by Tami Hoag
As he started to step back from the car door, a news van pulled into the parking lot, halting not more than ten feet in front of Annie’s SUV, blocking her way out. Her heart sank, knowing exactly what was about to go down.
“That didn’t take long,” she muttered, looking to Nick for his reaction. She could feel his tension instantly as he straightened away from the car door, his shoulders squaring and flexing, as if he was preparing for a physical fight.
“Detective Fourcade! Detective Fourcade, can we have a word?” The reporter was shouting at him before her feet even hit the pavement as she all but tumbled out the passenger door of the van.
Kimberly Karstares was instantly recognizable by her bottle-blond, spray-starched mane and the predatory gleam in her eyes. From the waist up she was dressed for the camera in a red blouse and too much makeup. From the waist down, white shorts revealed a mile of tan legs. She wore neon green running shoes, advertising her willingness to literally chase down a story if she had to. An ambitious rising star at one of the Lafayette stations, she had been a thorn in Nick’s side for months with regard to the Theriot case.
“Detective Fourcade, can we get a comment from you on last night’s murder of the Gauthier boy?”
“No, you may not.” He stood like a statue, feet apart, jaw set, his sunglasses hiding a glare that might have made Kimberly Karstares think twice if she had had the sense to do so.
“Don’t you want to make some kind of appeal to the public for information?” she asked, microphone in hand as she stepped too close.
“Sheriff Dutrow has already done so.”
“But you’re the lead detective on this case. Don’t you—”
“You should stay out of my way while I see to it then, yes?” he said, his voice a low growl.
“How are you supposed to investigate this murder while you still have no resolution in the Theriot sexual assault case?”
“Crimes don’t wait their turns to be committed, Ms. Karstares,” Nick said. “Nor do they wait their turns to be solved.”
The reporter glanced over her shoulder for her videographer, a young man with a bad complexion and a camera perched on his shoulder. He hustled toward them from the back of the van, hiking at the waist of his baggy jeans with one hand.
“Clovis, get up here!” Karstares snapped. “Are you rolling?”
“I am!”
She turned back to Nick, thrusting the microphone at him like a fool poking a stick at a tiger. “Detective, would you please repeat what you just said so we can get that on camera?”
“No.”
“Have you spoken with the Theriot family about this? Are they aware you’ll be abandoning their daughter’s case as you take charge of this investigation?”
Annie wanted to jump out of the car and snatch Kimberly Karstares by her hair extensions. Instead, she said loudly, “Detective Fourcade, we need to go! We have a briefing to get to.”
Nick remained still save for a muscle pulsing in his jaw.
“Let’s go!” Annie prodded. “Sheriff’s waiting!”
“Duty calls, Ms. Karstares,” he said quietly. “Report that. Detectives couldn’t be bothered to comment as they were busy trying to solve the crime.”
He stalked past her and around the hood of the SUV. As the reporter started to give chase, Annie revved the engine and leaned hard on the horn, sending the woman bolting sideways.
“Y’all have to move that van!” Annie shouted out the window. “Preventing us from leaving is interfering with the business of the Sheriff’s Office.”
Karstares’s eyes narrowed, and she hustled back around toward Annie on the driver’s side of the vehicle, the hapless Clovis the cameraman stumbling to keep up with her.
“And you are?” she asked curtly, as if she had a right to know.
Annie held up her badge. “Broussard. Direct your questions to Sheriff Dutrow’s office. They’ll be all too happy to entertain you.”
“I’m not looking to be entertained. I’m looking for the truth.”
“Well, isn’t that funny? That’s our job, too,” Annie said as Nick got in on the passenger’s side and slammed the door. “We’ll let you know soon as we find it.”
“Broussard . . . ?” Karstares said, realization dawning alongside derision. “Oooh. You’re the wife.”
“It’s Detective Broussard,” Annie said. “And you’re out of line, Blondie. Now move that van before I call to have it impounded. And don’t think I won’t.”
“The people have a right to know what’s going on when their Sheriff’s Office can’t keep them safe in their own homes,” Karstares snapped in a parting shot, even as she backed toward the news van.
Behind the shield of the dashboard, Annie flipped her off with both hands. Karstares said something through the window to her driver and the van rolled forward just enough to let Annie squeak by.
“Drink that bleach next time instead of putting it on your hair, you nasty piece of business,” Annie grumbled, glaring at the reporter in the rearview mirror.
Nick looked over at her as they turned onto the street, his expression unreadable.
“Are you mad at me?” Annie asked, watching him out the corner of her eye.
“Because you thought I needed saving? Again. No.” He shook his head. “That’s hardly the first time that’s happened. Won’t be the last. How can I fault you? Your brave heart is the first thing I fell in love with, you know.
“I remember the night you came up to me at Laveau’s back when,” he said. “I’d had too much whiskey and too much bullshit, and you were scared to death of me, but you stepped right up and had your say, just the same.”
Annie smiled at the memory. She had been terrified—of him, of what she wanted to ask of him, of where that might lead. She had wanted in on his murder investigation when she was just a deputy and so low on the totem pole she should have carried an umbrella to deflect all the piss rained down on her from above.
“But this is liable to get ugly, you know,” he said. “I can take it. I don’t want them going after you because you’re my wife. If we can’t solve this murder in a hurry, Dutrow will figure it reflects badly on him, and that will be my fault. He’ll be all too happy to take it out on me any way he can, including turning the media on me like a pack of starving dogs. He don’t want them near me now, as long as there is still the potential for him to look the hero, but that’s not gonna stop them coming at me.”
“You don’t deserve it,” Annie said, knowing it wouldn’t matter. The mix of anger and helplessness made her want to hit something.
“Well, in terms of karma, we don’t know what I might deserve—”
“Stop it,” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear about how you were some kind of badass ninja in a past life, therefore . . . I know who you are in this life, in my life, in our son’s life. I know what we deserve. And I’ll be damned if I sit quietly by and let Aqua Net Barbie try to use you for a stepping-stone out of East Ass-Crack, Lou’siana, on her way to some imaginary stardom.”
A sudden smile split Nick’s face, as surprising and dazzling as the sun bursting forth in the middle of a storm.
Annie scowled at him as she slowed the SUV for the turn into the law enforcement center. “Don’t you dare be amused at me, Nick Fourcade.”
“You’re something else, ’Toinette,” he murmured. “My tigress.”
She hit the blinker and glanced over at him as she waited for oncoming traffic to pass. “Don’t you forget it, mister.”
FIFTEEN
The Partout Parish Law Enforcement Center had been built in the late 1960s. The SO had long since outgrown the main building, purchasing the property adjacent from a road construction outfit in the ’90s, turning the heavy equipment yard into an impound lot and giving the construction office over to the detective division for their exclusive use.
Stefon Quinlan glanced up from his computer screen in acknowledgment, a telephone receiver pressed between his meaty shoulder and his ear as his thick fingers tapped his keyboard. A fine sheen of sweat gleamed on his dark bald head, giving lie to the noisy efforts of the two window air-conditioners in the back wall.
Nick looked past him to Wynn Dixon, their resident techie. Tall, rawboned, and red-haired, she had been dubbed with the obvious nickname Winn-Dixie (after the supermarket chain) by Stokes when she had first come on board with the team a year past. As the newbie, she had been too diplomatic to object. Now it was too late. The name had stuck with every man in the SO whose sense of humor hadn’t advanced past the ninth grade—which was most of them.
Nick had no tolerance for such foolishness. He had assessed Dixon’s abilities as a detective, pinpointed her specialties, and used her accordingly on his cases. She knew her way in and around every conceivable database available to them and could track a paper trail like a bloodhound on a scent.
“Dixon, what you got?” he asked, taking a stance at the end of her desk, his arms crossed over his chest. Annie snagged a chair from the next desk over, rolling it close enough to look at Dixon’s computer screen.
“Genevieve Gauthier: no wants, no warrants,” Dixon said. “She does have a record. Mostly petty stuff. A couple convictions on shoplifting, one for check kiting, one disturbing the peace. She does have two convictions for driving under the influence—”
“When was that?” Nick asked. “The DUI.”
“One eight years ago. One a year ago.”
“Any drug charges?”
“Misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance. Looks like that went together with the first DUI. The charge was dismissed.”
“Dig into that. Find the arrest record. I want to know what the substance was and how much she had on her. See if she was actually charged with the misdemeanor.”
Annie arched an eyebrow at him. “From eight years ago?”
“If she had enough of whatever it was on her that she could have been charged, then got to plead down for some reason, A: she might have flipped on somebody to get that deal, and B: she for sure had known associates who provided that substance to her, yes? Who’s to say she might not still have the attention of one of those people? Maybe last night was payback.”
“That seems a long stretch.”
Nick shrugged. “C’est vrai, but what’s to lose? We’re just digging in the dirt at this point. Let’s see what we scratch up. Maybe nothing, maybe something. All it costs us is a little of Detective Dixon’s time. You don’t mind, do you, Detective?”
“No, sir,” Dixon said. “Anything you need—for this case, especially. I have three nephews. This hits too close to home.”
“Did you find the birth certificate on the Gauthier boy?” Annie asked.
“Yes. He was born at Terrebonne General Medical Center in Houma to Genevieve Gauthier. No father listed.”
“No marriage licenses, divorce decrees, anything like that with her name on them?” Nick asked.
“No.”
“I want to know if she’s ever been a victim of a crime,” he said. “Specifically, domestic violence or sexual assault. Has she ever taken out a restraining order on anyone, that kind of thing.”
“I’m on it, boss.”
“I want hard copies on everything. And call me immediately when the results come in on her tox screen.”
He turned and went down the hall to what had at one time probably been the construction foreman’s office in the building’s past life. Nick had commandeered the room for himself upon his promotion, not because he fancied himself an executive but because he needed a retreat from the noise and personalities of the bullpen. He needed to be able to step away and just be still, to gather his thoughts and his focus.
He thought of Jeff Avery’s office as he walked in—messy, crowded with clutter and obvious reminders of who the man was and how he had gotten there. Nick had no wall of fame displaying his diplomas and citations. He kept nothing personal in the room at all. No mementos, no photos of his family. His private life was not for public display. His desk was immaculate, orderly, with nothing extraneous on the surface. A pair of simple straight chairs served anyone needing to speak privately with him—utilitarian, but not inviting a visitor to linger.
The only visitor invited to stay in this office was the kitten from the Gauthier house, curled up sleeping in a towel-lined box under the desk. The kitten had moved in lock, stock, and litter box.
Along one wall filing cabinets squatted beneath a long countertop where the paperwork related to his pertinent cases was all perfectly organized. The wall opposite his desk was taken up by a large whiteboard, on it his meticulously handwritten notes on his most prominent case of the moment—before today—the Vanessa Theriot case.
He had taped a photo of the girl in the middle of the board and stood in front of it now, staring at the thirteen-year-old, a dark current of emotion pulling at him. It was a school photo, though Vanessa did not attend a traditional school. Her parents worked three jobs between them so they could afford to send their daughter to a special facility for severely autistic children in Lafayette.
Even in a photograph Vanessa couldn’t make eye contact. Her gaze went not to the camera, nor to the photographer, but up and to the left. Her expression was that of a child mesmerized by something she couldn’t understand. Nick always had the feeling she was seeing something no one else could see, something wondrous in another dimension.
Vanessa was just reaching puberty and her features had begun to morph from the soft roundness of childhood to hint at the angles and lines of the young woman she would become. Her thick, dark hair had been pulled back on one side with a barrette to show off the small pearl pierced earrings she had gotten for her birthday that year—a momentous event, her mother had said.
As detached as she was from the world around her much of the time, Vanessa still sometimes showed an interest in the things her older sister liked—pretty things like jewelry and hair ribbons. She liked to make art and dance to pop music and giggle like any teenage girl. At least, she had done. Before.
Nick hadn’t been allowed to see Vanessa Theriot in weeks. Her parents wouldn’t have it. There was no point in it from an investigative standpoint. The girl couldn’t or wouldn’t speak to him—or to anyone else, for that matter. She hadn’t told him what had happened to her or given him any idea who might have molested her. Her communication with her parents, primarily with her mother, consisted of little more than guttural sounds of emotion: need, comfort, discomfort, excitement, fear. Her existence was largely internal. No one had a key to that world. Vanessa lived there alone.
Nick understood that, as well or better than most. He had always fiercely guarded his internal life, even as boy. That was just who he was. When he was small, his mother had referred to him as petit homme de mystère—her little man of mystery. Very few people had ever been invited past even the first of his fortress walls.
Someone had trespassed on Vanessa Theriot’s barriers and violated her—not in an attack a detective or a doctor would categorize as brutal or violent, as wrong as that sounded. Her physical injuries had been minor, thank God, nothing but a few bruises on her thighs and some minor vaginal bruising. The assailant had penetrated her with the handle of a hairbrush—an act she had later pantomimed to her mother—but not viciously, seemingly not with the intent to punish or damage.
That as a detective he had to mak
e those distinctions objectively offended Nick deeply, personally, beyond the law and order aspect of the case. He believed any breach of personal boundaries was inherently violent, existentially speaking. The lasting damage was to the fabric of one’s being, to the veil of trust, to the shell of self-image, to the pillar of confidence. Those things could not be altered by force and ever return to their original shape. It wasn’t possible. The damage was done. And how much worse that had to be for Vanessa, who had no real means to express what she felt or to grasp the tools conventional psychotherapy could offer to help her heal herself.
The frustration that he had been unable to do anything to at least avenge her was like a hard lump in Nick’s throat that he could neither swallow nor dislodge. He wanted nothing more than to bring to justice the person who had hurt Vanessa Theriot, but the case had gone nowhere. They had no witnesses, no DNA. A couple of random unknown fingerprints in the girl’s bedroom had not found a match in any database.
That frustration was no stranger to him. He understood the anger of Vanessa’s parents better than they would ever know. He knew what it was to lose a loved one. He knew what it did to the family to have their questions go unanswered, to have justice hang in the limbo of not knowing. He knew the helplessness and the misplaced guilt. He knew the whys and the what-ifs and the if-onlys. He knew there was no escape from any of that and that the only thing that even marginally relieved the pressure was to vent it onto someone else—namely the detective in charge of the case.
His sister, Justine, had been a sophomore at LSU in Baton Rouge, studying to become a teacher for children with special needs. Had she lived, she would have been helping kids like Vanessa. A beautiful girl, sweet, funny, the apple of their father’s eye, Justine had gone out for a run one fall evening and never returned to her dorm. Her body had been found two days later in the underbrush off a jogging path in a park just off campus. She had been raped and murdered and dumped like a sack of trash. The crime had gone unsolved for years.
Just seventeen at the time, Nick had watched the stress and strain and heartache of not knowing, of never being able to see their daughter’s killer punished, destroy his parents. Racked by grief and anger, his father had died of a heart attack two years after Justine’s murder. His mother had been heartbroken, and her health had failed. She passed less than a year later. Their family had disintegrated, all of them victims of the faceless predator who had taken Justine Fourcade’s life.