Lost Souls. Lisa Jackson
Читать онлайн книгу.
rain from the glass. Cruising at fifty-five miles an hour through the storm with his half-blind hound dog seated in the passenger seat, he wondered if he was losing his mind.
Why else would he agree to take over a night class for a friend of a friend who was on sabbatical? What did he owe Dr. Althea Monroe? Nothing. He’d barely met the woman.
Maybe you’re doing it for your sanity. You damned sure needed a change. And anyway, how bad could one term of teaching eager young minds about forensics and criminology be?
Shifting down, he guided his truck off the main drag and angled along the familiar side streets, where rain fell through the naked branches of the trees and the streetlights were just beginning to glow. Water hissed beneath his tires and few pedestrians braved the storm. Jay had cracked the window and Bruno, a pitbull-lab-bloodhound mix, kept his big nose pressed to that thin sliver of fresh air.
Cash’s voice reverberated through the Toyota’s cab as Jay slowed for the city limits of Baton Rouge.
“My momma told me, son…”
Jay angled his Toyota onto the crumbling driveway of the house on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, a tiny two-bedroom bungalow that had belonged to his aunt.
“…don’t ever play with guns….”
He clicked off the radio and cut the engine. The cottage was now in the process of being sold by his ever-battling cousins, Janice and Leah, as part of Aunt Colleen’s estate. The sisters, who rarely saw eye-to-eye on anything, had agreed to let him stay at the property while it was being marketed, as long as he did some minor repairs that Janice’s do-nothing wanna-be rock star husband couldn’t get around to making.
Frowning, Jay grabbed his duffel bag and notebook computer as he hopped to the ground. He let the dog outside, waited as Bruno sniffed, then lifted his leg on one of the live oaks in the front yard, before locking the Toyota. Turning his collar against the rain, he hurried up the weed-strewn brick path to the front porch, where a light glowed against the coming night. The dog was right on his heels, as he had been for the six years that Jay had owned him, the only pup in a litter of six who hadn’t been adopted. His brother had owned the bitch, a purebred bloodhound who, after going into heat, hadn’t waited for the purebred of choice. She’d dug out of her kennel and taken up with the friendly mutt a quarter of a mile away whose owner hadn’t seen fit to have him neutered. The result was a litter of pups not worth a whole helluva lot, but who’d turned out to be pretty damned good dogs.
Especially Bruno of the keen nose and bad eyes. Jay bent down, petted his dog, and was rewarded with a friendly head butt against his hand. “Come on, let’s go look at the damage.”
“Folsom Prison Blues” replayed through his mind as he unlocked the door and shouldered it open.
The house smelled musty. Unused. The air inside dead. He cracked two windows despite the rain. He’d spent the last three weekends here, repainting the bedrooms, regrouting tile in the kitchen and single bath, and scraping off what appeared to be years of dirt on the back porch where an ancient washing machine had become the home to a nest of hornets. The rusted washer along with its legion of dead wasps was now gone, terra cotta pots of trailing plants in its stead on the newly painted floorboards.
But he was far from finished. It would take months to get the house into shape. He dropped his bags in the small bedroom, then walked to the kitchen, where an ancient refrigerator was wheezing on cracked linoleum he had yet to replace. Inside the fridge, along with some cheese that had dried and cracked, he discovered a six pack of Lone Star that was only one bottle shy, and grabbed a long neck. It was strange, he thought, how Baton Rouge, of all places, had become his haven away from New Orleans, the city where he’d worked and grown up.
Had it been the aftermath of Katrina that had drawn the lifeblood from him? The crime lab on Tulane Avenue had been destroyed by the storm and the work the lab did scattered to different parishes and private agencies as well as to the Louisiana State Police crime lab in Baton Rouge. Sometimes they worked in FEMA trailers. It had been a nightmare—the extra hours, the frustration of evidence that had been collected, only to end up being compromised. And then there was the volunteer time spent helping with victims of the storm, as well as the cleanup after the floodwaters receded. He doubted few people on the police force hadn’t thought about quitting, and a lot had, leaving the force understaffed in a time when it needed more dedicated officers, not less.
Not that Jay blamed anyone for leaving. Not only were they helping victims of the hurricane, many officers, too, were dealing with the loss of their own homes and loved ones.
He, too, needed a change. It wasn’t just the horrendous hours he’d worked. Witnessing the horror of the hurricane and watching the city struggle to recover while the Feds pointed fingers at each other was bad enough. But then knowing that so much evidence, painfully collected over the years, had literally been washed away—that had settled on him like a weight. So much waste. So much to do to bring things back.
At thirty, he was already jaded.
And something—some last piece of tragedy—had sent him on this journey away from New Orleans.
Had it been the looters—those who were desperate or criminal enough to take advantage of the tragedy?
The victims trapped in their own homes, or nursing homes?
The lack of a quick response by the federal government?
The near-death of a city he loved?
Or was it the fact that his own home had been totaled by the screaming wind and flood that had torn his rented cottage from its foundation, ruining nearly everything he’d owned?
And how much of the disaster could he blame for his ill-fated romance with Gayle? Had the demise of their relationship been his fault? Hers? The situation?
He gave the dog fresh water in an old saucepan, then opened his beer. As he took a long swallow from the long neck, he stared through the grimy, rain-spattered window to the backyard. Through the panes he saw a bat swoop near the branches of a solitary magnolia tree. Dusk was falling rapidly, a reminder he had work to do.
Twisting his head, he heard his vertebrae crack and adjust as he walked to the second bedroom—still painted a nauseating shade of pink—where he’d set up a desk, lamp, and small file cabinet. A dog bed was in the corner and Bruno found an old half-chewed rawhide “bone” and started working on it. Jay took another swallow of his Lone Star, then set the beer down. He opened his notebook computer and set it on the chipped Formica desktop before hitting the power button. With a whirr, the PC started and images appeared. Seconds later he was on the Internet, eyeballing his e-mail.
Imbedded in the spam and mail from coworkers and friends was another note from Gayle. His gut clenched a bit as he opened the missive, read her quick little cheery e-note, and found no humor in the joke she’d forwarded to him. No big surprise. They’d agreed to be civil to each other, remain friends, but who was kidding whom? It wasn’t working. Their relationship was dead. Had been dying long before the storm hit.
He didn’t respond. It was as pointless as the diamond ring that sat in his bureau drawer in New Orleans. His lips twisted at that. He hadn’t had much luck in the ring department. Years before he’d given a “promise ring” to his high school sweetheart, and Kristi Bentz had promptly gotten involved with a TA when she’d gone off to school up here, at All Saints College. How about that for a bit of irony? Years later, when he’d finally offered a ring to Gayle, she’d accepted the diamond and begun to plan their life together—his life—to the point that he’d felt as if a noose had been draped over his neck. With each passing day the rope drew tighter until he hadn’t been able to breathe. His attitude had rankled Gayle, and she’d become all the more possessive. She’d called him at all hours of the night, had become jealous of his friends, his coworkers, even his damned career. And she’d never let him forget that he’d wanted to marry Kristi Bentz long before he’d met her. Gayle had been certain he’d never stopped pining for his high school sweetheart.
Which was just damned stupid.
So