My heart was galloping out ahead of me, both worried and excited that I was going to see a throwdown, all the while pretending they were fighting over me instead of “Fawn.”
“This ain’t over, Wash.” Matt didn’t give chase any further, but his voice carried on the crisp fall air.
Mr. Granade’s hand left my back for a moment and then returned. Something told me he’d just flipped Matt off.
“What the fuck was all that about?” I slid into the leather seat and wiped my sweaty palms on my skirt.
Mr. Granade tossed the evidence into the backseat and pulled away from the curb. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
“Is that so? Seems like I do need to worry about it. I thought he was going to clock you there for a second.”
Mr. Granade’s lip twitched and then stretched into a smile. “Even on that asshole’s best day, he could never clock me.”
“Cocky much?”
He shrugged. “Just stating a fact.”
“Who’s Fawn?”
“Matt’s wife.”
I groaned. “You do realize I graduated from law school, right? That I did well enough on the LSAT to get into law school? That I, oh, I don’t know, graduated high school, and even middle school? So, while I appreciate you stating the obvious for me like that, what I was asking was who is Fawn to you.”
“And therein lies the lesson. Ask what you mean to ask. Tailor your questions precisely and you may just get the information you’re after.” He pulled up to the sheriff’s office and jumped out of the car before I even had a chance to continue my short-lived interrogation.
I followed him, but he managed to stay a few steps ahead of me this time, his hair gleaming in the afternoon sun. I wanted to reach up and yank on it to get him to talk to me, or at least let me talk. He wisely stayed out of range. Besides, even I knew that pulling your boss’s hair in broad daylight in front of the sheriff’s office might not be the best career choice.
We signed in and were led to another stark conference room—everything metal and dingy. The evidence clerk brought in two storage containers marked with bright yellow tape and indecipherable codes in Sharpie.
“This it?”
“Aside from the bodies at the morgue, yeah.” The deputy seemed none too pleased about helping us.
Mr. Granade dug some gloves from his suit. It should have creeped me out that he’d been wandering around all day with rubber gloves in his pocket, but I was just impressed that he came prepared.
He handed me a set. “All of it’s been processed and dusted for prints, but there’s no telling what’s in here, and it’s probably stuff you don’t want to get on your hands.”
“Noted.” I snapped the gloves into place as the deputy shut the door and took up his post down the hall.
A camera in the corner kept an eye on us as we got to work. He cut the tape sealing the first bin and flipped the lid off. A manifest lay on top of the items, each piece of evidence neatly logged in a precise hand.
“We’ll get a copy of their log, but go ahead and catalog everything I pull out. We never rely on anyone else’s work but our own.” He reached for the item on the top of the pile. It was a pale blue scarf that reeked of cheap perfume. A deep brown stain colored one end.
I scribbled down the description.
“We should have the tox and blood results on the docs Matt gave us. Once we get back to the office, give it all a once-over and match up the items with the test results. Then we’ll know which victim goes with what. Got it?”
“Yes.”
He placed the scarf on the table and dug out the next item. A white T-shirt covered with even more brown stains.
“What’s that?”
He checked the manifest. “Looks like a shirt that was found stuffed behind a chest of drawers at Rowan’s apartment.”
I shuddered. There was too much blood on the shirt for it to have come from a shaving mishap.
“Let’s keep going.”
We spent the better part of two hours looking at the items that told a story of a life lived poorly and violently. Knives, needles, a variety of drugs, snuff porn—if it was disgusting or creepy, Rowan had it. Two pieces of evidence were particularly troubling: a gun and a notebook full of twisted writings.
Rowan was something of an author, but as I flipped through the composition notebook, it became clear that his darkest fantasies were written on the pages. Rape, murder, dismemberment—all written in slashing blue ink. It read like the Bayou Butcher Manifesto. No wonder he’d been popped as soon as the cops got a line on him.
Other pieces of evidence weren’t quite as obvious. A scribbled note with the name and number of a boardinghouse. A photo of Rowan with another man, Rowan’s arm slung casually over the much shorter man’s shoulders. It was old, taken back when Rowan’s teeth weren’t rotted out from the meth pipe.