City of the Dead Page 9

  “Detective Gilchrist, isn’t it?” Max asked, pushing open the glass door.

  Indeed it was, the sincere young man from the Eighth District who’d blushed when he’d had to mention the word fertility. Chastity wondered what he’d get upset about this afternoon. It seemed he was tag-teaming, which Chastity thought didn’t mean anything good.

  Both men walked into the house.

  “Yes, sir,” Gilchrist was saying. “I appreciate your seeing us. This is Detective Dulane from Jefferson Parish, sir.”

  Dulane was a squared-off, middle-aged black man with old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses and freckles. His watchful, patient gaze took in the house and then settled on the inhabitants.

  Max shook hands and led them to a couch. Chastity almost interfered, the instinct so strong in her that nobody sat on those couches. The police, evidently, did.

  “This is my sister-in-law,” Max said, setting them on the cool plastic of his furniture. “Chastity Byrnes. Have you met?”

  “Yes. Hello, ma’am.” Detective Gilchrist nodded with a tip of his head. The other guy just watched.

  “Hello, Detective,” Chastity said. “Seems I just left your office.”

  She got him to blush again, which meant that he was either still a young cop, or working the wrong job entirely. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, but this came up after you left.”

  “I assumed as much.”

  He couldn’t even seem to look at her. “I was wondering if you could identify something for me, Dr. Stanton,” he said instead, not looking appreciably more comfortable.

  Chastity’s stomach did a fresh slide that had nothing to do with bathrooms and old photos. Oh, God, she didn’t want to be here. She did not want to know that she’d failed another sister before she’d even had a chance.

  Because she knew this song, chapter and verse.

  Detective Gilchrist was already reaching into his pocket, and it wasn’t treasure he was going to show them.

  But it was. Chastity damn near lost her breath when he turned his closed hand palm up and exposed the evidence bag in his hand.

  “Holy shit,” she breathed.

  “Dear God,” Max moaned.

  It was an emerald. A big, blue-green emerald the size of Chastity’s knuckle, sparkling like the Caribbean in the early afternoon sun. Set into a yellow gold ring and bracketed by about a dozen equally impressive princess-cut diamonds.

  Exquisite. Memorable.

  “Do you recognize it, sir?” the detective asked, his voice as gentle as a man’s could be.

  “It’s Faith’s wedding ring,” Max said, his voice harsh, his hand out as if to touch it. Never reaching it. Just hovering there in front of him as if contact would make a statement he couldn’t.

  “Sir,” Detective Gilchrist said, not moving, that emerald still glowing in the refracted sunlight, “can you tell me what it was doing on another woman’s hand?”

  Six

  How interesting, was all Chastity could think. Here were the police waving around her sister’s wedding ring—the wedding ring that wasn’t on her sister’s hand—and she couldn’t seem to work up any emotion.

  Not dread. Not fear. Not grief.

  Because you’d think that a woman wouldn’t part with a legacy like that without a serious tussle, which meant that Faith must have been involved in more than just hopping a cab out of town. And Chastity could only think, how interesting.

  She should have felt something more. It was her sister, after all. But it was her sister she hadn’t seen in ten years. Her sister who had gone to exceptional lengths to re-create a life that Chastity had been fleeing as fast as her feet could carry her. Her sister who had married a man who looked just like the father who had terrorized his three daughters straight into hell.

  Okay, so maybe it would take a little while for dread, fear, and grief to push past those photos in the bathroom. Chastity still felt way too betrayed to work up any other good emotion.

  Obviously not a problem for the doc.

  “What are you talking about?” he demanded, suddenly on his feet. “What do you mean you found it on another woman?”

  He’d gone so pale Chastity thought he’d keel over on the spot. She knew she should go out and get him a nice big glass of tea, but she couldn’t seem to move.

  Gilchrist considered the ring that dangled inside that bag, as if seeing it for the first time. “Well, that’s the puzzle, sir,” he said, evidently spokesman for the day. “You see, this ring was found on an unidentified body in Bayou Segnette over in Jefferson Parish. When he recognized the ring from your missing persons report, Detective Dulane here notified us.”

  If possible, Max got paler, his face tight and small somehow. “Bayou Segnette? How could Faith…I don’t understand.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sir. The woman we found isn’t your wife. At least, the coroner doesn’t believe so. This woman seems younger than your wife.”

  “Seems?” Chastity couldn’t help but ask. “Does she look so much like my sister you’re not sure?”

  Detective Gilchrist didn’t blush this time. He flinched. “Um, you see,” he said, looking down at that wedding ring in his hand as if it would give him direction, “the woman had been in the bayou a while, and…”

  Chastity nodded. “Ah.”

  “Then how can you be sure?” Max demanded. “I mean, Faith cherishes her wedding ring. She would never give it up.”

  Chastity took another look over at that decadent, seductive emerald, and suddenly, in a flash of belated memory and insight, thought of how, in fact, Faith could have given it up. She assessed the flashes of blue, the deep, sweet clarity of the stone. She considered the fact that for an emerald, which almost always had inclusions, it looked just a shade too perfect. She wondered offhandedly just how much that ring had cost. How much a person could get for it if she, say, finally wanted to run away from home.

  She should have thought of this before, but all of Faith’s jewelry had been right there in her box. All precisely laid out like stock on a jewelry counter. Chastity had seen it and hadn’t even considered such a possibility. For some reason, though, it was the first thing she thought of when she saw that emerald.

  But just how did she ask?

  “Are there any identification marks on the ring, Max?” she asked. “An inscription, maybe?”

  Max stared at her as if she had no right to interrupt. “Our initials. The date of our wedding.”

  Gilchrist was already nodding. “They’re there. We checked.”

  Chastity sat back and wondered when she could talk to the cop alone.

  “But what does this mean?” Max demanded, pacing. “Why would this woman have Faith’s ring?”

  “Well, that’s what we’re trying to figure out. Uh, just to make sure, would you mind our collecting something in the house that might have your wife’s DNA on it? A hairbrush? Toothbrush?”

  He got another tense silence, and then Max sat down.

  “Her DNA. Then you’re not sure.”

  “We don’t want to make a mistake, sir.”

  Max nodded, a sharp, frantic movement. Chastity held her breath, terrified that Max would ask her to go back into that bathroom to look for a hairbrush. Before she could even offer, though, Max lurched to his feet and stalked from the room.

  Chastity pulled herself together at warp speed. She needed information more than a meltdown right now.

  “What else?” she asked Gilchrist, sotto voce.

  Gilchrist took a nervous look toward the back hallway, where Max could be heard, and turned to the other detective, the black guy from Jefferson Parish, who finally came to life.

  “The victim took a shotgun blast to the face. She’s blond like your sister, and the same basic body type. But…”

  He shrugged and Chastity nodded. “There’s not enough left to do dentals or anything?”

  “We’ll be in touch with the family dentist, just in case.”

  She nodded. “You’re
sure there’s nothing else, though. No clothing tags or tattoos or anything. I mean, everybody else in this city sure has a tattoo.”

  “The body was unclothed,” Gilchrist said. “No tattoos. Nothing definite about the soles of her feet. Well, you know…”

  What was left of them.

  “You don’t think she’s homeless, then,” Chastity said.

  It was the first thing you checked on an unknown victim. If their feet were calloused and dirty, chances were they weren’t into regular footwear. It made identification both easier and harder.

  “No, but we can’t take the chance.”

  “Of course. And is she at the New Orleans coroner?”

  “No, ma’am. Jefferson Parish. We’re west of Orleans Parish. Bayou Segnette, where the victim was found, is in our jurisdiction.”

  Chastity nodded. “Your coroner use a forensic pathologist?”

  He didn’t seem in the least insulted by the question. “We have three.”

  “Can I talk to the pathologist involved?”

  “His name is Willis. I’ll let him know you might be in touch.”

  “Thank you. Is there anything else? Anything I can do?”

  Dulane shrugged. “If you can find anything else out from Dr. Stanton that might point the way to who this woman might be…”

  “You don’t think it was a thief? Burglar or something?”

  His eyebrow lifted. “If you’d made off with that thing, do you think you’d wear it long enough to get shot in?”

  Chastity had to smile, thinking of the cache in her pocket. “Actually? Yeah. I would. At least long enough to pretend it was mine before I had to give it up for the rent money.”

  The cop thought about that for a minute before he nodded.

  Chastity squirmed. “Um, Detective…”

  “Here.” Max was back, a tortoiseshell brush in his hand that was part of the set Chastity had seen on Faith’s vanity. Dulane pulled out another evidence bag and stood to let Max drop the brush in. Then Max held out his own hand to Gilchrist, as if expecting a trade. His eyes on the brush, Gilchrist didn’t notice at first.

  “Thank you for bringing my wife’s ring, Detective,” Max said, still standing there.

  Gilchrist looked up at Max, and then he stood up. “I’m sorry, sir. We can’t give this back to you yet. It’s evidence.”

  Max went from paper white to mottled red, and suddenly Chastity could easily see him tossing instrument trays around.

  “Do you know what that ring is worth?” Max demanded, his voice hard and sharp. A surgeon’s voice. “I’m not just giving it up to the property room of the New Orleans Police Department!”

  Give them their due, neither detective so much as flinched.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Detective Dulane said, taking the ring back from Gilchrist and carefully holding it alongside the brush. “I have no choice. I promise it’ll be well taken care of. And it’ll be in Jefferson Parish, not Orleans. At least for the present. I’d be happy to leave my card, if you have any questions.”

  Chastity, well used to jurisdictional hot potatoes from her work in the much-fragmented St. Louis region, could see the frustration build in Max as he tried to follow the cop’s logic.

  “Max,” Chastity said in her best tension-defusing voice, “he really can’t give you the ring.”

  “He would if I contacted his superiors,” Max assured her, his nostrils flaring.

  “But you wouldn’t do that,” Chastity said. “Would you? Especially if it could jeopardize our chances of finding Faith?”

  He actually flinched, as if she’d yanked him back from somewhere. Chastity could see him pull himself together.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding, focused on no one. “I see. Anything else right now?”

  Dulane relaxed a bit. “The name of your wife’s dentist?”

  Max went white again, all but swayed. “Yes. Of course. Dr. Bradley. Dr. Simon Bradley.”

  “Thank you, sir. I promise we’ll be in touch.”

  Max nodded him off like an intern. “Then if you don’t mind…”

  He just turned and walked away, leaving Chastity to see the detectives out. She stood where she was, though, watching until Max had walked down that long hallway and into the master suite he’d shared with her sister. Where he’d shared those marabou feathers.

  Not something Chastity wanted to think about now. Instead she girded herself because she knew she was about to scale a wall.

  “You wanted to ask something before,” Dulane said quietly.

  Chastity turned back to see the two of them focusing their cops’ eyes right on her. Oddly enough, it was what settled her. Cops she was used to. It was this house that was going to send her shrieking into the swamps.

  “Yes,” she said, eyes back on the ring. On that decadent green stone that seemed to have a life of its own. “Um, actually, I have a suggestion.”

  Two left eyebrows lifted in tandem. Briefly Chastity thought to ask them how they’d mastered the trick.

  “Go get that ring appraised,” she said. “Right now.”

  Gilchrist stiffened like an outraged virgin. “If you don’t trust us…”

  Chastity gave him a scowl that should have set his hair on fire. “Back down, there, Detective. My thought is this. I’m not sure what Dr. Stanton said when he reported his wife missing, but I think there might be a chance she just ran away from home. I told you that. But until I saw this ring, I wasn’t sure how she managed it. Now…well, the fact is, she’s done it before.”

  Both cops all but went on point.

  “Pardon?”

  Chastity reached for her little bag, and let it comfort her. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought to tell him this earlier. She didn’t know why she hadn’t told Max.

  Oh, yes she did. Because she survived by pretending that most of it had never happened. And all that jewelry had been sitting right there in Faith’s bedroom. Even her pearls. The pearls Faith had deliberately left at home the last day she’d been seen.

  God, Chastity thought. She should have recognized the pattern.

  “Ten years ago, Faith and my mother disappeared from St. Louis without a trace. They didn’t take credit cards or checkbooks or their own Social Security numbers. I know, because we looked. What they did take was all my mother’s good jewelry.”

  In the dead of night, from one sunset to a sunrise, before Chastity got out of bed in the cheap little apartment she’d been sharing with five other people. Before anybody could stop them or Chastity could ask why But then, she’d known why.

  Chastity could see all those cop questions build up behind their sharp eyes, and knew they realized that a ten-year-old case wasn’t the one that should interest them. She felt the tension in her neck ease by millimeters.

  “I’m not saying that we should discount foul play,” she insisted. “But I thought you should know.”

  Dulane shot a look down the hall. “You think she was running from her husband?”

  Gilchrist was the one to stiffen this time. But then, Max had saved his daddy.

  “No.” She sighed, sucked it in to keep going. “Not necessarily. Like I told you, Detective Gilchrist. My mother just died. It’s not an uncommon time for children to decompensate. And Faith sure had the blueprint to do it.”

  Oddly enough, it was the quiet Dulane who smiled. A gentle, white-toothed smile that helped Chastity maintain focus.

  “About my suggestion,” she said.

  “It would help to know where he bought the ring.”

  “Leyton’s on Royal,” Gilchrist said. “Dr. Stanton told me when he filed the report. Said it was the family jeweler.”

  Dulane had a look like he wanted to whistle at the information. After everything else, Chastity wasn’t surprised.

  “May I also suggest taking me along for validation?” she asked. “In case my brother-in-law questions the results. He seems like a nice guy, but he’s got a real hard-on about that ring.”

  “As good a
suggestion as that is,” Gilchrist demurred, his cheeks pinking up again, “and not to denigrate your credentials…”

  “Which I assume you checked.”

  “Which we did. We can’t assume your objectivity.”

  They could, but they wouldn’t know that. She thought a minute. “What about Kareena Boudreaux? Would she work?”

  At once both expressions cleared.

  “Kareena’s nuts,” Dulane said. “Once rode a motor scooter through the Charity ER. But she’s a pro.”

  “Good. I know where she works.”

  Chastity took a minute to brave the master suite to let Max know that she was going out with the police.

  “Would you rather I stay for a while?” she asked.

  He was lying fully clothed on that beige bed, his arm over his eyes, the curtains drawn. The room was as cold as a morgue, and Chastity wanted out even before she went in. It occurred to her, this time, that if there wasn’t anything of Faith in this room, there wasn’t anything of Max either.

  “What are you going to be doing?” he asked, not moving.

  “Trying to find Faith.”

  “Okay,” he said, his voice taut and thin. “I think I’d rather have some time alone right now. Thanks.”

  “I’ll call later, okay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  A child bred and raised for guilt, Chastity was assailed by it as she backed out of that room. But she couldn’t feel any remorse for escaping that house.

  She was climbing into the backseat of the New Orleans police unit when she realized what she’d forgotten to ask Max.

  “Hey, Detective, I don’t suppose you found out anything more about that fertility clinic, did you?”

  It was almost a pleasure to see him blush again.

  Frankie Mae Savage drove a cab. A lean, sleek, mocha-skinned woman of Creole descent with sly blue eyes and the kind of marcelled hair Cab Callaway had once worn, Frankie Mae was the kind of woman who moved with sinuous grace and hid much of her intelligence behind a quiet smile.