The Evidence Room: A Mystery by Cameron Harvey

gone? Or was she lucky enough to be one of the ones buried farther inland, facing the swamp?
    She found it halfway down the second row, on a smooth headstone carved to look like a pillow. RAYLENE BROUSSARD ATCHISON. 1964–1989. AGED TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. HOW MANY HOPES LIE BURIED HERE. Aurora traced the letters with her index finger and wished for a way to know what those hopes had been. She had carried Wade’s name with her, even in death. Aurora wondered why Papa had not changed her own name back to Broussard. An eyeless angel perched on the edge of the tomb, a rusting locket shape embedded in the stone beneath it. Aurora nudged the tarnished cover aside to reveal a photograph of her mother. Raylene, bleached by the sun, peering over her shoulder. There was something so unencumbered, so free, in the smile she turned towards the camera.
    Aurora slid the cover back and leaned against the grave, watching the glittering water make its inroads through the cemetery. How long would it take before this place was completely gone? Her mother’s story would live on in the local anthology of tragedies. Raylene the person, the smiling woman in the pictures, was already being submerged. With Papa’s death, Aurora was the last remaining vestige of Raylene. Aurora believed there were things that connected you that couldn’t be explained in a neat spiral of DNA. Maybe it was the Southern part of her. She knelt in front of the grave, picking the headstone free of weeds. There was a kind of peace in it, like a small offering to her mother’s memory. Tomorrow she would clip some of the lavender flowers in the front yard and bring them here.
    The sound of someone approaching snapped Aurora to attention. Had it been half an hour already? She drew her hand across the carved letters, resolving to return, and made her way back towards the bayou, with one glance back at the grave.
    “Better not do that,” a voice said.
    Aurora turned around so quickly she almost lost her footing. The owner of the voice was a woman, lounging against a tomb. She took a swig from a murky bottle of Bacardi and tipped in Aurora’s direction. She wore a blue knitted skullcap ringed with dangling seashells, improbably paired with blue jeans and a satin Bucs jacket missing most of its snaps.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Don’t look back when you’re leaving a graveyard,” the woman said. She patted the tomb she sat on. “Or they gonna follow you.”
    “Thanks for the warning. I’m just waiting for my ride.”
    The woman shrugged. There was something unsettling about her manner. Aurora turned back towards the bayou. When she turned back, the woman was pouring the rum on the ground in a careful line, murmuring under her breath. She caught Aurora watching.
    “You don’t believe in this,” the woman said, her tone accusatory.
    “Believe in what?”
    “ Voudon, ” the woman said. She removed a tiny bag of what appeared to be bird bones from her jacket pocket and sprinkled them on the marshy ground.
    “I guess I never thought about it,” Aurora ventured, trying to be polite. Everybody mourns in a different way. She wondered whose grave this woman was here to visit.
    “Ha!” The woman giggled. “Your grandp è re, he thought about it.”
    “You knew my grandfather?” There was something disconcerting about the familiar way the woman spoke. It was a small town, she told herself. Everyone knows everyone else. Her arrival must have been more newsworthy than she imagined, and this woman had heard about it. That was all.
    “Everybody knew him. The alligator man.” The woman unzipped a dusty backpack and closed it over the rum bottle. Something hanging from the zipper glinted in the sunlight, catching Aurora’s eye. A bag tied with string, like the ones in Papa’s house. It was good luck, Luna had said. She wasn’t sure why, in this woman’s hands, it seemed to be something more ominous.
    “Gris-gris, right? It’s a good luck charm?” Aurora pointed to it.
    The