Garden of bone book 6, p.2
Garden of Bone: Book 6, page 2
"What's going on?" he asked, his own tone now tersely matching hers. No friendly greeting, no wondering when she was going to come and visit him or when they might get to spend time together again. All his softer ideas had fled with her initial words.
"GJ and I are clearing out her grandfather's basement lab."
He'd known as much, thinking she might make it to him in another few days. He hadn’t expected to be cleared so early. There were too many unclaimed skeletons and human bones in the lab. But Walter wasn’t a forensic scientist; Donovan expected GJ to do most of the heavy lifting. The good news was that the lab was basically a museum, so at least this shouldn't involve anybody getting shot at. Whatever they were dealing with was likely already well dead.
Walter confirmed that in a moment. "There's a body in the kettle, Donovan."
Shit, he thought again. Just what they needed. He was certain—or he wanted to believe, maybe—that once GJ's grandfather was in custody, his “work” would have stopped. The lab would have remained static, and GJ and Walter would merely clean up what was there. Instead, it sounded as though new body parts were showing up.
Donovan remembered that they still hadn't found Shray Menon's body. Walter had declared the man dead during a gunfight, and Walter generally knew what she was doing. Still, given the scenario she'd described to him, it was entirely possible that Menon had somehow gotten carried away by his own people or by the family that owned the land Marks and Menon had raided.
There was also the slight possibility that Walter’s assessment had been wrong and Menon was still alive. And if he was, he might still be making use of GJ's lab. Although they knew the lab contained a way to bring a full human body in and out without being noticed, they hadn’t found the passage yet. The body in the kettle that Walter referred to was solid evidence that the path existed. The FBI had kept the lab under close surveillance. No one should have been able to get a body in.
"Tell me about it," he said, even as he wondered if the corpse could be Menon himself. He didn’t say that, not wanting to sway other investigators if they hadn’t thought of that possibility on their own.
"Well, we found it a few hours ago. GJ opened it up. It's already been de-fleshed, so any evidence we might have had is likely gone.—Wait, what?"
He could tell she was no longer speaking to him. Somewhere in the distance, he heard GJ Janson's voice. "The DNA would be boiled. Our only hope is that we get lucky with the teeth. Chances are, forensic ID is going to be our best bet."
"Did you hear that?" Walter asked. Before he even had a chance to reply, she said, "That, like GJ said."
It wasn't likely she was going to repeat scientific standards to him.
"Did you notify Westerfield?" he asked. Westerfield, his own special agent in charge of the NightShade division of the FBI, had very recently become Walter's boss as well.
"No." Donovan could practically hear her shaking her head. Walter had lived on the LA streets with homeless vets for a while, and Donovan always thought her simultaneous answer and nod or shake of her head was a remnant from being around so many people who’d had their eardrums blasted in war. It wasn’t a happy thought, but it was pure Walter. She was still talking. "We looked at it and we wanted to see if we could get some information to report in, other than just ‘we found this thing in the kettle’—Oh, Jesus!"
The tone in Walter's voice almost made Donovan smile. GJ had a knack for putting Lucy on edge. "What's going on now?" he asked.
"She's got tongs and she’s pulling the bones out and shaking the water off."
"Well, how else is she supposed to get them out of the kettle?" Donovan asked. He was familiar with body kettles—large vats, much like pressure cookers, that one could use to de-flesh a skeleton. GJ's grandfather had one of the nicest, newest ones he'd seen. It was a recent model, in better condition and a bigger size than they'd had at the forensic center he'd worked at in South Carolina when he'd been the medical examiner, just a few short years ago.
"Do you need me to come examine it?" he asked.
"Do we need Donovan?" he heard Walter ask GJ.
Next, he heard GJ’s reply from a distance. "I don't think so. Not yet. But I wanted him to have a heads-up, in case we might."
"There you have it," Walter said, her voice turning softer. "I miss you."
"Eew," GJ commented in the background, clearly not wanting to be the third-wheel overhearing a phone conversation between two lovers.
Donovan wanted to tell her there were no worries. He and Walter rarely got mushy, even when they were alone. It wasn’t part of either of their DNA. "Well, call me back if you need me," he said. "But—a word to the wise. Don’t wait more than a day to call Westerfield. Seriously. If nothing else, leave him a message tonight before you go to sleep. Anything longer than that will just piss him off. You want to get a nice balance between delivering feasible information and getting the information to him sooner rather than later."
"Got it," Walter replied. "We're going to see what we can do for this ID."
"Oh, it's definitely one of them," GJ called out from across the room.
Donovan cringed, wondering what word GJ might come up with for them. She'd taken to calling him a werewolf, no matter how many times he told her that the term was absolutely inappropriate. Unfortunately, the only other real word he'd ever heard to describe his type was Lobomau, and the Lobomau were not him. They were a very specific group of creatures and much more dangerous than most. However, that identification would not be possible from the bones alone.
"Well," he said, "unless you guys or her grandfather have some secret resource that I don't know about, you're going to need to tell Westerfield to start combing through dental records for a match. So I don’t see how you can wait until you have a positive ID on the body before telling him what you have."
They spoke a little longer as he gave the two women tips and hints about how to deal with the boss the three of them now shared. And he hated to admit it, though he desperately wanted to see Lucy, a case was not the way he wanted to do it. He was still hopeful he wouldn't get called in on this one.
As soon as he hung up with Walter, his phone pinged again.
I’ve arrived.
It was Eleri. She’d made it, although whether that meant she’d arrived in New Orleans, at her great-grandmother’s house, or somewhere else, he didn’t know. The text didn’t warrant a return. She’d simply promised to check in at least daily and give him some general idea of her whereabouts. He’d demanded the promise as she set off on her own. There was no FBI backup for this one, though they both were relatively certain she wouldn’t need it.
Settling back into the chair in his living room, Donovan stared out the window. A tall wooden fence ringed his backyard. A gate at the far edge allowed him access to the National Forest land behind him. He thought about going for a run, and then, in the next moment, he stood up to make it happen. It had been far too long since he’d run at all, let alone in his own woods.
Piece by piece, he shed his clothing as he moved toward the back door. He was an investigator. He understood what it would mean if anything happened to him and anyone came in and found this. Still, he didn't let it stop him. He was fully naked by the time he reached the back gate and reached up, undid the latch near the top, and let himself out into the woods.
Turning, he stretched one hand over the high top of the fence and closed the latch behind him. For a moment, he looked up and around. This is a new world, he thought. He hadn't worried about these things when he was a child, but as he'd gotten older, technology had become more advanced, too. What he'd seen in the Ozarks had made him even more worried. Now he'd taken to looking for drones every time before he changed. The last thing any of them needed was someone catching a glimpse.
Unlike Wade and the de Gottardi and Little families in the Ozarks, Donovan had had no one to teach him or watch out for him. No groups were here scanning the area for technology, bugs, cameras, and even wolf hunters.
He hadn't known until the Ozarks that such hunters existed. Now, he stopped and checked for them far more cautiously. This run would be the first run where he wondered whether he would truly enjoy his freedom in the woods. Still, he figured, if he didn't do it now, when would he?
Stepping under the cover of trees, making it harder, at least, for someone to spy on him, he rolled his shoulders, popped his jaw, and felt the bones shift and move against each other. He felt tendons snap into a new position and the goose-pimpling of his flesh as the hair on his arms and legs and back rose. When he was finally down on all fours, he stretched long and low in a full run into the woods.
3
"Grandmere! I'm here," Eleri called out as she entered through the front door of her great-grandmother's house.
She needn't have hollered, and she knew it. Grandmere always knew who was at the door, just as she knew who was on the phone, and even when it would ring. She'd never seen the need to replace her old phone that still hung on the wall and rang with sounds that gave no sense of digital tone. The rotary dial used to drive Eleri crazy, but now it made her smile. Grandmere had no use for such frivolities as push-button dialing.
Grandmere didn't reply to Eleri’s announcement. She merely turned the corner from the kitchen into the small living space. Everything in this house was small. "Cozy," Grandmere would call it. It suited her perfectly, though it had been far too small for Eleri's mother, Nathalie. Nathalie had fled Grandmere's home as soon as she had turned seventeen. She'd run off and married a man who owned multiple homes, any of which would allow Grandmere's whole house to fit inside a single bedroom.
That was how Eleri had been raised. However, there was something about Grandmere's shotgun house in the Lower Ninth Ward that none of her own family's homes could ever duplicate.
Grandmere wiped her hands on the towel she had tucked into the sash of the apron tied around her waist. Despite the fact that she was wearing the apron, as well as flour and possible other baking foods, she engulfed Eleri in a huge hug. Only then did Eleri finally begin to calm down from her encounter at the shop in the French quarter.
"Makinde!" Grandmere held her back by the shoulders and looked in her face. "What has you so strung up?"
Knowing that lying was useless, Eleri told her Grandmere at least a portion of the truth. "I drove into town and headed straight for the French Quarter. Thought I would walk a bit and wander some of the shops. It was a mistake."
"Did you go into those voodoo shops?" Grandmere admonished her, snapping the towel as she turned and headed back into the kitchen.
Of course. I went to the French quarter. What else would I do there? Eleri thought. That provided the entire answer to everything that had worked Eleri up.
"Yes,” she said. “It looked like a cute little tourist shop."
"Did you find some real voodoo in there?"
"I did," Eleri replied as she followed her great-grandmother into the tiny kitchen. She was still trying to forget the zing that she’d felt when she picked up the bone-handled knife. Images had assaulted her—violent, scary, overwhelming scenes. But now, she was ashamed at the way she had dropped the knife and run from the shop.
She'd caught a brief glimpse of the shopkeeper’s dark skin and wide smile as she spoke to the other patrons in the store. But the woman’s eyebrows had frowned as she watched Eleri flee. Eleri wondered if the woman knew what she had in the shop. Still, she didn't tell Grandmere.
"Go set yourself up in your room," Grandmere said, and Eleri obliged.
Heading back toward the other side of the house, she stepped toward the small bedrooms tucked back there. The house was long and narrow with the short side facing the street. Eleri’s bedroom—at the far back end of the house—was snugged in beside Grandmere's. Both were the same size. The house had no master bedroom set up.
One bathroom afforded all the residents of the home the opportunity to brush their teeth and use the toilet, taking turns in the same small space. Her room, as Grandmere called it, had been hers and Emmaline's when they had come to visit as children. The room still had the same two twin beds shoved into the corners. Just enough wall space remained for the door to the hall and another for the tiny closet.
The home was old enough that the closet door looked like another door opening to a room, yet the space was barely deep enough to hang clothes. Somewhere along the way, possibly a decade ago, Eleri had finally begun to use Emmaline's bed as a place for her suitcase. Grandmere had said nothing about it, though surely she'd noticed the change.
Before then, Eleri had been continuing to put her pieces into the closet, leaving the bed empty. She felt, perhaps as Grandmere did, that one day Emmaline would return and demand her space in the room.
Eleri now knew that was never going to happen. She suspected Grandmere knew it, too. They didn’t talk about it. However, Grandmere still loved the bed. Surely, it had become purely symbolic.
When Eleri returned to visit Grandmere, she managed to ignore the signs of Emmaline that were still around. She saw them, but they usually didn't burn her heart the way they once had. This time, though, they did.
A tiny table sat, against the wall, taking up the gap between the beds. On the table stood a framed picture of Eleri and Emmaline.
Eleri must have been no more than ten, given that Emmaline was in the photo with her. They had their arms slung around each other and mud smeared on their hands and their pale dresses. They had obviously been playing in the yard. Grandmere had offered their mother a copy of the picture, but Nathalie refused it. The pictures that hung in Eleri's other homes included those of the two girls in their riding gear, dressed for Sunday best, or in their mother's arms at family portrait time. Grandmere’s picture showed them playing. This might be the only photo of its kind in existence, Eleri thought.
Eleri had been named for her grandmother on her father's side of the family, but Emmaline, Eleri's little sister, had been named for Grandmere’s daughter and their mother Nathalie's mother. The first Emmaline had disappeared young, too. However, she'd come back with baby Nathalie on her hip, and then once again disappeared—mostly likely into her addictions to booze and drugs. Grandmere had never seen her daughter again. She'd raised Nathalie on her own.
Nathalie had envisioned a bigger life for herself than this tiny house in this poor section of the wild town could offer, but Eleri loved it here. As she stood in the bedroom, looking out the back window, she could see through the spaces between the houses that backed up to Grandmere’s home. Those houses faced the other street, which ran behind the one Grandmere lived on. The lack of fencing created a kind of backyard alley that ran the length of the block. Eleri saw empty lots, a few fresh-colored homes, and several that had faded to a dull brown-gray. Spray paint marked the sides of some houses. Plywood covering the windows still bore the marks “Gas X,” Letting the search-and-rescue people know the gas had been shut off and the house would not explode.
The remnants of Hurricane Katrina still showed here in the Lower Ninth Ward, where Grandmere lived. Grandmere had refused to move, although she’d had the option to do so after the devastation had swept through. Her house, once a bright red, had been washed out a bit in the flood. Still, it had survived with less damage than most. She claimed it was the sandbags that she’d stacked around the base of the building, and the fact that it was ever-so-slightly elevated off the ground. Eleri knew otherwise. Similarly constructed houses had been washed out, deluged with four to five feet of water. Most of the owners on the street had fled during the storm—but not Grandmere. Although the water had washed into her house, the same as all the others, her water had washed right back out again, leaving no muddy residues or black, moldy patches.
As a child, Eleri had always wondered if her Grandmere had real magic. Now, as an adult, she knew it. And she wondered if she’d need it.
4
Eleri woke from the nap that Grandmere had practically insisted she take while Grandmere made dinner. She woke to the smells of home cooking and the sounds of frogs in the backyard awakening in the dusk outside. Given that it was New Orleans, Eleri almost expected to be able to look out the back window onto a bayou—but she couldn't. The back window gave only views of the backs of small houses, broken houses, or the empty lots where houses had been razed but never rebuilt.
Her drive through New Orleans on her way here had reminded her that the original neighborhoods had weathered the decade-plus old storm very differently. In town, most homes had been fully rebuilt, although you might find an occasional, well-tended space between houses where another home had stood before the hurricane. Those neighborhoods barely showed scars at all.
Here, many of the lots still had standing structures full of mold. The abandoned homes were broken down and boarded up. It was clear that this neighborhood had changed dramatically, and although the neighbors had been poor, now they were poorer. Eleri wondered about this. Grandmere, it seemed, could have made more money by moving to a more prosperous area any time she wanted, but she refused to leave the little red house.
It wasn't until she was an adult that Eleri understood this decision better—the sense of home Grandmere had here and her need for roots. The older Eleri got, the more she realized her Grandmere's roots ran deeper than she ever could have fathomed.
Donovan had pointed out, only recently, that Grandmere was a Remy. The Remy family had been in New Orleans for generations—possibly centuries.
Looking out the back window, Eleri smelled that dinner was almost ready. As she walked the short distance from the room to the kitchen, she recited a prayer to Aida Weddo under her breath. It seemed appropriate now. She would need strength in the days to come. She would need it to find Emmaline. She would need it to deal with what had happened to her sister. Possibly the hardest thing facing her was that she would need to confront Grandmere about why the old woman had not done anything.
