Across the front yard, she went, her speed pressing her nightgown against her in front, blades of grass slipping between her toes. She vaulted the short boxwood hedge lining the Caruso property and landed on a large hosta, crushing it. Even though the man who owned the house usually kept his car in the garage at night, its absence from the driveway gave her cause for concern, partly because he was out of town a lot, partly because she needed him so badly.
She rang the bell and pounded on the storm door until the porch light came on. The inner door inched open and a face appeared in the crack.
“Mr. Caruso. I’m Kit, from next door. There’s a prowler in my house and I need the police and an ambulance. Please, call nine-one-one.”
The door swung inward and a man wearing pajama bottoms but no top unlocked the storm door. The hand behind him trailed a baseball bat. “Come in. Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine. But a friend of mine has been injured and I’ve got to get back. . . .”
He reached for her through the open door. “You shouldn’t do that. He might still be there.”
She stepped away from his grasp. “He is still there, but we’ve got him tied up. Please, just make the call.”
“All right, I’ll do it now. Don’t worry. I’ll get help.”
He disappeared into the dark house and Kit turned to go, but then she had a terrible thought. If her phone wasn’t working, maybe his wasn’t either. She opened the storm door and leaned inside. “Is the phone working?”
“Yes,” Caruso said from somewhere she couldn’t see. “I’ve got them now.”
Satisfied there was nothing more she could accomplish here, she hurried home the way she’d come.
Afraid to look, she returned to the bedroom and found Broussard with his eyes wide open. For a moment, she thought he might be—but then he blinked.
“Help is on the way,” she said. “You should lie down.”
He held up his free hand in a weak restraining gesture. “I’m okay.” His eyes went past her, to the prowler, and he said, “Why, Brookie . . . Why?”
Brookie? Kit’s brow knitted in confusion. As she turned, the prowler got up on one elbow and then to a sitting position. “Get this mask off me and I’ll tell you.”
Kit edged over, removed the mask, and quickly stepped back.
“I did it because you took Susan,” Brooks said angrily.
“I don’t understand,” Broussard said. “It was cancer. . . .”
Brooks glared at Broussard, his lips curling down at the corners, his face so full of hate, he barely looked like the same man. “Before that . . . our life together.”
“I’m not following you.”
The fury in Brooks’s face subsided. His eyes focused beyond the walls. “I would have done anything for that woman,” he said. “But from the very first, she returned only a fraction of what I offered, keeping a part of herself from me . . . unreachable. I gave everything, but she held back, even denying me children.” His voice took on a dreamy quality. “It’s not a man’s work that matters. It’s children . . . the giving of life . . . passing on the genetic flame . . . two people merging their separate identities to create a new individual whose every breath is their breath, whose very existence could never have happened without one moment of utter surrender.”
Kit found the word surrender an odd choice, almost as though Brooks would have viewed a child as a symbol of some sort of victory over his wife. She moved to the bed and sat down.
“Being Catholic and not disposed to the use of contraceptives, or at least that’s what she said, she kept me away from her except for those few days when she believed there was no chance of her getting pregnant. So there were to be no children and I was to live my life out and die with no heirs. I used to go to bookstores and look at the children’s books and imagine which ones I would buy if I had . . .”
The words caught in Brooks’s throat. He closed his eyes and rocked his head back. Face to the ceiling, he rolled his head from side to side. Abruptly, his eyes popped open and he looked at Broussard, all the anger back. “Of course I don’t expect a self-centered egotist like you to understand,” he snapped. “And at first, that made it hard for me . . . to see where you could be hurt. Then I remembered Kit and how you spoke of her when Susan and I were here last year . . . the sound of your voice, your expression. . . . And I knew that was the way.”
Broussard shook his head. “What did I have to do with Susan’s decision not to give you children?”
As fascinated as Kit was with what was happening, she yearned for the sound of an ambulance, for Broussard was shockingly pale.
“Everything,” Brooks shouted. “You had everything to do with it.” He stared at his knees. When he spoke again, it was Susan Brooks’s husband, not Broussard’s enemy. “There were to be no children and I would never possess Susan like I wished. But I still adored her and decided to take whatever she’d give, thinking that maybe she was simply incapable of more. But then—” his voice grew strident again “—when I was going through her papers after her death, I found the letters.”
“I never wrote to her,” Broussard said.
“Letters she had written to you,” Brooks snapped, “but didn’t mail. Letters saying she should never have left you and gone to New York for her residency, and that marrying me was a mistake. A divorce? Out of the question. Too hard on her devoutly Catholic, sickly mother. So she stayed with me and doled herself out a little at a time.”
Brooks’s expression turned even more malignant. “And then, on the bottom of the stack, I found the letter telling you about her abortion—the abortion she never mentioned to me. With all the restrictions she placed on me . . . a child, our child. And she found the idea so abhorrent, she ignored church doctrine and destroyed it. There’s not even a grave to visit . . . flushed away like a dirty tissue. But I don’t blame her. It was you. It’s always been you. She wanted you and that poisoned her mind against me. And for that, I decided to hurt you the way I had been hurt.”
“But the others you killed had nothing to do with me.”
Brooks’s face shifted into a satisfied smirk. “You’re very much mistaken. Everything I did here was because of you. That means every death is on your head. Three people dead because of you . . . dead. Think how their friends and families are feeling. The pain . . . But if you had never existed, they’d still be alive.” He was almost laughing now. “Oh the guilt you must feel. If you’d been smart enough, you could have stopped it after just one. That’s why I gave you all the Scrabble tiles from the start. But you were too slow. You needed more help and more time. You were too stupid.”
Kit’s mind was humming now, tearing at the logjam of facts that had accumulated since Saturday. This explained so much. Yet . . . “Suppose you had been able to pull this off,” she said. “The only way you could get satisfaction would be by explaining the whole thing to Andy. And that would mean . . .”
Brooks looked at her as if she was retarded. “Do you think my life means anything to me now . . . without Susan? It ended when she died.”
Broussard was no longer listening, but was years away . . . medical school . . . the first pathology exam.
“Name three organs that are radiosensitive,” Susan asked. She was wearing white shorts and a man’s white shirt, tied at the waist so her midriff showed. Her long, tan legs were crossed and her foot was bouncing, her heel out of her sandals. He was lying on his back, on the floor, thinking not of pathology but her clean, sharp smell and how you could see tiny blond hairs on her thighs when the sun was just right. It was no way to study, but he couldn’t imagine doing it any other way.
“The clock’s ticking,” Susan said.
“Radiosensitive organs,” he began. “Lymphoid, testes, ovary.” He glanced at her for approval, knowing he was correct.
She looked back, one tawny eyebrow arching. “Testes, ovary,” she repeated slowly, putting the book down. She got up and knelt beside his face. “I love it when you talk dirty.
” She bent to kiss him, her long hair forming a tent around their faces that trapped her scent inside.
The image wavered and grew fuzzy at the edges.
“My Susan,” Brooks moaned. “My dear Susan.” He closed his eyes and began to draw quick deep breaths, his lower lip trembling. Then he toppled over, hitting the floor with a thump, sobbing as though there was no one else in the room.
Kit turned at the sound of a siren. Car doors slammed and there were heavy footsteps in the hall. She looked at Broussard and froze. His chin was on his chest and both hands were resting limply on the floor. He did not appear to be breathing.
21
The day after the adventure in Kit’s bedroom, the bruises had begun appearing. Today, they looked even worse, but fortunately, they were all hidden by her clothing. She knocked on the heavy green door and went in without being asked. Broussard was sitting up in bed with a bottle of clear liquid in a rack overhead, connected to his arm with transparent tubing. Phil Gatlin was sitting on a small vinyl sofa by the window; Leo Fleming was seated in a chair on the opposite side of the bed.
“How are you feeling?” she said.
“Well enough to leave,” Broussard replied. “But I’m supposed to stay a few more days. Kit, I want to apologize. . . .”
“For what?”
“For what happened . . . for nearly gettin’ you killed.”
“Nonsense. You had nothing to do with it, or the others. And if you persist in thinking so, you’ll be giving Brooks exactly what he wants. Actually, his coming after me was a compliment.”
Broussard’s brow furrowed.
“He only did it because he believed you were . . . well, fond of me.”
Fleming and Gatlin sat straighter in their seats, interested in what Broussard would say to this.
Falling back on the dodge he’d used at the reception, he looked away, but there was Gatlin. Above his beard, Broussard’s cheeks grew pink and there was a trapped look in his eyes that made Kit think he might tear out his IV and run for it. She had him now, but since he wasn’t well, it didn’t seem fair.
“I brought you something,” she said, setting the Forensic Academy tote bag she’d brought onto the bed. The look of relief in his eyes changed to pleasure as she put the glass bowl of lemon drops from his office on the nightstand.
“I’m sure this is forbidden, too,” he said testily, thrusting his chubby hand into the bowl. He put a lemon drop in his mouth and folded his hands over his belly.
“Now I want some answers,” Kit said. “How did you know it was Brooks?”
“I got a bone to pick with you about that myself,” Gatlin said, getting up and moving to the foot of the bed. “Why’d you let me make an ass of myself with Harvey if you knew it wasn’t him?”
“I didn’t know for sure who it was until one o’clock Friday mornin’. That’s when the phone call I was waitin’ for came.”
“Who was it?” Kit said.
“Gene Ochs, the cardiologist in the Heartbeats.”
Kit shook her head. “I’m lost.”
“When Brookie first arrived at the hotel, he gave me a picture taken of himself and Susan at a party celebratin’ their twentieth anniversary. The drummer in the photo you got from the paper looked a lot like one of the faces in the background at Brookie’s party.”
Kit groaned. “Ochs was Waldo.”
“I’m still lost,” Fleming said.
“It was all a brilliant game of cat and mouse engineered around two photographs,” Broussard said patiently. “Brookie gave me one of them the day the meetin’ started. To get the other one, the picture of the Heartbeats, Kit had to solve the riddle of the Scrabble letters and the newspaper pages Brookie left on his victims. If she hadn’t figured out that the clue was in the little score-keeping numbers and not the letters, we’d never have found the second picture in the paper.”
“We can thank Grandma O and Teddy LaBiche for that,” Kit said.
“So, now we had both pictures but had no idea they were related,” Broussard continued. “I’d been lookin’ at the picture of Brookie and Susan quite a bit over the last few days and had noticed that one of the faces in the background resembled Gene Ochs, the drummer in the Heartbeats. But I didn’t think anything of it until that singer, Merryman, gave Kit the envelope containin’ a page from a Find Waldo book.”
“Which Merryman got from Brooks,” Fleming said.
“Yeah, but most likely not directly from him.”
Gatlin nodded knowingly.
“Coupled with the hairs Brookie also left on the victims to tell us the killer was a forensic colleague, I began to see the light. But I wasn’t sure the drummer in the Heartbeats and the guy in the picture of Brookie and Susan were the same person. I wanted to believe they weren’t, that Jason Harvey really was behind it all as it first appeared and that the Heartbeats were involved only because they constituted a Harvey team. But I had to check. So when Kit and Phillip went to find Merryman at the museum, I caught a ride with them back to my office and looked up the drummer, Ochs, in my specialty directories. He lives in Carmel, California, but when I called, his answerin’ service said he was out of town until late that night. I left a message for him to call me no matter what time he got in. We were lucky he was conscientious enough to check his messages so late. When he reached me, I asked if he’d been at Brookie and Susan’s twentieth anniversary party. He said he had, and that was all I needed.”
“How did they know each other?” Kit asked.
“Ochs is the son of Brookie’s sister. He was home visitin’ her when the party was held. So he tagged along to pay his respects. She probably sent Brookie a copy of the article on the Heartbeats when it first appeared.”
“I guess Brooks thought that since Ochs didn’t live in the city, nobody would bother to quiz him about the band,” Fleming said.
“That’s the way I see it,” Broussard said. “Anyway, it was a few minutes after I hung up before I realized the rest of it—that he was after Kit. Lookin’ back, it was so obvious, I should have known. . . . He practically handed it to me the night we all went to Felix’s. He made two mistakes that night, one on the way over and one comin’ back.”
“I was there,” Kit said, “and I didn’t notice anything.”
“Remember when we were decidin’ where to eat and Charlie suggested Tortorici’s? Well, Brookie said they were closed. But they were open, because Hugh Greenwood said he’d eaten there Monday night. Of course, they were closed Saturday night. We saw that for ourselves when Leo and I ran into you and Teddy. So Brookie wasn’t tellin’ the truth when he told me Monday mornin’ that he’d just arrived. The other mistake—and this one was huge—was when you and he were talkin’ on the way back from dinner Tuesday night. I was right in front of you and I heard you talk about Lucky bein’ poisoned. Brookie referred to Lucky as a little dog. When I mentioned your dog to him at lunch on Monday, he said he didn’t know you had a dog. And in our conversation, I never said what kind of dog it was or how big it was. So how did he know it was little?”
Kit felt her jaw drop. “Jesus, he was the one who poisoned Lucky.”
“So there’d be no barkin’ when he came for you. After Lucky was gone, he probably returned while you were workin’ and checked out the room arrangement, makin’ plans for later.”
Kit’s thoughts went to the Mace in her nightstand and she knew that had she tried to use it, she would have found it empty. Then . . . “I remember now the night we all went to Felix’s, he maneuvered the conversation around to the vet I was using. I bet he called him to make sure Lucky wouldn’t be home. And it almost worked, because you were about a minute too late. If he hadn’t stumbled against the footstool in my bedroom, I might be dead.”
“I’d say we both got your money’s worth from the footstool,” Broussard said.
“Why’d he kick the stool?” Fleming asked. “If he cased your house, he should have known it was there.”
“Because it wasn’t there w
hen he was. Lucky had thrown up on it after being poisoned and it was away being recovered.”
“Like I told you,” Broussard said, “it’s not the big thing that sends you over the cliff, but the untied shoelace. Too bad the shoelace works both ways. Did you get a visit from a police car a short while before everything happened?”
“Yes. Did you send it?”
“Soon as I realized what Brookie was up to, I tried to get hold of you, but there was no answer. I called nine-one-one and told them to get to your house right away. For all I knew, it was already too late.”
“Brooks cut the phone line,” Kit said. “They repaired it yesterday. Apparently when a line is cut like that, it still sounds like it’s ringing to someone calling in.”
“Well, it sure worried me,” Broussard said. “Those cops were supposed to stay with you until I got there to explain and see that you stayed the night someplace safe. Obviously, things didn’t go as planned. Fortunately, they didn’t for Brookie, either.”
Kit turned to Gatlin. “So Brooks was the one who put the key under Harvey’s mattress.”
“Yeah, we finally got him talking late yesterday,” Gatlin said. “He told us he did it one night when he and Harvey and some others played bridge. After playing for a few hours, he suggested they go down to the bar for a drink. When they were all out in the hallway, he pretended to remember a call he had to make and asked Harvey if he could use his phone, knowing everybody’d stay in the hall to give him privacy. The whole Harvey ploy was just to keep us looking in the wrong direction.”
“Clever of him to mention the Harvey team to Leo rather than come to us with it directly,” Kit said.
Fleming’s mouth drooped in disgust. “And like a sap, I came runnin’ right to you.”
Gatlin looked at Broussard. “Andy, Brooks said it was you who let him know we took the bait.”
New Orleans Requiem Page 22