by Tami Hoag
ALSO BY TAMI HOAG
NOVELS
The Bitter Season
Cold Cold Heart
The 9th Girl
Down the Darkest Road
Secrets to the Grave
Deeper Than the Dead
The Alibi Man
Prior Bad Acts
Kill the Messenger
Dark Horse
Dust to Dust
Ashes to Ashes
A Thin Dark Line
Guilty as Sin
Night Sins
Dark Paradise
Cry Wolf
Still Waters
Lucky’s Lady
Sarah’s Sin
Magic
SHORT WORKS
The 1st Victim
DUTTON
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Hoag, Tami, author.
Title: The boy: a novel / Tami Hoag.
Description: First edition. | New York: Dutton, [2018] |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018050539 (print) | LCCN 2018052358 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101985403 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101985397 (hardcover)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3558.O333 (ebook) | LCC PS3558.O333 B69 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018050539
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
CONTENTS
Also by Tami Hoag
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Glossary of Cajun French
About the Author
With my most heartfelt thanks to my amazing team at Dutton, most especially Stephanie Kelly—you are the ultimate cheerleader—and Christine Ball, who just calmly adjusted course again and again. And to my agent of lo these many years (how did we get so old?), Andrea Cirillo, who took it all in stride. Some books are more labors of love than others. This one was like giving birth to an elephant.
Thank you all for seeing it through with me.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In The Boy I return to a setting my longtime readers know is a favorite of mine—Louisiana’s French Triangle, Cajun country. It is a place like no other—ecologically, sociologically, culturally, and linguistically. I have done my best to try to impart some of the rich flavor of the region to you, in part through language and dialect. Cajun French is a patois as unique to Louisiana as gumbo. Imagine Elizabethan-era French that evolved isolated from its home country, influenced by the spice of Spanish, Creole, Native American, and African languages. Because Cajun French evolved predominantly as a spoken language, spellings and even meanings of words may vary from one area to the next. According to the last census, about one in ten families in south Louisiana still speak French in the home, and many words and phrases find their way into the speech of English speakers. I have included a glossary in the back of the book for words and phrases used throughout the story.
ONE
She ran down the gravel road, struggling, stumbling. Her breath sawed in and out of her lungs, ragged and hot; painful, like serrated knives plunging into and pulling out of her chest. The night air was too thick, too heavy. She thought she might drown in it. Her legs wobbled beneath her like rubber, heavy with fatigue. Sweat streamed from her pores. It felt like her skin was ready to peel away, leaving her red and raw and bloody.
Blood. So much blood. On her hands. In her hair. On her face. She was painted with it. When she found someone—if she found someone—they would see the blood, too. They would see the whites of her eyes and the red of the blood that streaked down her cheeks and across her jaw. They would see the blood that stained her hands like red lace gloves. They would be horrified without even knowing the true horror of what had happened.
She replayed it over and over in her mind’s eye, the images flashing like a strobe light, like random scenes from a movie. The flash of the knife. The flailing arms. Blood spraying everywhere.
She could taste the blood: bitter and metallic. She could taste the salt of her sweat and her tears. The mix made a nauseating cocktail in her mouth. She choked on it as she tried to swallow. She could smell it. The stench of fear: blood and body odor, urine and feces. The memory was so strong and so real she gagged on it.
Then suddenly she was falling, spraw
ling headlong. The road rushed up to meet her, slammed into her, the gravel biting into the flesh of her hands and bare arms and knees and the side of her face. The impact rattled her brain and knocked the wind from her. She tried to gasp for air, frantic, thinking she might die.
Maybe it was better if she died. Maybe she should just lie down and quit. Everyone in her life would probably be happier, relieved, unburdened.
The night waited, ever-patient, oblivious to her pain, not caring if she lived or died. Things died in the swamp all the time. Death was just a part of life here.
As the roar of her pulse in her ears subsided to a dull throb, the sounds of the bayou came through: crickets and frogs, the groan of an alligator somewhere nearby, the splash of something hitting the water, the distant rumble of thunder as a storm rolled up from the Gulf. Something moved suddenly in the brush at the side of the road. A bird flew up, its wings thumping against the thick, still air.
Startled, gasping, she scraped and scrambled, swimming on the rock, struggling to get her feet under her and to get herself upright.
Headlights appeared around a bend in the road. A driver in the dead of night in the middle of nowhere—would this be help or harm? She knew all about the kind of men who prowled the darkness and preyed on women. A part of her wanted to crouch in the brush and hide. A part of her knew she couldn’t.
She stood in the middle of the road and waved her arms above her head.
“Help me! Stop! Help me. Please!” In her mind she was shouting, but she could barely hear the words. They seemed nothing more than a rasp in her throat.
The car drew closer. The headlights blinded her.
The driver had to see her now.
“Help me!”
The vehicle slowed to a crawl.
“Help!” She flung herself at the driver’s side of the hood as if she could physically force the car to stop. “Please, help me!”
She slapped the hood with one hand and the windshield with the other, smearing the glass with blood. For just a second her eyes locked on the terrified face of the driver, a woman, and then the engine roared. The tires chewed at the gravel. The car leapt forward, and she fell to the side, trying to grab hold of a door handle. Her head cracked hard against the window. Bang! Thump! Thud! She hit the ground and rolled, choking on the dust, spitting out blood and gravel and a tooth.
She could have closed her eyes and willed it all away, slipping into the deep abyss of unconsciousness. She might lie there and die, be run over by a truck, or dragged into the swamp by an animal. But then she was on her hands and knees, crawling, coughing, crying, blood and tears and snot dripping from her face.
The thunder rumbled in the distance, but above her the moon was still white-bright, so bright that the sky around it glowed metallic blue. Down the road she could see the outline of a house, a shabby little box of a house, a yard with an old pickup parked near a sagging porch. A yellow bug light burned beside the front door.
She wobbled to her feet like a newborn deer and staggered on, one foot in front of the other, her focus on the house. Would someone come if she made it to the door? Would they call the police at someone knocking in the middle of the night? Or would they just mistake her for an intruder and shoot her?
Exhausted, she tripped on the front steps and fell onto the weathered boards of the old porch. Beyond feeling pain, she dragged herself the last few feet and banged a fist against the screen door. She wanted to cry out, to call for help, but her voice died in her throat. She slapped at the screen door, her strength draining out of her, rushing out of her like water down a hole.
Help me. Help me. Please God, someone help me . . .
“You done forgot your key again?”
The complaining voice seemed to come from a long distance, from a dream.
“I swear! I ought to leave you sleep with the hound dogs! Dat’s all what you deserve, you! I oughta shoot you first, coming home at this hour. Stinkin’ drunk, no doubt.”
The inner door creaked open.
Genevieve looked up at the woman in the doorway—a narrow, lined face, eyes popping, mouth open in shock, teeth missing, a halo of frizzed red hair shot through with gray. The face of an angel.
“Oh, my God in heaven!” the woman exclaimed.
“Help me. Please,” Genevieve whispered. “Someone killed me and my boy.”
And then the blackness of oblivion swallowed her whole.
TWO
Annie Broussard listened to the thunder rumble in the distance. The sound echoed the restlessness that stirred inside her. She felt anxious, on edge, as if she was waiting for something bad to happen. This had been going on for weeks now, ever since that night in June, when a call had awoken her from a deep, peaceful sleep.
Not that she wasn’t used to the phone ringing at all hours with bad news, but it was always someone else’s bad news, and she or Nick or both of them were being called on as sheriff’s detectives to come out and sort through the latest human catastrophe in Partout Parish. She had never been called to a catastrophe of her own until the night her tante Fanchon had been rushed to the hospital after suffering a stroke.
What had followed that call had been days and nights of breathless anxiety, Annie clinging by her mental fingertips to hope that ebbed and flowed like an erratic tide.
Fanchon Doucet had been her anchor since childhood. And even though Annie’s mother had exited her life without warning when she was small, Annie had never imagined Tante Fanchon doing the same. Fanchon and Uncle Sos were as constant as the North Star, as solid as stone—until that night in June.
Now, every time the phone rang in the middle of the night, Annie’s heart bolted at the thought that the call would be for her, not as a detective but as next of kin. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in four months.
Carefully, she slipped out of bed and padded across the cypress-wood floor to the window to peek through the blinds. The moon had yet to be overrun by the clouds, casting the night in a silver glow. Lightning spread across the sky in the distance like spiderweb cracks across dark glass. The thunder rolled after it and right along her nerves.
She liked to think she was too logical and practical to believe in signs and portents, but she couldn’t escape the fact that she had been raised by superstitious people in a superstitious place. The French Triangle of south Louisiana may have embraced all the modern amenities technology had to offer, but there were people in bayou country who still half believed in the loup-garou—a mythical swamp werewolf. Uncle Sos, as Catholic as any Cajun man in these parts, still wore a dime on a string around his neck to ward off bad gris-gris—curses and such. “Just in case,” he would say with a grin and a playful gleam in his dark eyes.
Annie wouldn’t have gone so far as to drill a hole in a dime, but she secretly wished for some protection against that now-familiar sense of dread that sat like a rock in her stomach.
It didn’t help that the unrelenting heat and humidity had everyone on their last nerve. Summer should have been a distant memory by now, but like a big ugly snake, it had sunk its fangs in deep and hung on, pumping its venom into the citizens of south Louisiana. Tempers and patience were running short. Bar fights and domestic calls were up, along with the temperature and the consumption of alcohol.
Everyone in the Sheriff’s Office was feeling the effects—on the job and off. And if the rise in calls to come between contentious citizens wasn’t enough, ten months into the tenure of their new boss, there were still problems and personality conflicts in the office. Most of the staff had worked their entire careers under the long reign of Gus Noblier, and no matter how any of them had or hadn’t gotten along with Gus, he had become a saint in absentia.
The new sheriff was an outsider, a usurper; too stiff, too arrogant, too brash. It didn’t matter that Gus himself had brought Kelvin Dutrow on board as chief deputy the year before his retirement. Dut
row wasn’t from here. He wasn’t one of them. Tensions within the department exacerbated the tensions out on the road. It was a vicious cycle, and every deputy and detective took that tension home to his or her family at the end of their shift. The Broussard-Fourcade household got a double dose.
The chaos and fury of a good old-fashioned thunderstorm would be a welcome break.
As if in answer to her thought, way out over the Atchafalaya Basin, lightning again chased itself across the sky, and the ominous low rumble of thunder followed seconds later.
On the other side of the room, Annie’s husband stirred in his sleep, grumbling, sweeping an arm along the empty space beside him.
“’Toinette? Where you at?” he asked, his voice a low, raspy growl.
She didn’t answer for a moment, still irritated with him for something he’d said to her earlier in the evening. He sat up, the sheet puddling around his narrow waist. It was too dark to make out his features. He was a broad-shouldered silhouette as he rubbed a hand over his face.
“There’s a storm coming,” Annie said.
She turned away from him and opened the blinds. The wind was starting to come up, ruffling the treetops and fluttering the ribbons of Spanish moss that draped the limbs of the big oak trees in the yard. That sense of anticipation rose within her again. Behind her, the sheets rustled and the bed creaked as Nick got up.
“Good,” he said.
He stepped too close. She slipped to the side.
“You gonna be mad at me forever or what?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
He bent his head and sighed, his warm breath stirring the hair at the nape of her neck as he moved close again, corralling her between his arms, trapping her between himself and the window. He whispered something in French and brushed his lips against the curve of her shoulder.
“Don’t.” Annie shrugged him off and ducked under his arm. “You know that just pisses me off,” she whispered. “I’m angry with you, and you think you can just brush it aside like it doesn’t even matter, like I’m liable to just forget about it if only you can get me to have sex with you.”