Chapter 18 #3
“Six miles out of town, stuffed behind a wall in the attic of an abandoned antebellum mansion. The man who killed her owned it then. His name was Billy Joe Dubois. He got away with murder, but karma kicked his ass. He caught COVID before there was a vaccine and spent three long weeks in a hospital, under oxygen, gasping for every breath like she did when he strangled her. I like to think that her ghost was sitting on his chest the whole time, and that he could see her. That would be his karma.”
O’Brien shuddered. “You don’t have an address?”
“I will know it when I see it. I know the road it’s on. You follow me to the house now. I’ll show you the wall. You do the rest.”
“You’re freakin’ scary,” O’Brien said.
“No, people who kill are freakin’ scary.
I like to think people like me are created to be the conscience they don’t have.
I’m parked down the street. It’s a blue Ford Explorer, and I don’t like to wait.
Justice has been too long coming. I want to be able to tell Mrs. LeBlanc that her daughter has been found before she passes. ”
O’Brien signaled at a detective. “Would you please walk Mr. Bandy out? I need to make some calls.”
Minutes later, Tate was walking down the street to where he’d parked. He got in, started his car, then turned on the air conditioning and sent Raina a text.
Tell your grandmother to hang on. We’re going to get her girl.
Raina saw the message, then read it again aloud to her grandmother and saw a tear roll down the side of her face.
It took fifteen minutes for O’Brien to organize the search.
He had a couple of people from forensics and three detectives.
When Tate saw the convoy, he pulled out in front of them and led the way out of town.
He was watching the mileage as they drove, and as they were coming up on six miles, he saw the house from his vision.
He began signaling a turn, then went up the long-overgrown driveway, stopped, grabbed a flashlight from the glove box, and got out, locking the car behind him.
The police exited with tools and their equipment.
“Lock your doors. There are squatters on the premises,” he said.
“Shit,” O’Brien muttered.
“They’ll scatter when they see us, but that’s not why we’re here,” Tate said.
He led the way inside and headed for what had once been a grand staircase that wound up through both floors.
The house was a dump. They heard the footsteps of people running out as they entered.
The cops half expected to find some druggie dead in a corner somewhere. It smelled of weed, filth, and feces.
“Where’s the access to the attic?” O’Brien asked.
“This way,” Tate said, and kept walking to the door at the end of the corridor. When he opened it, a bird flew out into their faces, leaving tiny wisps of baby feathers behind as it flew off to somewhere else.
“Jesus wept,” a detective mumbled, and made the sign of the cross. This house felt like the devil was here.
Tate was expecting the room to be pitch-black, but part of the roof was missing and daylight was splattered all over the place. He walked straight to the attic window, then put his hand on the wall to the left.
“She’s in here, about halfway down. Be careful when you start cutting into the wall, or you’ll be taking a pile of bones back to your lab,” Tate said.
“I guess we didn’t need a search warrant after all,” someone said.
Tate stepped back, watching as they used a hammer and began chipping at the wall, carefully breaking through the lathe and plaster.
They made four tiny openings several inches apart.
Every time they opened a new one, they flashed a light into the crevice, seeing what looked like a thousand years of dust and spiders, but nothing more, until they made the last opening.
Light spilled onto the skeletal head and gaping jaw, and everything stopped.
“Oh, God, she’s here,” someone said.
O’Brien looked into the opening, then turned around and stared at Tate.
“You were right.”
What Tate saw when he looked was who she’d been. And how she looked. Not this. “This is your crime scene. I’m leaving. I need to let the granddaughter know her mother has been found.”
The same detective who made the sign of the cross before entering didn’t trust a human’s ability to divine. He was leery about Tate Bandy and where his gift came from. “So, you want to be the one to brag? So you can be the big shot who found her?”
Tate turned to face him. “I am the big shot who found her. But you won’t hear me bragging about it to the media. Families tell their stories, and include me in them, but I didn’t ask for fame any more than I asked to be given the knowing.”
“Yeah, but you make money off it,” he countered.
Tate shrugged. “Do you get paid for finding bad guys and solving mysteries?”
“Well, yes, but we’re official officers of the law, and you’re some hick from the hills,” he said.
The skin crawled on the back of Tate’s neck.
“So, it takes a gun, a badge, and some man’s law before you can do your job, and then it takes weeks and sometimes years to solve it, or it becomes a cold case and you forget this woman ever existed?
Just because I can do it in minutes, you think I should do it for free for assholes like you?
I’m picky about this, dude. I won’t do this for just anybody.
Why don’t you just go on and do your job now, because mine is over. ”
O’Brien gave Tate an apologetic look and then held out his hand. “Thank you. We’ll take good care of her for the family.”
Tate shook his hand and left, and the moment he was out of sight, O’Brien lit into the entire team.
“If I find out even one of you says anything negative or lies about that man in any way, I will turn you over to IA and let them sort through your issues. In my squad, we do not disparage people who help. Even when it hurts to admit we’re wrong. Understand?”
They ducked their heads and got to work.
Tate walked out, got in his car, and drove back to the hospital, then went straight back to Room 312 and walked in.
Raina was still sitting by the bed. The monitors were still beeping proof of the faint sounds of Marjolynne’s life. He leaned over her bed and whispered in her ear.
“Mrs. LeBlanc…we found Caroline. She’s not lost anymore. Rest in peace, sweet lady.” He brushed a kiss across her forehead, then turned to Raina. “The police will be in touch as to when you can claim the body.”
“I can never thank you enough,” she said.
“It’s what I do,” Tate said, and turned around to leave the room. The monitor was still beeping, but slower, fainter. He was walking toward the elevator when he heard an alarm go off at the nurse’s station as he was passing, and knew what it meant.
Another soul was going home.
“And so, it goes.”