Hardass (Bad Bitch) (5 page)

Mr. Granade came around the table and offered me his hand. “Come on, Ms. Montreat. Time to go.”

I took it and rose, feeling more awkward than anything else.

“Sure you don’t want to stay here, Caroline?”

I knew I wasn’t supposed to talk. I knew it. I did it anyway. “And learn how to creep on younger associates? No thanks. I can get that lesson better elsewhere.”

Matt whistled. “You got a hot one there, Wash. Better watch out.”

“Keep running your mouth like you always do. Doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m still going to wipe the floor with you like I always do.” Mr. Granade opened the door for me, and I gave an acid look to Matt as I walked out.

“Not this time, Wash. Your guy is as dirty as they come, and I’m going to make sure he gets the death penalty.”

“Sure, Matt. Sure. Say hi to Fawn for me, would you?”

“Don’t even say her name, Wash.” Matt followed us into the hall.

Carla looked at us over the ledge of the reception desk, her eyebrows raised almost to her hairline.

“I don’t even have to say hers. I’m sure she says mine every night.” Mr. Granade pushed the door open for me, Matt hot on our heels.

“Don’t you fucking talk about my wife!” His yell reverberated around the reception area.

“Have a nice day, Matt. Thanks for the docs.” Mr. Granade kept his hand at my back as I tried to walk as quickly as possible to the car.

My heart was galloping out ahead of me, both worried and excited that I was going to see a throwdown, all the while pretending they were fighting over me instead of “Fawn.”

“This ain’t over, Wash.” Matt didn’t give chase any further, but his voice carried on the crisp fall air.

Mr. Granade’s hand left my back for a moment and then returned. Something told me he’d just flipped Matt off.

“What the fuck was all that about?” I slid into the leather seat and wiped my sweaty palms on my skirt.

Mr. Granade tossed the evidence into the backseat and pulled away from the curb. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

“Is that so? Seems like I do need to worry about it. I thought he was going to clock you there for a second.”

Mr. Granade’s lip twitched and then stretched into a smile. “Even on that asshole’s best day, he could never clock me.”

“Cocky much?”

He shrugged. “Just stating a fact.”

“Who’s Fawn?”

“Matt’s wife.”

I groaned. “You do realize I graduated from law school, right? That I did well enough on the LSAT to get into law school? That I, oh, I don’t know, graduated high school, and even middle school? So, while I appreciate you stating the obvious for me like that, what I was asking was who is Fawn
to you
.
”

“And therein lies the lesson. Ask what you mean to ask. Tailor your questions precisely and you may just get the information you’re after.” He pulled up to the sheriff’s office and jumped out of the car before I even had a chance to continue my short-lived interrogation.

I followed him, but he managed to stay a few steps ahead of me this time, his hair gleaming in the afternoon sun. I wanted to reach up and yank on it to get him to talk to me, or at least let me talk. He wisely stayed out of range. Besides, even I knew that pulling your boss’s hair in broad daylight in front of the sheriff’s office might not be the best career choice.

We signed in and were led to another stark conference room—everything metal and dingy. The evidence clerk brought in two storage containers marked with bright yellow tape and indecipherable codes in Sharpie.

“This it?”

“Aside from the bodies at the morgue, yeah.” The deputy seemed none too pleased about helping us.

Mr. Granade dug some gloves from his suit. It should have creeped me out that he’d been wandering around all day with rubber gloves in his pocket, but I was just impressed that he came prepared.

He handed me a set. “All of it’s been processed and dusted for prints, but there’s no telling what’s in here, and it’s probably stuff you don’t want to get on your hands.”

“Noted.” I snapped the gloves into place as the deputy shut the door and took up his post down the hall.

A camera in the corner kept an eye on us as we got to work. He cut the tape sealing the first bin and flipped the lid off. A manifest lay on top of the items, each piece of evidence neatly logged in a precise hand.

“We’ll get a copy of their log, but go ahead and catalog everything I pull out. We never rely on anyone else’s work but our own.” He reached for the item on the top of the pile. It was a pale blue scarf that reeked of cheap perfume. A deep brown stain colored one end.

I scribbled down the description.

“We should have the tox and blood results on the docs Matt gave us. Once we get back to the office, give it all a once-over and match up the items with the test results. Then we’ll know which victim goes with what. Got it?”

“Yes.”

He placed the scarf on the table and dug out the next item. A white T-shirt covered with even more brown stains.

“What’s that?”

He checked the manifest. “Looks like a shirt that was found stuffed behind a chest of drawers at Rowan’s apartment.”

I shuddered. There was too much blood on the shirt for it to have come from a shaving mishap.

“Let’s keep going.”

We spent the better part of two hours looking at the items that told a story of a life lived poorly and violently. Knives, needles, a variety of drugs, snuff porn—if it was disgusting or creepy, Rowan had it. Two pieces of evidence were particularly troubling: a gun and a notebook full of twisted writings.

Rowan was something of an author, but as I flipped through the composition notebook, it became clear that his darkest fantasies were written on the pages. Rape, murder, dismemberment—all written in slashing blue ink. It read like the Bayou Butcher Manifesto. No wonder he’d been popped as soon as the cops got a line on him.

Other pieces of evidence weren’t quite as obvious. A scribbled note with the name and number of a boardinghouse. A photo of Rowan with another man, Rowan’s arm slung casually over the much shorter man’s shoulders. It was old, taken back when Rowan’s teeth weren’t rotted out from the meth pipe.

Once we’d cataloged all of it and gotten a copy of the police manifest, it was nearing five o’clock. We headed back to the office as the sun played a game of hide-and-seek behind the downtown skyscrapers.

“Start a database with all the evidence we’ve seen so far. I want a memo tomorrow detailing what’s in Matt’s file. List each item as a bullet point, with a note below concerning its significance.” He turned into the parking deck of our building.

“Tomorrow?”

“Hearing problems, Ms. Montreat?”

“No, that’s just”—I stole a glance at the sheaf of papers and the CD that could contain thousands more documents—“soon, is all.”

“If you can’t keep up, I’m sure Ms. Evans would be more than happy to help me.”

“Really? Yvonne couldn’t lawyer her way out of a paper bag.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

“And you can?” He gave me a sidelong glance as we pulled into his parking spot.

“Yes.”

“We’ll see. Have it on my desk by noon.” He didn’t move, just waited for me to get out.

“Calling it an early night, Mr. Granade?” I twisted and reached between our seats to gather the documents.

Mr. Granade shifted in his seat at my intentional invasion of his personal space.
Good
.

“I have a prior appointment, which is why I’m trusting you to get this done for me.”

I turned back around in my seat and opened the door. “I will. By noon.”

“Good. After we get our feet under us with the documents, we’ll start doing some real investigation.”

I got out and was about to close the door when Mr. Granade spoke.

“And don’t forget to schedule a visit to the morgue within the next few days. I want to see the bodies. Photos are good, but we need to take our expert, Dr. Snider, over for a look. Coordinate the trip.”

My blood chilled at the thought of dead bodies. I bent over and met his eye. “Do we have to go?”

“Do you want to be a defense attorney?” His tone was mocking, though he did genuinely quirk an eyebrow.

I had never seen a body before, especially not one that had been carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey, if the news reports were true. I fought my fear and tried to nod. Nothing happened. I swallowed hard.

His gaze flickered down to my throat but no lower before he caught my eyes again. “Well?”

I clutched the documents to my chest and let out a resigned sigh. “Yes.”

“Then, yes, we have to go. Good night, Ms. Montreat.”

“’Night.” I straightened up and closed the car door. I expected him to back out and leave, but he waited until I’d made it to the elevator bank, and even until the doors were closing and blocking me from view, before he put his car in reverse.

Terrell was waiting for the elevator when I arrived on the third floor.

“You’re going the wrong way. Turn around for home and wine.”

“Can’t.” I held up the folder of documents. “Have to go through some evidence and make a log for Mr. Granade.”

“We already back to Mr. Granade’s log again?” He grinned.

I rolled my eyes and walked past him. “Don’t wait up. I’m going to be here for a while.”

Yvonne came around the corner, her hooker heels clacking. “Finally decided to do some work today, Caroline?”

I was not in the mood for her shit. “The only thing you know about working is how to shimmy your skinny ass up under a desk and work a dick like you’re a bobblehead doll.”

Terrell snorted and covered his mouth with his hand.

Yvonne narrowed her eyes. “You—”

“Ladies.” Mr. Palmer walked past the reception desk, the expression on his face akin to sucking on a lemon . . . a rotten one. “Let’s at least try to live up to the decorum required in our profession, shall we?”

Fuck
.
Whereas Mr. Granade was the fabled hardass, Mr. Palmer was a stone-cold operator. Nothing got by him. He was in his fifties, single, rich from his own hard work, and conscientious to a fault. I was still surprised he’d hired me to work for him, though I suspected Terrell had something to do with it.

The Lynches and the Palmers were once slave families to one of the most powerful families in New Orleans. It was some sort of poetic justice that the slaves’ descendants were at the top of the food chain whereas the former masters’ families were scattered and no more high class than I was.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Palmer.” Yvonne jumped ahead of me in the brown-noser line.

“I don’t want apologies, Ms. Evans, just better behavior.”

His gaze rested on the documents in my arms. “Long night, Ms. Montreat? I heard Wash chose you to work on the Ellis case.”

“Yes. Just got the evidence from the State.” I wanted to apologize, but it didn’t seem to have worked out too well for Yvonne, so I held off.

Mr. Palmer dismissed me by turning his gaze to Terrell. “Care to go for an early dinner? Your father’s meeting me at the club.”

I grinned at Terrell over Mr. Palmer’s shoulder. Terrell hated the “stuffy rich folks torture chamber,” as he called it. But he wasn’t getting out of it this time, not when Mr. Palmer was asking point blank.

“Sure, sounds great.” He forced a smile as I tiptoed backward like a cartoon character.

It was gratifying that Yvonne was left standing to the side, not invited and with nothing to do other than give me a scathing look as I turned and walked down the hall to my office.

My smile faded as I realized the long night of work I had ahead of me. I kicked my shoes into my office and went to the copy room to scan everything into the firm’s document-management software. It was relatively painless, taking only a few minutes before I could sit down at my desk and begin sifting. I called in an order to the Indian place a few blocks over and settled in for the evening.

The police reports seemed like the best place to start. Seven bodies over three years. I began working up an outline, filling in details of the murders. The similar injuries, the checkered pasts of the victims, the even more checkered past of Rowan Ellis. I saved the pictures for last. I figured if I could get through everything else, I would have steeled myself for the gore.

It was almost midnight by the time I’d read through the last document and gotten to the photo evidence. The office was eerily quiet. The hum of the air-conditioning and the whir of my computer’s fan were the only things to break the silence.

I skimmed down to the JPEG files and clicked on the first one. I flinched, expecting some horribly gory scene. Instead, it was just a peaceful waterway, cypress trees and vines in the background. It wasn’t so bad.
You can do this.

I clicked to the next one. More water, more trees. No big deal. The next was a closer shot of a white tree trunk rising out of the water a bit. I clicked through a few more, each one focusing more on the tree trunk. Then I put my hand to my mouth. It wasn’t a tree trunk. It was a body. Its skin was ghastly white, as if it’d been bleached by the sun. She was nude, her flesh wrinkled and ruined from the water. Her mouth was open, as if frozen in a perpetual scream. I had thought it was a dark knot on the tree.

My gorge rose, and I stood, trying to escape the image that was already seared into the backs of my eyelids. I leaned against my desk, my back to the monitor as I tried to shake the horror away. I had to pull myself together. This was probably nothing compared to what the morgue would be like. But her face, the terror that was visible even through the decay . . .
Breathe,
I told myself, my hand at my throat.
Just breathe.

“Ms. Montr—?”

I jumped and screamed.

“Whoa, whoa.” Mr. Granade had been standing in my doorway and hurried over to me. “You okay?”

I nodded and examined the floor, still horrified yet simultaneously embarrassed that I’d screamed like a banshee. He stood in front of me and looked to my right, at the screen. I was shaking, and my knees felt like they might go if not for the desk behind me.

“Oh, hell. This is not something you should be looking at all alone up here this late at night.” He sighed and put his hands on my upper arms. “Ms. Montreat, look at me. It’s okay.”