Tin God (A Southern Mystery) (Delta Crossroads Trilogy #1) Read online

  “That place is on a busy corner. I’ve seen people fight for parking spots. Jaymee wouldn’t notice if anyone was following her, especially if she was keyed up about Gereau.”

  “Plus, it’s Friday. Town’s full of tourists.” Nick ran his finger over the cheap cedar chest of drawers. The thing had seen better days. A standard rectangular mirror with a brown plastic frame–the five-dollar kind available at any department store–sat on top of the tall cedar piece. Stuck between the glass and thin frame were a few snapshots.

  Jaymee with her brother and a little boy Nick assumed was her nephew. Lana and Jaymee at Lana’s high school graduation, another of the two at Lana’s wedding. And one of Jaymee with a leggy blond. The woman’s hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, her eyebrows perfectly arched, and her lips outlined in pink. High cheekbones and wide eyes gave the woman the appearance of beauty and innocence, but her smirk and short skirt disagreed.

  “Who’s this?”

  Cage righted a picture of Jaymee and her brother and then turned around. He scowled. “Crystal. She put that picture up there, and Jaymee didn’t want to hurt her feelings so she left it. Why she put up with that woman I’ll never know.”

  Nick studied the picture. It wasn’t taken at Jaymee’s but likely in another trailer. The dark paneled walls gave the location away. The two women stood side-by-side, Crystal tall and confident, her arm around Jaymee’s shoulder while Jaymee grasped her friend’s waist. Her smile was less exuberant, but she still looked happier than he’d ever seen her. Would he ever get to see her smile like that?

  ###

  Almost eight. They’d been driving for nearly an hour. Darren’s heavy silence made Jaymee feel buried alive. The storm weakened, leaving only scattered rain and dense clouds. She strained to see in the dark, but she could only make out the gravel road they’d turned onto twenty minutes ago. Trees lined both sides of the road, still bending in the remnants of wind. No houses, no other vehicles since they’d hit gravel, no chance of escape.

  Illuminated by the digital lights, the knife lay in front of the steering wheel. She had no hope of snagging it.

  “Figured out where we are yet?” Darren was back to his affable tone.

  “Too dark.”

  Her mind raced. If he was taking her to a familiar place, she might be able to break free. The digital compass on the rearview mirror read south. How many turns had they made? Three. Right out of Ravenna Court, then left onto a narrow blacktop, and then right onto this gravel road. Jaymee leaned toward the dash, wincing as the dried blood pulled one of the fine hairs on her collarbone. The winding road was more mud than gravel now. Look at the trees–no magnolias. Cypress. Cottonwoods. Was that a wild lotus?

  When they were kids, Holden had taught her and Darren how to recognize Mississippi’s many trees, especially the ones growing in the thick woods near his cabin.

  The jolt of her heart traveled up her throat and out of her open mouth with a sharp gasp.

  “You remember.” Against the green glow of the dash, Darren’s broad smile looked manic.

  “Lyric Lake. The cabin.”

  “Some of my favorite memories are there.”

  Jaymee dug into the shadows of her memory. Lyric Lake stretched ten or twelve miles through Wilkenson county. Holden brought Darren to his cabin often, and Jaymee had always been jealous. Begging earned her a few trips, but nothing like the excursions Darren enjoyed.

  The three-room cabin was primitive, built with cheap ply-board and standing on cinder blocks. Vinyl dating back to the seventies covered the floor, and the furniture looked even more ancient. The bed Jaymee shared with her brother had smelled like mothballs. No television, no phone. Nearest town wasn’t really a town at all, just a small populated area of backwoods with people living mostly off the land. Isolated.

  Acid boiled in her stomach. Gooseflesh spattered her arms and legs. Fear mutated into panic.

  Isolated.

  “Remember the last time you came out here with us?” Darren swung the van onto an even more narrow and mud-filled road.

  Jaymee scrawled a mental road map as the memories rushed back. The cabin was just off this path. She remembered now. No neighbors, but soon the cypress trees would thin, the lake would appear, and the cabin would emerge. They would park in the tall grass. No other cabins for miles–at least that’s how it seemed when she was a kid. But the sparse community was to the west. Bait store and a few crappy houses. Hopefully one of them had a phone. If she followed the lake, she’d find the makeshift town.

  If she got the opportunity.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes, sorry.” Jaymee tried to sound as normal as Darren. “I don’t remember much about this place at all.”

  “You were probably eleven, maybe twelve. I didn’t know why Holden agreed to bring you–by that time you were more into your little girlfriends than roughing it.”

  She’d been jealous. Jealous of all the time Darren got with Holden. And resentful of his freedom from Paul’s tyranny.

  “You threw me in the lake.”

  He belly-laughed. “Got tired of you complaining about the heat and the bugs. You were so mad.”

  “I plotted my revenge the rest of the time we were here. Never got it.”

  Maybe she’d find a way tonight.

  Her memory hadn’t failed. The cypress trees slowly thinned, and then the lake appeared, black in the cloudy night. Caught in the beam of the van’s headlights, the cabin stood weathered, leaning dangerously on its cinder blocks. Jaymee braced herself. The muscles in her arms knotted; her fists ached from clenching. She didn’t dare relax. If he came at her with the knife, she’d deflect it.

  Don’t worry about getting cut on the arm. Surface wounds heal. Protect the throat, the heart, the stomach.

  Darren put the van in park and killed the engine. He grabbed the knife, opened his door, and shut it. Jaymee didn’t move when he came to her side, knife at the ready, smiling as though he’d brought her a surprise.

  He unlocked her door and then inched it open, brandishing the knife in front of him. “Now, be good. Let’s not fight like we did last time we were here.”

  Grabbing her bound wrists, he pulled her out into the muggy night. When he shut the door, darkness closed in. She smelled the lake water layered with the scent of fish. Ducks quacked, and all around, night creatures rustled through the grass. A dove cooed.

  She stumbled on rubbery legs. Compliant. Glanced to the west. No lights. But they were there. Those few other residents. They had to be.

  Overgrown grass tickled her bare legs below her shorts. Her work shoes–the only pair of decent tennis shoes she owned–sunk into the soggy ground. Another waft of fishy air filled her lungs, the scent heightened by the fresh rain. Her stomach twisted, but Jaymee swallowed her disgust. Darren still held her wrists, leading her forward through the dark night. Knife in his right hand now.

  Blood rushed in her ears, her fingers swollen and half-numb, body a live wire of tension. Lungs moving too fast for comfort. Stinking air, scratchy grass, soggy ground. Wait for the one moment. One chance.

  Darren stumbled.

  Now.

  She jammed her right foot between his and swept his leg out from under him. He dropped to his knees, cursing and bringing Jaymee with him. She landed in the wet muck. Dirt splattered in her eyes and open mouth. She screamed. Kicking, pulling, punching. Knife stuck into the mud. Darren loosened his grip on her wrists. She pulled as hard as she could.

  Free. Her nails dug into the putrid mud. Her feet slipped, but somehow Jaymee fumbled her way to a standing position.

  Run.

  She plowed through the slick grass. Ducks quacked again, smacking their wings against the water as they escaped the ruckus. Get to the trees. Dodge the dim moonlight emerging from the thinning clouds overhead.

  Tension grew in her head until she thought it would explode. The air felt raw in her heaving lungs. She tasted the fish-tinged air and gagged.
r />   The tree line was straight ahead. The cypress waited, with the wild lotus and bushy cottonwoods as backup. They would hide her race to freedom.

  Jaymee’s escape lasted all of six agonizing seconds. Longer legs and experience caught her by the shirt and jerked her backward. She slammed against Darren’s chest, and what little breath she had evaporated. Fingers digging into her shoulders, he whipped her around.

  His eyes were wild. Nostrils flaring and teeth bared. Mud spattered across his fair skin and onto his polo shirt. He glared at Jaymee with such hatred she froze. Her stomach literally rolled, and her bowels threatened to give up.

  Darren started laughing. Nearly hysterical at first and then controlled and menacing. He leaned forward to rest his forehead on hers, his hot breath making her gag. She pressed her fists against his chest, but he was bigger and stronger. Darren’s hands slid from her shoulders, across her collarbone, to her neck.

  Panic now consumed her. She beat at his chest and slapped his face. Heart skipping and pounding and racing, she tried to fight, to raise a knee, but he deflected her. He had the experience. She had only bone-numbing terror.

  His hands tightened on her neck. Dead eyes stared into hers as she clawed at his slender fingers. “Please.”

  Another squeeze. Her vision blurred into a bright tunnel.

  Stay conscious. Fight.

  Energy waning, she reached up, dug her nails into his cheek, and raked them across the tender skin as hard as she could. Darren howled in pain, but his grip only tightened.

  The tunnel narrowed, and her breath ceased.

  “After all the trouble I went to in order to protect Holden,” Darren’s voice hovered somewhere in the rapidly darkening tunnel. “You still destroyed him.”

  Jaymee drifted away.

  33

  The storm had finally dissipated, but Nick still felt drenched. He and Cage didn’t find anything else in Jaymee’s trailer. Charles still sought a search warrant. Evaline was locked up.

  “Come over to my parents. Eat. Wait with us,” Cage suggested.

  After a stop at Annabelle’s for some dry clothes, Nick found himself once again sitting at his mother-in-law’s tidy kitchen table, surrounded by her creepy, inanimate chickens.

  Lorelai cooked something. Nick ate but didn’t taste the food. Cage made coffee. Nick drank it black. He should sleep, but he couldn’t. Not when Jaymee was out there.

  “Maybe you boys got it wrong,” Oren said for at least the seventh time.

  “No, Dad.” Cage answered in the same way he’d done all evening. “Uniform took her home. She’s not there. She’s not at work. Didn’t leave a note. Hasn’t called. You know she wouldn’t do that.”

  “And Newton’s missing, too.” Nick said his line.

  “Piece of dog shit.” Oren lit his pipe.

  Naked without his phone, Nick had called Sergeant Kees from the Foster’s house to give her Cage’s number. Turned out Debra was singing loudly. The adoption ring had been Holden’s idea. After selling his baby with Elaine, he’d convinced himself he was doing God’s work, helping well-deserving parents and protecting unwanted children from a life of misery. Money was just a pleasant side effect.

  Debra helped him streamline applicants, hide his finances. She found the parents and did the dirty work.

  Holden hated Royce Newton and hadn’t wanted to succumb to the blackmail, but Debra convinced him he had no choice. At the very least, Newton could ruin Holden’s reputation by exposing their affair. His wife could ask for a divorce, and if his financials were closely investigated, there were a lot of questions he didn’t want to answer.

  So Newton got his cut.

  But something nagged at Nick–the same damned feeling that had been festering since he first arrived in Roselea. They were all missing something stupidly obvious. The answer coated the tip of his tongue but refused to take shape in his brain. They now had all the pieces but one. Nick just didn’t believe the missing piece was Royce Newton.

  Charles called again. He’d been out to Jaymee’s trailer. Talked to all the residents. Nothing. With no crime scene, it was hard to declare her a missing person.

  Most of the time, he and Cage didn’t speak. Their mutual pain connected the two of them just as it had four years ago, and the occasional glance, the manly nod, was all they could muster.

  As the grandfather clock in the living room chimed the hours, Nick hovered in a state of rampant distress and overwhelming exhaustion. He paced the living room, desperate with the need to do something. When his head began to throb, he dropped onto the couch and sunk into the cushion.

  Lorelai went to bed. Every so often, her sobs echoed down the stairs. Oren sat in his chair snoring, mouth hanging open. Cage slept folded over the kitchen table, phone in hand.

  Nick didn’t know how many times he drifted off when Cage’s cellphone ringing startled him upright. He rubbed his eyes and tried to hear over Oren’s snores.

  “We’ll meet you there.”

  He got to his feet. Knew he’d need more coffee. Poured a cup and stuck it in the microwave. 4:02 a.m.

  “Where?” he asked as Cage finished the call.

  “Evaline. Charles got the warrant.”

  Early morning darkness still reigned when Cage and Nick arrived at Evaline. Likely startled awake by the arrival of the police cruisers, a blue jay sang from the protection of a live oak. The stifling humidity made Nick’s lightweight shirt cling to his back and dampened the roots of his hair. He wasn’t allowed into the house. Pacing the corner of the whitewashed porch, he wiped the moisture off his forehead. Drawing a decent breath was impossible.

  “You’re sure Royce has trinkets from the victims? From Jaymee?”

  Cage nodded. “Had them in a box­­–in a hidey-hole.”

  “Where?”

  “All these old houses have stash places. First thing we did was start checking the floorboards for hollow spots and then moved on to the wall. We found the box in Royce’s office. The blueprints of the original house hang in the entryway, and according to them, Royce’s office used to be Henrí Laurent’s study. Detective Charles noticed the fireplace didn’t work and removed the iron guard. Box was behind the fake logs.”

  “What’s in it?” The question made Nick’s already sour stomach twist into a knot.

  Charles exited the house. His dress shirt was wrinkled, his salt and pepper hair stuck to his forehead, and his expression was caught somewhere between resignation and invigoration. He clutched a flat white box. “Don’t need that fax from your Sergeant Kees anymore.” He opened the lid.

  Nick recognized the elegant writing immediately. A manila envelope lay at the top of the box’s contents, Elaine Andrew’s name printed neatly in the center. Charles picked up the envelope with a gloved hand. Beneath it lie photocopied bank records of deposits to RLN Enterprises from New Life Baptist Church. A feminine-looking scrawl, most likely Rebecca’s, dominated the bottom of the page. Along with the account number for RLN, she’d written what looked like two other bank account numbers with a jagged arrow pointing back to a nine-digit social security number.

  “Rebecca found out about Royce’s misdeeds and made notes.”

  Charles moved the photocopies. The next item slugged Nick in the midsection. A delicate gold cross, exquisitely made, the charm smaller than Nick’s pinkie fingernail, hung on a thin gold chain. Lana’s thirteenth birthday present from her mother. The gift she wore every day had disappeared with her murderer. Beside it, a gold ring with a green stone. Nick couldn’t tell if the emerald was fake or a real gem.

  “Crystal’s ring,” Cage said. “I remember her wearing it.”

  “Royce didn’t know about Debra’s arrest before he took Jaymee,” Charles said. “Thought silencing her would buy his freedom.” He rattled the box to reveal a pair of cheap black sunglasses hiding beneath the papers.

  Cage released a broken-sounding moan. Nick didn’t have to ask who the sunglasses belonged to.

  “Jaymee’s,�
� Cage choked out. “The night Rebecca was killed, she stopped at the diner to confirm Jaymee’s cleaning appointment. Jaymee asked about the sunglasses, Rebecca said she’d already laid them on the kitchen counter. Next morning they were gone, and Jaymee’s been looking for them ever since. Royce planned on taking her all along.”

  Nick looked at the box. A sweltering breeze rolled between the Greek columns. He tasted the sweet magnolias and fresh air on his tongue. And something in his brain switched on.

  “Why are they on the bottom?”

  Cage and Charles both looked at him in confusion.

  Nick grabbed the pen sticking out of Charles’s pocket and carefully lifted the envelope and papers. “The order is all wrong. He killed Lana first. If he started keeping this box then–which he would have, if he were a collector–Lana’s envelope would have been on the bottom and her cross with it. Then Rebecca’s papers, Crystal’s ring, and Jaymee’s sunglasses. Yet her sunglasses are on the very bottom.”

  Cage shrugged. “Maybe things got shook up when he put the box away.”

  “That envelope barely fits in there,” Nick said. “Sunglasses aren’t going to crawl underneath it and hide.”

  “That’s true.” Charles rattled the box again. The envelope stayed resolutely in place. “”S’all backward.”

  “Royce is no serial killer,” Nick said. “The Roselea murderer isn’t, either. Not in the true sense. He’s killing to protect himself. He’d take Lana’s papers and Rebecca’s evidence, but he wouldn’t give a damn about Crystal’s ring or Jaymee’s things.”

  “Unless he was trying to lead police in the wrong direction,” Charles said.

  “You’re saying the killer planted this?” Cage said. “To make Royce look guilty? That Paul did this?”

  “Planted, yes. But Paul was accounted for during Jaymee’s disappearance.” The feeling he was missing something flittered in Nick’s brain with the skill of a heat-seeking fly.

  “Ballard was in and out,” Charles said. “Home and then at the hospital with Holden. We’ve had a tail on him. If he’s got her, I don’t know when he would have done it.”