Not So Picture Perfect

Not So Picture Perfect

Book One of the Between the Veil series

Copyright ©2014 Amber C. Carlyle

Cover Design by DragonReine (Real name: Kerry Chin), 2014, http://dragonreine.deviantart.com/

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Acknowledgments:

To my Inanities for being the best group of gamers and friends a geek could ever ask for. You never fail to amaze and inspire me.

To Claudia, Alys & Sarah for giving me the encouragement to continue when I most needed it, and the support to carry forward.

And most especially to Lance, my wonderful husband, for holding my hand, staying up late to talk me through my thought process, and never letting me give up on my dream. This book is dedicated to him, because without him, I would never have found the strength to finish. I love you.

Chapter 1

Blood trickled from her mouth and nose, her head lolling to the side as she hung against the wall. Her long brown locks flowed past her bare shoulders as her arms stretched outward, pulling her pale flesh taut. Red streaks trailed down her nude body, along her pert breasts, leaving a puddle just below the tips of her toes. A tiny carving along the inside of her left breast was the only visible mutilation. Even still, it was a difficult sight to take in. My eyes locked with her dark ones, but there was nothing in them. They were glassy, dead, and I found that I couldn’t look away, but I preferred that over the rest of the macabre scene.

No matter how much time passed, my stomach churned as I looked at the picture in front of me, my brain running the scene again in my head as I managed to open the sliding glass door to find Naomi Patterson strung up like that. Even now, the haunting chords of Hotel California resonated in my head, as I recalled rushing to the body and praying that she might still be breathing. I forced myself to look away, the acrid taste of bile in the back of my throat.

Miss Matthews? The male voice from my computer drew my attention, but I knew the picture of the corpse was next to the Skype call. You need to come to terms with the graphic detail of this crime.

I shielded my eyes with a hand as I glanced towards my monitor. It obscured the majority of the screen, and I was thankful for that. I'm not sure that's possible.

You are a key witness to placing Mr. Prescott at the scene of the crime. I reached over and used the mouse to shut the window that housed the image of Naomi Patterson, allowing me to drop my hand back into my lap. If you can't maintain your composure when addressing the evidence of what you saw firsthand, the defense is going to have a field day picking your testimony apart.

I quirked a brow at the pixelated image of Perry Scott, the assistant DA that worked with me, with his thinning gray hair and blue eyes. And here I thought the fact that I can't easily cope with the horrific murder of another human being was a good thing.

Mister Scott kept a straight face as he spoke to me. I wondered if it was to mock my inability to do the same right now. Where the jury may find your situation empathetic, it weakens your stance as a witness. With your past...

Right, with my past, my credibility is already going to be called into question. Agitation tinged my voice. My past was something the DA already took me to task for, more than once, since they became involved. My early adult years were wild, to say the least. I worked hard to put those activities firmly behind me, and it wasn't like I wanted to be part of a major criminal investigation. I lucked into it, if you could call it luck.

Perhaps we should make a meeting for you to actually come into the office.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, not wanting to, but I nodded. This case was important. Naomi Patterson needed justice, and my personal investigation into Naomi Patterson and her lover Grayson Prescott were the only strong link for the DA. My wants were secondary at the moment. That's fine. Just shoot me over some dates and times that would work, and I'll confirm back as soon as I can.

The Skype call ended, and I welcomed the silence. God, I need a cigarette after that. Rather than having a smoke though, I rifled through my desk for a pack of nicotine gum. I was trying to quit. I wanted to bask in the silence as I waited for the slight tingle of nicotine to reach my brain, but by then, boredom was bound to set back in. For all the benefits that stumbling on to the Patterson murder gave me, it also managed to shut down most of my other work avenues. I was a private investigator by trade, and I wanted to focus on missing persons, but I took what I could get, which was mostly the standard philandering spouse contract. Technically, that was how I learned of Grayson Prescott. His wife Olivia asked me to provide proof of his infidelity, and she was as shocked as I by the results of my investigation.

However, that job technically ended over three months ago. After I got done with my limelight of catching a heinous murderer, no one was really knocking on my door.  Of course, it was much harder to keep a low profile after the six o’clock news plastered my face all over the case for a few weeks, and I never even once spoke to the reporters. I studied Communications at Tulane University, so I wrote my own article and sold it to a newspaper for exclusive rights. That was far more beneficial for me, but the television press didn’t seem to mind. They liked having a face to link to the story that wasn’t one of the homicide detectives, or Grayson Prescott himself.

Fortunately, the lack of work coming in wasn’t affecting my monetary situation. I received a hefty check from The Times-Picayune, and there was always my trust fund that pretty much allowed me to follow my own path. My parents didn’t necessarily approve of my vocation of choice, but ever since I wrote that article, my mother at least told people that I was an investigative reporter instead of a photographer. It wasn’t my first article, but it was the one that gained me traction in the right circles, and my mother at least approved of that. Although the argument that resulted between my parents and I when they learned that I stumbled across a murder was not one that I cared to repeat. Ever. It was all the more reason to keep them in the dark on the things that I pursued.

Besides, they’d never approve of my wanting to look into missing persons cases, and I never understood why. I glanced to one of the pictures in my office as the thought crossed my mind; my eyes drawn to the last family portrait of the Matthews Family. We were almost the classic American family. George Matthews, a tall, strapping middle-aged man, graying hair and warm brown eyes, and Kaitlyn Matthews, a tall, willowy woman with blonde hair pinned up and light green eyes, sat in front of a young man, dark haired, with the same green eyes as the woman, an open black graduation robe across his shoulders. Stationed next to the young man stood a petite teenage girl, black hair, dark eyes, tanned skin, and it was painfully apparent that I resembled nobody in our family. I was adopted though, and that was why we weren’t quite the American family you’d find on your television sets. That picture was also the last of happy times, and the last of pictures were real smiles.

Two years later, my graduation picture from the Jean-Marie Dumont Academy in 2005 found me standing between my parents, no one smiling, as if we were but statues. Sean was nowhere to be seen, as if someone erased him from our lives with a magic eraser. The problem was we didn’t know what happened to him.

I shook my head, trying to force the thoughts out of my head.. No, that happened ten years ago. I did not want to start walking back down that path – not today. I scooted my chair back up against my desk, wiggling the mouse until the monitor began to glow with life.  I needed something to occupy my brain so I wouldn’t start wandering that path once more, or maybe my phone would just ring for once. I didn’t even care what the circumstances were. Anything was better than sitting around bored.

I saw the face of my phone light up from the corner of my eye before it even began the chorus of Enter Sandman. As I answered it, I saw the name Daniel Mallory stamped across it. Oh, shit, I probably just jinxed myself. Matthews.

Hey, it’s Sgt. Mallory. We got a scene down at 1512 Esplanade Avenue. Mallory was a young cop, fresh from the academy. He hung on to a certain homicide detective’s coat in hopes of impressing him. It could not be good that he called me.

That piqued my interest. I grabbed a pen, scribbling the address across the front of a folder on my desk. Why would the police call me about a crime scene? I was a lowly private investigator. Okay, do you need me to head that way?

I think it would be best if you did.

Fine, I’ll head that way shortly.

Detective Boulliard will be on the scene when you get there. Mallory hung up before I could say anything else. Not that anything really crossed my mind. Of course, given that Mallory idolized Boulliard, I was not surprised to hear the name mentioned. I knew Boulliard, more than I wanted to admit, and, well, that just made things complicated. I disliked complicated, but it beat sitting around at home hoping for a better phone call.

Grabbing my camera bag from the knob of my closet door, I gathered the rest of my belongings as quick as I could muster, trying to distance myself from the encroaching memories. My last stop before leaving my house was to grab my leather jacket from my hall closet. Despite the fact that I lived in sunny New Orleans, the temperature, and weather in general, could change on a dime, thanks to the nearness of the Gulf. I preferred to be ready for that rather than get caught in a spontaneous shower that broke the humidity, making it a cool autumn afternoon rather than a muggy one.

I locked my apartment tight as I left home, heading to the black Honda Civic waiting for me in my usual parking space. Being as I lived in a nice part of New Orleans, my neighbors and I established our own parking spaces without any fuss.  Sure, there wasn’t any official assigned parking with this building, but we all parked in the same place, almost every time, and we tried to keep our guests from using someone else’s spot. I guessed you could call that some kind of strange southern hospitality.

My eyes caught sight of a single long-stemmed red rose placed across the windshield of my car, and I stopped in my tracks. I glanced around the mostly empty parking lot, but there was no one in the vicinity. It made me nervous to approach my car alone. After all, this wasn’t the first little gift someone left for me. It was the first one in several weeks, but after the first month of finding wild flowers with no note, I started to get unsettled with the whole notion of a secret admirer. Shortly after my bout of fame with the Patterson case, the gifts stopped, and I was happy for it. I guessed that it was too good to be true for my admirer to go away. I grabbed the rose from the windshield as I unlocked my car, setting it and my belongings in the passenger seat of my car. I at least knew how to get to Esplanade without having to use my GPS, so it shouldn’t take me long to arrive. It would at least take me twenty minutes since I was close to Uptown, and there would certainly be traffic since it was towards the end of the 9 to 5 crowd lunch hour. The idea of traffic suited me just fine though. Detective Boulliard made his living by trying to solve the murders of New Orleans. If homicide was on the scene, it meant that I was going to get some lovely first hand images of dead people.

True to my guess, it took me almost twenty five minutes before I pulled up to an area of Esplanade covered with police cruisers, news trucks, and a whole gaggle of onlookers. Yep, this definitely was my stop. I found a space along the street, as near the gaudy yellow crime scene tape as I could. It didn’t say that parking was restricted, but I hoped that given the circumstances, and my affiliation, that I wouldn’t get a ticket anyways. I gathered my things as I got out of my car, slipping on my leather jacket before slinging the strap of my camera bag over my shoulder. I would deal with being uncomfortable in the heat if the weather didn’t turn sour. I attached my investigator badge to the front of my coat, so it couldn’t be missed.

As I crossed the street to the crime scene, feeling the sun beat down on me, a funny feeling washed over me. I wasn’t sure why, but something seemed weird, like someone watched my every move from afar. I guessed I always imagined that these kinds of things happened in the middle of the night, where the things that go bump in the night might get you. It shouldn’t be out in the broad daylight, where anyone could stumble across it. It must be the difference between reality and fiction. There was no dark and stormy night here, just the bright New Orleans sun and the fragrant stench of baking garbage.

An officer I didn’t recognize stood just on the other side of the tape as I approached. He looked to me, then to my badge. As I opened my mouth to tell him to find Detective Boulliard, he held up a finger. Taking a step back, he turned toward the apartment building where more cruisers were scattered through the parking lot, along with at least two unmarked police vehicles. I followed his gaze, watching as several uniformed officers stumbled out of the apartment building, green about the face. Great, if seasoned officers were getting sick, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to see the inside of this place, but if I wanted to do my job, and maybe get a story, I would need to stick to the course. The officer nearest me let out a whistle, making my shoulders jump and drawing the attention of the men chatting in front of one of the cars.

Among them was Detective Joshua Boulliard. Even from here I could see him furrow his brow as he looked at me, and then with a shake of his head, start moving in my direction. What are you doing here, Matthews?

Despite the almost slow, casual draw of his voice, I could tell that nothing about this scene must have been easy going. Boulliard looked rough, to say the least, as he stopped in front of me, coffee in hand. On a given day, I counted on the fact that Boulliard wore a pristine white shirt, neatly pressed, with a monochrome tie, his face clean shaven, and his dark brown hair neatly combed into place. All in an annoyingly perfect manner that would make most girls swoon, and they – for the most part – did throughout school, if I recalled correctly. Today, though, he was far from that image. His black tie was pulled loose, the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up past his elbows, and his hair looked like he had run his hands through it more than once.

I smiled in his direction, knowing that it would irritate him more than win him over. I got a call that I was needed.

As predicted, he didn’t return the smile; his hazel eyes shadowed by whatever was on his mind. I’m not sure who called you, but whoever did, it was a mistake.

A flutter of annoyance settled in my stomach, but I did not let my smile falter. I guessed Mallory jumped the gun on calling me before Boulliard expressed that desire. Well, it seems someone else thought differently. I had a call to come down here as quickly as I could.

Trust me, Yumi, you don’t want to be here.

I shrugged. I’ll be the judge of that. I peered past Boulliard to the door of the apartment building. An officer stood in front of it, talking to someone on the inside, and blocking any chance to see beyond him. So do you want to let me by so I could help, or are you going to make me sit out here with the April O’Neils?

Boulliard shook his head. Actually, you should get back in that car of yours and head home.

Josh…

"I’m in charge here, Yumi. I’ll make the call, when and if, you’ll be allowed inside. No exception."

Boulliard! A voice from near the apartment building called out, and we both looked over to the door. One of the officers stood there, flagging Boulliard for his attention.