by Tami Hoag
Hoping Nora might do the same, she poked around for anything resembling a diary, looking in logical hiding spots but finding nothing. She looked around for the other things she wasn’t seeing—a purse, a backpack. Something a kid would take with them if they were running away. Kids these days seemed to carry their lives in their backpacks. Remy’s daughter, Gracie, a fourth-grader, already carried a backpack half as big as she was.
There was no backpack in Nora Florette’s room. No schoolbooks, either. If she had been planning to run away, she might have left them in her locker at school. Or maybe she was just holed up with a friend, thinking to punish her mother by disappearing for a day or two. Too bad her mother hadn’t bothered to notice.
Annie plucked a small school photo from the frame of the dresser mirror and took it with her downstairs to the kitchen. Jojean had poured herself a whiskey and was sipping it as she stirred her ground beef in a giant pot of spaghetti sauce.
“Is this a recent picture of Nora?”
“That’s last year’s school picture. They haven’t taken new ones yet.”
“Do you have anything more current? In your phone, maybe?”
Jojean sniffed, frowning. “When do I have time to take their pictures? My husband’s gone three weeks at a time, working a rig in the Gulf. He’s on twenty-one and off fourteen. And those fourteen days when he’s home, he ain’t home. He’s driving long hauls for his brother’s trucking company to Florida and back. He is a goddamn ghost to this family.
“I am it in this house,” she said, turning away from the stove, walking up on Annie, her temper rising. “I am the parent. I work my ass off for these kids, and when I’m not working, I’m cooking and cleaning and doing their laundry. I’m a fucking slave to this family. So if you’re thinking I’m not a good mother because I’m not making them scrapbooks and recording every waking moment of their precious lives, you can just shove that idea right up your tight little ass, Detective.”
Annie said nothing, not caring in the least that Jojean Florette was feeling judged. Her feelings didn’t weigh more than a twelve-year-old child.
She put the photo of Nora down flat on the kitchen table and took a picture of the picture with her phone.
“Did you make those phone calls?” she asked. “To the cousin? To the other friend?”
“She’s not at her cousin’s house,” Jojean said, calmer. “And the Averys didn’t answer.”
Annie checked her watch. It was getting on to suppertime, and the sun wasn’t much more than a faint glow out the window.
“I’ll put this picture out for all our deputies to see, with a be-on-the-lookout notice,” she said. “If you haven’t heard from Nora in the next couple of hours, I want you to call me,” she said, placing a business card on the table next to the photograph. “You don’t want to take this seriously, but I am taking it seriously, Miz Florette. No one has seen or heard from your daughter since last night—”
“She’s just being stubborn—”
“You don’t know what she’s being,” Annie snapped. “KJ Gauthier was murdered last night. We don’t know why. Could be he was just in the way. Could be he could have identified this person because he’d seen him before. If my daughter had been taking care of that child and now I couldn’t find her, I’d be a damned sight more upset about that than you seem to be.”
Fed up, Annie started for the doorway but then stopped and looked back at Nora Florette’s mother. “When was the last time you actually saw and spoke with your daughter?”
Jojean didn’t answer right away. She either didn’t want to or had to think about it. At least she finally had the grace to look guilty.
“Monday night,” she said at last. “She said she was never gonna speak to me again.”
Monday night.
Two days had passed.
TWENTY-ONE
Merde,” Nick swore as they rode up the drive to the entrance of Our Lady. Three news vans were parked along a red zone, antennas up. Their crews had staked out areas on the lawn near the entrance to broadcast their six o’clock news segments. Live from Bayou Breaux . . .
“They’re like mosquitoes,” Stokes said. “Swarming right where you don’t want them to be, ever-ready to suck your blood. You want to duck in a side entrance?”
“No,” Nick said on a sigh. “Might as well run the gauntlet and disappoint them all at once. They’re not gonna be happy until they get us on camera being dicks to them. Let’s get it over with.”
“Like I always say when I’m making love to an ugly woman . . .”
He pulled the Charger into a spot reserved for law enforcement, immediately drawing the attention of the news crews.
“I-i-i-i-it’s showtime!” he said, settling his fedora at a jaunty angle over one eye as he got out of the car.
Nick climbed out of the vehicle and slid his sunglasses in place, even though daylight wasn’t much more than a glow in the west. He walked with purpose toward the hospital entrance, his expression set in stone. Stokes ran interference on one side. Kimberly Karstares came at him from the opposite side, shouting his name, shoving a microphone at him.
“Detective Fourcade! Detective Fourcade!”
“Do you—”
“Have you—”
“Will you—”
Their voices were a discordant racket as unpleasant as a flock of crows cackling around his head.
“No comment.”
“Detective Fourcade, have you spoken to the Theriot family?” Karstares asked.
No, he had not. He had a murderer running loose in his parish. Solving that crime had to take precedence over a courtesy call to the Theriots.
“No comment.”
Bobby Theriot would call him. He had no doubt about that. Bobby Theriot would call him in a couple of hours, after he’d had a chance to steep himself in Jack Daniel’s and frustration, and Nick would take whatever abuse he chose to dish out.
“Do you have no consideration for the family that—”
“Do you have no consideration for the victims of this crime, Miz Karstares?” he snapped, pausing just outside the hospital doors and turning to face her.
The doors whooshed open. Behind him, he heard Stokes groan, “Oh, Lord Jesus, take the wheel!”
“You are aware there’s a murdered child lying in the morgue here, are you not?” he asked the woman. “And a mother, brutalized in her attempt to save him, lying in a hospital bed, knowing she’s never gonna see her little boy again. Maybe you could muster up some sympathy for this family.”
He shouldn’t have said it. Kimberly Karstares wasn’t smart, but she was certainly clever. She knew she had to take a different angle than the others to get attention, and she didn’t mind stooping low. She had baited him, and he’d jumped to it like a bass to a fly.
He didn’t wait for a reaction or a response from her. He proceeded into the building, knowing the vultures weren’t allowed to follow them inside.
“You just had to, didn’t you?” Stokes grumbled as they headed for the elevators. “Dutrow’s gonna shit a brick when he sees that on the news.”
“Fuck him,” Nick snapped. “I’m tired and I’m hungry, and I’m disgusted by the base selfishness of society in general, and of that woman in particular.”
“She’s just doing her job, man.”
Nick all but pinned him to the wall with a look. “Are you sleeping with her?”
Eyes wide, Stokes held up his hands in surrender. “No!”
“By God, you’d better not be.”
“I swear!”
“Don’t let me find out different,” Nick warned, shaking a finger at him. “That will not work out for you.”
Stokes punched the button for the elevator and crossed his arms over his chest. “Not that she ain’t worth a fantasy or two,” he admitted. “Man, you seen the legs on that girl?
Whooo-eee!”
“Don’t toy with me,” Nick growled. “I’m in no mood. She wants to make her name putting my dick through a wringer. I won’t have it. And I sure as hell won’t have you help her.”
“You wound me, Nicky. Truly, you do,” Stokes said as they got on the elevator. “Here I am, practically your only friend, and you think I’d betray you for a piece of ass?”
“I think your logic system too often resides south of your belt buckle.”
“Well, that is sometimes true,” Stokes conceded. “But you have to know I’d rather be alive and miserable than die happy and satisfied. There’s always another pretty girl. There’s only one of me.”
He flashed the square white smile and thumped his own chest.
Nick rolled his eyes. “Merci Dieu.”
The deputy who had drawn guard duty on Genevieve Gauthier’s room for the evening shift stood leaning back against the wall beside her door, playing on his cell phone.
“Young Prejean!”
Prejean shot to attention, fumbling his phone in the air like a manic juggler, his eyes wide with horror that he’d been caught slacking on the job.
“How long you been here?” Nick asked.
“Since four, sir.”
“You have anything to report?”
“No. Well, Sheriff Dutrow’s fiancée came by with flowers.”
“What?”
“Sheriff Dutrow’s fiancée came by with flowers.”
“How’d you know it was Dutrow’s fiancée?” Stokes asked.
Confusion puckered Prejean’s brow. “’Cause she said so.”
“C’est sa couillon!” Nick snapped. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What?” Prejean whined, looking like a kicked puppy. “What’d I do?”
“Are you dumber than a sack of hammers?” Stokes asked. “You are here to guard the victim of a crime who was attacked by an unknown assailant, and you let someone you didn’t know go in the room?”
“But she was a lady!”
“And you don’t think a woman can be violent?” Stokes asked. “Are you a virgin or something?”
“Umm, no—”
“Jesus Christ,” Nick muttered. “Get your head out your ass, Prejean. Do not let unauthorized people in this room. How hard is that to understand? She could have been a reporter, for all you know.”
“Oh, man.” Prejean winced. “I never thought of that!”
“Well, don’t hurt yourself trying to use your brain, Einstein,” Stokes said. “Who else just happened to come by that you held the door open for? Jack the Ripper?”
“Miz Gauthier’s boss and his wife are in there now, paying their respects,” Prejean confessed. “Miz Gauthier said to let them in.”
Stokes shook his head and clamped a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “Son, you are gonna love that Walmart greeter job! They give you a cute little blue vest to wear!”
Already dismissing the deputy, Nick knocked on the door once and walked into Genevieve Gauthier’s room without waiting for permission.
Jeff Avery swung around, frowning at the sight of him. He stood at the foot of the bed, conspicuously far away from the bed’s occupant, looking uncomfortable for being anywhere near Genevieve Gauthier. His wife looked first at his face then at Nick, a little worry line tracking up between her eyebrows. She stood beside the bed in a pretty summer dress with a small bouquet of daisies clutched in her hands like an out-of-place matron of honor.
“Mr. Avery,” Nick said.
“Detective.” Avery nodded, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “My wife wanted to come by to pay our respects to Miss Gauthier.”
“I see that.”
“Janine, this is Detective Fourcade and—”
“Detective Stokes,” Stokes said, doffing his hat as he came into the room.
“—from the Sheriff’s Office.”
“I hope you’re about to say you’ve caught the animal that did this,” Janine Avery said.
“Do you have news, Detective?” Genevieve asked. Her bruises were in full colorful bloom now, and the swelling around her left eye and cheekbone stretched the skin to the point that it looked shiny and tight.
“I’m afraid not,” Nick said. “Detective Stokes and I need to ask Miss Gauthier some more questions.”
“We should be going, then,” Avery said, pouncing on the excuse, already moving to herd his wife toward the door.
“Genevieve, you call us if you need anything,” Janine Avery said, setting the flowers on the bedside stand.
“I may need to have a few more words with you tomorrow, Mr. Avery,” Nick said just to watch Avery’s reaction—a brief hot flash of panic, quickly covered.
“Whatever you need,” he said, but his hand was trembling as he went to press it to the small of his wife’s back. “You know where to find me.”
Janine Avery shot a look of concern over her shoulder as her husband all but shoved her out the door.
Stokes leaned close and murmured, “I hope he makes it to the shitter in time.”
Nick refrained from comment, though he was thinking much the same thing. Jeff Avery was going to have an uncomfortable ride home with his wife asking questions. He could easily excuse one visit from a sheriff’s detective. He was Genevieve’s boss, after all. But what might warrant a second round of questions? Avery would stew on that himself tonight with the mother of his children lying next to him.
“What questions?” Genevieve asked softly. Her good eye was wide and dark, the pupil almost swallowing the iris entirely, making Nick wonder what drugs the doctor had her on.
“Why would you have questions for Mr. Avery?” she asked.
“Just routine background stuff,” Stokes said. “Nothing for you to worry about, ma’am. My condolences on your loss.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, staring at him, her expression almost wary. “Do I know you?”
“No, ma’am. Detective Stokes. I’m one of Detective Fourcade’s partners.”
She looked to Nick again as he pulled up a stool beside the bed and sat down to be closer to eye level with her.
“It was very kind of him to come. Mr. Avery,” she said. “They’re very kind people, the Averys.”
“I understand they’ve tried to help you out,” Nick said, keeping his voice low and quiet so she had to pay close attention. “They’ve helped you get on your feet here.”
“Yes, they have.”
“Mrs. Avery—is she a friend of yours?”
“No, not really. I don’t really know her,” she said. “We aren’t in the same . . . social circles. But she’s been very kind to me and KJ. We’re her charity project,” she said with just the slightest hint of resentment.
It had to be difficult for her, Nick thought, to see everything the Averys had—a comfortable life, social standing, stability—and to know she and her boy were a project for them, a name to add to the list of their church’s outreach program, someone to give their hand-me-downs to.
“And Mr. Avery, he’s a good boss?” he asked.
“He’s been a godsend.”
“He’s taken something of a special interest in you, trying to work you into an office job?”
“He thinks I have potential. He sees more in me than most people do.”
“It’s nice to have someone believe in you,” Nick said kindly, with the barest hint of a smile. “Sometimes that’s all a person needs—for someone to believe in them, yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Avery told me you’ve had office jobs before, but you moved up here and took a job as an aide at Evangeline Oaks. That’s a noble profession, for true, caring for people, but it probably doesn’t pay all that well, I’m guessing. Why would you do that?”
“I needed a job. It’s what was available,” she said. “Why
?”
“Me, I’m just trying to get a clear picture of who you are, Miz Gauthier,” he said softly, holding her gaze with his. “Genevieve. May I call you Genevieve?”
“It sounds so pretty when you say it,” she said with a shy smile.
“It’s a beautiful name,” he said, again giving her the slightest of smiles in return.
“Thank you.”
“So, Genevieve, the more I know about you, about your life, the better I might be able to see why someone chose you to be their victim. If I can understand that, I can better discern who that person might be.”
“It’s like we’re putting together a ten-thousand-piece puzzle,” Stokes added. “But we don’t get to see what the final picture should look like until it’s almost done. That’s why we need all these little pieces that might not look like anything to anyone else—not even to you. For instance, I’m gonna ask did you notice people coming and going from your neighbor’s property? The blue house next door—Mr. Perez.”
“Last night?” she asked. “No.”
“Any night.”
“No. Why?”
“Your neighbor, Mr. Perez, has a criminal record as a drug dealer, among other things,” Stokes said. “You didn’t know that?”
“No!” she said, clearly upset by the idea. “How would I know that? I would never have moved in there if I had known that!”
“Your landlord, Mr. Carville, he didn’t mention it to you?”
“Did he know?”
“He owns that property as well. He’s well-acquainted with Mr. Perez.”
“Oh, my God,” Genevieve murmured, shifting in the bed, breathing harder and faster as her anxiety level rose. “That horrible little man! He rented that house to me and my son, knowing there was a criminal next door?”
“But you told me this morning you’ve never had any real interaction with Mr. Perez,” Nick said. “He didn’t bother you in any way.”
“He yelled at KJ that time.”
“But other than that one time . . . ?”
“No. Well . . .” She hesitated, glancing away, uncomfortable with whatever she was holding back.