioned the area they reeled out a load of tripe about the house being haunted. Maybe he should have listened for once and stayed away. But Uncle Horace also waited inside for his manly black, no sugar. Contrary to nattered rumours of vengeful spirits, the threat of a long lecture on Davey’s tardiness was very real.
Not for the first time, he wished some other pathetic chump occupied his spot as the newest recruit on the bottom of the St Martin sheriff’s office urinal. Was it his fault the coffee order slipped under his windscreen wiper early that morning like an infringement ticket had stretched longer than the cafe queue? Some comedian had ordered a mint julep. Davey had asked anyway, knowing it was stupid. His server with a nose ring and pretty red hair sniped she’d check out back for her “lace parasol, a gentleman caller, oh, and an 1850’s recipe.” Everyone in the shop had laughed. Although not so much when Davey loudly requested a “ginger tart” and little-miss-nose-ring promptly called the manager.
And this part of Louisiana was so off-the-known-track, without the police tape draping the bushes by the property’s entrance, Davey would still head for the Gulf of Mexico. Even GPS failed out here. To this point, everyone believed the land was unoccupied. Apparently, they’d had to search way back in the records to discover the landholder’s title. The victim’s name was Baptiste, Raphaela.
Hitching an equipment-packed belt he reached in, gathered the coffees on precariously stacked trays, and kicked the door shut. He wondered for the gazillionth time how Uncle Horace had managed to bully him into a career as a police officer. Davey had just wanted to go to college and teach history, not stare down years before the rest of them trusted him with something other than food and beverage orders.
Now he found himself shimmying through a creepy gridlock of dead cars towards a place with a cruel reputation that spanned centuries. Accidents happened in the vicinity too often: disappearances, drownings, gator attacks, moccasin bites. Voodoo and superstition riddled this part of Louisiana. Maybe, those rumours of black magic and devil-worship had simply got the better of him today.
“Another schmuck fronting the Reaper with surgical gloves and crime tape,” he muttered.
His spine crawled, as though unfriendly eyes peered from the cypress and cottonwood shadows. According to a fuzzy satellite image from the coffee-stained incident report back in the car, the dead woman’s land was originally a wilderness of greenery and swamp. He’d frowned at the word ‘originally’, reading it over and over. What had replaced the vegetation?
Davey scanned the scrubby clearing, ancient gnarled trees riddled by Spanish moss guarding what had once been a turning circle. The incessant shriek of insects was like razor wire in his ears. An industrial grinder lay by the gate, required to shear chains heavy enough to tether a tanker. Whatever had happened here, this was no ordinary crime scene. The concrete wall ringing the perimeter seemed better suited to a medieval fortress. He craned to glimpse its wide, barbed top. What on earth was the victim trying to keep out?
The place gave him a serious case of the jitters. It was not too late to hightail it back to the office. Hell! It was not too late to hightail it to college. He was barely eighteen. The whole team had made the trek here anyway. Stimulants aside, they didn’t need him. Uncle Horace would just have to deal with the fact that three generations in law enforcement ended the family record.
Davey gingerly navigated the partly open gate via colossal pillars, his lungs deflating. Silence fell. Beyond the columns, a clinging vapour swallowed his legs up to his thighs, the odour of petrol triggering his asthma. Juggling the trays, he fumbled his inhaler from an overstuffed pocket, sucking deeply. In an act worthy of a Las Vegas magician, he gritted a handkerchief in his teeth and tied it about his face with only one hand.
Treading cautiously up the incline, a pothole turned Davey’s ankle and several cups tumbled from the trays. It was even more suffocatingly humid inside. He gasped for air, pain lancing his leg. An asthma attack this severe was a rarity since enrolling for swimming years ago. Even with its owner gone, this eerie place managed to repel trespassers. What had happened here?
The fog eddied, his chest spasming in the sulphurous reek. He coughed and retched, rearranging stacks to take an urgent slug from the puffer. Picking up the pace, he tried another diversion by inspecting his surrounds. It was a mistake. Charred trees twisted from the fumes. Now Davey knew what became of the plant life, but wasn’t any less baffled. Their blackened carcasses reminded him of that painting of a screaming guy, as if they’d tried to escape skyward.
Ready to flee back to the sanctuary of his car, Raphaela Baptiste’s residence emerged from its poisonous shroud and Davey’s panic settled to knuckled tension in his gut. Through burning eyes he noticed it was stylish, made sinister by a layer of soot and a moat of pitted craters. Dead opossums, frogs and lizards scattered the burned remnants of front lawn in some sham garden, their state of decay more advanced than possible.
His brow furrowed. Had this devastation been caused by a toxic spill? Yet, the teeming bayou insects were absent, not one pelt boiling with parasites. In fact, he’d not been pestered by a bug at all since breaching the gate. Davey scanned the sky, the only sign of life a falcon circling high overhead.
The house’s double doors were thrown wide onto a generous veranda. Davey climbed the stairs and entered, panting as if he’d chain-smoked for decades. Boot prints grimed a floor of black-and-white marble and he tugged the gag to his neck, sidling through officers clotting the art-and-sculpture packed foyer. No one paid him any attention. They massaged the brims of their hats, eyes darting. Whispers followed him: “She’s too young. Must be the great-granddaughter …” “Packing stuff everywhere, bubble wrap and so forth …” “There’s no trace. Forensics haven’t a clue …”
Davey had never witnessed so many nervous cops crammed into one room. Dumping his reduced cargo on a fancy chair, he hoped his colleagues were the glass-half-full types. The brimming cap on Uncle Horace’s cup inspired relief. Joliet Senior crawled beneath an antique side table, torch in mouth, the taut seat of his gabardine slacks shined by chair use.
“Sheriff Joliet?” his nephew called.
Uncle Horace lurched upright and walloped the back of his stringy-haired head. The torch clattered to the tile.
“Geez, Davey.” He rubbed his scalp and unfolded a rangy frame, hauling to his feet. “A little warning? The ticker’s already in overdrive.” He halted and stared. “You look awful. You’re the shade of a honeydew melon. You didn’t fall for the ginger tart trap, did you?” His expression was far too sympathetic. “That serving girl’s as pleasant as a rabid cat.”
“It’s nothing. Just a little asthma.” Davey thrust the coffee at him, unwilling to admit the humiliation. His uncle took the cup and leaned tiredly on the tabletop.
“Thanks. You don’t have to stay, you don’t want. I couldn’t abide the lecture from your mother if you keeled over under my supervision.” He winked.
Davey’s curiosity burst forth. “What happened here?”
“Who knows? Make something up and we’ll be closer to the truth. This place is a museum. Nothin’s gonna wash out this stink. It’s plain unnatural.”
“Can I check it out before I leave? Maybe I’ll learn something.”
Horace smiled at this improvement in attitude and nodded. “You can’t miss her. The chief’s got his dander up. Just follow the wounded-bull roar. And Davey?” Davey paused and turned back to his uncle. “Don’t touch anything, no matter the temptation.”
A little credit: he was an academy rookie, not a fool. Davey made his way towards the rear of the house, down a long corridor that ended in a T-intersection. A bustle of activity led the way to an office in the right-hand cul-de-sac. Classy paintings, statues and fixtures jammed every available space. In his admittedly limited knowledge, it all looked worth a bucket.
A sweet, spicy odour eased his lungs the closer he got. He’d expected essence of cadaver. Arriving, Davey froze just inside the doorframe. The furniture cluttered the side furthest from him; an Oriental rug rolled up and pushed carelessly against the rest. A mutilated dead woman sat Buddha-like in the centre of the room, three tall black candles molten around her. Under the blaze of four police spotlights arranged in a square, a glassy prison welded her petite frame in place. She reminded Davey horribly of Spielberg’s Jurassic mosquito encased in amber.
Busy investigators failed to eclipse his attention, as if time slowed in a halo about her. She was very beautiful. Gross as it was, Davey couldn’t help thinking it. Her big eyes stared a thousand miles, strands tumbling from a messy bun, varnished lips sealed forever, and cream pants carved in resin.
He jerked his focus from her chest, where a bloody cavity peeled her sternum, bone and sinew visible. This tiny woman appeared to have stabbed herself, hands fixed in wilted prayer. But the blade was missing. Davey felt even more confused, amongst a turmoil of other less precise emotions. Such fuss over a suicide? He’d thought this was a murder. If not, a robbery? The burglars weren’t so thorough, easily transportable gem-studded ornaments dotting the room. Besides, with all the security they’d have to be Ocean’s Eleven.
And every time he glanced away, two triangles, one inside the other, wrought in red crayon, flickered from the ground. They made a frame surrounding her, which was filled with unknown symbols. No matter how hard he tried to hold the image, it vanished the moment he looked directly at the poor dead lady. His intuition squirmed.
“That knife’s crucial evidence! And it’s an heirloom worth more than my lifelong salary. It was there a moment ago,” the chief bawled from his position by a spotlight, his head lit up like a fire siren. “How in the mothering disaster could somebody pilfer it? We can’t budge her.”
Four officers even more florid than the chief grappled Ms Baptiste’s limbs, pulling and heaving with much swearing and no movement. A nearby technician smirked at Davey, as if he’d never seen a corpse.
“You okay, kid?” she asked. “If you’re going to up-chuck, take it outside. You don’t want to contaminate the scene.”
He’d been hunting with his uncle for years and was not the squeamish type. Davey fingered his baton, but didn’t have the nuts to utter a comment about the techy’s enormous butt matching her mouth. Besides, nausea was not the main problem. Could no one else see that triangle? Or feel the faint throb it emitted? If he tilted his head and didn’t stare straight, it luminesced from the edge of his vision.
He rallied to speak. “Hey, excuse me, guys … can anyone see—?” But the words were drowned by an outburst from the chief.
“Use a jackhammer for all I care. Get the whole lot to the lab. And find that damned knife!” The chief barrelled for the door. “Make sure there are plenty of photos,” he barked over a shoulder.
Davey scuttled out of the way and tried again, much louder. “Anyone see a drawing on the ground? A red triangle.”
“Ah, sir?”
“What, Mumford? What!” The chief lunged back inside, jowls quivering.
“We,” the video archivist croaked, “can’t seem to photograph the scene.”
“I am not an artistic man, Mumford. But even I could capture a few unhappy snaps with that whizzbang equipment the State generously purchases on your behalf. If you’re not up for the task, pass it to someone who is, and sign yourself up to shoot pictures of toddlers at the mall. Stop wasting my time.”
The mouthy one next to Davey stepped forward. “It’s not just Mumford, sir. We’ve tried on four different cameras and video. The digital frames are black every time. I’ve taken film, but no promises.”
“Guess not.” Davey gave up, positive the red triangle existed.
Never again would he disregard the bad vibe yelling, “stay in the car.” This tomb should have been left sealed. The chief devoted an opera to his disappointment and all present cowered. Davey didn’t catch a word. He slumped against the wall, transfixed by her, a terrible premonition knotting his bowels.
“Track down that unknown caller. Pronto! Goddamn it all to hell.”
“You mean the hell aside from this one?” Davey muttered to himself, gnawing his nails to the quick.
He wondered if that Egyptologist fellow, Carter, felt the same on cracking Tutankhamen’s crypt, ever after cursing his team to bad luck and death. Someone had cared about the victim, though, and phoned in details. Old Edith, who worked the switch, claimed she’d not heard a man more wrecked by sorrow in all her years. Otherwise, the Baptiste lady would have rested undiscovered for eternity. Davey felt sure she was meant to remain that way, her house a monument keeping its dire secrets. But someone wanted a proper burial for her. Or, thought Davey, to secretly gloat.
