Pattern of Wounds

by J. Bertrand

  My grasp of the geography fails me. After a wrong turn, I end up cruising along River Road, feeling a deep kinship with the immobile rust-colored barges out on the Mississippi that, like me, could probably use a dry dock and refitting. But they still get the job done, regardless of looks.

  The thought of me running through a graveyard, winded, while Gene clutches his blown knee brings a smile to my lips. Old men playing at what looks to be a young man’s game.

  With some effort I find the highway and cross the river into downtown, driving in the general direction of Jackson Square. My tourist’s knowledge of the city is long out of date, forcing me to resort to a little trial and error until I find Decatur and take it all the way, pulling into one of many empty parking spots along a stately and semi-decayed building with a series of French doors on the ground floor and wrought-iron galleries decked with hanging plants on the two above.

  As I cross the street to the porticoed café, my phone buzzes in my pocket. The screen reads CARTER ROBB.

  “It’s a little early for you to be up, isn’t it?”

  “Roland? It’s Carter.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Are you . . . I need to . . .” He lets out a sigh. “Listen, the first thing is, everybody’s okay. There’s no need to worry. But I have to tell you . . . Something bad happened.”

  Despite the preamble, my heart constricts.

  “What happened?”

  “Someone broke into the house.”

  “Was Charlotte there? Is she all right?”

  “She’s a little banged up,” he says.

  “Let me talk to her.”

  “They’re with her now. She’s the one who told me to call.”

  “Who’s with her?”

  “The police. They’re here. Gina called 9-1-1.”

  My legs go weak. I lean against one of Café du Monde’s pillars for support, clutching the phone with one hand and my forehead with the other. I tell him to go back to the beginning and talk slow, explaining everything that happened.

  At four thirty in the morning, Carter woke up to the sound of his phone ringing. When he answered, Charlotte whispered to him that she’d heard a noise and there was somebody in the house. He roused his wife and told her to call for help, then descended the apartment stairs to the back door of my house, keeping the line to Charlotte open. He found the door ajar and went inside. There was a crashing sound from upstairs.

  “I raced up two at a time,” he says. “The noise was coming from the bedroom. Over the phone I could hear Charlotte screaming that he was trying to get in. I found him pushing against the bathroom door. She’d locked herself inside, and the crashing was him kicking the lock open. They were pushing back and forth on the door.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  “It was dark,” he says. “I yelled at him to stop. For a second, he just stood there, and then I saw something shiny in his hand. He rushed at me and shot his arm out. He sliced my forearm pretty good, but I got ahold of him and wouldn’t let him do it again.”

  He tells me this in a boyishly calm voice.

  “For a couple of seconds we kind of wrestled—it seemed like forever. I could smell the guy’s breath, feel his spit on my face. Then Charlotte came out of the bathroom and threatened to shoot him.”

  In her nightstand I keep a loaded .38 revolver, an older all-steel model so she can manage the recoil, fitted with red-dot laser grips. The laser activates as soon as she picks the revolver up, and the bullets hit wherever the dot falls.

  “I could see the red dot on the wall next to us, and he must have seen it, too. One second he’s trying to gut me, and the next he goes slack. I misjudged it, though. I thought he was giving up. Instead he kneed me and took off through the door.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “My arm is bandaged up, but they gave me something for the pain. I’ve had worse.”

  “You said Charlotte was hurt? Did he do anything to her?”

  “The door hit her in the face when he kicked it, but she’s okay. She was a real trouper. She probably saved my life.”

  “I want to talk to her,” I say.

  “Hold on.”

  In the background I can hear voices, some close and some far away. A portable radio squawks. The phone changes hands and a woman speaks. Not Charlotte.

  “March, is that you?”

  Theresa Cavallo. “What are you doing there?”

  “Gina called me after it happened, so I figured I should come over. Charlotte’s giving a statement, but I’ll put her on when she’s done. She’s holding up well under the circumstances. She says her only regret is not shooting the guy.”

  “She’s really okay?” I ask, hardly believing it.

  “I promise. And you owe Carter a debt of gratitude.”

  “It sounds like I do.”

  “Not just for rushing over,” she says. “Thanks to him, you might just have a break in your case.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m holding it in my hot little hands.” She rattles what sounds like an evidence bag over the line. “The knife,” she says, her voice electric. “He dropped it on the floor.”

  I take a deep breath.

  “There’s Carter’s blood on the blade, but they’ve lifted some good prints off the handle. They’re gonna take the hilt apart and see if there’s any other blood or trace evidence.”

  “You’re saying the guy who broke into my house is the same one who killed Simone Walker? How would he even know where I live?”

  “I don’t know. The same way he knows your email address? Obviously I can’t say for certain it’s the same man, but I told the detective to make sure Dr. Green gets a look at the knife to see if it matches.”

  “No,” I say. “Have Bridger do it.”

  “Whatever. That’s your problem. The point is . . .” She pauses. “Never mind. Here’s your wife.”

  “Roland?”

  At the sound of Charlotte’s voice, a wave of relief goes through me. My mouth twists into a painful smile.

  “Are you okay, baby? Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “It was horrible,” she says. “I had the gun and couldn’t use it. He could’ve killed me, Roland, and I couldn’t pull the trigger. I feel ashamed. Terry says it was probably him, the man you’re after. I couldn’t even give them a good description.”

  “Don’t worry about any of that,” I say. “None of it matters. You’re safe and that’s everything. You stood up for yourself and I’m proud of you.” My throat catches. “I’m so sorry. I’m so terribly sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I should have been there. I’m never there.”

  “Roland, no—”

  “I shouldn’t be here. It was pointless. And he could’ve hurt you without me there to stop him. I’m so, so sorry, baby.”

  She shushes me with a whisper. “Just come home.”

  “I will. I’ll go to the airport and get a flight.”

  “No,” she says. “There’s no rush. I’m fine. Everyone’s here. Just come home.”

  If everything is really connected and there are no coincidences, if that’s more than just a platitude I’ve repeated over the years, then how do I explain a drive like this, the second in my life, both of them westward over the long swampy stretch of Interstate 10 that crosses the Atchafalaya? How do I account for such a repetition? Absent again when I’m needed most, forced again to trace the seemingly endless road of shame, only this time alone.

  Between them, Charlotte and Carter could only sketch the barest outline of a suspect. Caucasian, male. To obscure his face, he wore the kind of white germ mask that pinches shut over the bridge of the nose. Despite the prints on the knife handle, Carter thinks he wore latex gloves. The whole time he spent in the house, the man never uttered a word.

  Around nine I reach Lafayette and decide to give Bascombe a call.

  “You wanna tell me what you’re doing in Louisia
na in the first place?”

  “No,” I say, but I tell him anyway, starting with my trip to Huntsville. The deeper I get into the story, the quieter his breathing grows, to the point that I have to take it on faith that he’s still at the other end of the line. “Lieutenant?”

  “You’re aware that Eugene Fontenot is under investigation, right? What am I saying, of course you are. You were sitting right there in the same briefing as me. I’m glad you don’t let details like that prevent you from doing whatever you want and going wherever you want.”

  “The lead about Fauk is solid.” Even I’m not convinced by the tone of my voice.

  “Good work,” he says. “Meanwhile, you wanna explain why the perp in your open homicide is making house calls?”

  “I wish I knew. Either he expected to find me there or—”

  “He wanted to send a message.”

  “Like they say in the action movies, this time it’s personal. Maybe Fauk wasn’t happy with my prison visit. Maybe he found out and sent an errand boy to my place.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “I don’t know. I want Bridger to compare the knife to the one used on Simone Walker.”

  “Sure,” he says. “Let’s alienate Dr. Green for no good reason.”

  “I’ll give you one. She tipped Lauterbach off about the supposed connection between his case and mine. That right there is enough for me.”

  He thinks it over. “I’ll make the call. When should I expect you?”

  “Three hours or so. But I won’t be coming straight to the office.”

  “Understood. I’m treating the attack on Charlotte as part of the Walker case, and assigning Aguilar to work it for the time being. I don’t have to tell you this guy cooked his goose. He can’t go after one of us without reaping the whirlwind.”

  “Ten-four.”

  The lieutenant’s pep talk doesn’t reassure me much, but it gets me thinking. I exit the interstate and drive around until I find a Starbucks. I raise the flap on my briefcase, withdraw the laptop, and log on to the wireless network. My email inbox is flooded with the usual junk, but at the bottom of the list, sent at 7:00 a.m. sharp, there’s a new message from Simone Walker.

  HI DETECTIVE,

  FOR AN OLDER WOMAN, YOUR WIFES SO HOT.

  YOU SHOULD WATCH HER THO. WHEN I DROPPED

  IN THERE WAS A YOUNGER MAN. ;-)

  I CUT HIM FOR YOU THO. SEE YOU SOON.

  LOVE, SIMONE

  I read it over twice, ignoring the reaction the words provoke, then forward the email to Quincy Hanford’s address, telling him to find out what he can.

  A white Crime Scene Unit vehicle sits in my driveway. I park on the street and rush up the walk. Eric Castro slips through the front door, pausing in surprise.

  “Detective—”

  “Where is she? Inside?”

  He nods wordlessly and I slip past.

  She’s in the living room, cradled in a wingback chair with the portable phone in hand. Based on the tail end of her sentence, probably talking to her sister Ann. She looks up, sees me.

  “He’s here,” she says into the phone.

  She rises as I move forward, opening her arms for me, pulling me close. Her body presses into me and I hold on as tight as I can, feeling her breathing, her warmth, inhaling the scent of her hair.

  “Oh, Roland,” she says.

  When I loose my hold, she pulls back slightly, giving me a crooked smile.

  “That’s quite a shiner,” I say, trying to make light of the swollen lid, the purple flesh around the eye.

  “It’s fine. It’s nothing. It doesn’t even hurt.”

  “Sure, it doesn’t. You’re very brave, you know that? And the guy who did this, he might as well have cut his own throat. He just signed his death warrant.”

  “Don’t even talk like that.” She pulls away. “It’s not funny.”

  “It’s not meant to be.”

  “If I wanted him dead, I could have done it myself.”

  “You’re right,” I say, the words coming out harsher than I intend. “Forgive and forget. When I find him, I’ll tell him to mind his manners from now on.”

  “Roland,” she says, cutting her eyes sideways.

  For the first time I notice the audience. Carter slouches on the opposite chair, his gauzed forearm hanging over the side, and behind him, silhouetted in the doorway, a crime scene tech stands frozen, waiting for the action to pause before passing through the room. I motion him along, then sink onto the couch, pulling Charlotte down beside me.

  “How’s that arm?” I ask Carter.

  He lifts the bandage for inspection. “I’ll take this any day over getting shot.”

  “We did all right,” Charlotte says, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze.

  I can imagine them a few moments earlier, knowing my arrival was imminent, deciding between them to put a brave face on things. But all I can think of is my wife screaming as a knife-wielding psychopath beats down the door. I put my arm around her and remember the wounds on Simone Walker’s back. He’d have done the same to Charlotte, even worse, if Carter hadn’t arrived when he did. They can sit here with their awkward smiles and congratulate themselves on the outcome, and I can let out a hundred sighs of relief, telling myself everything worked out in the end. But only by the thinnest margin. If Carter had been slower, if her attacker had gotten through the door, would Charlotte have been able to shoot? Or would I have come home to find her cold and lifeless on the tile floor, another victim of the man it was my job to stop?

  “Don’t,” she says. “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t.”

  I bury my face in her hair. “I can’t help it.”

  “I should probably go,” Carter says, rising to his feet.

  Before he leaves, I shake his good hand and thank him again. “You saved her life.”

  “She saved mine, too.”

  The resentment I’ve built up the past couple of months, the frustration with his influence over Charlotte, ebbs away as he walks through the door. I watch him go and for the first time in a year I finally see him for what he is, just a young man willing to risk himself to do what’s right. Whatever our differences are, I admire that. He’ll never ossify with rust, never cut the corners. He’ll never wake up across the room from his crooked doppelganger, uncertain which side of the line he’s really on.

  “I should probably go,” I say. “Get on top of this thing.”

  A faint smile. “Yes, you should.”

  I sink back beside her, wrap my arm around her shoulder.

  “There’s so much to do,” I say.

  But I don’t leave for a long time, afraid to put too much distance between us, afraid of what might happen if I’m not here. After a while she starts to tremble. And then the tears flow and I hold her tight.

  “You’re not staying here,” Ann says. “No way.”

  Charlotte’s sister drags her downstairs by the wrist, a hastily packed overnight bag clutched in the other hand. Within ten minutes of her arrival, she’s taken charge of the situation, declaring the house unsafe and insisting Charlotte go home with her. She gives me a tongue-lashing for not having installed a security system, and I take it gladly, relieved that someone is finally putting the blame where it belongs.

  “She’s right,” I say. “We can’t take the chance that he’ll come back.”

  “There’s a police car out front. I hardly think he’d be that stupid.”

  Ann drops the bag near the door without releasing Charlotte’s hand. “We’re not arguing, sis. You’re coming with me, end of discussion. Once your husband takes care of the situation, you can do what you want. Until then, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  “What about Carter and Gina?”

  “What about them?” Ann says. “There’s a police car out front.”

  I’ve never cared much for Ann, calling her the ugly duckling behind her back, but at this moment I could kiss her.

  “Go with y
our sister. I’ll come see you when I finish some things.”

  I follow them out, slipping Charlotte’s overnight bag into the back. Ann guides her to the passenger seat, making sure she’s settled, then closes the door. Coming around, she leans in close to me.

  “You’d better not,” she says.

  “Better not what?”

  “Come over. How do you think this guy found out where you live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She shakes her head. “How would you do it?”

  “I’d look him up, but we’re unlisted.”

  “How else would you do it?” she asks. “Think about it. You work with a lot of bad people. Well, I’ve represented a few. It seems obvious to me.”

  “What does, Ann? Just spit it out.”

  “Did you ever think maybe he followed you? You were at the scene, your name is in all the newspaper reports, and he obviously knows how to email you. Would it be so hard to tail you around?”

  I smile. “You think I wouldn’t notice?”

  “I think there’s plenty you don’t notice,” she says. “So indulge me, all right? Let me take care of my sister and you focus on your case.”

  They pull out onto the street and Charlotte lifts her fingers in a hesitant wave. As the car rolls away I feel a bond drawing taut and, as her figure behind the glass grows small, finally snapping. It’s terrible, her going away, but somehow right that she should be taken from me. I turn back toward the house, cold and deliberate, a dark intention forming at the back of my mind, a cancerous notion metastasizing, infiltrating blood and bone.

  Hanford calls my cell, telling me his baited hook is ready to send.

  “You’ll be able to find him with this?”

  He laughs, unable to contain his excitement. “I think so. All he has to do is run the Mail software. When our message hits the preview screen, we’ll get a location—it might be precise, it might be vague. But we’ll also get a picture. He’ll basically send us his identity.”