“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine. Just a little heartburn.”
“A little?”
“Yeah! That’s what I said. And why the hell are you drivin’ like an old lady?”
Traffic was stacked in front of him. He sent her a questioning glance. Where the hell did she expect him to go?
“You could hit the lights and siren, y’know.” She twisted her neck until it cracked, then fiddled with the air conditioning, then played with the automatic windows, something she did when she was nervous. “Shit, I could use a smoke right about now. I know, I know.” She held up a palm. She’d given up cigarettes years before. “And if I dared come home with even a whiff of tobacco on me, Priscilla would have a shit-fit.” She rolled her eyes. “My daughter has taken the position that she’s the rule keeper at the house at seventeen. As if!” She let out a long-suffering sigh. “But it gets worse.”
“It does?”
“Oh, yeah.” Nodding, she said, “Get this: Toby wants to go live with his father. Like that’s some sort of threat or something. I think it’s because my brilliant ex promised the kid a car when he turns sixteen.” She ran a hand through her spiky hair and let out a huff of disgust. “Like that would ever happen. As if Bart would want a thirteen-year-old cramping his style.” Rolling her eyes, she said, “And his sister. Seventeen going on goddamned thirty! Do you know how many times a week I hear that Priscilla is ‘almost eighteen’?” She made half-hearted finger quotes as Reed glanced at the GPS screen, searching for a faster way through the town. “Teenagers.”
“We were all there once,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. I was hell on wheels. Don’t know how my mother survived,” she admitted as Reed slowed to a stop, waiting for a member of a road crew to wave them around scattered debris—branches, limbs, and a shattered window pane, the aftermath of a live oak crashing down on a garage. Not only was the roof of the garage collapsed on the sedan inside, but a pickup that had been parked in the drive had been totaled. A photographer was taking pictures, while a heavyset worker in a hard hat, orange vest and a sour expression beneath the shadow of a beard waved them through.
“Some detour,” Morrisette muttered ungraciously. “Seriously, this is the best they can do? One lane?”
“Give ’em a break, will ya? It’ll get better.”
“Let’s hope. Or it will be midnight by the time we get out there.”
“It’s less than three miles.”
“Exactly!”
Reed was waved through and picked up speed.
Morrisette said, “I just can’t believe someone found bodies out there. In the basement of the old house? How likely is that? I mean, there aren’t that many cellars out here, especially not on the flood plain.”
“It’s an old house.”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about! A basement? Maybe a root cellar . . . but a full-on basement? I dunno.”
“Anyone talk to the Beaumonts?”
“Yeah, I expect they’ll show up. The deputy who called the son, Tyson, said he freaked out that bodies had been found on the place.” She glanced at Reed. “Well, duh.”
“Anything else?”
“The deputy said we’d be over to talk to them, but Tyson said he was gonna round up his old man, so I expect they’ll show up.”
“Good,” Reed said. “Let’s see what they have to say. Maybe they can shed some light.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
An anonymous caller had phoned in to 911 to report a body in the basement of the old Beaumont house. A male who refused to identify himself. Reed had listened to the call; the guy had been freaked out of his mind, his voice raspy and strained. “I-I mean, I saw. Oh, Jesus . . . there are bodies at the Beaumont estate . . . in the basement. . . oh, Holy Christ . . . two . . . maybe more, I don’t know. Just . . . just fuckin’ skeletons.”
The operator had asked, “Sir, could you give me your name?”
“Didn’t you hear me? For the love of God, they’re dead!”
“Sir, please, if you could calm down and give me your name and address.”
“I told you. At the fuckin’ Beaumont estate out on Old Carriage Road. In the fuckin’ basement.”
“Sir—”
“They’re girls! Didn’t you hear me? Dead girls! In the fuckin’ basement!”
And then he’d clicked off. Without giving his name or whereabouts or any information on how he’d come across the bodies and why he’d been on the grounds in the first place. But they had his number, and even as the first deputies had been dispatched to the scene, the department was working to ID the caller. Reed wanted to be first in line to talk to the guy, whoever the hell he was.
“Why wouldn’t the guy who called emergency identify himself?”
“Because he doesn’t want to be known, be a part of it.”
“Maybe he’s the killer?”
“If it’s a homicide. But unlikely.”
“What? You think it might be something else? Like kids playing and getting caught in the basement and dying?” she scoffed.
“We don’t know yet.”
“You don’t know yet. My money’s on murder.” Folding her arms over her chest, she raised an eyebrow to stare at him. “What d’ya say? Five bucks?”
He wanted to counter with, Fine, you’re on. But he couldn’t. Because she was probably right. “No bet.”
“Thought so. Anyway, I’ve got one of the newbies, Delacroix, trying to run down the phone call. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Maybe,” he said without any conviction as they slowed and eased around another utility truck, its amber lights flashing. “The call could have come in on a burner phone. No trace.”
“Hell, Reed, let’s not go there yet.” She shot him a look that could cut through steel.
“Just sayin’.”
“Well, don’t. Okay? Would it kill you to try to think positive?”
“Like you?”
“Oh, fuck you,” she said, but scared up the hint of a smile as he cut through a neighborhood going to seed, took a side street and finally connected to the highway. He hit the gas. When they rolled up to the gates of the old Beaumont estate, they weren’t the first. Three cop cars, a cruiser and two SUVs, blocked the entrance.
A deputy for the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department was posted at the rusted gate. Reed had met her several times. Tina Rounds, a tall, no-nonsense policewoman with a dour expression, her springy black hair pulled tightly away from her face, her hat square on her head. She made them sign in and display their badges despite knowing who they were. By “The Book” all the way.
The sun was hanging low in the sky, the air muggy despite the canopy of branches overhead. Together they walked along a winding lane that had once been gravel but now was two faint ruts separated by a band of grass and weeds. A few birds twittered in the heavy, still air, and a snake, shining like silver, twisted quickly out of sight, slithering away through the knee-high grass.
Leaves and branches littered the lane, and a long, rusted real-estate sign was wedged into a larger limb that partially blocked their access. “You’d think if you owned a place like this, you’d take care of it better,” Morrisette observed.