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“Well, check after we’re done.” Tanisha was known for not mincing words. Just like Morrisette, though they couldn’t be more physically different. Whereas Morrisette was short and wiry, her skin lined from years growing up under a harsh Texas sun, Seville was tall and big-boned with smooth mocha-colored skin, springy black hair she didn’t bother taming and eyes that flashed when she was irritated. Like now. Ignoring the detective, she leaned into her camera and slowly panned the area.
Carter caught Reed’s eye.
“So far, only two bodies located.”
“That’s more than enough,” Morrisette muttered.
“Let’s hope it stays that way.” Reed didn’t want to see the body count going up, didn’t want to think that this once-grand estate had become a dumping ground for a serial killer. But what about that empty depression in the crypt? Had a third victim escaped? Would they find more skeletons when they began to dig? What the hell had happened here in this dingy, forgotten cellar filled with years of discards now illuminated by the eerie glow of temporary lights?
They talked with a couple of the techs, found out nothing more and watched grimly as the skeletons were painstakingly withdrawn from their resting spaces.
“This is something you just can’t unsee now, can ya?” Morrisette swept her gaze over the small bodies before they were bagged. “Gonna be with me for effin’ ever. As long as I live. C’mon. Let’s get outta here.” She was already heading for the stairs.
Outside, the air was still heavy with the smell of the river, but they’d left the pervasive scent of rot in the basement, thank God. Reed noted it was late afternoon, not a breath of wind to stir the air, the h
eat oppressive. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he took the call from the department. “Reed.”
“Yeah, it’s Delacroix,” a female voice stated, and he remembered the woman, a relatively new hire and junior detective. Auburn hair, medium build, serious beyond her years. “I’ve got a rundown on the phone number who called 911 about the bodies at the Beaumont estate. A guy by the name of Bruno Cravens.”
Reed was familiar with the name. “Goes by Bronco,” he said, remembering the small-time hustler who had been busted time and again for burglary, robbery, passing bad checks, that sort of thing. Always at the wrong place at the wrong time and up to no good. “We’ll round him up and have a chat.”
“You got his address?”
“Cabin on Settler’s Road?”
“That’s the one. Want me to check him out?” she offered, and Reed remembered she was a go-getter. Single, a little sassy and extremely gung ho.
“Nah, we’re about done here anyway. Thanks.” He hung up and was about to explain when Morrisette said, “I heard. Bronco Cravens again.” She shook her head. “No surprise there. Just can’t keep his nose clean.” Her eyes narrowed and she followed the path of a bee flitting through the tangle of weeds. “Wonder what he was doing here?” She scrabbled in the pocket of her blouse, her fingers coming up empty. “Man, I could use a smoke,” Morrisette admitted, scowling. “But if I did, man, oh, man, you can bet Priscilla would smell it on me and I’d never hear the end of it. Got a nose like a goddamned bloodhound and she’s death on smoking. At least for now. And as far as cigarettes go.” Morrisette’s eyes slid away. “Can’t say about anything else. Kids these days are into weed a lot younger than when I was in school. She’s a good kid, but you just never know.”
Priscilla was a handful, Reed thought. Morrisette’s son, Toby, was a few years younger than his sister and to hear Morrisette tell it, already thinking he was an adult and “the man of the family.” His mother disagreed. “In his dreams,” she’d confided not long ago.
“Come on, let’s get to it,” she added. “You go south, I’ll head north. Let’s just get a feel for this place and hope we don’t find any more bodies.” Reed eyed the woods, tall and gloomy, and wondered if the whole damned estate was a dumping ground for corpses and if there was a serial killer on the loose. The victims discovered in the basement had been there for years, possibly decades, but what if there were more? Fresh ones?
Reed didn’t like the turn of his thoughts. And there was Bronco. Why was he on the property? What was the connection?
As to the victims—yes, girls, he decided, his stomach churning at the thought. They’d been hidden in that hole in the wall a long time.
Who the hell were they?
CHAPTER 4
Nikki eased off the gas as she reached the gates of the Beaumont estate, then sped past. Before she was spotted. Of course the entrance was closed off, police vehicles blocking access except for the authorized vehicles from the department or the medical examiner or forensic team. And, she noted, Reed’s Jeep was wedged between two sheriff’s department SUVs. Deputies had been posted to prevent the public and the press from getting too close to the crime scene and keeping neighbors, the general public and lookie-loos from catching a glimpse of what was going on. Well, too bad. Fortunately, she knew this area like the back of her hand and so she rolled on past the main entrance. Around two curves she found a turnout where the road was wider, a spot that fishermen used to park their cars before they hiked to the river.
She pulled in and parked, locked the car and started jogging along a familiar path through the forest. She came to a fork near a blackened stump and turned without hesitation to the right, doubling back toward the Beaumont estate. She’d come here as a kid along with her brothers and sister. Andrew, the oldest, leading the way, Kyle dogging at his heels, Lily and Nikki lagging behind as they’d followed the old deer trails through the sun-dappled forest. It had been long ago—so long—and now . . . she closed her mind to the past, didn’t want to think of her shattered family. Andrew had died so long ago and his death had sent the family into a tailspin, Kyle rebelling and becoming distant, Lily set upon her own introspective path of bad decisions, and Nikki’s own innocence destroyed. Her parents, never loving to begin with, had never been the same.
But she wouldn’t go there. Not now. Not when she had to concentrate.
She kept running.
Twilight was fast approaching, the gloom settling under the canopy of branches overhead, the smell of the river thick in her nostrils. Roots and rocks made the ground uneven, and spider webs and limbs brushed her bare arms as she caught glimpses of the river through the trees. She was breathing hard as she spied the wire fence, the mesh disintegrating, a faded NO TRESPASSING sign hanging by a single strand as it warned that violators would be prosecuted.
“Too bad,” she muttered, and slipped through a large gap in the mesh.
Speaking of prosecution and the law—what happens when Reed finds out you’ve been here? Not just trespassing, but nosing around his crime scene? Huh? What then?
Ignoring that nasty little voice in her head, she hesitated at the edge of the woods leading to the clearing beyond, where the tall grass met the river’s edge and nestled in a copse of live oaks. The proud old house stood, crumbling now, on a small rise. As a child, Nikki and her family had attended parties here. Even then the old house had been starting to show its age, but now, nearly thirty years later, it had fallen into near ruin. As she peeked between the leaves of an overgrown crepe myrtle, she eyed the house and grounds now crawling with cops. So different from how it had been. In her mind’s eye she remembered the parties Beulah Beaumont had hosted, here on these very grounds. Nikki had been little more than a toddler who, like the other children of guests, had been allowed to play and run down the terraced lawn and in the surrounding trees while the acrid smell of smoke from the barbecue mixed with sweet aromas of hummingbird cake and pecan pies wafting from the kitchen.
She remembered Beulah Beaumont, the matriarch, as a proud woman with flaming red hair piled high, blue eyes that narrowed suspiciously and thin lips that were forever drawn into a saccharine smile. Miss Beulah had smelled of some odious perfume meant to cover the scents of alcohol and cigarettes, though those acrid scents had always lingered. As Nikki’s mother, Charlene, had once said, “Who does she think she’s fooling? And that wig! Dear Lord!”
