“Do you mind?” she asked, nodding at the recorder.
The man shook his head.
“May I ask your name?”
“Gilbert Johnson.”
“Thank you, Gilbert.” Delaplane tried to make her voice sound kindly. She’d been told more than once that she came across as brassy and intimidating. “Tell me what happened, in your own words, starting at the beginning.”
Johnson nodded. “I was working fertilizer into that bottlebrush hedge.” He nodded toward where the CSI team was clustered. “Someone had been smoking, and there were a lot of butts in there that I was picking up. Then I saw the finger. I was working fast and thought it was a cigar butt at first, because it was kind of black, but it smelled bad and then I realized what it was. So I threw it back down. And then I saw the hair.”
“Hair?” This hadn’t been in the brief initial report she’d received.
“Like someone was scalped. A long curl of scalp with hair. And there was blood, too.” He paused, breathing hard. “A lot of blood.”
“That’s okay, just take a moment.” She waited until he had collected himself, then asked, “And what did you do then?”
“I backed up and out of that hedge and called 911. That was about half an hour ago.”
Delaplane looked past the tape. She could see the forensic team going over the hedge with a fine-tooth comb.
“What happened to the cigarette butts?” she asked.
“I put them in the garbage bag.”
“Were they different brands or all the same?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Where is the garbage bag?”
He pointed to a flaccid black bag lying next to the hedge.
Delaplane nodded to Sheldrake. “Make sure that’s taken in as evidence.”
The detective nodded back.
“Anything else you remember?”
“I’ve just been sitting here since.”
“Thank you, Gilbert,” she said, rising and looking around. It was a picture of good crime scene investigation. She wondered if the FBI was going to show up. Once again, she felt annoyed that the feds had gotten involved. There was nothing about this case that justified it. And the senior agent they’d sent down, what a strange one he was. He looked almost like a vampire himself, pale and thin and clad all in black. And when she heard him speak—in that honeyed, upper-class New Orleans accent—it made her skin crawl. She’d met his type before, and in her experience, all that southern gentility sometimes concealed a hard-core racist mindset. Maybe even a family history of slave ownership.
The other one, Coldmoon, was the opposite. Recently he’d been looking every inch the fed with his sidewall crew cut, mirrored sunglasses, blue suit, white shirt, and spit-and-polish black shoes. He, at least, had a pleasing, soft-spoken manner.
She reminded herself not to make assumptions, to keep an open mind. She’d handle the FBI intrusion by simply going forward with her investigation in the usual manner. Detective Sheldrake was the nominal head, and she’d given orders for him to liaise with Carracci and the rest of the feds on a twice-weekly basis. But she intended to lead the investigation herself. Not that she didn’t have trust in Sheldrake, but this was going to be a high-profile case, and when the shit hit the fan—which she knew it would—at least she would be the one with the finger on the switch.
Delaplane turned to Sheldrake. “I’m going to look around a bit. Maybe you could circulate, make sure everyone’s doing what they should be.”
“Will do.”
He went off and, moments later, she heard him issuing a short string of quiet orders.
She circled the perimeter and found the M.E., George McDuffie, carrying a Yeti evidence cooler to his vehicle. It was hard to believe he actually had a medical degree—he looked more like a college freshman, thin as a rail, nervous and awkward. She hadn’t worked with him much and didn’t know yet if he was any good.
“Hey, George,” she said. “Got a minute?”
“Certainly, Commander,” He placed the cooler in the back of his vehicle and turned to her.
She nodded. “Have a look?”
“Um, sure.” He unhooked the Yeti and opened the lid. Delaplane peered in. In a large test tube nestled in ice was the finger. Next to it, in another tube, was a long, thin strip of bloody scalp, with the hair attached. She recognized right away that the finger must be from the first victim, found washed up on the riverbank, who was missing one. That body also had a scalp wound that was probably going to match this bloody strip. Several other test tubes contained swabs of blood, flesh, and bloody bits of clothing.