by Tami Hoag
Jeff Avery.
“There’s a shock,” Nick muttered sarcastically.
“Screwing the boss,” Stokes said. “It’s a cliché for a reason.”
“Go pick him up,” Nick said. “He can come to our house for a chat this time.”
He turned again to Dixon as Stokes left the room. “I want Genevieve Gauthier’s bank records. I want to know if she’s been making any deposits other than her paycheck, anything that might look like a payoff. Mr. Happily Married Man here is ripe for blackmail, and blackmail is as good a motive for murder as any.”
“Will do,” she said, vacating his chair.
“Did you find that old arrest report from Houma PD yet?”
“Not yet.”
“How is it not in their system?”
“Well,” Dixon said, “the easy answer is someone got rid of it. The question would be, why?”
And who, Nick thought, taking his seat. He frowned at the video still playing on his monitor.
“I did speak to someone at the Terrebonne Parish DA’s office,” Dixon said. “He told me if the court records don’t show the drug charge, then there was no drug charge, period. They didn’t cut a deal with her.”
“And they don’t have a copy of the original arrest report?”
Dixon rolled her eyes. “If they do, I’m sure they’ll get right on that for me, lowly peon from another parish.”
Nick waved her off. “Go see about her bank records. And her cell phone records, too.”
“I’m already on the phone records. We should have them this morning.”
“Good. Is there anything else on this drive I want to see?”
She leaned over and gave the mouse a couple of moves and clicks. “I don’t think want is the right word. It’s from the night of the murder.”
The scene was from the bathroom camera. Genevieve, not sober, trying to deal with her son at bath time. KJ fussing and whining. Genevieve arguing with him, grabbing him roughly by the arm, shaking him. The boy sobbing. Genevieve sobbing.
It was hard to watch. There on his screen was the boy Nick had only seen as a corpse, alive, breathing, having a tantrum. Being a child. And his mother, struggling to handle him, no one to help her, living in a shit hole, drugging herself to cope. Losing her temper. Resorting to violence.
In the end, the boy wrenched out of her grasp and ran from the room, and Genevieve sank down onto the floor next to the bathtub, crying.
Hours later, KJ Gauthier would be dead. Stabbed to death. And his mother would run the wrong way down a road to nowhere, looking for help that would be way too late in coming.
He clicked his way out of the video and went to his photos from the crime scene. He looked them over one by one. The surreal portraits of a dead boy. What might have been a partial shoe print in blood—a running shoe, he guessed. Not enough of a print to draw any conclusions as to size or make. What might have been a partial handprint on the wall.
Could he see Jefferson Avery stabbing a little boy? Why would he? What would be the point? Even if Genevieve had been blackmailing him, threatening to tell his proper wife and the mother of his beautiful children about the affair, why kill the boy? Why kill the boy and leave Genevieve alive?
He couldn’t see Jeff Avery as a killer. Avery was an average man with a desk job and a wife and kids. The extent of his secret life was a sweaty tumble with a girl from work, and guaranteed, he would be mortified to see the video. He was probably at that very moment trying not to shit himself at the idea of being formally questioned by a couple of hard-ass detectives. He couldn’t see Jeff Avery choosing to murder anyone.
Murder was generally depressingly simple. Person A hated Person B bad enough to want them off the planet. Motives were basic. Money, sex, drugs, revenge. But why did anyone kill a child?
Child predators killed children because they liked it.
He had one dead child and one missing child. But they were different in every way—different ages, different sexes, one from town, one from the country. The only thing they had in common was each other. So why would someone want either of them dead, let alone both of them?
Genevieve said Nora had not been at the Florette house that night when she picked up KJ. Hours later, Genevieve was high and fighting with her son. Hours later, KJ Gauthier was dead.
Who killed a child?
A parent.
Suddenly, the kitten launched itself up his leg from under the desk. Nick gently extricated the tiny claws from his pants leg and cradled the animal in one hand. The kitten curled up against him and began to purr. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of the vibration against his chest. This was what innocence felt like—to have absolute trust for no good reason. He could have killed the creature with one hand, but it pressed against him in absolute contentment. Like a child.
“Hey, Nicky!”
Stokes’s voice pulled him back to the moment.
“I got Avery in the box.”
Sighing, Nick set the kitten in his in-box and got up, dusting the cat hair off his tie.
“Let’s go scare the hell out of him.”
* * *
* * *
“MAN, HE ABOUT ran backward when he saw I was taking him into the jail,” Stokes said, chuckling.
They stood in the darkened observation room adjacent to where Jeff Avery waited impatiently, watching him through the one-way glass. He couldn’t sit still. He moved and shifted and fidgeted. He got up to pace and sat back down.
“Why was I taking him there? Why couldn’t we just go into an office? What about the Sheriff’s Office? He’s suddenly remembered they go to the same church,” Stokes added in an aside.
“Surely, there must be some mistake, Officer,” he said in his mocking-white-people voice. “I’m a white dude who goes to Calvary Baptist with Sheriff Dutrow. No jail for me!”
“Ass-pucker level: eight,” Nick remarked.
“At least. The first thing he wanted to do when we got in the building was run to the men’s room. I wouldn’t go in there for a while if I was you. Just sayin’.”
Avery got up again, checked his watch, rolled up the sleeves of his blue dress shirt, and paced a little more.
“Take the monitor in,” Nick said.
He flipped on the speaker and watched as Stokes wheeled the cart with the monitor and laptop into the interview room.
“What’s taking so long?” Avery demanded. “I’m a busy man. I can’t be this long away from my office. I have an inspection to prepare for. Where is Fourcade?”
“He’ll be along directly,” Stokes said, plugging in the equipment, setting everything up just so.
“I don’t understand why he still has a job,” Avery went on. “I saw him on the news last night tackling the poor father of that autistic girl. I don’t understand why Sheriff Dutrow hasn’t fired him. He’s incompetent and unhinged!”
“I’d keep that opinion to myself if I was you,” Stokes counseled. “Don’t antagonize him. Nicky doesn’t take that well. That will not work out for you.”
Avery looked alarmed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just sayin’,” Stokes said, going for the door. He tipped his porkpie hat and flashed a big white grin. “Good luck to you, Mr. Avery!”
He left Avery and came back to the observation room chuckling. “Poor guy’s sweating like a whore in church.”
“‘Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.’”
“Translating your fancy philosopher: Married guys—keep it in your pants!”
Nick’s phone vibrated. He checked the screen. Dutrow. And so the countdown began, he thought. Ignoring the call, he scooped up his props.
Avery jumped back as Nick opened the door and walked into the small interview room, his expression sober and dark. He placed a thick fil
e folder on the small table along with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“Mr. Avery,” he began quietly. “I’m disappointed to have to see you again.”
“You know I’m here voluntarily,” Avery said defensively.
Nick arched a brow in amusement. “Are you?”
“And I certainly don’t see why we have to be meeting in the jail, for God’s sake!”
“Well, it’s convenient, isn’t it?”
“For who?”
Nick just looked at him, expressionless, letting the implication make itself.
Avery turned a little gray.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here at all,” he said. “I don’t know anything about what happened to Genevieve. I’ve told you that. That hasn’t changed.”
“You don’t know what I know.”
Nick pulled out a chair, sat down, and tapped a finger absently on the file folder. The sound was like the steady drip, drip, drip of a faucet in the otherwise quiet room.
Avery’s eyes fixed on the folder. “I would sooner deal directly with Sheriff Dutrow.”
“Would you?”
“I find your manner unnerving, to be frank. And I know Sheriff Dutrow from our church—Calvary Baptist. I would be more comfortable speaking with him.”
A slow smile spread across Nick’s face. He held Avery’s gaze as if in a tractor beam.
“Well, you see, Mr. Avery, I don’t care what you want, and I don’t care about your church. Me, I believe organized religion was created as a panacea for the masses and a way to control the population of any given kingdom.
“People are easily manipulated by the notion of an omnipotent entity and the robed men who allegedly enforce his rules on the common folk,” he said. “Curiously, in my experience, this seldom prevents anyone from doing exactly the thing they desire most, no matter how egregious. They can always repent and start over; therefore, sin is conveniently without actual consequences.”
“You don’t believe in heaven and hell, then?” Avery asked. “Hell is a mighty powerful consequence.”
“Does one have to belong to a religion to believe in an afterlife? No, I think not. But if you need the threat of burning in eternal damnation to do the right thing, you don’t lack religion, Mr. Avery. You lack morality. Churches are just chock-full of people who preach and pray on Sunday and sin every night of the week. Which brings me to my case in point.”
He rose from his chair and went to the cart. “You should come around here, Mr. Avery,” he suggested. “So you can have a better view.”
“View of what?” Avery asked, coming closer cautiously.
“I call this Exhibit A,” Nick said, clicking the Play icon to start the video. He turned the volume all the way up.
“A,” he said, stepping back and crossing his arms, “for adultery.”
He watched Jeff Avery’s face as his expression went from confusion to apprehension to a sick realization as he watched the video.
“Oh, my God,” he murmured, his face going pale and then flushing red. “Oh, dear God.”
“See?” Nick said. “Now you ask forgiveness, and all is well. That doesn’t work for me, but then, I have always had a punitive streak in me.”
“Turn it off!” Avery shouted as the voices from the video moaned and panted and called out.
“And there you are, taking the Lord’s name in vain while breaking a commandment,” Nick pointed out. “That’s gotta be double strikes against you, yeah? I don’t know about the Baptists, but that would have been a whole lotta Hail Marys for me back in the day. That’s for true.”
“Please. Turn it off,” Avery begged, turning his back to the monitor. He was breathing like he’d run a hard mile.
“Why?” Nick asked. “Are you ashamed?”
“Yes, of course I’m ashamed!”
“Cheating on that pretty wife, those beautiful children.”
“It only happened once! I didn’t mean for it—”
“You look pretty purposeful here to me, Jeff,” Nick said over the impassioned grunts and groans coming from the speaker. He sat back against the edge of the table, shook a cigarette from the pack next to the file folder, and took his time lighting it.
“Jesus Christ, make it stop!” Avery shouted. He wheeled around and shoved the cart, no doubt meaning to tip it over dramatically. But it simply rolled away and bumped harmlessly into the wall beneath the one-way glass.
“Where did you get that video?” he demanded.
“Mmmmm,” Nick hummed, taking a long drag on his cigarette and blowing the smoke up at the ceiling. “Now, here’s the part you’re really not gonna like, Jeff. This video is playing On Demand all over the globe on multiple Internet porn sites.”
Avery’s face went ashen with panic. “What? No!”
“’Fraid so. Me, I don’t see the appeal of watching such things, but apparently a great many people do. Genevieve’s landlord, he had cameras hidden in the bedroom and bathroom. On the upside, you might be able to sue him for a cut of the proceeds. Get yourself a screen credit, at least.”
“Oh, my God, this is a disaster!” Avery cried, clamping his hands around his head as if to keep it from coming off. He didn’t seem to know if he should stand or sit or collapse. The underarms of his shirt were soaked dark with sweat. “This is fucking horrible! I’ll lose my job for this! Janine will leave me!”
“But if you hadn’t gotten caught, all would be well, yeah?”
“No! I regretted it immediately. It was never going to happen again.”
“How did it happen in the first place?”
“Her car wouldn’t start. I gave her a ride home. She was depressed because of the car and her finances, and she started to cry—”
“And you happened to be in her bedroom at the time? How strange.”
“I just wanted to comfort her. I felt badly for her. She’s a sweet girl, and she’s had it rough, and one thing just led to another . . .”
“Where was KJ?” Nick asked.
“He wasn’t there.”
“Where was he?”
Tears rose in Jeff Avery’s eyes as he struggled with the weight of his guilt.
“At a sleepover,” he said quietly, his voice thick. “At my house.”
“So,” Nick said, “while your devoted wife was looking after the boy, you were busy fucking his mother.”
“Don’t say it like that!”
“Why?” Nick asked, pushing to his feet, walking into Jeff Avery’s space. He backed him up against the wall and spoke just inches from his face. “Is that too ugly for you, Jeff?”
“Yes,” Avery whispered.
“You’re a piece of work, you are, Mr. Happily Married Man.”
He backed away, disgusted, and Avery seemed to slump against the wall.
“When did this happen?” Nick asked.
“Last Friday.”
“Genevieve, did she think it might happen again? Did she want that? A relationship?”
“I told her it couldn’t happen again. I told her it wasn’t right. I have a family. She has her son . . .”
And now she doesn’t, Nick thought, shaking his head. No matter the intent Jeff Avery put to it, he was a man in a position of power, a man in a position to make Genevieve Gauthier’s life exponentially better, and he had given her the brief hope that could happen, and then he’d taken that hope away. Because she had a child.
“Does my wife have to hear about this?” Avery asked. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Oh, you’ve already done that,” Nick said. “You think she couldn’t smell that on you last night at the hospital? And yet she went there to be kind to your mistress—”
“She’s not my mis—”
“You can only hope she’ll be that forgiving to you.” He stubbed out his cigarette and sighed. �
��You’re free to go, Mr. Avery. Being an adulterous ass is not against the law. It will, however, fuck you in divorce court. Detective Stokes will take you back to your office.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Annie’s lip was throbbing, and her nose felt askew. She looked at herself in the visor mirror as she sat in her car across the street from the Florette house. She was beginning to look like a Picasso painting, she thought, though she had carefully felt her nose and determined it wasn’t broken. The swelling made it look worse than it was. She was probably going to get a black eye out of the deal.
It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last. She’d had worse on the job, having been drugged and shot and pushed down a staircase, among other things, over the years. A little punch in the face by the sheriff’s fiancée was nothing. She was more concerned with what to do about Sharon Spicer.
There wasn’t a doubt in Annie’s mind that Dutrow had hurt her, but she had no proof. As she had regained her composure, Sharon had pulled the protective curtain around her and shut Annie out entirely. She had politely refused to talk about what might have happened the night before. She had politely refused the suggestion of getting her arm checked out by a doctor. She had politely refused to allow Annie to speak to Cameron.
None of her behavior came as a surprise to Annie—with the exception of that right hook to the kisser. Women like Sharon, who prided herself on her position and her self-control and her image, had an especially difficult time admitting abuse and asking for help. She feared the embarrassment of having people know her perfect life was nothing but a beautiful shiny apple with a rotten core. She probably feared what she stood to lose—her home, her standing, financial stability. She had undoubtedly already rationalized her fiancé’s behavior in order to cope.
It was a difficult thing to stand by and watch, made doubly so by the fact that the perpetrator was the sheriff. Annie’s stomach turned at the prospect of having to take action. Kelvin Dutrow was the most powerful man in the parish. He could end her career. He could end her husband’s career. But he couldn’t be above the law, not even if he was the law.