by Cynthia Lott
THE
FEATHERS
CYNTHIA LOTT
The Feathers © 2014 by Cynthia Lott
All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced without the express permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, situations, and places are the creation of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual people or places is purely coincidental.
Published by Piscataqua Press An imprint of RiverRun Bookstore, Inc.
142 Fleet St., Portsmouth, NH, 03801
www.riverrunbookstore.com
www.piscataquapress.com
www.cynthialott.com
ISBN: 978-1-939739-30-8
“I only know one thing, which is that I pursue the idea that I was born with, already present – if only in embryonic form – in the Drama or the Death Scene, with all the powers I can muster, till I can do no more.”
—Max Beckmann (German artist, 1919)
“The Law of Fives states simply that: All things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5. The Law of Fives is never wrong.”
—Malaclypse the Younger, Principia Discordia, Page 00016
To my parents, my sisters and to the memories of both Lizette Matens Sullivan and Colin Jackson.
Much love forever and always.
To read the next book in The Irises
Book Two of the Southern Spectral Series
Click here
* * *
Chapter One
I know he is close. There is a green feather near my black heel that has fallen from his mask. He is standing behind me, waiting. I will turn around and face him, fully aware that no one else can see him tonight but me. His warm breath is on my neck but it is not enough to thaw the coldness that has taken over my body. He has something to tell me. Finally, I will see what I have been waiting for, what his victims have witnessed. That’s where I will begin the story: two months before, when I investigated his first murder.
I stood at the end of a full-sized mahogany bed, removing a crimson stained sheet to reveal her dismembered remains. This was how my year began and how hers ended. Claire Watkins. The fifteen-year-old piano prodigy, Garden District socialite, and beloved daughter of Colin and Anna Watkins. Looking at the bloodied comforter that would now comfort no one, I realized that I would never hear her perform again.
It was February of 1978 when my partner, Detective Roy Agnew, and I investigated this young girl’s murder. An unseasonably cold winter combined with an unusual homicide: a debutante divided into five pieces.
“Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba.”
Roy glanced at me as he smoothed his gloved hand along the satin sheet.
“May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified,” I whispered. “It’s the beginning of the Kaddish prayer.” At that moment I wished I could light a memorial candle or perhaps even a thousand of them to illuminate Claire’s bedroom.
“I figured that’s what it was, Brenda. I just didn’t think you were practicing.”
“Only on special occasions.”
I placed my gloved hand over my mouth, closed my eyes for a moment and waited for the nausea to subside. The last thing I wanted was to add insult to injury by vomiting on this girl’s bed.
I forced my gaze to leave each disjointed piece of Claire’s torso, finally letting it rest on her face: the opalescent eyes were solidified into a state of shock as her chestnut colored hair flowed in rivulets over the white satin pillow. Black fingerprint dust already covered much of the white bed, competing with the dried blood that formed around her body, parts which partially resembled sashimi on a satin platter.
“The nanny said she smelled something ‘off’ right before she entered the room. The nanny is the one that found her.” Roy pointed towards the serving tray that still lay on the shag carpet where she dropped it. The scents of maple syrup and French toast lingered in the air, combined with the unsavory odor emanating from Claire’s body. I wrapped my scarf around my nose, smelling the dying scent of the gardenia perfume I sprayed on earlier in the morning, allowing the smell to overtake the stubborn odors.
“No wonder she’s carrying on downstairs. I would be, too. Not the first thing you want to see in the morning.”
This was not the day I'd wanted to wake up to, either.
I walked closer to Roy and stood next to him – the comfort of the only other living person in the room. I wanted to hide inside of him while he went through the motions, find a spot and emerge later when it was safe.
“It’s not something you want to see at all.” He drew the sheet to the bottom of the bed; his gloved hands seemed to move in slow motion. “With all of this blood loss, I’m not sure what the hell killed her, but you can see the petechiae: potential strangulation. We won’t know until the medical examiner takes a look.”
I was familiar with the condition, having witnessed it on several occasions: the spots and broken capillaries in the whites of the eyes. I switched my focus and stared at his hands, concentrating on their movements. I had seen them many times before: typing repetitively at work, caressing his favorite cup of coffee or touching my body – something we hid well from our colleagues.
Or had we hidden it well? We were professional at least, avoiding long stares and displays of affection.
At forty-five, he was still muscular and svelte, with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes like a chlorinated pool. I often looked at them as I did at that moment and imagined myself swimming in the pupil, diving into the cornea, but never able to swim deep enough or touch the bottom. At five-eleven, he towered six inches over me, providing a semblance of protection.
I observed her bed again, my eyes following the height of the tall, wooden bedposts. They reached high towards the ceiling. In an effort to comfort myself, I imagined Claire’s soul flying over them, high over the New Orleans skyline, far away from us and from whatever happened to her in this house.
Pulling out a Canon 35mm SLR from his briefcase, Roy snapped pictures of her body, the sound of each click echoing in the air. The coroner, Jim Plouche, entered the room. A short, stodgy, balding man, he always smelled of patchouli.
“She ready to go, y’all?” He looked towards the body, a sickly pallor moving over his face.
“Yeah, we can move her. The medical examiner is waiting for her at the lab and both LaRocca and Strode have already taken pictures of the whole room. Everything’s been dusted and sketched.” Roy referred to the criminal analysts, Officers Jake LaRocca and Michael Strode, who had been the first arrivals to the scene.
Plouche began to remove Claire's remains from the room piece-by-piece, bag-by-bag, with delicate precision.
“Damn it all, Roy. This is something else. Where’s the family?” Plouche placed the bags on top of one another at the bottom of the bed. He took a larger bag from his assistant as he whistled “When the Saints Go Marching In”. With the family hidden away in the recess of their home, he apparently hadn’t seen them on his way upstairs.
“They’re all in the dining room. They won’t see you go downstairs, but make it quick.” Roy continued taking photos of the bedroom, the click of the camera accompanying the sounds emanating from between Plouche’s thin lips.
I turned towards Plouche. “Why are you fucking whistling in here?
Can we have a little respect maybe?”
“Hey, it’s my way of dealing with the dead. You don’t like it? You can leave the room. How about that? We all got our ways of handling this stuff.” He cursed something under his breath that I couldn’t comprehend.
Roy glanced at me as I rolled my eyes and walked around Claire’s bedroom, inspecting the furniture and the typical items that adorned th
is teenage girl’s sanctuary. Nothing was particularly out of place, yet everything seemed too tidy. Were teenage girls this clean? I remembered my own room when I was fifteen. It always appeared as if a hurricane had torn through it on its way to the Gulf, leaving scattered papers, books, shoes and clothes in its wake. Even at thirty-five, I was known to leave dirty dishes in the sink and laundry strewn across piles of paper and books, much to Roy’s displeasure.
I walked over to a bookshelf, picking up one of the numerous snow globes that lined its cherry wood case. Several of them were displayed on the top shelf, each one boasting a different year and landscape. I held the most recent one in my hand, dated December 25th, 1977; and, in it, a young girl sat in an overstuffed plaid chair reading while a cat curled itself at her feet. As I shook the large globe, the snow fell all around the outside of the little home that protected both cat and girl warmly inside.
A world forever protected. No matter how much it snows, it never becomes cold.
“Brenda…come on. We don’t want to touch anything we don’t have to.”
Roy bent down under Claire’s bed, which had nothing to hide but a teen magazine featuring a shirtless Andy Gibb on the cover and a pair of red roller skates. He smiled briefly as he stood back up and walked over to her closet, opening the white wood shutter doors to reveal a wardrobe of conservative skirts and blouses alongside three sets of a Catholic school uniform.
“Sorry. It reminded me of the ones…never mind.” I placed the snow globe back on the shelf, remembering the fate of the ones I held in my hand a year before: nothing had remained but shattered glass, water and fake snow, strewn across my beige carpet. It was the consequence of throwing several of them against my living room wall. I had my reasons. I inspected her white dresser, as Roy sifted through Claire’s closet. He found little of interest among clothes, shoes, stuffed animals, and a box of various holiday and birthday cards.
Two weeks before her death, Claire’s father, Colin Watkins, had announced her debutante party in The Times Picayune. It was to be held at Commander’s Palace Restaurant, a private party for the wealthy elite of the area, complete with a champagne toast to welcome Claire into high society. Reflecting on my fifteen-year-old self, I realized that Claire Watkins and I had little in common.
I looked at the numerous RSVPs on the dresser, tucked between a stuffed unicorn and a keychain shaped like a music note. On the back was the inscription, For Claire, the music in our life. Love, Mom and Dad.
On the silver invitations was the inscription:
On February 9th, 1978,
We welcome you to the celebration of our daughter, Claire Watkins, and her arrival into society.
“This party is five days from now, Roy. They received a lot of replies back…pretty popular girl.”
I placed the invitations into an evidence folder and on a white sticker labeled the contents accordingly. Swiping at an annoying strand of long brown hair, I glanced at myself in her oval mirror; a tired version of me stared back. Roy closed the closet door and looked my way, his icy blue eyes always so diligent. From the expression on his face, I could tell that he noticed my prominent cheekbones, my weight loss since the year before.
Maybe I’m not ready for a case like this so soon.
I looked down as he rubbed my left shoulder…the one that always hurt the most.
“You probably think I’m a real amateur right about now.” “Amateur? No. But I do know this has been a rough month for you. It’s all right if you want to go downstairs. Really. I can finish this up if you need to walk away from it,” he whispered into my ear. “Yeah, well, this month is…it’s just that I’ve never seen anything like this before.” I glanced towards the bloodied bed that was now devoid of Claire’s body.
“Yeah, me neither.”
He nodded towards the bedroom door and, placing his hand on my back, guided me down the hallway. Officer LaRocca, motioned for us to walk through the French doors that led to the music room.
“There’s something you’re gonna want to see in there.” He gestured towards the door.
“Thanks. Listen, when you get downstairs, tell McGuire to go ahead and bring the family down to the station…we want to move them out of the house as soon as we can. I don’t want them disturbing the crime scene. LaRocca, you still need to finish up some dusting down there once they’re gone. McGuire has them all sitting in the dining room right now. Leave your notes on my desk, huh? I want to go over how this whole fucking thing looked when you guys first arrived.”
“Sure thing, I’ll take care of it.” LaRocca headed towards the first floor, skipping two steps at a time, the sounds of his footsteps clamoring down the stairs.
“Claire was a televised girl, Brenda. I remember seeing her on Good Day New Orleans and Alive at Five with Stan Wasserman. In a city like this, anyone could’ve followed her from their living room. So this is where it happened. Someone must’ve killed her in here and then placed her in bed.”
The room boasted a Burlwood Steinway grand piano, settee lounge, sheet music shelves and, under the window, a small wood antique table etched with three roses on its surface. Dried blood encrusted the whole of the floral settee lounge and spread out like tendrils onto the Aubusson carpet surrounding it. The piano stool was overturned, while the piano cover remained lifted as if Claire had just finished playing a piece. Bookshelves lined the walls with an array of various titles on Beethoven, Debussy, Mozart, and Satie. Small busts of the old masters gazed down with furrows between their eyes at the drained blood of a promising student.
“God. What a mess. What the hell happened in here?” I scanned the room.
“Look at how the blood trail stops right there at the door. Did you see blood anywhere down the hallway? I sure as hell didn’t.” Roy sidestepped the more saturated parts of the carpet.
“No, I didn’t. Someone carried her body down the hall without leaving a drop of blood anywhere. There’s no weapon either.”
I walked over to a window that overlooked the courtyard below. It was perfectly manicured, exhibiting two wrought iron benches and a large fountain with a stone pineapple that, on a typical summer day, would emit a bursting stream of water from its top.
How many times had Claire sat on one of the black benches, thinking about a boy or finishing a school paper? My fifteen-year-old self would have been out there half the day, reading.
“What’s this?” Roy bent over the small antique table. This was the evidence that LaRocca had mentioned. Lying on top of the wood, overlapping three intricately engraved roses, were four large green feathers, side by side.
“Strange. Why are these in here?” I looked at the feathers in detail. They were different shades of green and each one a varied length, the one in the middle being the longest with its darker shade like the leaves of a fern. The other three were shorter, dazzling in light emerald and tiny flecks of lime green.
“Mardi Gras is only a few nights away…parties, parades, king cakes…do these look to you like they could come from a costume?” Roy held a feather up to the light. The feathers were glistening, smooth without a speck of blood.
“Maybe. LaRocca said that Claire’s parents were attending a masquerade ball last night. They were celebrating the new Krewe du Vieux float and left all three children with the Nanny, Carmen. They didn’t come home until late last night. Where could these have come from?”
“They don’t seem to have been placed here randomly. I mean, come on. Look at this fucking room. They were clearly left here by somebody.”
I held one of the feather’s quills, feeling the sharp point at the end as it pricked through my gloved finger.
“Dammit! What the hell?” I noticed a tiny spot of blood on my right index finger and pulled out a band-aid from my pocket.
“Be careful. You going to make it?” Roy teased, smiling. He tucked my hair behind my right ear.
“Yes.” With a wink, I removed my glove and bandaged my finger. I pulled out a new glove from my pocket,
sliding it over my hand and, taking the other feathers from him, placed them all in a plastic evidence bag.
What happened to you, Claire?
As we walked back down the staircase, we encountered Officer McGuire in the process of preparing the family for their transfer to the two police cars parked in front of the house.
“I don’t want to leave my baby! Please…let me see her,” pleaded Claire’s mother, Anna, as she pulled on McGuire’s sleeve, her pleas echoing up the staircase. She was unaware that her daughter’s body had already left the premises in several bags. The older daughter, Karen, stood motionless by the front door holding her younger brother’s hand.
“Mrs. Watkins, it’s best we have you go to the station.” McGuire looked into her green eyes and held her elbow, helping her stand up straight. She was teetering from one foot to the next, her eyes darting around the room as if it seemed unfamiliar, strange.
“Anna, Anna…please, let’s go…” Colin pulled his wife away from McGuire and guided her towards the front door. “You better find this bastard!” He pointed at us, his dark eyes fierce. “And damn you for letting him into my house!” His voice bellowed at Carmen as he collapsed into a surge of tears, his hands covering his face. He sobbed, letting go of any semblance of composure.
McGuire put his arms around Colin and let him cry into his shoulder as Carmen wailed in the background, falling to the floor. Roy walked over and helped her up, letting Carmen rest her weight onto his chest as I stood back, watching the drama unfold in front of me.
Stay back, let them grieve.
Karen bent down and whispered something to her younger brother, Stephen, to which he nodded in agreement. As I attempted to make eye contact with her, she looked away and tightened the grip on her brother’s hand.
