CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Fields drove.Ella sat in the passenger seat and talked fast.
‘A lock keeper.A man who opens things so other people can pass through.He literally directed us to it.’
‘And there’s a canal lock south of here,’ Fields said.‘It runs off the bayou into a drainage canal.The parish has been talking about dredging it since I had hair.There’s an old boy who sits out there.He’s been minding the gates for years.’
Ripley was in the back with her phone in hand.‘Earl Parsons.I just checked.The Orleans Parish records have him listed as the canal lock operator.He was appointed in 2004 and there’ve been no updates since.’
‘That’s over twenty years in a hut on a canal that nobody uses,’ Ella said.
Fields didn’t answer.He put his foot down.
The scenery adjusted as they left the city behind.Suburbs gave way to light industrial, then to scrubby lots, then to nothing much at all.The land flattened out and the sky got bigger and the vegetation thickened on both sides until the road was a grey line cut through a wall of green.
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it sooner, and it was because she was too focused on the key to see the whole thing at a glance.Either way, she was too late, and whatever blood she was about to walk into was on her hands.This unsub had barely given her a chance to find the next victim because he was hours earlier than his pattern suggested – and how the hell did he know about her life?
Ella benched the thought until she’d gotten the next few hours out of the way, because this next victim deserved her full attention.Fields turned off the blacktop onto a gravel track.The cruiser rattled and pitched.Through the trees, Ella caught a dull gleam of water.
Then the track ended, and there it was.
The lock keeper’s hut sat at the edge of the canal where it met the bayou.It was a wooden box on stilts with a tin roof gone brown with rust.A narrow walkway ran from the bank to the door.The canal sat behind it.Ella could see the lock gates themselves; two heavy timber arms with rusted ironwork, sitting half-open.
‘That’s it,’ Fields said.He turned the engine off.Ella jumped out of the car and raised her weapon.Ripley and Fields followed close behind.
‘Hell of a place to die,’ Fields said.
‘Hell of a place to live.I’ll cover the side.Fields, take the back, if there is one.’
Ripley and Fields got into position, which took two seconds because the building was the size of a large garden shed.
Ella tried the handle.It turned.
She pushed the door open with her foot and the smell came out first.It was the smell of a body in the spring before decomposition.
She went in.
There sat a chair, a desk, a drawer, tools she didn’t recognize, a paperback novel, one cup of coffee and one cup of water.
And on the floor beside the chair, folded into himself, was Earl Parsons.
He was on his back with his arms at his sides, like a man who’d lain down for a nap and picked an odd spot for it.He was thin and old and his clothes were too big for him.He wore a faded work shirt with a parish maintenance patch on the breast pocket.His trousers were belted tight.The boots barely hanging off his feet had been resoled more than once.
She crossed to him and crouched.Pressed two fingers to the side of his neck.The skin was cool but not cold.He hadn’t been dead long, but long enough.Ella saw the bruising on the throat, same as Amber and Rose.The killer had gone back to strangulation for this one.Earl Parsons looked frail enough that hands would have been more than sufficient.
‘His right hand,’ Ripley said.She was beside Ella now, looking at Earl’s outstretched arm.‘There’s something in it.’
Ella pulled her gloves on.She uncurled Earl’s fingers one at a time, gently, because rigor hadn’t fully set and the fingers gave without resistance, and because this man deserved at least that much care from the last people who would ever touch him.
A figurine sat in his palm.
It was small, wooden, hand-carved, hand-painted, just like the ballet dancer and key-man before it.
Except this one was a bird.
A pelican.
It was standing upright on a flat base with its wings slightly raised and its beak pointing forward.It had a tiny black eye on each side of its head.
