Dead Spaces: The Big Uneasy 2.0 Read online

  Dead Spaces

  Big Uneasy 2.0

  Pauline Baird Jones

  Contents

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  From Relatively Risky

  From “Family Treed”

  From Do Wah Diddy Die

  Other Books by Pauline Baird Jones

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About This Book

  The Big Uneasy 2.0!

  After Relatively Risky comes…

  Dead Spaces

  Be careful what you dig for…

  A forensic surgeon in the New Orleans Coroner’s Center—and part of her dad’s Baker’s Dozen—Hannah Baker thought she knew where to dig, how and what to slice, and when to walk away.

  But when her big brother gets her involved in the exhumation of a couple of old coffins, she realizes the past can’t be ignored. Not when its been simmering up a big pile of trouble for longer than Hannah’s born days.

  Only New Orleans could produce a “Baked” gumbo of the mob, shadowy figures from the past, annoying figures from the present, murders, attempted murders, and a really cute detective who is technically off limits on account of he’s her big brother’s partner.

  Good thing NOPD Detective Logan Ferris doesn’t know the meaning of “off limits,” because once more the Big Easy is getting mighty uneasy.

  * * *

  A Big Uneasy Family Tree is available here.

  One

  The law firm of Leblanc, Fontenot, Miller, Robinson, and Hendry had a long and somewhat infamous advocacy history. The Leblanc family had founded the firm at the turn of century, forming an unholy alliance with Zafiro. When Zafiro was helped out of existence by Afoniki, Calvino and St. Cyr, the founding Leblanc had added partners so as to keep the tangled threads of the various “wise” interests from crossing and causing him problems. That Leblanc’s son, and then his son’s son, had stayed at the center of this web, helped maintain the illusion of neutrality.

  In their own way, the firm was honest. They held the affairs of their clients as a sacred trust. Of course, it helped keep them honest that their clients would have no hesitation in visiting swift vengeance on them if they strayed from their crooked path. But beyond this incentive, each of them found a kind of virtue in honoring the trust reposed in them. Each partner was like a small country, with strict borders that protected their clients, and only old Leblanc knew all the threads and steered their company ship carefully between the varied—and often conflicting—interests.

  Until the murder of Phineas St. Cyr.

  This event that had caused him, the current senior Leblanc, to steer the firm deliberately into stormy waters.

  He hadn’t done it with malice, but there had been much forethought. In the years before St. Cyr’s death, the lawyer in him had argued the case for and against this action—and the man could admit to hoping that the choice would not come in his lifetime. Not that he wished it on his son. Mostly he’d hoped it would pass them by as not relevant. He’d not been quite sure which instinct would prevail until the moment arrived.

  When it did, and he’d made the inevitable and unwelcome decision to honor that promise to his father and grandfather, he was left wondering what the cost would be to himself. To the firm. To the others in the firm. Had they known, had he known—but the law, even his side of the law, was not about knowing. It was about fulfilling contractual obligations. It surprised him to discover that at heart he was a lawyer.

  He’d acted as one, even if it might be against his own interests. He hoped that he wasn’t burning his own house down. Perhaps it would turn out to be a remodel of the existing structure, or possibly a shedding of burdensome layers.

  But it felt as if he’d set it aflame. Very like it. He shifted uneasily as he considered this. His new client had been most unhappy with the role the firm had played. Quite vocally unhappy.

  Through the years, through his offices, had passed many of the most dangerous, most unprincipled, evil—he didn’t like the word because there was judgment in it, but it was the truth. Some of the evilest of evil had sat in the chair across from him. All these years, so many faces and he’d never, not even once, been afraid. Because in the evil he’d known there had also been reason. There’d been logic behind the evil.

  Until now. This evil was not reasonable. Or logical. He was not certain it was…competent. And it had something to prove. He did not see how this could go well. And he’d unleashed it. Not just on the firm, but on an…unsuspecting world. The main targets were, no question, not innocent, but there would be collateral damage.

  Probably too much to expect God to have mercy on his soul. He’d sold it so long ago.

  * * *

  An exhumation didn’t make a lot of bucket lists. Not that Hannah Baker dared write her bucket list down. Life with many siblings had taught her not to leave a paper trail if she could help it. And she wasn’t sure she wanted a bucket list. It didn’t seem like a good idea to have a list of things to do before she died when she worked in one of the “dead spaces” of New Orleans—the Coroner’s Center—as a forensic surgeon.

  Might be more useful to make a list of things to do before she got laid off. Whatever ongoing budget crisis was being experienced by the various city departments, it was multiplied by a really big number inside the NOCC.

  Which meant she wouldn’t be paid for showing up on her day off. She didn’t know whether to curse her curiosity or her “un-bucket” list. Her gaze drifted to one of the four men who’d followed the two coffins inside.

  Or she could blame her hi-jacked day off on her big brother.

  Of course Alex shouldn’t be here, even if he was keeping behind the chalk line she’d drawn on the floor. This particular exhumation was a little too personal for her usually impersonal brother. No way she’d let him contaminate the chain of evidence—assuming that the two coffins produced anything remotely evidential. After thirty years in their crypts—New Orleans’ other dead space—that seemed unlikely.

  It wasn’t that unusual to have a couple of Bakers—in this instance, three of them—cluttering up a crime scene. It was a bit unusual to have them “Baking” the morgue—which was already hot, thank you faulty air conditioning.

  Both Alex and Ingrid—the third Baker present—were on duty and getting paid. Not that Hannah was bitter. She’d left sibling rivalry behind when she turned thirty. Still needed to work on not whining though. Hard habit to break when you worked in a whine-one-one zone.

  A couple of techs positioned the two coffins on her side of the chalk line, bits of debris still clinging to their surfaces, and set the brakes on the wheels. The coffins were in better shape than she’d have expected after so long. Maybe there would be something inside. Was it wrong of her to hope so?

  Each tech picked a coffin and went to work on the latches. This gave Hannah time to study the non-dead people in the room. She was used to having Ingrid, who worked in the Crime Scene Unit, around now and again, and she was happy to have her sister on her side of the chalk line. A little girl power never hurt. Alex showed up less often in Hannah’s dead space. No one really wanted to be in the NOCC—which was currently located in the back of an old funera
l home—even when they had to. His partner, Logan Ferris, lounged next to Alex.

  An invisible line of suspicion and aggression divided the two cops from the two bad guys, also unfortunately present for the occasion.

  The wise cousins were Guido Calvino and Claude St. Cyr. Hannah knew their presence was a Family thing more than a family thing—the crypts from whence the coffins came were family owned. At this point no one knew who was interred in the caskets. Or not interred in them. It was confusing enough to make her eye twitch. She suppressed the twitch, because movement of any kind made her sweat more.

  Either family could have blocked the exhumation and she was surprised they hadn’t. Apparently curiosity wasn’t limited to the legal side of the situation. Instead they had both countered with a demand for a family representative to be present when the coffins were opened. Alex would have said no and fought it all the way to the DA. Truth was, the case was still open because no one could find the file. It was a loophole Alex had driven his new truck through. He hadn’t expected the bad guys to come through it with him. Sucked to be him right now.

  Of the two bad guys, Guido was definitely the eye candy. Rugged everything, bad boy heir to a criminal empire currently run by his great-uncle. Guido had a decent skull, his frontal nicely balanced with his mandible. Acceptable frame, clavicles wide enough to make his suit hang nicely, though he was a bit elegant for her tastes. Might be the suit. Wouldn’t mind seeing him in jeans. Dark coloring, probably from his Italian heritage. Most likely way to die? Gunshot or explosion, though it would be a pity to blow him to bits. It took her a few seconds to realize that, unlike a corpse, he could look back. And was. With a look of amusement in his dark eyes, his gaze met hers. She blinked, gave him an apologetic half smile, and turned her attention to Claude St. Cyr.

  And wished she hadn’t.

  Claude looked like he could have crawled out of one of the coffins. The skin hung off a skull with a receding mandible and an occipital begging to be bashed in. All his skeletal frame did was make his suit hang oddly. Hard to see him as the new, big bad boss of the St. Cyr crime family when he looked more like a creepy accountant. There was a slight gleam of something in his pale gray eyes. Hannah couldn’t tell if it was worry or anticipation. One sensed he had the potential for evil. Now that he was the boss, he might be ready to explore that part of himself.

  Hannah shifted her attention back to the “good” side of the room. And sighed.

  Her brother’s physical presence overshadowed the two bad guys, even the tallish Guido. He was a big big brother. Before his shoulders got that broad, Alex had carried a lot of the parental weight of looking after his younger siblings when their dad buried his second wife. Hannah, as oldest of the second wave of children, had some memories of her mom, but it was her big, dark-haired brother that she remembered making her lunches and telling her the facts of life. Pause for internal shudder at that memory. As always, she felt a wave of love and frustration. It was not easy to keep him on the other side of any lines. Didn’t matter that this was her space, not his. He was the oldest and stood in for their dad more often than not until Zach—they all called him Zach because Alex did—retired.

  She felt his frustration, saw it in his body language—which spoke the volumes his mouth did not—as the techs struggled with latches sealed over thirty years ago. If Alex could have gotten closer, they’d probably pop open at a look. As far as Hannah knew, only their dad could stand up to the Alex glare.

  In stark contrast to Alex’s crossed arms and intense glare was his very relaxed, almost-asleep-standing-up partner. Ferris, with his slighter build, should be in Alex’s shadow as well but somehow wasn’t. Beneath the lazy droop of his lids, his gaze was sharp. His rangy frame might lack the brute force of Alex’s, but Logan Ferris could move fast when he wanted, or needed, to. He’d earned Alex’s respect—not easy to do—and their good cop/bad cop was legendary within the NOPD.

  Alex’s friends, at least the ones who’d watched her grow up, still saw all of the Baker girls as his little sisters. Didn’t matter that Hannah was the oldest little sister. Also didn’t matter how many letters she accumulated after her medical degree—nothing quite like being the geeky genius in the Baker family, she acknowledged a bit wryly. If she’d accumulated them to prove something—well, she hadn’t. She’d done it for herself—with maybe a little of trying-to-get-daddy’s-attention in there—and because she couldn’t help it if she vacuumed up knowledge.

  Mostly it didn’t bother her that Alex’s friends couldn’t see the grownup she’d become. Ferris was, for a reason she declined to parse too closely, the exception. It wasn’t that she liked him or anything. Not that she disliked him, but she didn’t like him. Besides, he hadn’t watched her grow up. And he was younger than her by at least three years. That disqualified him from seeing her as Alex’s baby sister. A pity he hadn’t got that memo. He didn’t seem to notice her not noticing him, so she felt free to direct a quick glare in his direction. Annoying boy.

  He did appear to be noticing Ingrid, who was a younger, cuter version of Hannah, though also older than Ferris. If she hadn’t moved on from sibling rivalry, that would have bothered her. Good thing she’d moved on.

  “That should do it, doc,” said one of the techs, arching a brow and making a lifting motion with his hands.

  She shook her head—she didn’t want to pop the lids until the two techs left. Leaks were impossible to stop, but she still felt a need to try. She thanked them, waiting until the two men left before nodding to Ingrid. They got on either end of one coffin and, after a brief struggle, forced the lid up. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t—she blinked—this. She looked at her sister. Her eyes were wide, too.

  As one, she and Ingrid moved to the second coffin and lifted its lid. And stared. Hannah tried to think of something to say. These were not the bodies she usually dug through. That meant the coffins just became Ingrid’s problem and she might get her day off back. She gave her sister a “take it away” gesture, trying not to giggle.

  Ingrid grabbed a camera, her lips twitching. Only then did Hannah look at her brother.

  “Well?” Patience was not really in Alex’s wheelhouse, though it should be. As the eldest, he’d had a choice. Be awesomely awesome at patience or totally suck at it. He’d opted for sucking. Didn’t seem to regret it either.

  She didn’t rub her chin. One didn’t when one worked in a morgue. But she wanted to. Ingrid finished her photographs and moved to the second coffin. Even though it would have been entertaining to see their faces, she didn’t invite them across the line. Another lesson learned in family trenches: you’ll never get back given ground.

  “You wanna start collecting the, um, evidence?” Ingrid looked up from her camera to ask. She gave a quick look at her watch.

  Hannah opened her mouth to remind her that it was her day off and that she hadn’t wanted to get sucked into this, but ran into Ingrid’s hopeful look.

  Hannah gave a nod that had a sigh in it and a lot of reluctance. She’d prepped for what she’d assumed would be an autopsy, so she was geared up enough to grab the nearest item. There was a faint ripping sound as rotted fabric gave way. The “corpse” had apparently been secured on purpose in its, um, interesting pose. She held it high so that the four men could see it. It stalled Alex’s next question. Four jaws went slack.

  Ferris recovered first. “What is it?”

  She turned it one way, then another, studying it for at least a minute. “It’s a doll. Possibly a Barbie doll.” She rubbed the mildew off the face with her thumb. “Malibu, I think.”

  It was a bit embarrassing she knew this, but she did have five sisters. And seven brothers. Yes, that was also embarrassing. She flicked a glance at the slack jaws and hoped Ingrid would get a shot of that. Even their heads were angled the same direction. Felt a bit like they’d wandered into a Saturday Night Live sketch when one combined those looks with a naked doll that had been secured in a coffin in the m
ooning position.

  As if he heard the thought—he’d developed a bit of parental psychic power growing up—Alex’s jaw snapped closed. “What’s in the other one?”

  Hannah stepped to it and tugged at one of its “corpses.” More ripping sound before she held it up. “I’m gonna guess this is Ken. Three of them in this one.”

  Were the dolls significant or merely a curiously weird joke? Hannah knew the story behind the coffins, knew what was supposed to have been buried in them. Phillip St. Cyr and Antonia Calvino, two star-crossed lovers, slash, mob prince and princess, blown to bits by person or persons unknown nearly three decades ago. Only they hadn’t got blown up. They’d faked their own deaths and fled to Wyoming where they raised a daughter. That daughter, Nell Whitby, had come to live in New Orleans. That wouldn’t have mattered if she hadn’t looked like the ghost of her grandmother, Ellie Calvino. This resemblance had launched an unfortunate series of events, including a couple of murders and some attempts on her life. That Alex was dating Nell, the long-lost granddaughter of two crime families, added another level of complication to a situation weird even by New Orleans standards.

  It made Hannah’s head hurt thinking about the wheels within wheels of the messy past—a past that seemed determined to take out her day off.

  The girlfriend was the other reason for keeping Alex on the other side of that line. The sibs were divided on the wisdom of Alex dating someone related to two crime families. Divided on how bat crap crazy it was, that is. Hannah thought he’d be in Wit-Sec by the end of the year. Made it hard to warm up to Nell.

  “Kens?” Alex looked and sounded incredulous. “Kens?”

  Hannah studied Ken. “Could be Malibu, too, I suppose.” She glanced at the other two.

  “This one might be Superstar Ken. Looks like he was dressed in a suit. Black. With some glitter.” Ingrid held up some rotting black threads, a bit of dull sparkle along what could have been a lapel.