Where The Devil Won't Go: A Lucas Peyroux Novel (4 page)

Chapter 8

After Sunday brunch with Heather, I showed
my face at the station. For the most part, I twiddled my thumbs, occasionally
watching the station television. The news reports had moved on to a bar
shooting near Tulane, where two college students were killed. This meant the
desperate, misled, and weirdo callers would move on and River Doe’s real family
was still in the dark or sadder yet, no one missed her.

Tara had been scarce lately, working on
other cases and informing me that my main job was to update her as the weekend
cops went on about their business around me. No one had ever approached me about
my little skirmish with Frank Harvin, so I could only assume he hadn’t told
anyone due to embarrassment.

Captain Dobson orbited my desk. Her polo
shirt was crisp, tucked into her pleated slacks with a physique like a starving
fashion model. She was once an overweight rookie, but had lost the pounds over
years of intense dieting and taking several leaves of absence to have her excess
skin removed. The stories of her throwing suspects around as a heavy beat cop
were legend.

Her thin eyebrows arched. “It’s Sunday.
Why don’t you go home if you’re bored?”

“I’ve been sitting home for two months.
Besides, Heather’s doing some gardening and I don’t feel like working in the
yard today. If the M.E. wasn’t so backed up, maybe I could make some progress.”

“He’s getting to it.” Her shoulders
slumped. “Two more autopsies with the shooting
Uptown
.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m overdue on lots of reports and I
tend to snack on anything I can find when I hang out at the house. It’s good
for me to be distracted.” She smirked.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, how come I’m
not getting any other assignments? Not that I don’t know the answer.”

She smiled patiently, like a mother.
“Just get your feet wet on this one, okay?”

“You’re worried about my decision making…
About putting other cops in danger.”

“I heard about you at the shooting
range.”

“Great.”

“I’m not worried. It’s like this; if you
were a surgeon, I wouldn’t give you three operations on your first day back,
but I would totally trust you to do a heart transplant. You get me?”

“I get you. You want me to help Billy out
with the autopsies.”

“Ha ha. I trust our shrink. She says your
mental health is fine. I’m good with that, but I need to make sure it sticks.”

I bit my lip to keep more words from
leaving my mouth.

Dobson went on. “Cozy Robicheaux called
again.”

“Yeah.”

“Have dinner with them. The poor girl
doesn’t understand why her hero is avoiding her.”

I mimicked stabbing myself in the chest.
“Right through the heart. Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll call her.”

Dobson nodded and straightened an
overlapping belt she still wore as a reminder of her former weight. She looked
over to yesterday’s box of donuts that still had two remaining. “I totally get
how recovering alcoholics feel.” She shoved a stick of gum in her mouth and
walked away.
 

I called a string of police departments
north along the river, inquiring about any missing residents. River Doe’s file
sat cold on my desk, no different from a random gang execution or a tourist’s
murder with no leads. I had a complete set of photos, a box of bagged and
tagged garbage, and a few unhelpful witness statements. While waiting for lab
results, I considered going back into older missing person’s reports, ones that
fell through the cracks because they didn’t cause a public outrage.

However, my cell came to life with the
name of Dr. Billy Phillips from the Coroner’s Office.

“Peyroux here.”

“Sorry to disturb your crawfish boil.”

“I’m at the station.”

“Brown-noser. I’m using my Sunday to
finally get to your Doe from the river. You of all people deserve some
expedience. You want to come down so I can go home and soak my feet? The dogs
are barkin’.”

Dobson glanced at me through her office
window as if she heard the question. I stood. “On my way and I’ll call Gray.”

#

This morning, Captain Dobson had asked Tara
to help Frank Harvin question the neighbors in the Callio Projects since a
white cop strolling in alone wouldn’t receive such a great reception. I haven’t
told my partner about my episode with Frank yet, staying neutral about the
whole thing.

Tara
had said she didn’t mind helping Harvin on a Sunday as she had nothing personal
against him and she had attended Saturday’s Midnight Mass. She joked with me
that Frank Harvin had volunteered that he wasn’t scared with a trembling voice.
The truth was that Tara had built up a lot of good will in those projects and
he needed her.

Peeking into the medical examiner’s lab
was like watching a jack-in-the-box; waiting for something to surprise the hell
out of me. Tara had abandoned Harvin and arrived first; sitting perched on a
stool near the body, rubbing her right hand. Maybe corpses gave her weak knees,
but she’d never admit it. I looked twice at her sparkling blue gym shoes that
screamed disco.

Dr. Billy Phillips greeted me with a
raised scalpel above that dreaded body, however my first priority was to smear mint
gel under my nose. It was strange that as humans, we were composed of mostly
water, and yet this was the grotesque byproduct of what water could do. Doe’s
mass had reduced somewhat from when she was pulled from the river, but that
didn’t make her appearance any better.

“
Billy,
how’s
business?” I asked.

“Busy with a broom up my ass. Hence
Sunday.” Billy looked to have a helmet of perfect, short black hair. His lanky
body stood at six-foot-three with wire-frame glasses on a long face. His lengthy
fingers manipulated the surgical instruments with precision. He was cool, but I
suspected he was into some freaky stuff due to his sexually disturbing humor.
Given his job, I figured not much shocked him.

“Were you guys waiting for me?”

Billy cleared his throat. “Didn’t want to
start without you. She didn’t drown. No water in her lungs. Asphyxiation.”

“So, it’s a murder. Great.” I jotted it
down in the small notebook I kept in my back pocket.

“Been in the river about four days. I’m
ruling it a homicide. I’ve been going over the contents of her stomach.”

I quickly wrote his comments. “No way to
tell a dumping point, I guess.”

“You’re the detective.”

“You would think.” I glanced at Tara.

“Well, you’re in luck. I saved the best
for last.”

“You know who she is?” I glanced at Tara.

“No, but almost as good. Just twenty
minutes ago I pulled an iPhone from her vaginal cavity.” He handed Tara the
evidence bag. “You only get one joke, so make it good.”

“No jokes.” Wincing, I blinked the image
away. “Do you know if she was still alive when the phone went in?”

“Yes, the tissue bled when it tore, but a
suction had been created, so it didn’t get wet.”

“Let’s see if it still works.” Tara
gloved up to handle the cell.

I watched the screen light up. “You said
tissue tore. Was there a lot of trauma?”

“You asking whether she was a Catholic
school girl or a hooker with nine kids?” His eyes smiled. “She wasn’t a porn
star. It would have hurt going in under normal circumstances, but under duress
and the adrenaline of impending death, she might not have felt that much pain.”

“Like not knowing you were shot during an
altercation?”

“Yes,” Billy agreed. “Doesn’t mean her
killer didn’t do it. Maybe she was unconscious at the time. Good luck with
prints.”

Tara looked up. “It’s possible it’s not
her phone. Maybe someone else wants us to think the phone is hers, trying to
fake their death?”

“Stupid way to fake your death,” Billy
said. “Of course there are people that stupid, but that’s a question for you
two. I have pictures for you. I found a mole on her inside thigh, pretty
common, but nothing else to distinguish her. No scars or medical issues like
rods or implants. No abnormalities. I’ll need her dental records to get a
proper ID. That, or some DNA to compare her to.”

“It should be easy enough to track down
the owner through the carrier.” Tara motioned like Vanna White. “It’s ready.”

“We’re not going to send it to Dr. Jerry
for prints?”

Billy spoke up. “The way it was situated
in there; it was like sliding it between two sponges and it came out slimed… sorry,
there aren’t gonna be any prints on it, in my opinion.”

I lowered my vision until light flashed
across the surface. “Don’t see any obvious ones in the glare.”

Tara pointed. “Our best bet for prints
will be the inside cover and battery.”

“Where it’s been well-protected. But if
the GPS is on, we’ll be able to track her movements.”

“That’s right,”
Tara
agreed, “these bastard phones know every move you make.”

I pulled a pair of latex gloves from a
box and swiped the screen. The wallpaper was a selfie of an attractive woman.
Our luck held as her cell opened without a password. “The GPS is off. No record
of where she’s been.”

“Figures.”

“The account information won’t show a
name. Let’s see her call history.” It took a couple seconds to pull it up.
“Hmm. Interesting. No contacts.”

“That’s freaky. Who has no contacts?”
Tara extended her neck to see.

“New phone? There’s only one call going
out and it dropped.”

“Has to be brand new. That’s the only
explanation.”

“Maybe she deleted the call log. Can you
do that?” I asked.

“Yeah, but why? Who was the call to?”

“Emergency 9-1-1. Four days ago.” I
glanced at her meaningfully.

“And it didn’t go through? Remind me not
to use her carrier. Find her picture gallery.”

I scanned her sparse icons until finding
the gallery. “Five pictures.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Has to be her first iPhone, maybe days
old. Nothing carried over from a previous card and she didn’t have time to fill
it up or know to turn the GPS on.” I touched the first thumbnail and the
picture blew up on the screen. It portrayed a bored, but attractive girl-next-door.

“Anything other than her?”

“Let’s see, a kitchen, and a door with a
‘B’ on it, probably her front door and praise Jesus,” I turned the phone so
Tara could see. “A picture of an apartment building. I know this balcony. It’s
on Dauphine. Oh, man, there’s a video here.”

“Well, play it.”

I pressed the arrow and a black, shadowy
image bounced around until settling on a hulking figure heading toward the
camera operator. It was too dark to see details, but there was a snake pit of
humans around her. The view spun to bright penlights on the wall like twinkling
stars. The screen became black and the video ended.

“No audio. She was probably too afraid to
say anything. We have to get this to tech so they can blow this video up and
maybe lighten it so we can make out details,” Tara said.

“Check this out. The time stamp of the
video is a minute before the 9-1-1
call
. She took the
video hoping to get her killer on camera, dialed emergency and then…”

“…And then inserted it, probably thinking
the 9-1-1 call would be traced and she’d be found.”

“But the call didn’t go through.” I
played the video again. “Had to be a place with little to no bars. There are
other victims in the video, too, like a trafficking ring.
God,
and then to stick this phone in?
She was brave.”

“I’ll dial her carrier and get a name. At
least we have a place to start.”

“And we definitely keep this tidbit out
of the press.”

“Damn straight. Can you imagine?” Tara
walked away from me, dialing the number.

“A print on the inside cover would be
nice.” I saddled up to the body. “Preferably her killer’s.”

“It’s possible,” Billy mumbled.

A few minutes later, Tara dropped the
cell back into the evidence bag and faced the body as if exhausted. “The
account’s only been active for five days. Makes sense with the number of
photos. The name is Haley Robicheaux.”

“Oh, God. No.” I wiped my hands down my
face.

“Wait, Robicheaux – as in Cozy
Robicheaux?”

“Haley’s her sister.
Was
her
sister.
She told me about her running
away in the hospital. Damn.”

“Now you
have
to go see her.”

“To tell the girl I shot that we found
her dead sister who might’ve been caught up in a human trafficking ring.
Fantastic. Of all the fucking coincidences.” I paced around the room, letting
my head tilt back. “In the hospital, Cozy had asked me to remember her sister’s
name in case I ever ran across her.” I came back to the body, which had been
cut open vertically. My eyes focused on Phillips.