Page 1 of Blood Hymn

CHAPTER 1

EVIE

The sign says WELCOME TO HARLOWE PARISH. Somebody has shot it four times.

I count the holes because counting is what I do now. Twenty-one days since my sister died. Nineteen since the parish put her in a file and closed it. Eleven since a coroner in Baton Rouge who didn't owe me anything called and said Miss Price, I think you should come look at this. Four holes in the sign, rusted at the edges. Old. Whoever did it did it a long time ago, and nobody ever bothered to replace it.

That's Harlowe. Nobody ever bothers.

Delilah rides shotgun in a cardboard box the size of a shoebox. The funeral home in Baton Rouge asked if I wanted an urn and I said no, because an urn is for keeping.

I'm not keeping her. I'm bringing her home. There's a difference, and I'll know what it is when I get there.

Under her box is a manila folder, and under the folder is a .38 that used to belong to a man in Lafayette who left it in his glovebox with the windows down. I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not.

The folder is heavier than the box. It shouldn't be. It's paper. But it's the second autopsy—the real one—and it says things the first one didn't. Ligature furrow angled wrong for a hanging. Horizontal, not inverted-V. The kind you get from somebody standing behind you. Abrasions on both palms, curved, consistent with fingernails. Her own. Defensive. She fought whatever was around her throat, and she fought it hard enough to bleed.

And the tox screen the parish never ran. Diazepam, blood concentration high enough that she'd have been rag-doll limp when they did it.

The sheriff's report says self-inflicted asphyxiation, decedent had history of depressive episodes. Six hours from the 911 call to that sentence. Six hours. I've waited longer for a decent meal.

The road narrows past the sign, and the trees close over it. Live oak and cypress, moss hanging like something drowned and dragged up. It's October, and the light comes through green even at noon. I forgot that.

Six years, and I forgot the light. I thought I remembered everything about this place. The smell of the bayou at low water, the church bells on Wednesday nights, the way people look at you a half-second too long… but I forgot the light. Now it's on my hands on the wheel, and I want to pull over and scrub it off.

I don't pull over. I drive.

Chapel Road comes up on the left, and I don't mean to look but I do.

The church is still there. That's the first thing. I thought they'd have torn it down. Instead they let it rot; windows boarded, the steeple listing three degrees off true, kudzu up one side like the ground is trying to swallow it slowly. A chain across the drive with a sign that says CONDEMNED and a date six years gone.

They built the new one out on the highway. I saw it coming in, all white siding and a parking lot big enough for a Walmart. This one they just left.

Nobody ever said why. Nobody in this parish says why about anything.

I know why.

I was seventeen. There was a smock with paint on it and a table in the basement where the youth group did crafts, and I stayed late because I'd gotten the Jordan wrong and wanted to fix the water before Sunday. The youth pastor came down the stairs quietly. He always came down quietly. He said God had shown him something about me, that I'd been chosen, that I should be grateful. He said it with his hand on the back of my neck.

There was a hymnal stand. Cast iron. It had been in the basement since the flood of '09 and nobody ever carried it back up.

I carried it. Once.

The sound is the part I can't get rid of. Not the look on his face, not the blood, not the drive out of the parish with my headlights off. The sound. Wet. Like dropping a melon.

I liked it.

I've had six years to find another word for what I felt, standing over him with iron in my hands and my mother's silver cross on the floor by his head, and I've never found one. I liked it. I lied to myself for a long time about that and I'm done lying. Whatever I am, I brought it back with me, and it's sitting in the truck with the .38 and the box and the folder, and it's patient.

Delilah's building is a converted feed store on the back side of Main with four apartments upstairs and a laundromat that's been closed since I was a kid. Her door is the second one. It isn't locked. That's how I know before I open it.

Empty.

Not empty like she left. Empty like they came. Every stick of furniture is gone. The bed, the dresser, the ugly green chair she found on a curb in Alexandria and drove ninety miles with in the back of a borrowed truck. The walls are stripped. The nail holes are puttied over. Somebody swept.

I stand in the middle of the room, turn in a circle, and there's nothing. Not a hair tie. Not a bobby pin in the baseboard. They didn't clean it, they erased it, and they did it fast, and they did it well, because they've had practice.

Fine.