by Tami Hoag
“I need to speak with your administrator,” Nick said flatly.
“Oh, yes, of course!” Mavis said. “I told him you were on your way. Just let me ring him.”
“No need, Mavis. I’m right here.”
Jefferson Avery emerged from his private office looking tired and harried. His thinning sandy hair had been subjected to a hasty finger combing. In his early forties, he might have been Mr. Popularity in high school, Annie thought. He was still good-looking, but he had gone a bit soft around the middle and along his jawline, worn down by the inevitability of male pattern baldness and the disappointing mediocrity of his life.
He offered a hand to Nick. “Jeff Avery.”
“Detective Fourcade,” Nick said. “This is Detective Broussard. We need to speak with you and some of your staff regarding an employee—Genevieve Gauthier.”
“We’ve all seen the news already, Detective,” Avery said on a sigh. “It’s terrible. I don’t know what else to say.”
“I have some questions for you, if we can speak privately.”
“Of course.”
“Detective Broussard has questions for any of your staff who might know Ms. Gauthier.”
“Whatever you need,” he said, gesturing Nick toward his office.
Annie watched them go. As soon as the door closed, the office manager started in again.
“He’s such a good man—Mr. Avery,” she said. “Very civic-minded, even though he hasn’t lived here all that long. He belongs to I don’t know how many groups—the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club, and I don’t know what all. I don’t know where he finds the time. He’s working here all hours.”
“And Genevieve . . . ?” Annie prompted.
“Just tragic. I felt so guilty right away when I saw the news,” Mavis confessed in a half whisper, leaning over the counter, woman-to-woman. “I was angry with her this morning for being late. I said something very unkind. Donna Goldberg, our head nurse, heard me—and she agreed with me, frankly. I mean, in all fairness to me, Genevieve is often late and suffers no repercussions whatsoever.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know, as I’m married to the father of my children, but I’m sure it’s difficult being a single mother—”
“No,” Annie interrupted. “Why no repercussions?”
“Oh, I don’t want to speak out of school—”
“Of course not.”
“—but it’s no secret she plays the Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me card with Mr. Avery, and he is far too kind.”
“Is there a reason for that?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said, pulling back in offense.
“She’s a pretty girl. He’s a man.”
“Mr. Avery is very dedicated to his wife and children.”
“That never stopped any man I ever knew from looking,” Annie said. “Or giving preferential treatment, for that matter.”
“Well, Mr. Avery is not that way,” Mavis insisted. “He has a kind heart, is all. In fact, he and his wife put together a box of clothes and shoes their son had outgrown to give to Genevieve for her boy. That’s the kind of people they are: charitable, God-fearing Christian people.”
“Do you know Genevieve very well?” Annie asked, refraining from telling Mavis how many “God-fearing Christian people” she had put in prison for all manner of hideous behaviors. Showing up in church on Sunday didn’t automatically make anyone good, as far as Annie was concerned.
“No, not really. She’s not what I call a woman’s woman, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t. What do you mean?”
“She doesn’t have much to say to other women. Now, whenever a man is nearby, that’s a whole other story. She just lights right up,” she said with a sharp hint of acid. “But who am I to judge? I have a husband.”
“So Genevieve wouldn’t have confided to you if something had been bothering her,” Annie said.
“If her moods are anything to go by, something is always bothering her. But I know she struggles to make ends meet. And her little boy is—was—a handful. She has a hard life, bless her heart.”
“Do you know if she’s friends with any of the other staff here?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Has she ever said anything to you about a boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, anything like that?”
“No.”
“Has she ever said anything about her boy’s father?”
“No.” Mavis’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why are you asking all these questions about Genevieve? She’s the victim. Shouldn’t you be out looking for whoever did this?”
“We don’t know who did it,” Annie said. “Genevieve doesn’t know who did it. We’re hoping people who know her might be able to help fill in a few blanks. We don’t always see the bad in people close to us. Sometimes folks who pretend to care about us turn out to be jealous and spiteful.”
Mavis didn’t blink, apparently lacking the self-awareness for shame.
“Well, this wasn’t somebody she knew,” she said with certainty. “Surely not. This was some maniac. We’ll be locking our doors tonight, hoping y’all can catch this murderer faster than you’ve done anything about the pervert who molested that Theriot girl.”
She nodded in the direction of Jeff Avery’s office. “He’s the detective for that investigation, too, isn’t he? I saw him on the news when that happened. Maybe Sheriff Dutrow should put someone more capable in charge.”
Annie clenched her jaw and reminded herself that the general public only had what information the press and the gossipmongers gave them. This woman had no idea what had gone into the Theriot investigation. She knew nothing about Nick’s sleepless nights or how many hours he had spent going over and over the meager details of a case with a silent victim. She knew nothing about police work or the frustration of having a case with no leads and no viable suspects. She only knew someone had been hurt and no one had been made to pay.
“I can assure you, Detective Fourcade is very good at his job, ma’am,” Annie said.
Mavis sniffed. “Well, I hope so. Here we are living with maniacs running around loose in the dead of night.”
Annie tuned out the diatribe and looked through the glass office doors to the facility’s large, sunny common area, where residents gathered to socialize. It was a homey place full of chintz and overstuffed couches and round oak tables topped with adult coloring books and half-done jigsaw puzzles.
“Genevieve has a relative here, doesn’t she?” she asked. “An aunt?”
“Clarice Marcel. Genevieve calls her Aunt Clarice, though I don’t know what kind of niece she is,” Mavis said. “Clarice and her husband lived here two years before he passed, God rest his soul, and we never saw hide nor hair of Genevieve. Better late than never, I suppose.”
“Can I meet Mrs. Marcel?” Annie asked. “Maybe she’ll have some insights to share.”
“Probably not from this decade,” Mavis quipped, coming out from behind the counter. “But you’re welcome to try.”
* * *
* * *
“HAVE A SEAT, Detective,” Jeff Avery offered as he seated himself behind his desk. The knot of his navy blue tie had been pulled slightly loose at his throat, jerked off-center, the collar button beneath it hastily undone. He was already rattled, and they had yet to begin the interview.
Good, Nick thought. His specialty was making people uncomfortable, putting them off balance. People lied to the police all the time. Bad people wanted to look good. Good people wanted to look better. No one wanted to be a rat if they could find a creative, venial way out of it. But lies were twice as hard to keep straight as the truth, and harder still when the liar was nervous.
“I’ll stand, thank you,” Nick said politely, knowing this would immediately make Avery slightly uncomfortable, both
physically and psychologically. Avery would have to look up at him and follow him as he moved restlessly around the small, messy office. He would wonder why this detective wouldn’t bring his energy level down to have a simple, quiet conversation about an employee.
It was a drab room with putty-colored, utilitarian furnishings and a window that looked out on the parking lot. Papers and periodicals were piled on a credenza. Pictures of the family hung on one wall at the end of a row of framed certificates, diplomas, and such. The larger photo was of the entire Avery family dressed in khakis and untucked white shirts, posing on a sand dune somewhere.
Jeff Avery had a pretty, gently plump, dark-haired wife and three nice-looking stair-step children—two girls and a boy. The All-American middle-class family. They had probably met in college—or just out of—him and the missus. They had probably followed the expected track: courtship and a big Southern wedding with too many bridesmaids. A career for him, children for her. Fifteen or so years on, that track might have worn into a rut. Life might have become stale, predictable, monotonous. Enter the troubled twenty-something single girl with the pretty smile and sad story . . . A tale as old as time.
“How old are your children?”
“The girls are fourteen and twelve,” Avery said. “My son just turned ten. Makes me sick to think of anyone harming them. I hate to imagine what Genevieve is going through, losing KJ. It’s just terrible. Incomprehensible.
“Is she hurt badly?” he asked. “All they said on the news was that she was hospitalized.”
“Her condition is stable.”
“Is she conscious?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know who did this?”
“How long have you known Ms. Gauthier?” Nick asked, blatantly ignoring Avery’s question. He moved away from the family photos, pausing to look over a framed diploma for a bachelor of science degree in General Family and Consumer Sciences from Nicholls State University down in Thibodaux.
“She started here part-time as an aide mid-June. We didn’t have a full-time position available for her until a few weeks later.
“I can’t imagine how she’s going to pay these hospital bills,” Avery said. “Her health insurance isn’t due to kick in for another two weeks. I checked this morning. We have a waiting period from start of employment. There’s a high rate of turnover in this business at the lower levels. People take these aide jobs and quit within a week or two. It’s more prudent for business to wait and see if the employee is committed.”
“She may be able to get some assistance through Victim Services,” Nick offered, moving again. “Do you know what brought her to Bayou Breaux?”
“She wanted to be closer to her aunt Clarice—a resident in our facility,” Avery said. “She doesn’t have any other family—Genevieve, that is. Clarice has family in Mobile—a niece and a nephew of her late husband. They never visit. They just pay the bills.
“Some people think assisted living is just a storage facility,” he said with disgust. “A place to stick their old people until they die or go into full-time nursing care. And then you have people like Genevieve.”
“You’re fond of her,” Nick said, watching him carefully.
“She’s a young woman with a difficult life, trying to do the right thing,” Avery said. “She works hard, does the best she can with her son, spends time with an old woman the rest of her family has forgotten. That’s admirable. She deserves a break. Now this happens . . .”
“She told us you let her do some office work in addition to her work as an aide.”
“She’s had clerical jobs before. She was a receptionist for a dentist in Dulac. She worked as a file clerk at City Hall in Houma for a time. Our front-desk receptionist will be going on maternity leave in a few months. Genevieve could take her place. She’s personable, polite—”
“Attractive.”
“—presents herself well,” Avery continued, refusing the bait. “In the meantime, I’ve had her helping Mavis some so she could earn a little extra on top of her aide’s pay. I know she’s struggling financially. Her regular shift ends at three; then she does a couple extra hours in the office.”
“You’re a good man,” Nick said, pacing slowly back and forth in front of the desk. “You see a young woman struggling, you try to help her out. Chivalrous. That’s what that is. Me, I don’t get to see much of that behavior, you know? My line of work, I see the worst of people. I’m more apt to run across the man who has a little power in a certain circumstance—a boss, for instance—who decides to leverage that into something for himself.”
“I’m not that man,” Avery said, pushing to his feet, color rising in his cheeks. “I don’t appreciate the insinuation.”
Nick said nothing. He stared at Jeff Avery, letting the silence hang until Avery was uncomfortable enough that he felt a need to move. It didn’t take long. He went to the wall of pictures and unnecessarily adjusted the one of his family.
“I’m a happily married man,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
“Hmmm. Were you aware of anything troublesome going on in Ms. Gauthier’s life?” Nick asked. “Did she ever mention being bothered by anyone? A boyfriend? Ex-boyfriend? Would-be boyfriend?”
“She never mentioned anything like that to me,” Avery said, moving back to his desk to straighten a pile of papers. “It wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to have that kind of conversation with an employee.”
Nick shrugged. “People, I find, are often inappropriate in times of need. Self-preservation takes precedence over decorum—rightly so. This girl looks up to you, appreciates your kindness, sees you as a benefactor, a mentor of sorts, perhaps. Not hard to imagine she might turn to you with a confidence or for advice. Nothing wrong with that.”
Avery held his silence—which was neither an admission nor a denial but was almost surely more the former than the latter, Nick thought.
“Ms. Gauthier was here at work yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Did anything seem out of the ordinary? Her demeanor, the quality of her work . . . ?”
“I couldn’t really say. I was very busy yesterday,” Avery said stiffly. “We’re getting ready for an inspection. My mind was on a million details I need to see to before that happens. I’ve only been here a year, myself, and my predecessor left something of an administrative mess for me to sort out.
“What are you implying with this line of questioning, anyway?” he asked. “That Genevieve somehow might have seen this attack coming? That’s absurd.”
“Do you know where Ms. Gauthier lives?”
Avery’s reply seemed to stick in his mouth.
“That’s a yes-or-no answer,” Nick said calmly.
The man rubbed a hand across his jaw as if to unlock it. “Yes,” he said on a short sigh. “I once drove her home when her car wouldn’t start, but I don’t want you getting the wrong idea from that—”
“Does that seem to you to be the kind of neighborhood anyone would find by accident?”
Avery was silent for a beat, no doubt picturing the desolate road he had driven down while taking his lovely employee home.
“No,” he admitted. “Are you saying you think she knows the person who did this?”
“Statistically, most perpetrators are known to their victims,” Nick said. “Do you drug test your employees, Mr. Avery?”
Avery all but grabbed his neck for the whiplash from the change of subject. “Why would you ask such a thing?”
The question was hardly out of his mouth when he raised a hand in surrender, acknowledging that he didn’t expect an answer.
“Yes,” he said. “We drug test at the start of employment.”
“Can I assume Ms. Gauthier had a clean test or you wouldn’t have hired her?”
“Of course.”
“And you’ve had no cause to suspect sh
e might be abusing substances since she’s been working here?”
“No, of course not. She’s been a model employee. Why would you—”
“Would it be up to Ms. Gauthier to refill prescriptions for her aunt? Or is that a service provided by the facility?”
“It depends on the resident. Some have auto-refill and delivery from local pharmacies. Others prefer to get out and pick up their own. We’re not a prison, you know. People are free to come and go. We help them as much or as little as they need.”
“And Mrs. Marcel?”
“You’d have to ask our head nurse, Mrs. Goldberg.” Avery set his hands at his waist and huffed a sigh as if he’d been running. “I find your whole line of questioning very strange, Detective. Genevieve is the victim here. Is there some reason to believe drugs were involved—?”
“You said, ‘She does the best she can with her son,’” Nick said. “What did you mean by that?”
“Nothing! It’s just a figure of speech!” Avery said, exasperated. “She’s a young mother trying to raise a child on her own. That’s not easy. She does the best she can, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything by it! You can’t think Genevieve did that to her son!”
“I’m just trying to get a complete picture of their home life,” Nick said calmly.
“You are way off base thinking something like that,” Avery said adamantly. “Genevieve would never be capable—”
“People are capable of all manner of things when under sufficient pressure.”
“No. Not Genevieve.” Avery shook his head, agitated. “And she’s in the hospital, for God’s sake! She didn’t put herself in the hospital—”
“No need to work yourself up, Mr. Avery,” Nick said softly. “These are just routine questions.”
“None of this sounds routine to me!”
Nick let the man’s statement hang in the air—a little too loud, a little too emotional. Avery worked to rein himself in, to compose himself. Color mottled his face in red splotches.
“You have a very antagonistic way about you, Detective,” he said.