by Linda Ladd
“Yeah, I do remember that. They acted crazy about each other, and about us.”
“Sophie wanted to catch a fish, she loved to fish, so we walked up the bank a good ways from them. It was warm that day. I remember sweatin’ and takin’ off my jacket. I went into the woods to find some worms, and that’s when this masked man got me and tied me up and put tape over my mouth.”
He paused there, and Claire gave him all the time he needed. But all her muscles were tight when she thought of the little children they had been back then. How much fun they’d all had together and how they’d all been devastated when Family Services people had taken her away. Gabe had yelled and cried and held on to the back of her shirt as they’d dragged her out of the house.
“He went out and got Sophie and tied her up, too. Then he walked down the path and shot Mama and Papa. Point blank.”
“You saw him do it?”
“Yeah. And I see it to this day. He shot Papa once and Mama twice and then he just walked back to us, like nothing had happened.”
Now the pain on his face was visible, and awful to behold. Claire began to have some misgivings about forcing him to tell it. “So you saw his face?”
“No, he put that Mardi Gras mask back on before he got to us, the kind that only covers the top half of your face. Decorated with sequins and red feathers. Looked like a snake. That’s when he chloroformed us.”
Claire waited while he took a sip of water. “You don’t have to relive this, Gabe. I know it’s painful.”
“You don’t know how bad I want to get that guy. I wanted a chance to kill him myself but didn’t get it. Not yet, anyway.”
“Let me get him for you. I’m going to get him, Gabe. I’ll never stop until I do, especially now.”
“I hope you do, and I hope you kill him.”
“Clyde said he beat you.”
“Yeah, he beat me. He liked it. After he got us to his hellhole, he kept us drugged and tied up down in a cellar. But he had this obstacle course thing upstairs, that and a voodoo altar he liked to scare us with. He kept calling it his mini maze of terror. And that’s what it was, Annie, that’s exactly what it was. It was designed to scare the hell out of us.”
“And you don’t know where it was?”
“Out on the bayous somewhere. I think there was a river nearby or some kind of water. We could hear the rushing of the current sometimes when it was really quiet. And he got us out there by boat; I remember that because I woke up a little bit while we were still lying in the bottom of that boat. I remember that he had a flashlight and he carried us up some steps to a porch and then inside a dark house.” He stopped, sighed. “Believe me, I’ve looked for the place for years. It’s all pretty fuzzy, because I only saw it at night, but it was an old house, a big one, creaky and dark and damp and crawling with roaches and spiders. All the windows were boarded up, and he kept us locked up in some kind of cellar or root cellar, something like that. He made us take pills to keep us quiet.”
Gabe stared down at his hands, and Claire watched how his fingers were curling in until his nails bit into his palms. “He got off scaring us. Played all these frightening hide-and-seek games. He’d tell us to hide and maybe he’d let us go home, and then the first one of us he found, he’d take upstairs to what he called his playroom. It had lots of toys and an old four-poster bed. I guess he slept up there. It reeked of cigarette smoke, I remember that. That’s where he usually beat me. He put up sheets of plastic on the floor and the wall to catch the blood.”
“Oh, my God, Gabe,” Claire got out somehow, but she felt nausea pushing its way up her throat at the depravity he’d suffered.
Gabe swallowed down some of his own horror. “He was as brutal as any man could ever be, Annie, an absolute monster. You wouldn’t believe how cruel he was.”
Claire picked up his hand and held it. “We think he marks his victims with a tattoo. Do you remember anything about that?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s very vivid because it scared us so much. He must’ve gagged us and tied us to chairs, because we already had the tats when we woke up the first time. He bragged about his artwork, told us he did it himself with his own personal tattoo machine.” He turned his wrist over for her to see. “I’ve still got it, here, on the inside of my wrist. Clyde told me that I’d had it done before the accident, and I didn’t remember enough to know any better. I always wear my watch there or a wide leather bracelet to hide it. But I never got that tat taken off. It helps me keep my resolve to find him and kill him.”
Claire stared at his wrist. The same snakes and stars. “It’s the same thing we found on Madonna and Wendy. He killed them both. Oh, God, Gabe, how many people has he killed and terrorized all these years?”
The muscles were moving under the skin of Gabe’s jaw and she could actually hear his teeth grinding against each other. “He left me more memories on my back.”
“Rene said he whipped you.”
“That’s right. I’ve got plenty of scars to prove it. They told me I got them in the wreck, that I was thrown out of the car onto shards of broken glass and concrete. I believed that for a long time, too.”
Gabe turned on his side and pulled apart the back of his hospital gown. Claire gasped, horrified. The scar tissue was raised and pale against his dark skin, some thin lines, other scars the size of a drinking straw. Dozens of them, made by a whip or belt, crisscrossing his back from neck to waist. He had been beaten mercilessly, all right.
“Oh, Gabe, how could anybody do that to a child?”
Gabe lay back again. “He hurt Sophie, too. He chained me up in the cellar and I had to listen to her screaming from upstairs, calling for me to come help her. But he didn’t hurt her as bad as he hurt me, thank God. He didn’t beat her. He seemed almost fond of her.”
Claire remembered Gabe’s beautiful little sister with her fine wheat-blond hair and wide and trusting dark eyes. She had still been so little when Claire had lived there. They had shared a room, filled with Barbie dolls and books and jump ropes and a giant dollhouse that Bobby Lefevres had built for Sophie.
“Every single day I look at those scars in the mirror, and I swear I’ll find that devil and choke the life out of him with my bare hands.”
“Jack Holliday thinks that the man who did that to you and Sophie is the same man who murdered his family out in Colorado. Do you think he could be right?”
Gabe merely shrugged. “Did he mark his sisters with tats?”
“They never found them. Like Sophie. They were just three years old on the night his mom and stepdad were killed in their bed. Jack never saw them again. He’s been looking for them for years. He hired a private investigator to find them, and he traced them down here to Madonna, after he found out her parents had been shot in a similar double murder. That’s when they discovered the tats on their wrists.”
“Well, he ought to stop looking for them. They’re dead and gone a long time ago. He always kills the kids he takes. He told me that himself. That he was going to kill us and everybody else he put in his maze. The only reason I survived is because I didn’t swallow that last sleeping pill and managed to pry a board off a cellar window and get both of us out.”
“Thank God, you made it out alive.”
“Sometimes I wonder about that. I couldn’t rescue Sophie. I was weak from a beating and not strong enough to carry her out through the swamp. She was still drugged and couldn’t keep up after a while, so I hid her, but I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t’ve ever left Sophie out there alone, but when I got a chance to break free, I thought I could get help and get back before he found her. I don’t remember much about what happened after that. I vaguely remember wading through the swamp and fighting through undergrowth, trying to find a way out, but I guess I lost consciousness. I don’t remember being found or being in the hospital, either.”
“Things are coming together now, Gabe. I’m going over to Rene’s house and take a look at the file on your parents’ murders.”
; “Be careful. That monster’s still out there somewhere. He’s probably the one who threw those grenades. If he’s killing off surviving victims, he’d want me dead, and you’re hot on his trail. Two birds with one stone. Nick was just collateral damage.”
“You just rest and don’t go anywhere. When Black gets back, tell him I’ve gone to Rene’s house to get the file. I’ll be home in a little while. Tell him not to worry. I’ll be fine.”
“He does worry. He’s not going to like you taking off by yourself.”
“I know.”
“You got a pretty nice thing goin’ here. He’s good to you. And he’s been good to me, and he doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground. But I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry I had to ask you these questions, Gabe. Bring everything back like that.”
“Just get him. For Sophie. I want to get him for her. No telling what he did to her when he found her that night. I try not to think about that part.”
“Get some rest. I’ll bring the case file in and let you look over it, if you want to.”
“Be careful. This guy’s good. He’s gone a long time without getting caught. And now he’s probably pretty anxious, thinkin’ that you’re getting too close. Just be alert.”
“Oh, I will, trust me. I’ve learned that the hard way.”
And that was true. She wasn’t going to take any stupid chances. She wanted to live a while longer. But this guy. He was pure evil and they had to bring him down. They would, too; she was sure of it now. His brutal little maze of terror was going to be out of business very soon.
A Very Scary Man
Malice was absolutely furious. Nothing was going according to plan. Nothing. Claire Morgan was still on the case, even after he’d warned her off with that voodoo doll with her picture on it. Why the hell she hadn’t been jerked off the case was the real question. He was irritated to damn death about that, and then what did she do? She found another one of his survivors almost at once and paid her a visit, too. It was just a matter of time before she and her partner started putting two and two together and suspecting him.
So now dear little sexy Wendy had to go, too, whether he liked it or not. But he did like it. It was high time that he cleaned house anyway. He had been young and stupid back then when he’d let them get away, and the biggest fool who ever lived to allow them to keep living all these years. There had been countless times in the past when he could have killed Madonna and Wendy without getting caught. Now it had become more risky, but it was something that had to be done. Quickly and efficiently and without leaving any evidence behind.
So he planned out the attack, thoroughly, examining every possible exigency as he’d learned to do. This time he chose just after dark when everybody in Mimosa Circle was either preparing their evening meal or settling down in front of the television set for their favorite primetime programming. He had cased out the place for several nights and found it to be very quiet at that particular time. It would be fairly easy to approach her house without being deemed an intruder. He came in through the woods behind the complex on foot, climbed the fence, and made his way to her place, avoiding streetlights and keeping in the shadows. No one was around except one jogger passing an intersection a good ways down the street, the place very quiet and peaceful. No going up and knocking on the front door this time. Wendy’s neighbors lived way too close for that. Besides, Wendy was a lot smarter than Madonna Christien. She wouldn’t let him in so easily. But he had no problem getting inside her apartment. He just picked the lock on her back door and cut the chains with his bolt cutter. He had become quite adept at breaking and entering, especially at picking locks, practicing daily until it only took him a few seconds. He entered silently, his bag of voodoo gear in tow.
Once inside her apartment, he looked around and realized that she was upstairs. He crept stealthily up the steps, pulling on his heavy leather gloves. She was in her bedroom, sorting through the clothes hanging inside her closet. She never even saw him coming. He crept up behind her and hit her in the back of her head with one hard fisted blow. She went down in a heap, too stunned to resist his assault, and he took his time beating her to within an inch of her life before he grew tired of it. She had become a problem for him all right, and he didn’t like problems. He used the glow of the little night light beside her bed to sew her eyes and mouth shut, a nice touch since he was effectively hushing her up for good.
After that, he had plenty of time to paint her face and molest her body a bit before she died, and then he straddled her waist and strangled her until the bones in her throat cracked and gave way under the pressure of his thumbs. He got off on that sound every single time he heard it. After he was sure she was dead, he spent time cleaning up after himself and setting up the altar downstairs in the foyer. He made it as identical as he could to the one he’d fashioned for Madonna at the LeFevreses’ old house. Murder had become as easy as pie for him, a highly enjoyable pastime. He felt better now that she was dead and could tell no tales. Loose lips sunk ships, and all that jazz. So now, he was going to have to remedy that, once and for all, by killing any and all of his survivors. There weren’t all that many; he was too good at what he did for that.
Even better, Claire Morgan was still running around in circles. He was fairly certain she didn’t know what the hell was going on, and he wasn’t leaving her any clues to go by. Let her think it was some voodoo-obsessed crazy, getting off on sewing up lips and eyelids. And maybe this time, when they found a second doll with Claire’s picture pinned to it, maybe then her stupid sheriff would come to his senses and assign the case to somebody else. Better yet, he might assign her young and inexperienced partner to run things. That would be even better.
If not, he would just have to kill her, too. He smiled at that thought. Actually that wasn’t such a bad idea. He would just murder her, or better yet, maybe he could capture her and throw her inside his maze. Talk about a worthy opponent to pit against his cruel games. It would be quite the interesting challenge to see if she could outwit him. Yeah, he had to find a way to get her out to his little island paradise in the swamp, where they could get to know each other really well. There were all sorts of things he could show her. She wanted to know what his victims suffered? Well, he’d just show her.
Decided on his next course of action, he packed up his gear, wiped down Wendy’s place for any DNA he might have left, relocked the back door, and then faded into the night, very satisfied with his night’s work. Sometimes murder was just too damn easy for words.
Chapter Twenty-five
It only took Claire a minute or two to drive to Rene’s house. He lived in the Quarter, too, in an old home with an inner courtyard like Black’s. It wasn’t as big and fancy and expensively furnished, but it had been handed down in his family for years. She pulled up and parked across the street. Lights were on upstairs in his living room behind the white wrought-iron balcony that overlooked the street. Underneath Rene’s gallery at street level, there was an automatic garage door with a pedestrian portal right beside it, one affixed with a buzzer to ring for admittance. She pressed the button, then stepped back and looked up at the second-floor balcony. A couple of minutes later, Rene leaned over the railing and peered down at her.
“Hey, Claire. C’mon up.”
From somewhere inside, she heard a click as he automatically unlocked the door, and she entered a dark hallway, then climbed a narrow enclosed stair to the living area. Rene met her at the top of the steps. He was home for the evening, dressed in a charcoal-gray nylon running suit marked on the back with NOPD in big white letters. He wore scuffed black leather slippers and held a cocktail in his hand, a dry martini with three green olives on a toothpick.
“Well, this’s an unexpected pleasure,” he said to her. “I didn’t expect you to show up so soon. How about sittin’ down and havin’ a drink with me?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got a few questions I want to ask you and then I need to see that murder file.”
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Rene nodded and sipped his drink. Claire walked past him into his living room. It was large and spacious and airy with well-worn, apricot-colored couches facing each other. A black grand piano claimed one corner, and expensive modern art covered the walls. Claire had been there once for a Fourth of July celebration when she’d lived with the LeFevreses. It hadn’t changed much at all.
“Nice place, Rene. Looks the same as years ago.”
“My mama had good taste. I can’t take the credit for the furnishings. Sure you don’t want that drink? Martini? I’ve got more in the pitcher, ready to pour.”
“I don’t think so.” Enough of the pleasantries, already. She turned and waited for him to meet her gaze. “I really need to see that file, Rene. It is here, right?”
Instead of answering her question, he turned around and walked to a dry bar built inside a tall antique rosewood cabinet. He said nothing as he refilled his stemmed glass from a small cut-glass pitcher. He ate the olives, then skewered three more and plopped them into his fresh drink. Claire said nothing, either, just waited. But she didn’t like his delay in answering and felt like it was an excuse to think of a reason to deny her the file. Her impatience was simmering, ready to erupt into a full boil.
Rene took a sip and looked at her over the rim of his glass. Then he heaved an audible sigh. “Sit down, Claire. Let’s talk about this, calmly and rationally. You got to know how sorry I am about all this. Gabe’s like a son to me. Come on, have a drink.”
“I said that I don’t want a drink. I want to see that file.”
“Sit down, please.”
Claire sat down on the sofa. Rene took his place on a black leather club chair directly across from her. Apparently, he had been reading when she rang the bell. An open book sat on the hassock in front of him, a thick biography of Andrew Jackson, alongside Rene’s black-rimmed reading glasses.
“Okay, what do you wanna see?”
“First off, I want to see the murder file you compiled on the LeFevres murders. I know you buried the facts of the crime at Clyde’s request, in order to protect Gabe. But you still have it, don’t you?”