by Anne Frasier
The smells.
Glorious.
The hunger.
The cravings.
So much time had been wasted.
"Come and play," I whispered. "Wade with me in the fountain."
A smile hovered near the corner of his mouth, but he made no move.
The tabby brick wall was wide. I ran, landing on the top, silent and smooth as a cat, then I slipped quietly into the water.
He would follow.
I heard a splash behind me and smiled to myself.
The water wasn't deep. No more than three feet.
I dropped to my knees, then rolled to my back and floated. Something brushed my hand, and I realized it was a fish.
Stars. In a black velvet sky.
"I haven't told anybody," Enrique said. "And I won't. Ever. You know that, don't you? Your secret is safe with me."
"Shhh," I whispered. "Look at the stars. Just look at the stars."
"They're beautiful," he whispered.
I rolled to my stomach. "Keep looking." With my feet on the bottom of the pond, I pushed and floated to Enrique's side. "Don't stop looking."
He always did what he was told.
I could see his eyes, see the stars in his eyes. The eyes in his pretty, pretty face.
I pulled out the knife. "Are you looking at the stars?" I asked him.
"I'm looking."
I could hear the echo of the smile in his voice as I slit his throat.
Your secret is safe with me.
Hot blood ran across my fingers. Sticky. Smelling sweet and bitter and metallic, all at the same time.
I'd been planning this moment for days so I knew what to do. I worked diligently, and soon everything was exactly the way I'd seen it in my mind. I filled his clothes with rocks, so he would sink. So he wouldn't be found for at least a few days.
Finished, I climbed from the fountain, water pooling from my clothes. I was hot and tingly, my nerve endings singing. I could smell the worms living in the soil beneath my feet. I could taste salt in the air, from the marshes miles away. I could hear people fucking in the safety of their homes and beds.
I stroked myself through my soaked clothes and thought about the detective David Gould.
The salt in the air became the taste of his skin; the whispers, his soft encouragements and groans of sexual satisfaction.
I hurried through the darkness. In my bed, I stripped off my wet things and slipped under the covers, putting my arms around Mr. Turello, pulling him close, whispering sweet tales of death in his ear.
Chapter 30
James LaRue was on the run.
On the run.
He liked the phrase. It sounded important.
His frantic escape from Savannah had been harrowing, with cops everywhere, all of them eyeing his car with suspicion. One hour into his panicky flight to the Big Easy, he'd exited Highway 95 and taken the back roads the rest of the way.
Exciting.
Like a movie.
Or television.
James LaRue, badass.
To someone who had been teased and humiliated his entire life, it had a nice ring.
Not that he'd always been a straight edge. Hell, no. As early as eleven years old he was doing a bit of walking on the dark side.
Always a curious kid and never one to pass up an opportunity to get something for free, he'd been digging through the trash behind a funeral home one day and had come upon a mother lode of Polaroids.
Of dead people.
The family funeral business was folding and they'd cleaned out their files.
One person's trash was another's treasure.
He took off his hooded sweatshirt and filled it with photos, then tightly bundled the sleeves together. He pedaled home, dumped his treasure in his bedroom closet, then returned at night with garbage bags to fill with more loot.
The photos were a hit with his school buddies.
He could have unloaded them for five bucks a pop. Instead, he kept them all, every one of them. They filled four shoe boxes that he hid in the back of the closet. His favorite was a full-frontal nude of a teenage girl whose face had been smashed in, but whose body had remained flawless.
He sometimes let his buddies take a look at his private collection, which was something he learned to never do again.
Never let anybody else in on your secret or it won't be a secret anymore.
The photos gave one of the kids, Shawn Hill, nightmares and he ended up telling his dad about the stash in the closet. Big trouble. A life-altering moment.
All because of some snapshots that had been thrown away. Trash was trash. Public property, if any of the public wanted it. He hadn't done anything wrong.
His father was shocked. Disgusted. Confused.
Embarrassed.
His old man had been reading the latest parenting book, written by the latest self-proclaimed expert on child rearing. In the chapter "Punishing the Wayward Child," the author suggested that the punishment should always be related to the crime. Say, if you had a dog that killed a cat, then you would beat the dog with the dead cat.
As punishment for his Polaroid crime, James was locked in his bedroom closet for two weeks with the Polaroids.
Cunning.
Sick.
James' father wasn't an evil man, just misguided. How was he to know that the person who'd written a book on child rearing would end up in prison for child pornography?
In adult time, two weeks wasn't much. For a kid, it was a lifetime.
Things became confused in that closet. Even though it was dark, James could see the photos in his mind. He could see the dead people.
They became his friends. His comfort.
Things were never quite the same after he got out.
He was never quite the same.
Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
A psychiatrist would probably say that his time in the closet had twisted him, maybe even damaged him. Not true. It had cleared his head. Made him strong.
And just maybe a tad obsessed with death.
But one thing hadn't changed. He wanted to please his dad. Needed to please him.
James would have enjoyed his present notoriety more if it hadn't been for his dad. James kept imagining him sitting in the living room in front of the TV. James' face would suddenly fill the screen. His dad's heart would leap, because he'd long expected James to gain international attention as a famous scientist, someone who'd used his knowledge to better the world. Not as a fugitive from the law.
James had tried. He'd really, really tried.
He knew he should call home, tell his dad everything was okay, but cops would be watching the house. That was the first thing they'd figure he'd do. They'd also be watching previous associates and members of the academic community. Friends, if he had any.
Funny how you could be an outcast even among your own kind.
He had to go it alone.
He had to disappear.
New Orleans was perfect for that. After things cooled down, he would hitch a plane to the Bahamas, then on to Haiti. Once there, he'd call his dad. Tell him he was okay. Try to convince him he hadn't really done anything wrong.
Shouldn't have done it. With hindsight, he could see it had been a bad idea. But he'd been a little out of his mind at the time. And when he was out of his mind, he did unpredictable things. Crazy, foolish things.
Sometimes, when he looked back after a particularly wild encounter, he couldn't remember what he'd done, where he'd been.
Who he'd been.
When he reached New Orleans, James referenced movies he'd seen, as a blueprint to disappearing.
He didn't use his credit card. He cut his hair. Bleached it blond. Quit shaving. Wore Different clothes.
A whole new persona. It felt good. Great to reinvent himself. Step into a new life ...
But not many days into being a fugitive, the novelty began to wear thin. He grew tired of trying to find places to sleep, tired of being dirty,
tired of wandering the streets of New Orleans.
Then he was mugged.
The last straw.
"Don't spend it all in one place!" he shouted after the three hoodlums as they ran down the alley with his billfold.
Enough.
He wandered into the New Orleans Police Department Headquarters.
"I'm James LaRue," he announced to the female officer at the front desk.
His new persona must have been good, because nothing about him registered with her. She stared blankly, waiting for him to state his purpose.
"If you look up the name on your computer, you'll see that I'm wanted in Savannah, Georgia, on a felony charge."
She called for assistance.
Two more officers showed up, one huge black guy and a white guy who looked as if he spent every free second in the gym.
"James LaRue," the female officer confirmed when she checked the computer. She eyed him, then the screen. "But you don't look much like the guy in our database."
Another officer wandered by, glanced at the screen, then back at James. "Could be him. What about prints?"
"No prints in the system. Never been in trouble before."
"Got any ID?" the black officer asked.
James patted the pockets of the baggy tan shorts he'd picked up at a thrift store and shrugged, his hands spread. "I was robbed."
"Did you report it?"
"I'm reporting it now. And aren't we getting a little off track?"
"I think we'd better get one of our facial-identification specialists down here," the black guy said.
"Why would I say I'm somebody I'm not?" James asked. "Especially somebody who's wanted for a felony?"
"Happens all the time," the woman told him. "You could be a Confessing Sam, looking for some attention your parents didn't give you as a child. Or you could just be looking for a free ride to Savannah."
Ingenious. He'd stepped into a whole new sick world.
"You could have run into LaRue somewhere. You could be pulling this switch for LaRue."
Until they could make a positive ID, they put him in a holding cell, fed him, and gave him a pillow and blanket.
After what James had been through, it felt like a five-star hotel.
Chapter 31
Elise folded the newspaper and tossed it on her desk. The cemetery photo was kind of campy, but the reporter had done a good job on the TTX article, getting her facts straight and displaying the Savannah Police Department tip line in large numbers on the front page.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
The sound came from beyond her office window.
Elise looked out to see David and Audrey in the cemetery, playing catch. She zipped her computer in its carrying case and went down to meet them.
"The pitcher hurt her arm," Audrey announced. "So I'm going to pitch a few games. Isn't that cool?"
"Isn't pitching a dangerous position?" Elise asked. "Didn't somebody break a nose last season?"
"I have to practice." Audrey lined up her fingers on the softball. "A lot." She tossed the ball to David, who was crouched in white shirtsleeves, his jacket and tie draped over a tombstone.
He caught the ball and straightened, shaking his bare hand. "That's enough for me without a glove."
"Mom, will you practice with me? Maybe tomorrow or the next day?"
Elise had never tossed a ball in her life. "What was her name? The girl who broke her nose? Camille? Didn't they say if it had hit any harder, her nose would have been shoved into her brain and she could have died?"
"Mom!" Audrey let out a laugh of exasperation. "Will you practice or not?"
"Okay." Since life made no sense, Elise would probably be the one to end up with the broken nose.
She eyed her partner. He obviously knew quite a bit about gloves and balls. "Need a ride home?" she asked. His car was still in the shop.
"Love it." He grabbed his jacket and tie.
It was late afternoon and traffic was heavy getting from downtown to the suburbs. They hit every red light and breathed in enough carbon monoxide to kill all of the canaries in the state of Georgia. Audrey, still excited about pitching, chattered the entire way and bailed out of the car as Elise pulled to the curb in front of Thomas' house.
"I'm going to pitch!" she shouted, dropping her glove in the grass and running toward Vivian, who was strolling around the yard, a baby on each hip.
Vivian passed off Toby to Audrey, then came over to sit cross-legged in the grass so that she could chat through David's open window. In the background Audrey put her mouth against Toby's belly and blew, making the baby grab fistfuls of her hair and laugh hysterically.
"We're having a neighborhood block party and cookout in two weeks," Vivian said, bouncing baby
Tyler on her knee and making faces at him. "Please come. Both of you. You need to have some fun, Elise," she added as if anticipating an argument.
"Oh, I have fun," Elise muttered. "Lots of fun."
Block party. It meant a bunch of strangers milling around, struggling for common ground. Elise didn't fit in that kind of world. A world that pretended bad things never happened. But then, was her world any more real? A world where horrendous things happened on a daily basis?
Vivian attempted a new tactic. "Try to get her to take some time off," she begged David. "Try to get her to come."
David was slouched in the passenger seat, eyes squinted against the setting sun, arm braced on the window. "Sounds nice to me," he said congenially. "But I don't have any influence over her."
Everything seemed way too normal all of a sudden. It made Elise feel a little queasy. "We'll try to make it," she lied.
After a lot of waving and too much baby talk, Elise and David drove away, heading back toward civilization and a higher crime rate.
"You have no intention of showing up, do you?" David asked.
"I don't know. ... I might. Depends on what's going on at work."
"Sure." He made a sound that implied he knew better than that.
Was she getting more transparent with age? "I love Vivian dearly," Elise said, "but I'm no good at that kind of small talk. I hate it."
"What you really mean is you're afraid of it."
"I can't believe you're lecturing me. You. Mr. Antisocial."
"I'll go if you go. That way we can talk shop if things get too awkward."
"Oh, that would be a hit. Maybe we should bring along some crime scene photos to pass around while we're at it."
"Eight-by-ten color glossies. I can see it now."
Elise veered to the left and pulled into the parking lot of a sporting-goods store. "I need a glove," she explained in answer to David's look of inquiry.
Inside, David made a tight fist and punched the center of the leather baseball glove.
"This one seems pretty decent." He pulled it off. "Here. Try it."
Elise wiggled her fingers into the glove. Her hand was healing nicely. The butterfly bandages were gone, replaced by two small Band-Aids. "It doesn't go all the way on."
"It's not supposed to."
"It's stiff."
"It'll soften up. You have to work with it. You don't want to get one that's too soft, or it'll start folding up on you. How does that feel?"
She made a fist and smacked it against the padded palm of the glove. "I don't know. How's it supposed to feel?"
"Okay." He let his shoulders sag, his arms dangle. "I can accept that you never played softball, but you surely played catch."
She smacked the glove again. "Nope." The ball fit so nicely in the glove. She rolled it around, pressing her fingertips against the stitching.
"What'd you do instead? Don't tell me you actually played dolls with those Barbies."
Elise thought about the time she'd tried to put a spell of silence on her sister. She'd found a doll with brown hair. She cut the hair so it resembled Maddie's. She superglued an X of black thread across the mouth, burned some herbs, and read a spell she'd been taught by the old lady conjurer down the
street. It had been one of her many early failures.
"Yeah," she told David. "I played with dolls."
"Hmmm." He squinted his eyes and appraised her. "There's something you're not telling me."
"So, you think this glove's okay?" She pulled it off and tucked it under her arm. "What about this one?" She lifted a red glove from the shelf hook. "I kind of like it. Or what about that pretty blue one?"
"The brown glove is better."
"It's more expensive."
"With a glove, you get what you pay for."
She put the red glove back and picked up a ball.
"That's a hardball. You need a softball. Here." He plucked two from a wire barrel. "One more thing ..." He perused the shelf until he found a small brown bottle. "Glove oil. You have to oil the glove, put the ball inside, then tie it closed so it will get a good shape to it."
"How has this gotten so complicated?" She shook her head in bafflement. "We're just going to play catch. Play"
"Play takes work."
David picked out a glove for himself. Something that took a little longer, because he was even more particular about his purchase than he'd been about Elise's.
"Stay where you are."
He gave her a slow, lazy throw.
She had no choice but to try to stop it, just snagging the ball with the top of her glove. She didn't toss it back.
"I'm assuming you played a lot of ball, so why don't you have a glove that already fits you?" Elise asked as they walked to the checkout area. "That's already formed to your hand?"
"I do, somewhere. It could be at my mother's in Ohio, or in storage in Virginia."
"I can't imagine my life being that scattered."
"They're only things. Material possessions."
He tossed the ball straight up and caught it in the glove. "You don't strike me as materialistic."
"No, but I become attached to my possessions in an emotional way. Like my car. It has over one hundred fifty thousand miles on it. I know I should get a new one, but emotionally I'm not ready. I can't let it go. I've had it so long that it's a part of me. An extension of who I am."
He got in line and put the glove with the ball inside on the conveyor belt. "Your car is a piece of shit."