Avery didn’t flinch, but he had the decency to drop his gaze to the ground.
“Alvin’s still doing time in Angola prison,” Mitch said, breaking the strained silence. “I want to personally ask him some questions. I’m going to talk to him this afternoon. You could ride with me, Carson.”
I felt the sting of tears. It had taken me more than two years after Annabelle’s death to be able to control my crying. Now I was about to lose it again because a D.A. stepped out of his professional skin and offered me a ride to a Louisiana prison. I was truly pathetic.
“Thanks. I’ll let you know.” I turned away and walked back to the shallow grave. The five skeletons were lying side by side, heads and feet in a row. I had no idea what had killed them, whether they were male or female, how old they were or why they’d been killed. For all of the things I didn’t know, I was relatively certain that they’d been murdered. The skeletons were perfect. Lying under the asphalt, they’d been safe from predators and animals that normally disturb skeletal remains. I knelt down beside the grave for a closer look.
Avery was watching me, alert to my possible theft of a femur or maybe a scapula. I examined the bones, stopping on the left hand of the first victim. I couldn’t be certain, but it seemed that a finger was missing. I looked at the next body and saw the same thing. Then again on the third, fourth and fifth.
“Hey, Avery,” I called. “The ring fingers are missing on all of them.”
He came to stand beside me, his black eyes assessing me, and not kindly. “We know,” he said. “And that’s something we’d like to keep out of the paper.”
I couldn’t keep a photograph from Brandon, but I could keep this information. At least for a day. “Okay,” I agreed, “until tomorrow. After that, I can’t promise.”
“The M.E. said the fingers were probably severed,” Avery said. “It might be our best clue for catching whoever did this.”
I nodded, still glancing at the bones. Something else caught my eye. Beside each skull were the remains of some kind of material, and beneath that, plastic hair combs. “Look at that,” I said. “Nobody wears hair combs like that anymore. What are the odds that all five bodies would have had combs?”
“These bodies have probably been here at least twenty years. I’ve got somebody checking records to see if we can find out when this parking lot was last paved.”
“You figure they’re all women?” I asked, feeling yet again the tingle at the base of my skull.
“If you jump to a conclusion, Ms. Lynch, please don’t put it in print. There are fools out there who believe what they read in the newspaper.”
“Thanks, Avery.” I was almost relieved to have him back to his normal snarly self.
“I’ll stop by and talk to Brandon,” Mitch said. “And you can decide if you want to ride to Angola with me. We could get there by three, back by seven or so.”
“Thanks. I’ll think about it.” When I glanced toward my truck, I saw that Riley had returned to his desk job. The forensics team had done its work and was bagging the bodies. I’d seen hundreds of the black, zippered bags, but they still left me feeling empty. Would the families of the victims find peace or more horror? I got in my truck and eased into the moving traffic jam that was the highway.
2
Instead of going to the paper, I detoured to city hall. Biloxi was an old sea town. Fishing was once the heart and soul of the settlement, and the preponderance of business development was right along the water on Highway 90 or on Pass Road, which paralleled the coast through two counties. The population was French, Spanish, Yugoslavian, German, Italian and Scotch-Irish with a smattering of Lebanese. The Vietnamese were the newcomers who had earned an uneasy place in the fishing industry. The population was predominantly Catholic, a fact that figured into how the gravy train of state funding was distributed for many years. With the power base situated in the Protestant delta, the Gulf Coast sucked hind tit. The casinos changed all of that. The coast now had the upper hand. King Cotton and the rich planter society of the delta were passé.
Highway 90 still had remnants of the gracious old coast I remembered. Live oaks sheltered white houses with gingerbread trim and green shutters. There was an air of serenity and welcome, of permanence. I drove through one such residential area and then turned onto Lemuse where city hall was located.
When I asked for the records of building permits issued in the 1980s, I discovered that Detective Boudreaux’s minion was one step ahead of me. A police officer had just copied those documents. They were right at hand, and I read with interest that a small addition had been built onto the Gold Rush in October 1981. The parking lot had also been expanded and paved. The five victims had to have been murdered prior to that. I had a place to begin looking and I sped back to the paper.
The newsroom had fallen into the noon slump. Only Jack Evans, a senior reporter, and Hank Richey, the city editor, were still at their desks, and I hoped they wouldn’t see me. They were journalists of the old school, and like me, they’d found themselves employed in an entertainment medium. I slunk past the newsroom to my office and was almost there when I heard Jack yell.
“What’s wrong, Carson? Vomit on your shirt?”
I couldn’t help but smile. Jack was awful, and I liked him for it.
“I just need a little nip from that bottle I keep in my desk.” It wasn’t a joke.
“How bad was it?”
I shook my head. “More strange than gruesome.”
“Mitch is talking to Brandon right this red-hot minute. I hear Joey got some good shots of the skeletons.” Jack grinned. “Mitch will have to trade his soul to keep Brandon from printing that.”
“I warned him.” I sat down on the edge of Jack’s desk. He was a medium-built guy with a head of white hair and a face that tattled all of his vices. In Miami I’d worked with a top-notch reporter who reminded me of Jack. We’d once rented a helicopter to cover some riots. It had been both harrowing and exhilarating.
“So, what did you see?” Jack asked, patting his empty shirt pocket where his Camels had once resided.
When I’d first started as a journalist, this was a game that had honed my eye. “Five skeletons, all uniform in size, buried side by side. I’d say they died around the same time because of the dirt and the decomposition, and also because the parking lot was paved in 1981.” I frowned, thinking. “There were hair combs beside each skull, which would indicate female gender.” I looked at Jack and decided to risk trusting him. “Not for Brandon to know, but their ring fingers were missing.”
“A trophy taker,” Jack said, leaning forward. “This is going to be a big story, Carson. If you play it right, you could climb back up on your career and ride out of this shit hole.” He shook his head, anticipating my question. “I’m too old. Nobody wants a sixty-year-old reporter. But you could do it.”
I felt the numbness start in my chest. My precious career. I stood up. “If I wanted a real career, I wouldn’t be in this dump.” I realized how cruel it was only after I’d walked away. Well, cruelty was my major talent these days.
I grabbed a notebook off my desk and headed to the newspaper morgue, a type of library where newspaper stories were
