The Boy

by Tami Hoag

  I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. He had used the John Burroughs quote as a mantra since he had first read it as a teenager.

  Ironically, it was the chaos of the man-made world that provided him a vocation and a living, but it was nature that fed his soul.

  He had left Remy’s, gone home, and grabbed an hour’s fitful sleep to at least in part recharge his energy for what he suspected would become a long night, if they were lucky. His mind had refused to clear, scenes from the day tumbling through his head like colored glass in a kaleidoscope, always coming to rest on the image of the Gauthier boy dead on the floor in a pool of blood, that image just one click away from the image of Justin asleep in bed with his teddy bear.

  He loved his son, loved being a father. He welcomed and embraced the responsibility that came with being a parent. Not every parent did. For some, it came as an unwelcome surprise, something they had failed to consider during the nine months of waiting for their child to come into the world.

  He saw it all the time with girls too young to be mothers. They wanted someone to love, someone to love them, and blocked out the notion that parenting was a job until it was too late. Genevieve Gauthier might have been one of those girls. She had been nineteen or twenty when KJ was born—not a child herself, but young and single. Did she regret the choices she’d made? Had she resented the result of those choices?

  Annie was right, though. They had no evidence Genevieve didn’t want her son. She had no record—neither official nor anecdotal—of abusing the boy. Nick had stood there in the morgue that morning and listened to Genevieve’s sobs, too. But he also knew that grief and guilt were not mutually exclusive. People who murdered family members and loved ones were often very remorseful after. A grievance that built to a head and exploded in a moment led to a lifetime of regret, but regret didn’t change or excuse what could never be undone.

  If that was the answer the evidence led them to—that Genevieve had killed her son—it wouldn’t come as a shock. Not even to Annie, as much as she didn’t want it to be true.

  The idea rubbed raw the wounds that had never completely healed for her after her mother’s death. Without an answer to the fundamental question of why her mother had taken her own life, Annie had never found a way to completely close those wounds. Because of that, a part of her would always be that abandoned little girl. Just as a small corner of Nick’s heart would forever be a seventeen-year-old boy feeling heartsick and impotent at the loss of his sister and the disintegration of his family.

  He kicked himself for not thinking about that. The fact that as investigators they had to consider the possibility of Genevieve’s guilt didn’t excuse him so carelessly running over his wife’s feelings. He would sooner have cut himself to the bone as hurt her, even unintentionally. His strongest instinct was to protect her from harm.

  He had never imagined himself as a husband or father before Annie. He couldn’t imagine himself as anything else since. Their life together meant everything to him. Before their summer had gone to hell with Fanchon’s stroke and his involvement in the Theriot case, they had been talking about having another baby, expanding their family now that Justin had started school. Now they couldn’t go a day without an argument, and his job was hanging by a thread.

  Maybe when these cases were cleared they could go away. They could take Justin and go down to the Gulf for a few days of solitude and get themselves back on the rails.

  Once these cases were cleared . . .

  He checked his position, sank the pole down into the mud, and pushed the pirogue forward.

  The lights were on in the Gauthier house as he steered to a vantage point on the far side of the road. He sidled the boat up parallel to the bank and tied off on a young tree only as thick as his forearm. Anyone on the road would pass within a dozen feet of him and be none the wiser. Hidden from easy sight by nature’s lace of scrub and young trees hung with vines, he would have been hard to spot in daylight. At night, dressed in black head to toe, his face smeared with black grease, he was as close to invisible as he could be.

  He dug into his backpack for his phone and, holding it inside the bag to hide the light, texted a message to Stokes. He checked his sight lines and settled in to wait.

  Across the road, Ossie Compton sat in his cruiser in the Gauthier driveway, silhouetted from one side by the porch light and from the back by the light over the door on the ramshackle garage.

  At the property next door, the only light visible in Roddie Perez’s house was the flickering, ever-changing light from the big-screen TV in the front room.

  A set of headlights appeared down the gravel road, coming from town. When the car was within fifty yards, the deputy driving the cruiser hit the roof lights—ostensibly to signal his counterpart in front of the Gauthier house. The lights rolled, red and blue as the car turned in at the Gauthier driveway and pulled up just to Compton’s left.

  The deputies got out of their respective vehicles and stood leaning against their open car doors, talking. From where he sat, Nick could hear the sounds of their voices, the tones and inflections, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. He pulled his night-vision binoculars out of his backpack and trained them on Roddie Perez’s dining room window, letting his eyes adjust to the green glow as he waited.

  The plan was a gamble, but one with not much of a downside, other than loss of sleep. Finding Perez with the slumlord Carville at Club Cayenne had rubbed Nick’s instincts the wrong way. Bad enough having a scumbag, drug-dealer ex-con living next door to a victim, but tie that character to a piece of shit like Roy Carville, landlord and flesh merchant, and that was a recipe for nothing good at all.

  It could have gone down just the way Nick had suggested to Carville. Tired of waiting for his rent, wanting to coerce Genevieve into taking her clothes off for his profit, Carville might have tapped Perez to scare the girl. Perez might have gone in through the boy’s window, waking the child, and the situation spiraled out of control . . .

  But why would he go to the trouble of climbing in the boy’s window? Surely, Carville had keys to the house. Why not go in through a door and make it look like a break-in after the fact? And why would Perez not have then killed Genevieve, too, if there had been any chance of her pointing the finger at him for murdering her son?

  Nick didn’t like the loose ends, but even as he questioned them, Roddie Perez stepped up to his dining room window and looked out in the direction of the Gauthier house.

  Setting down the binoculars, Nick reached into his backpack again and sent a text to Ossie Compton. Seconds later, Compton and the other deputy slammed the doors on their cruisers and went up to the house. They took down the yellow barrier tape from the front door slowly and carefully, folding it up neatly, as if they were planning to reuse it.

  Roddie Perez watched them from his dining room.

  Nick watched Perez. At twenty-five yards he cut a distinguishable black-and-white shape in the field of green light. He wore a white undershirt. His pants were several shades darker. He held a pair of binoculars to his eyes. That was as much detail as Nick could make out.

  The deputies went inside the house and through the residence, turning out the lights, reappearing on the front porch less than five minutes later. Compton stepped back inside, and the porch light went out. The pair sauntered back to their vehicles like men in no particular hurry to go anywhere. Compton drove out first. The second car made a lazy U-turn half on the lawn and half on the driveway, and followed.

  Perez remained at the window, watching as the taillights of the cruisers grew smaller and smaller on the way back to town. Then he backed out of sight.

  Now the wait began.

  The thunder rumbled closer.

  Would Perez take the bait?

  He wasn’t stupid. A lifetime of criminal behavior had sharpened his sense of animal cunning, at the very le
ast. Already a two-time loser on felony convictions, he was liable to be especially wary of a trap. But he wasn’t a genius, either. And if he had for any reason left any trace of himself in Genevieve Gauthier’s home, this was his window of opportunity to get it back or erase it.

  Then again, he had to know that if they had anything on him already Nick would have gotten his search warrant and Perez would have been sitting in jail tonight instead of sitting in his easy chair watching his big-screen TV. He would know there would be no drugs left in the house for him to steal, if that might have been a motivation—unless he knew Genevieve had a secret stash somewhere the crime scene people wouldn’t have looked.

  Entirely possible, Nick conceded, based on his low opinion of Keith Kemp. Stokes had supposedly kept his eye on the CSIs after Dutrow had thrown Nick out of the house, but Stokes was only as diligent as he wanted to be. He generally had no objection to the crime scene unit doing what he thought of as tedious scut work. Over the years, he had consistently expressed his impatience at Nick’s obsessive attention to detail at a scene.

  Left to his own devices, Stokes was an average detective at best and lazy at worst. Supervised and motivated, he could rise to the occasion. Which had he been last night while Nick had been outside pacing in the yard?

  Impatient with his own paranoia, he dismissed the question. He had walked the scene himself that morning before heading to the hospital. If anything had been overlooked by Kemp or Stokes, he should have caught it himself then.

  He thought back to the night before, calling Kemp on not picking up the tangle of colored thread he had seen on the carpet, his irritation with the man stirring anew. Kemp, who had been a cop himself, should have known better.

  Nick called to mind the photograph he had seen on Dutrow’s wall of fame—Dutrow and Kemp in uniform, teaching self-defense to women. He wondered when and why Kemp had made the switch to working crime scenes. He wasn’t old enough to have reached retirement and make a second career as a CSI. He certainly didn’t seem like the kind of detail-oriented, science-minded individual to make that choice out of love for the job.

  He and Dutrow had to have been tight friends for Kemp to follow him to Bayou Breaux to work a job as unsworn personnel.

  That thought raised another question. Since Dutrow had created the crime scene unit from scratch and could staff it as he wished, why hadn’t he hired Kemp on as a deputy and given the unit to him? Why would Kemp have left the Houma PD, where he had to have built years toward a pension?

  The sound of a truck engine roaring to life broke Nick from his musings. Perez rolled out of his driveway and turned toward town. Nick hunkered down in the pirogue as the four-by-four crept past, the big tires crunching over the gravel and crushed shell. It stopped and idled at the end of Genevieve Gauthier’s driveway. Thirty seconds . . . sixty seconds . . . ninety seconds . . . Nick stayed still, his breathing shallow, listening for any indication Perez was leaving the vehicle.

  Finally the truck inched forward, slowly picking up speed as it headed toward town.

  Nick sat up and watched the taillights disappear, then reached into his backpack and texted Stokes: Perez headed your way.

  Headed where? Back to Club Cayenne? On to some other dubious meeting? The deputies on the drug task force claimed Perez had been keeping his nose clean, but Nick’s gut told him the con was getting money from somewhere, and it probably wasn’t honest labor. The big TV, the laptop computer, the tricked-out four-by-four, all spoke of disposable income.

  Stokes texted back: Tailing. Just minutes later, Nick’s phone vibrated, Stokes’s name appearing on the screen.

  “Coming back your way, Nicky. He just drove around a couple blocks. He’s sniffing for a trap.”

  “Did he make you?”

  “I don’t think so. If he did, he didn’t react.”

  “Hang back and wait for my signal.”

  “Roger that, boss.”

  Even as Nick ended the call, he could hear the distant approach of a vehicle between rumbles of thunder drawing ever closer. He slid down once again, crouching low in the pirogue. Once again, Perez slowed the truck as he came past the Gauthier house, then drove on by.

  “Merde . . . Come on, you ugly son of a bitch,” Nick murmured, watching as the four-by-four turned in at Perez’s own driveway.

  The first fat raindrops began to fall. Lightning crackled across the sky.

  The truck’s headlights and taillights went dark, and the truck sat idling. Three minutes . . . five minutes . . . The rain came a little harder.

  Perez was thinking about it, weighing his options.

  Ten minutes . . .

  The lightning and thunder came closer together. The rain came harder still. Nick paid no attention to the elements. He made no move to cover himself. He kept the binoculars raised to his eyes, watching, trying to will Perez to move.

  Fifteen minutes . . .

  The truck shifted gears and, without turning on the lights, backed out of the driveway and turned north again. It rolled past the Gauthier driveway and then backed in, backing all the way to the garage area.

  The driver’s door opened and closed. Through the night-vision binoculars he could see the blurred figure rush toward the back door of the house.

  Nick texted Stokes and then waited until he caught a glimpse of the briefest flash of light inside the house. Then he slipped from the pirogue and crept up the bank. Staying as low to the ground as he could, he dashed across the road. The rain was coming in earnest now, providing an extra layer of cover in between flashes of lightning as bright as day.

  If Perez saw him—when Perez saw him—what would he do? Run or fight? Breaking and entering was a felony. Burglary was a felony. Assaulting a law enforcement officer was a felony. He would be going back to Angola—one of the worst hellholes of a prison in America—for the rest of his time on earth.

  His best bet would be murder. If he could kill Nick and make a run for it, he would have a slim chance of escaping. If he was apprehended, he would get the death penalty, but plenty of men who had endured sentences in Angola would have gladly taken that option.

  Soaked to the bone, Nick ran along the north side of the house, crouching below window level, weapon drawn and ready. As he reached the back of the house, he pressed against the clapboard siding and slowly peered around the corner, leading with his gun. As the lightning flashed, he had a clear view of the back porch and, beyond that, Perez’s truck.

  The screen door swayed in the wind, half-open. Nick made a dash for the porch, praying whatever Perez had gone in for was keeping him deeper into the interior of the house. Making entry would be his most vulnerable moment.

  And then he was up the steps and into the tiny, cramped kitchen. A bright burst of lightning illuminated the kitchen and the dining room and front room beyond. No sign of Roddie.

  Thunder boomed hard enough to rattle the old windows. Staying along the perimeter of the room, Nick made his way to the hall that led to the bedrooms.

  Stokes should be in the yard by now, he thought, blocking Roddie’s truck from its escape route.

  The beam of Perez’s flashlight bobbed in the room at the end of the hall—Genevieve’s bedroom.

  Nick moved quietly on the balls of his feet, his Glock out in front of him, aimed chest-high.

  “Goddamn it!”

  The curse was followed by the sound of something metallic hitting the wood floor in the bedroom.

  Nick crept closer to the half-open door, taking in the sounds of mumbling and rummaging. What was he looking for? Drugs? Money? Would he risk life in prison for the meager few bucks a girl like Genevieve might have stashed in her underwear drawer?

  Glass bottles collided. Something else fell to the floor.

  Perfume bottles, Nick thought. The clutter a woman kept on her dresser.

  Genevieve’s dresser was through the door
and to the left.

  He moved into the doorway—the door acting as a shield—and peered around the edge of it.

  Lightning brightened the room, showing Perez standing on the dresser, his flashlight sandwiched between his cheek and shoulder as he reached into a cold air return vent high on the wall.

  “Whatcha got there, Roddie?” Nick asked, stepping into the room, flicking on the ceiling light.

  Perez swung around, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The flashlight fell off his shoulder, and he grabbed for it with one hand and then the other like a drunken juggler. Catching one end of it, he hurled the thing in Nick’s direction, losing his balance in the process. The flashlight fell wide of its target as Perez slipped and slid in a crazy, scrambling tap dance on the dresser. One foot stepped into space, and down he went, hitting the floor with a bone-jarring thud.

  “I’ll tell you whatcha got, Roddie,” Nick said, standing over him, pointing the gun down at his face. “You got the right to remain silent.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  I think I got a concussion,” Perez complained, squinting hard. “Y’all gotta take me to the emergency room.”

  He sat slumped over on a straight chair, his hands cuffed behind his back. Outside the bedroom window, the rain was still coming down in sheets. A cruiser sat in the driveway, waiting for the storm to let up before they loaded Perez to take him to jail.

  “Don’t you have to have a brain to get a concussion?” Stokes asked. “I don’t see much evidence of that.”

  “Ha-ha,” Perez said. “You’re a laugh riot, you are. You won’t be laughing when I sue your ass for negligence.”

  “That joke’s on you, asshole,” Stokes said. “I’m a cop. I ain’t got a pot to piss in nor a window to pitch it out of. Go on and waste your own money suing me. You’re gonna die in prison just the same. Here you are, Mr. Two-Time Loser, breaking and entering—”