by Tami Hoag
“Maybe. Or maybe KJ is a product of rape. Who’s to say?”
“How was she toward the boy? Loving? Close? Distant?”
“I only saw her a couple of times. She seemed exasperated, bless her heart, but I don’t want to judge,” she said, clearly wanting to do just that. “We all have our moments.”
“Tell me about it,” Annie said. “Justin pitched a fit this morning. He didn’t want to go to school. I had a meltdown in the parking lot. I’m tired, out of sorts. We were at the crime scene all night. I love my son, but that wasn’t my finest moment as a mother.”
“You should send Justin over for a playdate,” Jaime offered. “He and Sawyer always have a good time together.”
“Oh, I don’t know that you’d want him right now. He’s going through a clingy phase.”
“Nonsense. He’ll be fine. Reg will take the boys out on the boat. They always love that.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe, nothing. You and Nick will have your hands full working this case. A few child-free hours will not go to waste, will they? If only to give you a chance for a nap.”
“A nap would be worth more than gold. Thank you.”
“That’s what friends are for.”
“And here I am, supposed to be comforting you,” Annie said. “I know how attached you get to your students—even if you haven’t had all that much time to get to know KJ.”
“Oh, he already stole my heart,” Jaime admitted. “You know I have a special soft spot for the ones with tough home situations. I talked his mother into putting him in my after-school story time twice a week.”
“You paid the fee, you mean,” Annie said, giving her a sideways look.
Jaime shrugged off the suggestion. “Whatever. KJ loved to be read to. He could almost manage to be still through a whole story. He tried so hard. He stayed yesterday for Leonardo, the Terrible Monster.”
“Did his mother pick him up after?”
“No. The babysitter did.”
“Who’s that?”
Jaime rolled her eyes. “A sixth-grader. Can you imagine? Would you send Justin home with a twelve-year-old?”
“God, no. I think thirty is a good age for a babysitter. Nick is even worse than me. He practically requires a government security clearance. Thank God I have a lot of relatives who pass muster.”
“Well, I was none too pleased about this situation,” Jaime said, “but what can I do? His mother arranged it. She saw absolutely nothing wrong with it. She said she used to babysit when she was that age, and it was only for a few hours after school. The girl took KJ to her house and kept him occupied until Genevieve got off work.”
“How did they get there? The bus?”
“They walked. It’s not far, I guess. Still . . . It’s easy for me to criticize,” she said. “I can afford better options.”
“What’s the girl’s name?”
“Nora Florette. She’s in Dan Blakely’s class. I asked him, and he rolled his eyes, too. It would be one thing if she was mature and responsible for her age, but she isn’t. She’s a silly, immature girl, and her home situation is chaotic, to say the very least. I don’t think that mother knows where her children are half the time. Nor does she care. They grow up wild as weeds.”
“I’m sure it’s small comfort,” Annie said, “but KJ’s not dead because of the babysitter. He was home in his bed. Everybody’s worst nightmare: being attacked in their sleep in their own home.”
“That’s too horrific to even contemplate,” Jaime said. “And here I am criticizing Genevieve. I feel terrible. Is she allowed to have visitors? I should go see her.”
“I’ll know more later this morning. I’ll text you.”
“Please do. I can’t even begin to imagine what she must be going through. I feel absolutely sick about it.”
“Do you know if she has family in the area?” Annie asked.
“I got the impression she’s on her own, other than I believe she said she has an aunt in the assisted-living place. She and KJ just moved here over the summer. I gave her the information to join the PTA, so she could meet some of the other moms, but she hasn’t come to a meeting yet.”
“Neither have I,” Annie confessed.
“Kindergarten moms get a pass. We’re too shell-shocked from separation anxiety to be expected to do PTA.”
“Good, because I think I’d rather break up a drunken brawl at Mardi Gras.”
Jaime managed a chuckle. “It’s not that bad.”
“I’m not the bake-sale type,” Annie said. “And how many PTA moms carry a weapon?”
“Probably more than we’d care to know about.”
“That’s true.”
They shared a chuckle that died quickly.
“I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to laugh,” Jaime confessed. “How can I think anything is funny or normal, even? I have to go tell my students one of their friends is dead.”
“I don’t envy you that. What do you even say to kids this young?”
“I don’t know. What can I tell them that they’ll understand? I don’t want to frighten them, but I’m frightened. I don’t understand. Why would someone kill a child?”
“He was probably just in the way,” Annie offered, as if that somehow made sense of a senseless act. “We think his room was maybe the easiest way into the house, and he was killed to silence him.”
“Do you think this maniac was after Genevieve? Was it a rapist?” Jaime asked with a fresh touch of horror. “Was that what he was after?”
“We don’t know the motive yet.” Annie sighed and glanced at her watch. “I need to go,” she said, rising reluctantly from the bench. “I’ll call you later.”
“Will you see Genevieve?”
“Yes.”
“Please tell her I am so, so sorry,” Jaime said sincerely.
“I will.” Annie nodded. “We all are.”
TEN
An old groundskeeper was wiping down the white statue of the Virgin Mary as Nick drove toward the entrance of Our Lady. He wheeled the Jeep past a parking space reserved for law enforcement, scanning the hospital entrance for any sign of reporters.
The good fortune of having Dutrow as the media magnet for sheriff was that he happily drew all the attention to himself with his staged events, buying the detectives a little breathing room. But the cleverer of the press scavengers would fall for that only so many times before they broke from the pack to hunt on their own. With the furor kicked up over the summer and fall with the Theriot sexual assault case, Nick suspected that time would likely be quickly at hand, with himself as the prime target.
Unlike his boss, he had little use for the press. In his experience, they caused more harm than good to most investigations, reaching for the most sensational headlines, leaking details that should have been held back, reporting rumors and half-truths. The media had helped to nearly end his career in New Orleans, playing right into the hands of corrupt men in positions of power whose goal had been to divert attention onto an overzealous, allegedly mentally unhinged detective and away from the brutal murder of a young prostitute. They had come after him again during the Bichon case, his first big investigation here, though the fault had been his own, getting drunk and going after the suspect he had been so afraid was getting away with murder on a technicality.
His name had quickly become a dog whistle to the media in these parts. As the lead detective on high-profile crimes, he was as attractive to them as metal filings to a magnet. They would be all over this case, a brutal child-killing in sleepy bayou country. And as soon as his name came up, they would dig into their Pandora’s box and bring up the Theriot case, and the Bichon murder, and all the way back to New Orleans. It was like being flayed alive over and over, and the truth was, there was no escape.
The Vanessa Theriot sexual assault had drawn them ou
t like cockroaches—a pack of lascivious voyeurs, their usual appetite for details on a sexual assault intensified by the fact that the victim was autistic. Nick’s disgust at their behavior was palpable and sour. He knew what it was for a victim’s family to live under a spotlight. He knew what that scrutiny did to the people involved. And for what? For the public to be entertained and distracted from their mundane existence as they worked up outrage in order to feel alive.
A crime as shocking as the murder of the Gauthier boy would make headlines anywhere, but it was all the more sensational in a place like Bayou Breaux, a small town where people supposedly still had values. Reporters would come all the way from New Orleans and Baton Rouge for this. But GPS notwithstanding, they wouldn’t easily find their way out to the Gauthier house, and their first stop would be the law enforcement center for the Kelvin Dutrow Show.
He swung back around the statue a second time and parked in the red zone of the ER entrance for a potential quick getaway. The parking valet looked up from his phone, raising a hand in acknowledgment as Nick held up his badge on his way to the doors.
Annie had chosen a corner table on the far side of the cafeteria, away from the few other diners. She sat staring at a plate of scrambled eggs as if the unappealing mass might transform into something better if only she could wait it out.
“You trying to wish that into a plate of chicken or something?” he asked.
She looked up, startled, taking in his change of clothes. “You went home.”
“I figured I should make an effort to look civilized. Town’s gonna be crawling with reporters soon. They have enough to say about me as it is.” He bent and pressed a kiss to her lips. “Better that I don’t look a vagrant and smell like a wild animal.”
“And you brushed your teeth,” she murmured. “Mmm . . . minty fresh.”
He hadn’t taken the time to shave, and she brushed her fingertips along the stubble on his jaw but made no comment. Enough that he had showered and put on a pair of slacks and a shirt and tie.
“Did the mother say anything about her next-door neighbor?” he asked, pulling out a chair and sitting down. It was the first time he had been still in hours. The fatigue hung on him like dead weight. He shoved his sunglasses on top of his head and rubbed a hand hard across his eyes.
“No. Why?”
“’Cause he’s a piece of shit low-life drug-dealing ex-con.”
“Wow. Every single woman’s dream neighbor,” Annie declared. “Is he a pedophile, too?”
She made a face at the eggs and shoved the plate toward him and then picked up a piece of toast and nibbled at a corner.
“Not that I know of—yet.”
He doused the eggs with Tabasco sauce and forked up a bite. The eggs didn’t taste any better than they looked, but he needed the protein. “There’s some blood on his front door like maybe she came knocking, but he says he never heard anything.”
“Can we get a search warrant?”
“Depends on what judge we get to look at the affidavit,” he said. “Stokes is on it. Me, I’m not hopeful. If the victim isn’t pointing the finger at him, and we don’t have anything more than a little blood smear on the outside of the door . . . I’d sooner bet on a horse race.
“I pressed my luck as far as I dared while we were in the house talking to him. I didn’t see much to make a case on, but I’m sure as hell not ruling him out. He’s a two-time loser on drug charges. If he goes back to Angola, he will never see the free world again. That’s a dangerous animal to put in a corner. If this woman knew something or saw something she shouldn’t have—or if the boy did . . . Murder is a viable option to a man like that.”
“But he didn’t kill Genevieve,” Annie said. “What would be the purpose of him killing her child and letting her live? To scare her? To shut her up? For what? What’s the point in keeping her alive so she can testify against him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Any reason to think he’s dealing drugs now?”
Nick arched a brow as he took a sip of her coffee. “Any reason not to think it? Past behavior being the best predictor of future behavior . . . And it’s easy money. Beats the hell out of cleaning chemical tanks at the oil refinery.”
“He’s not exactly living high off the hog down on that road,” Annie pointed out, setting her toast aside.
“The house isn’t much. C’est vrai,” he conceded. “But he has a nice big TV and a fancy chair to sit in and enjoy it. Maybe he’s just not into appearances.”
“He should rethink that. That’s a creepy place to live, out on that nasty backwater in those ramshackle houses.”
“Not a lot of prying eyes around. Fewer today than yesterday.
“Eat your toast, ’Toinette,” he admonished. “You gotta fuel the fire, cher.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said, pushing her plate toward him.
“You need to eat,” he insisted.
“I don’t want it.”
“Eat something else, then,” he said. “You gonna tell me you don’t have a Snickers bar in your purse calling your name?”
Instantly, she narrowed her eyes at him, readily taking offense. This was the way of things between them lately. He was too quick to lose patience. Her feelings were too easily hurt. They stepped on each other’s raw nerves on a daily basis.
He heaved a sigh and attempted to scrape together some diplomacy. “I didn’t mean for that to sound that way.”
“Well, it did.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“No,” she corrected him, “actually, you didn’t.”
“Mon Dieu! I’m sorry,” he said with more impatience than sincerity, holding up his hands in surrender. “There.”
Annie rolled her eyes. “And you’re so gracious about it!”
“Can we just back this up to the part where I was expressing my concern that you eat something to keep up your strength?” he asked.
She considered her options. He could see she might go either way. Her face was pale with purple smudges beneath her bloodshot eyes. She had worked the same hours he had, had been sleeping as poorly as he had been these past months.
She was a brave little thing, his Antoinette, fierce in the courage of her convictions even when it scared the hell out of her. She had never hesitated to stand up to him and set him straight when no man would. That was what had won his admiration and respect from the start—her heart, her courage. That she was pretty was a bonus.
She had been still a girl, really, when they met. Twenty-something, wide-eyed and idealistic. His opposite in almost every way. From the start of their relationship, he had pushed her to push herself, to challenge herself, to seek the truth, to grow. She had met that challenge every time—right up to and including marrying him.
He sometimes felt guilty she had accepted that challenge. He was not an easy man. She could have married a deputy DA. A nice guy in a suit and tie. Mr. Nine-to-Five. A man who had loved her but didn’t fulfill her. She would have settled into that life eventually and compromised on stability over satisfaction. The idea pained him, but that was what he would have done if he had been a better man: seen to it she had that life.
Lucky for him he was a selfish son of a bitch.
“Allons,” he murmured, reaching out to touch her shoulder. She twitched away, her eyes narrowed, brows lowered.
“Come on, cher,” he cajoled, leaning closer. “S’il vous plâit. Truce, eh? We’re both tired. I’m sorry. I am.”
She sighed and looked down at the cold toast, frowning, her arms crossed over her chest. This time when he reached out to touch her, she allowed it.
“I’m sorry,” she confessed softly. “I’m so tired, I can’t see straight. And I keep thinking about that poor little boy. I keep hearing the mother crying. The sound of her grief . . .”
A shudder went through her at th
e memory. She hugged herself, as if to ward off a chill. Nick stroked a hand over her hair to comfort her, wishing they were alone instead of on duty.
“It’s hard not to put yourself in her place,” he admitted. “To think if something like that happened to Justin . . .”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I could take it. I’d be a puddle on the floor.
“The Gauthier boy was in Jaime Blynn’s second-grade class,” she said. “Jaime took it hard.”
“Did she have anything to say about the mother?” Nick asked.
“That she’s a typical single mom: overworked and not enough money. Jaime doesn’t think she has much of a support network here. She said the boy was a bit of a handful—ADHD.”
“On medication?”
“Not that she knew of.”
Nick sat back, thinking about the Children’s Benadryl, the cold medication, and the cough syrup Stokes had mentioned finding in the family medicine cabinet. Genevieve Gauthier wouldn’t have been the first mother to use those drugs to calm a hyperactive child.
“Jaime said Genevieve recently started working at Evangeline Oaks, the assisted-living place,” Annie said. “She may have a relative there.”
“She had a prescription bottle for Oxy in her purse with the name Clarice Marcel on the label,” Nick said.
“She could have taken the bottle to go get it refilled for her aunt or whoever.”
“Or she could be a pill freak stealing from old people and living next door to a drug dealer.”
“Is that what this guy deals? Oxy?”
“Opioids are where the money’s at these days. Opioids with a side order of benzos is a popular combo, and she has a ’script for Xanax, as well.”
Annie shrugged. “I’d have a ’script for Xanax, too, if I was a stressed-out single mom trying to raise my ADHD child next door to a convict out in Twilight Zone–ville. Why are you trying to make her look bad?”
“I’m not. I’m just stating the facts and the possibilities. And there’s some things about her story that don’t make sense to me: If she was being chased, why didn’t the killer catch her? She had to go half a mile to get someone to open a door for her. Where’d this killer go? Why he didn’t run her down? Why would he let her go? Who kills a child and leaves an adult to tell the tale?”