by Tami Hoag
“Do you belong to a church here?” she asked. “If you need someone to call your pastor, I’ll be happy to do that. Or to call family. Do you have family here? Who are your people?”
It took Genevieve too long to process the questions. Numbed by chemicals, her brain was much slower than Sharon Spicer’s mouth. By the time she formed an answer, the woman was asking something new.
“I have a son, myself,” she said. “Cameron. He’s fourteen. A young man now, I know, but he’s still my little boy. My heart just stops at the idea of something happening to him. I understand your son was younger. Just an innocent little child—”
“How do you know me?” Genevieve asked. “How do you know about my son?”
Sharon Spicer hesitated for a split second, as if she was surprised to have someone interrupt her, then regrouped with a knowing look. “You’re all over the news, my dear.”
She gestured toward the television that hung high up on the wall across from the bed. Murder in Bayou Breaux crawled across the screen beneath the image of a newscaster reading soundlessly. Genevieve hadn’t even noticed the TV. She had no idea how to turn the sound on, didn’t know if she wanted to.
“As it happens,” the woman went on, “I am engaged to be married to Sheriff Dutrow. So, I suppose I heard the news before anyone. Has he spoken to you?”
“No,” Genevieve murmured, staring at the television.
On the screen, Sheriff’s Office personnel were going in and out of her house. Deputies in uniform. Crime scene people. Detective Fourcade stood off to the side at the bottom of the porch stairs, talking to another man. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the foreground.
The house looked even worse on television than it did in real life. People would watch this and think she lived in a dump—because she did. They would have no way of knowing it was only temporary, that as soon as Jeff was able to give her an office job and she had managed to scrape together enough for a deposit and first month’s rent, she planned to move someplace better.
That was the story of her life: there was never enough money. There had not been enough money when she was a child in a single-parent household, nor as a single parent herself. People liked to say money couldn’t buy happiness, but that was a lie. Money could buy comfort in the form of a nice home and clothes and a car that worked. Money could buy security and status. All those things added up to happiness in Genevieve’s eyes.
Everything cost money. Rent cost money, and food cost money, and her beater car cost money because it was always breaking down. It cost money to raise a child. Children needed things—food, clothing, toys, health care.
She needed a second job just to make ends meet, but she couldn’t get a second job because a babysitter cost money, and it made no sense to pay a babysitter when she could make no more than a few dollars an hour. She couldn’t get a job that paid better because she couldn’t afford college. And she couldn’t go to college anyway because she had a child.
You will never see your child alive again . . .
What would life be like without him?
Less expensive.
Less complicated.
“I’m sure the sheriff will be by to see you,” Sharon Spicer was droning on. “Kelvin is taking a personal interest in your case. The idea of a young mother and her child being attacked this way . . .” She shook her head, her perfect auburn bob swaying just so. “Family is very important to him.”
Genevieve said nothing.
“Do you know him?” Sharon Spicer asked.
“Why would I know him?”
“Well, he’s practically a celebrity,” she said with a small chuckle. “It seems like everyone around here knows Kelvin.”
“I’m not from around here.”
“That makes this all the more sad, then,” the woman said. “You came here to make a fresh start, no doubt, and this happened. I’m sure you wish now you had stayed where you were.”
“Could you leave now?” Genevieve asked abruptly. “Please. I’m very tired.”
“Of course,” Sharon Spicer said, seeming to take no offense. “You need your rest. I’m sorry to prattle on.”
She picked up a hospital notepad from the bedside table and wrote down her name and phone number in perfect, beautiful cursive.
“Please do call me if you need anything at all,” she said. “I can’t stand the idea of you going through this alone. If I can help in any way, I will.”
Genevieve couldn’t muster the strength or the grace to thank her. She watched Sharon Spicer leave knowing she would go on about her day of being Miss Everything to Everyone, then go back to her comfortable home to fix dinner for her almost-famous fiancé, the sheriff, and her precious son.
You will never see your son alive again . . .
What would life be like without him?
She thought of going home to that sad, run-down house on the bayou road. No one to greet her. No one to cook for. No one to fight with. No one to love.
What would life be like without him?
Empty.
Peaceful.
EIGHTEEN
School was letting out as Annie swung into the parking lot and parked in the space reserved for law enforcement near the main set of doors. Children spilled out of the building onto the sidewalk, swarming like a colorful army of ants, scrambling onto buses and hurrying toward the line of vehicles waiting in the carpool lane. The buses would load up the elementary school kids and then pull around the broad curved drive, past the park, to the junior high school to load the next batch of students.
The junior high kids had only begun to trickle out of their building, some of them walking toward downtown, a few meandering in the opposite direction to the park. Just like any normal day, Annie thought, except that it wasn’t.
She spotted Remy’s Range Rover at the head of the carpool line and waved him over rather than risking the gauntlet of carpool parents whose focus was already on their children’s next scheduled activity. Woe to anyone holding up the carpool lane—even a cop.
“You’re not here to steal my godson, are you?” Remy asked as he ran his window down. “’Cause we’re going fishing. Catch us some sac-a-lait for supper.”
He flashed his wide, easygoing smile dressed up with a thick mustache. Annie had always teased him he should have been a cop with that ’stache. Instead, he had parlayed his geology and biology background into a boutique environmental consulting business. He worked out of offices on his property just outside of town, allowing himself a flexible schedule to spend time with his daughter and his cadre of nieces and nephews. Remy was every Doucet kid’s favorite uncle.
In the back seat, Gracie Doucet made a face and shuddered. “Fish are slimy and gross!”
Remy rolled his eyes. “Said the girl who wanted a seaweed body wrap for her birthday.”
Gracie smiled like the pixie she was, meeting her father’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “That was different. That was part of my spa experience.”
“Yeah, well, that stuff smelled like a mud bog in the hot sun.”
“You have no appreciation for the finer things, Daddy.”
Remy shook his head in good-natured dismay. “Fourth grade and my daughter is a spa maven.”
Annie chuckled. “You’re in for a long haul, cousin.”
Gracie had always been the epitome of a princess, the girliest of girls, all pink glitter and fancy hair bows. She was something of a mystery to her parents. Her mother was, even as they spoke, in the Middle East photographing a refugee crisis for National Geographic, not a spa or a glitter manicure to be had for miles. But Danielle and Remy both delighted in their only child’s sparkling individuality. Rough-and-tumble athlete Remy, who had hands like catcher’s mitts, bragged he had mastered no fewer than five different hair-braiding techniques by studying YouTube videos.
“Maman?” Justin p
iped up from his car seat behind his uncle. “Are you coming with us? Come fishing! We’re gonna have fish for supper and I’m gonna catch them!”
Annie leaned in his window and kissed his cheek. “Nope, not tonight, little man. Papa and I have to be detectives tonight, but we’ll try to stop by later and tuck you in, all right?”
She held her breath, waiting for his mood to turn, ready to flip on her maternal guilt switch, but the prospect of going fishing and spending time with other people he loved won out.
“Okay,” he said. “But you’re gonna miss out on all the fun.”
“I know. I’m sad.”
“Let’s go, Uncle Remy!” he called, dismissing her. “We’re burnin’ daylight!”
“So much for missing me,” Annie said with a wry smile, going back to Remy’s window. “Thank you for taking him.”
“You know we love having him,” he said. “Justin’s my buddy. And Gracie loves to play big sister.”
“I know. I want you to know we don’t take it for granted. A case like this one makes me appreciate my family all the more.”
“Well, we are exceptional,” he said with a little wink.
Annie mustered a tired smile for him, this cousin who was no blood relative at all. She couldn’t imagine her life without him, without the entire Doucet clan. They were her support and safety net. She didn’t want to imagine trying to raise a child on her own without the sense of security her family gave her. She would never go through any trial in her life alone. She would never lie in a hospital bed with no one to comfort her and no one to call, no one caring if she lived or died. The sense of loneliness and hollowness that idea brought was painful and frightening.
But that degree of isolation wasn’t quite the truth of Genevieve Gauthier, she reminded herself. Someone had cared enough to try to kill her. She may not have had people to love her, but she definitely had one in the other category. And as Annie knew well, the line between I love you and I want you dead could be very thin indeed.
* * *
* * *
“WE NOTIFIED MOST of the parents by text and email,” Pamela Samuels Young said as they walked into the school office. She went around behind the counter to a computer monitor and woke it up with a wiggle of the mouse. “I’ve got my secretary calling the few who still live by landline.”
“What did you say in the statement?” Annie asked.
“Just that we lost one of our students to a violent crime last night and that we’re here for our Bayou Breaux Elementary family, et cetera.” She glanced away from the computer screen to give Annie a look of weary hope. “I don’t suppose you’re here to tell us the crime is solved.”
“’Fraid not,” Annie said on a sigh as she leaned against the counter. She looked to Jaime Blynn, who mirrored her pose a few feet away. She looked exhausted, like a wilted daisy, her usual effervescence gone flat over the course of a long, hard day. “How did it go with your class?”
“It was hard. I told them as gently as I could, but how do you tell children news like that and not upset them, not frighten them?” the teacher asked. “Some cried. Some asked for their parents. Others seemed shell-shocked. They’re too young to get their little minds around something that horrible. I imagine there’ll be some bad dreams tonight—mine, for starters.”
She rubbed her hands over her face, her makeup long gone, and pushed her blond hair back behind her ears. “I want a big glass of wine and to hug my boys all night long.”
“There’ll be a lot of that going around tonight,” Pamela said. “Here it is, Annie. Nora Florette. Her parents are Duane and Jojean Florette.”
She turned the monitor so Annie could see.
“The father works on an oil rig in the Gulf,” Jaime said. “He’s gone a lot. Jojean always has at least two jobs. The kids are left to their own devices most of the time. Nora is the youngest.”
“You had her in your class?”
“Yes, which is why I was concerned when I found out she was babysitting KJ. There’s no adult supervision going on there. The older kids are off doing their own thing after school—none of it good, I’m sure. The older girl was always very mouthy. Takes after her mother, I hate to say. The brother, Dean, must be fourteen now. He likes to hang around the park after school and make trouble. I’ve run him off more than once myself.”
“Charming family,” Annie murmured as she entered the Florettes’ address and phone numbers into her phone. “What kind of trouble?”
“Teasing girls, picking on boys weaker than he is, smoking cigarettes. He’s your basic annoying little punk. But what can we expect if no one is trying to mold him into something better?”
“So you said Nora usually picked KJ up after school and walked him to her house,” Annie said. “Did they cut through the park to get there?”
“Yes. The Florettes’ neighborhood is just on the other side.”
“That’s what I thought. You haven’t had any creepers hanging around the park lately, have you?”
“There was a raggedy guy camping down in the woods way at the far southeast edge of the park a couple of months ago,” Pamela said. “Right before school started. We came across him on a run. Remember that, Jaime?”
“Oh, my Lord, he scared the bejesus out of me,” Jaime said.
“How’d I miss this?” Annie asked.
“You were in the middle of everything with your tante Fanchon,” the teacher reminded her.
“It wasn’t a big thing,” Pamela said. “We called the police and they rousted him out of there. He never caused a problem.”
“Have you seen him since?” Annie asked.
“I haven’t,” the principal answered. She looked to Jaime Blynn. “Have you?”
“No. I was out there yesterday,” Jaime said. “I didn’t see anybody out of the ordinary.”
“Did you see Nora and KJ?”
“Nora was hanging out with some friends by the gazebo. KJ was playing on the swings. Too far away from her for my liking, but everything seemed fine. I came inside to get a bottle of water—it was so beastly hot!—and when I went back out, they’d gone.”
“Will you walk out there with me now?” Annie asked.
“Sure.”
“Is that what you think happened?” Jaime asked as they headed down the cool dark hall toward the main doors. “Some child molester picked KJ out in the park and followed him home?”
“I don’t know,” Annie said. “It’s possible. I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s possible.”
“Sick, is what it is.”
“That applies no matter who did it. There’s no good reason a child gets murdered in his own home.”
“Have you seen Genevieve? How is she doing?”
“In shock one minute, in tears the next.”
The memory of Genevieve Gauthier sobbing over the body of her child in the morgue at Our Lady lit up in Annie’s mind with painful clarity. The worst part of her job was having to be a voyeur to the pain of victims and loved ones left behind. Moments that should have been intensely private but by necessity and circumstance were often not.
“How long will she be in the hospital?”
“A day or two, I should think. Her injuries aren’t life-threatening.”
“And then what?” Jaime asked. “Is she just supposed to go home? How can she go back to that house after what happened? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ever go back there again.”
“She won’t be allowed to go back until we release the scene,” Annie said. “That could be a while. Nick likes to keep his scenes sealed until he’s absolutely certain it’s no longer necessary. She’ll have to stay elsewhere.”
They each pushed open one of the big doors and stepped out into the heat and humidity. Both of them groaned automatically.
“When is this heat going to break?”
“It�
�s hurricane weather, if you ask me,” Annie said. “I can do without that, too.”
The elementary school playground was empty. It was an almost eerie sight, Annie thought, a place that should have been alive with noisy children, now devoid of all life, the swings hanging still in the thick air. Beyond the playground, around the curve of the drive, the park stretched out, green and studded with sprawling live oak trees. A paved path cut through the center of it for cyclists and pedestrians.
Annie pictured a girl and a little boy walking down that path hand in hand. Nora Florette leading KJ Gauthier on their way to the neighborhood she lived in on the south side of town. Less than a mile beyond that neighborhood sat the house where KJ had died.
Was there a connection? Could some child predator have seen the boy in the park, fixated on him, followed him? The perpetrator would have had to follow the kids to the Florette home, lie in wait for two to three hours—until Genevieve arrived to pick up her son—then follow them home from there just to find out where the targeted child lived. He would then have either had to find a hiding place to wait or leave and return hours later to kill the boy.
A far-fetched theory, to say the least, she thought. The kind of child predators that trolled playgrounds and parks tended to be opportunists. They took the path of least resistance to get the thrill they wanted. They singled out a vulnerable child and acted when and where the chance presented itself. They weren’t usually stalkers with long-term elaborate plans.
Still, the notion of the raggedy man in the woods was unsettling. Annie made a mental note to call the patrol sergeant at the Bayou Breaux Police Department and talk to him about it.
She was more interested in speaking to the babysitter to get some idea if there had been anything out of the ordinary in the days leading up to the crime. Had she heard anything, seen anything? Had Genevieve been acting strangely? Had KJ been upset? Might he have innocently mentioned anything that could have been a clue something terrible was headed their way?