by Tami Hoag
The first thing that struck Annie about the location was that it was so close to town yet seemed so remote. The road ran along a shallow, tree-choked bayou populated with snakes and nutria. It wasn’t a place for pleasure boating or sport fishing. No one would come down this road if they didn’t have to. Yet not half a mile from here was one of Bayou Breaux’s newer subdivisions, Blue Cypress, where the houses were fashioned after Caribbean plantation-style homes and traditional Acadian houses.
No pricey architect had been involved in the design of Genevieve Gauthier’s house. It was a cheap cracker box with a sagging front porch. No doubt she lived out here because it was all she could afford. Surely there was no better reason. Even with all the lights on, and an array of law enforcement vehicles parked along the road, the place gave Annie the creeps.
She got out of her SUV and walked toward the driveway with a cardboard carrier of steaming cups of coffee in each hand. Caffeine was like molten gold at a crime scene in the middle of the night. They had been here for hours already. They would probably be here for hours more, examining every inch of the scene. And it would be hours beyond that before they got a chance to sleep. She had swung into the Quik Pik on her way here, the only convenience store in Bayou Breaux that stayed open all night, serving cops and shift workers from the oil refinery and the lamp factory.
“Coffee?” she said by way of greeting as she came up to the two deputies standing guard at the head of the driveway.
“Annie, you an angel of mercy, you are,” Ossie Compton said, snagging a cup.
“That’s Detective Angel of Mercy to you,” she quipped back.
She had known Ossie Compton since her first days in a uniform. He had been one of her lesser tormentors when she had been the only female deputy in a department of hard-ass chauvinists. They had been relentless in their teasing and bullying, some of it good-natured, most of it not. She had learned to give as good as she got. Seven years had somehow gone by since her promotion to detective, but she would always be Annie or just Broussard to the old guard—out of either affection or disrespect. With some, she minded. With Compton, she did not. He had a good heart and a good sense of humor. She considered him a friend.
“You coming late to the party,” he said.
“I was at Our Lady with the mother.”
“She all right?”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly. She’s alive. Her wounds will heal—at least the physical ones.”
She held out the carrier toward the younger deputy, who had yet to speak. Everyone called him Young Prejean because he was a nephew to the Prejean with whom Annie had once worked. He looked too young to have a job and had grown a scraggly goatee, as if that might fool someone into thinking he was a grown man.
“I hear it’s bad in there,” she said, nodding toward the house.
“Terrible,” Compton said. “Somebody punched their own ticket straight to hell tonight. And the sooner they get there, the better.”
Young Prejean shook his head. “I don’t ever want to see anything like that again.”
“None of us do,” Annie admitted. “But all of us will if we’re at this long enough.”
“You remember your first homicide, Annie?” Compton asked.
“I sure do. Pam Bichon.”
“That was a bad one.”
“I’ll have that in my head ’til the day I die.”
“What happened?” Prejean asked, sipping at his coffee like it was too hot for his delicate young tongue.
“A real estate agent lured to an abandoned house out on Pony Bayou,” Annie said, wishing she could keep the mental picture at bay, knowing she wouldn’t be able to. “She was nailed to the floor, tortured, eviscerated. It was horrific.”
On patrol, she had been the one to find the body days after Pam Bichon had been reported missing. She could still hear the buzz of the flies. The sickly sweet rotten smell of decaying human flesh came back to her and lodged in the back of her throat like a fist.
“Damn,” Young Prejean whispered, his eyes wide.
The sound of raised voices came from the house. Annie looked at the crime scene van and knew Keith Kemp would be here. No good would come of that. Having opposed the idea of the crime scene unit, Nick had taken an instant hatred to Kemp. And Dutrow was here. His big black Suburban was parked on the road.
The sheriff’s job was primarily as an administrator, not an investigator. Gus Noblier had rarely ventured to crime scenes, preferring, like most men in his position, to let his people do their jobs. But Dutrow liked to be visible. He would be posting on Instagram from the scene come morning, ever the politician. And the crime scene unit was his baby. He would be here to hover like a helicopter parent on his child’s first day at kindergarten.
Kemp, Dutrow, and Nick. That was a three-man recipe for disaster, right there.
Compton hummed a note of concern. “Detective Fourcade, he’s none too happy.”
Annie blew out a weary sigh and started toward the house. “Pray for me, Ossie.”
Chaz Stokes came out onto the front porch as Annie climbed the steps. He was a good-looking man with photogenic, symmetrical features—a square jaw centered with a perfect white smile, a slim nose, and piercing light turquoise eyes beneath thick black brows. His skin was a shade more brown than white, hinting at his mixed racial background.
Unsuspecting women routinely fell under the spell of his looks and his dubious charm. Annie had never been one of them, and that had made them adversaries back when. The years and shared experiences had softened both their edges. Their relationship had gradually morphed from disgruntled would-be lover and sexually harassed target to something more like annoying big brother and smart-mouthed little sister. They had reached a truce of sorts because they had Nick in common.
“Slipping out of the line of fire, as usual,” Annie said.
“Damn straight,” he confessed, snagging a cup of coffee from one of her trays. “I done risked my life several times tonight already trying to keep your husband from tearing somebody’s throat out.”
“Let me guess. Kemp.”
He made a face. “Hell, I’d buy a ticket to watch that redneck piece of shit get his clock cleaned. Not that it would even be sporting. That’d be like watching a panther tear apart a muskrat. I’m talking about the sheriff.”
“Great,” Annie said on a sigh.
“You, on the other hand, have perfect timing. You have my blessing to go in and save the day.”
“And here I forgot my whip and chair.”
“TMI, Broussard. I don’t need a vision of y’all’s sex life in my head.”
“Ha-ha.”
“You know, as a detective, you make a fine errand girl,” he said as she set the cup carriers off to the side on the porch railing and wiped her hands on a napkin.
“Isn’t that funny?” Annie returned. “Was the sheriff just sending you out for sandwiches, Chaz? There’s a bag of them in the back of my car.”
“Said the woman just showing up at long last.”
“Yeah, I’ve been slacking the night away interviewing the brutally beaten mother of a murdered boy. It’s so much fun to torment victims by making them relive the horror of the worst moments of their lives,” she said with heavy sarcasm.
“She’s conscious, then. Did she give you anything? A name and address for the assailant would be great.”
“No such luck.”
“A suspect at least?”
“Oh, yeah,” Annie said. “A demon from hell, she told me. So, naturally, I thought right away of you. Where were you tonight?”
“Very funny.”
From inside the house came an angry raised voice: “Get the fuck away from me, you coonass cocksucker!”
“Oh, shit!” Annie snapped, bolting for the door.
In the front room Kemp and Nick were standing much too
close together, Kemp leaning into Nick’s personal space, trying to assert dominance even though he was the smaller of the two. Nick stood with his hands out to his sides like a gunslinger, his feet slightly apart, his expression impassive, disinterested, even. Deceptively emotionless.
Annie held her breath.
“My God, the two of you! Stop it!” the sheriff snapped, exasperated. From where he stood near the dining table he could see Kemp, but he couldn’t see Nick’s hooded eyes and wouldn’t have known how to read the dangerous tension in his stillness.
Nick shrugged in that very French way that somehow managed to embody condescension. He never took his eyes off Kemp. “Me, I’m just making sure he’s getting everything I want preserved, Sheriff. Working in a spirit of cooperation. That’s what you wanted, no?”
Kemp’s hard, chiseled face was nearly purple with rage. “I know my job! I don’t need this asshole looking over my shoulder, questioning every goddamn piece of lint on the ground!”
“If that piece of lint came off my killer and you don’t pick it up and a murderer goes free because of your laziness,” Nick said, “that’s not gonna end well for you, mon ami.”
“Let the man do his job, Fourcade,” Dutrow growled. “He’s not gonna follow you around, looking over your shoulder while you conduct your investigation. You can do him the same courtesy.”
“Maybe he should,” Nick said. “He might learn something.”
“Nick—” Annie began, trying to break his focus.
“Oh, fuck you,” Kemp sneered. “You arrogant, overrated son of a—”
He stepped forward and went to shove, planting his hands on Nick’s chest.
Quick as a snake, Nick had one hand cupped behind Kemp’s head and a forearm shoved up against his windpipe, choking him ever so slightly.
“Insults are the last resort of an insecure man with a crumbling argument,” he said quietly, his face just inches from Kemp’s.
“Fourcade!” Dutrow shouted, rushing forward. “Let him go!”
Kemp was free before the words were out of the sheriff’s mouth. He coughed, red-faced, grabbing at his throat, and croaked, “You’re out of your fucking head!”
“Don’t you ever put your hands on me again,” Nick said calmly, wagging a finger at him like he was a recalcitrant boy. He took a step back, rested his hands at his waist, and cocked a leg. Relaxed. Bored, even. The moment was over.
Annie let out her breath. “There’s coffee outside,” she announced.
Sweating, trembling with residual emotion, Kemp let his gaze dart around to the other people in the room. With a final pathetic show of bravado, he said stupidly, “There’s your wife coming to save you.”
The smile that curled Nick’s mouth was predatory. His eyes narrowed. He reached out and patted Kemp’s cheek like he was a poor, dimwitted child and chuckled low in his throat.
“Mais non, couillon. She’s here to save you.” He laughed out loud—a rich, low sound that undoubtedly ran like iced daggers through most of the people in the room.
Kemp slapped his hand away and backed out of reach.
Nick bent down and pinched up a tangled collection of colored threads between a gloved thumb and forefinger and held it out to Kemp.
“You missed something.”
“Kemp, bag it,” Dutrow snapped. He turned on Annie. “Broussard, get your husband out of here. I’ve had enough of this bullshit for one night.”
“Yes, sir.”
Annie started to say something to Nick just as the coroner’s assistant wheeled the stretcher into the room from the side. Annie’s breath caught at the sight of the small black body bag. The memory of his mother’s wail of mourning went through her, an echo of grief, and chills chased over her from head to toe.
Frowning darkly, Nick grabbed one end of the stretcher and backed toward the door. Annie hustled ahead of them, pushing the screen door all the way open and holding it for them to pass through. Stokes moved aside, sober-faced as Nick and the coroner’s assistant maneuvered the stretcher down the steps and around the crime scene van.
Annie followed as they made their way down the drive. Compton and Young Prejean hustled to the coroner’s hearse parked on the road and opened the back. No one said a word as the body was loaded into the vehicle. Ulysse Wilson, the coroner, a small, thin gray man so old he looked like he should have been riding in the back, watched until the door was closed and then climbed in on the passenger’s side. His assistant got behind the wheel.
Young Prejean crossed himself as the hearse pulled out and headed toward town, then turned and walked back toward the house, followed by Compton. Nick stood on the road, watching the hearse’s taillights grow smaller and smaller.
Annie walked up beside him, her arms crossed in front of her. They stood there, side by side, listening as the sound of tires on gravel faded away to nothing, swallowed up by the sounds of night on the bayou: insects, frogs, small things splashing in the water, an owl calling from the thick canopy of trees.
“He was stabbed,” Nick said at last. “Eight times, ten times, maybe more. In a frenzy. In a fury. Stabbed once in the eye. Right in the eye!” he said, incredulous that anyone could do such a thing. “A little boy! C’est fou!”
Annie listened to the emotions in his smoke-hoarse voice. The shock. The horror. After all the things he’d seen in his career—much of which had been spent in New Orleans, where death and depravity had come in near-daily doses—he still had the capacity to be morally outraged at the deepest level of his soul, as if it were the first time.
She stepped closer and rubbed a hand against the taut muscles in the small of his back. His T-shirt was damp with sweat. He smelled of cigarettes and frustration. He turned and pulled her to him and held her tight, resting his cheek on top of her head.
“We need to find justice for that child,” he said.
The boy was his now. His responsibility. He had already taken that truth to heart. He wouldn’t rest until he had answers. Already stressed with the Theriot case, Annie wished he could have stepped away from this one, but he wouldn’t—not voluntarily, at any rate.
“You’d better watch yourself,” she cautioned, taking a step back. She wagged a warning finger at him. “You piss Dutrow off bad enough, he won’t care how good you are at what you do. You’ll be wearing a uniform and mopping out the drunk tank for the rest of your career.”
Nick scowled. “He’s a fool.”
“He’s our boss. And Kemp is his man. Like it or not.”
“I say not.”
“That was made abundantly clear while you were choking the man.”
“He put his hands on me. Me, I had to defend myself.”
“I was afraid you were going to snap his neck like a chicken bone,” Annie confessed. “I’d just as soon you don’t get sent to prison, thank you.”
“How is the mother?” he asked, bluntly dismissing her concerns for his job security.
“Broken,” Annie said simply.
“Did she say any more about the demon who did this terrible thing?”
“No.”
“Then we’d best get back to work, ’Toinette,” he said, turning back toward the house. “Justice seldom delivers itself.”
SEVEN
Oh, you’re just in time for breakfast! What a nice surprise! Look, Cameron! Kelvin is joining us for breakfast!”
“I’m only having coffee,” Kelvin said as he walked into the kitchen. He went to the stove where his fiancée was stirring scrambled eggs and bent to peck a kiss on her cheek. The flowery notes of her perfume cut through the heavy scent of bacon cooking. “I have to shower and get changed. I have a press conference this morning.”
She gave him a slightly scolding look. “You can’t just have coffee, Kelvin. I’m sure you have a full day ahead of you. Sit down and let me bring you a plate. The bacon is just ge
tting done. I make mine in the oven, you know, so the grease doesn’t go everywhere. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do it this way.”
She was an attractive woman in a 1950s kind of way: curvy, always nicely dressed, her auburn hair always done just so and sprayed in place. At seven in the morning she already had her makeup on.
Sharon reveled in both her femininity and her domesticity. She was an old-fashioned kind of woman who actually enjoyed cooking and cleaning and being a mother. Even though she and her son had only just moved to Bayou Breaux in the summer, she was already chairing a committee in her church group and volunteering for the hospital ladies’ auxiliary. She felt it was important for the sheriff’s soon-to-be wife to set a good example for the community.
Kelvin sighed and took a seat at the round table that was tucked into a bay window alcove with a view of the back patio and the scenery beyond. He had bought the house on the edge of the Blue Cypress development shortly after coming to Bayou Breaux. It was a nice Caribbean plantation–style home, a single-story house with a roof that overhung the building by several feet to create a shaded gallery all around. The quarter-acre property featured an oversize detached second garage that housed his RV and workshop, and a little dock for his bass boat and the small rowboat he had bought for Sharon’s son. The backyard was an entertainer’s dream with a small pool and a barbecue area.
Beyond his backyard lay woods and wetlands. He routinely saw herons and egrets. Deer were common. This time of year squadrons of ducks raised a racket coming and going to and from the wilder reaches of the Atchafalaya Basin on their way south for the winter.
He usually found it restful to watch the birds. Now he watched a group of mallards fly to the east, knowing they would quickly pass over the murder scene he had just left. Sharon would be upset to know a murder had been committed so nearby while she and Cameron slept in this house, half a mile but a world away. He would emphasize that when he told her. This was a nice, safe neighborhood, and he made sure deputies cruised through the streets here enough to deter any would-be prowlers. It was a far cry from where Genevieve Gauthier and her boy lived.