by Tami Hoag
FIFTY-ONE
This is Owen Onofrio, KJUN, all talk, all the time. Our topic tonight: What the heck is going on in Partout Parish? Two murders and two missing children in three days! Let’s talk about it, folks!”
Kelvin snapped off the radio in favor of the sound of the windshield wipers, not in the mood for the opinions of people who sat around this time of night calling in to radio shows. Lonely, malcontent, unintelligent gossipmongers, no doubt. House-bound conspiracy nuts. He shuddered to think what they would have to say after the goings-on in the park tonight. Better that he didn’t listen. Better that he assumed the worst and took the appropriate measures to regain control of the situation.
He drove toward the house, working to formulate a plan as he went. He needed to right his ship and show his constituents that he was in control and that he could assure their safety. How could they feel safe if the sheriff’s own future stepson was missing? How could they have confidence in him if his own fiancée accused him of not caring?
He was furious with Sharon for the way she had conducted herself at the park. She should have come to him directly when she realized Cameron was missing. She should have had sense enough to remain calm at the scene, to stand back and let him handle the situation.
The community looked up to him as a patriarchal figure, a calm, confident, wise leader who would keep them from harm. Now he would have to reestablish that image, thanks to Sharon and her boy.
As much as he wanted to be rid of the pair of them tonight, Kelvin realized now was not the time. He couldn’t have these relationships come apart at the seams now. He needed everything to appear normal and healthy. Sharon should continue with her volunteer work. The wedding plans should appear to go forward. They would keep up appearances until such time they could gracefully and quietly stop—or not, he thought.
He needed to cool his temper and consider this with a clear head. He had no desire to start over with the time-consuming hassle of dating—a process that would be especially fraught for him as sheriff. With Sharon, he knew what he was getting. They were already comfortable with their arrangement. If he had to start over, he would have to tread carefully through the minefield of local hopefuls, lest he get snagged by another Genevieve Gauthier. Needy girls, greedy girls, girls willing to get themselves pregnant to snag a meal ticket—they would all come out of the woodwork. He had no interest in sorting through them.
Sharon had been upset this evening, but she would calm herself once Cameron came home. She was probably already regretting her foolish, hysterical behavior in the park.
Kelvin would expect an apology from her, of course, for embarrassing him. And there would have to be some consequences. He would insist that Cameron go away to school. Now was the time to use his leverage for that end. Sharon was a practical woman. She enjoyed the pretty house and the public standing that came with being his fiancée. She would see the need to give in to him on the point of the boy.
It would all work out, Kelvin thought. He was feeling confident.
The situation with Fourcade, on the other hand, was another matter, he thought darkly. He couldn’t continue to tolerate a man who had no respect for him. And he certainly couldn’t have Fourcade spewing stories to the press about Kemp and things that had gone on in Houma years ago.
Fourcade would have to be dealt with. He had come damned close tonight. No one would have questioned his account of events. Fourcade’s reputation preceded him. But he hadn’t been able to find the nerve to pull the trigger. He’d never shot a man before. It grated on him to think he had hesitated. All his big talk as a man of action, and he hadn’t made good on it.
He drove past the Florette house, making a mental note to call on the mother in the morning as soon as she had ID’d her son’s body. With the daughter still missing and the son dead, the media focus would be heavy on the family. He would offer his condolences and assure them justice would be done.
It stood to reason that the two cases were connected. If both could be resolved at once, half of Kelvin’s public relations problems would go away. That would leave him with the matter of the Gauthier home invasion and murder, which could be put off to the possible drug connections of a troubled young woman, or on the woman herself.
He was feeling much calmer as he turned onto Blue Cypress. A deputy sat in a cruiser at the curb in front of the house. Not interested in getting soaked making small talk, Kelvin pulled alongside, ran down his window, and dismissed the young man for the evening with a quick sentence.
A black SUV he didn’t recognize sat parked in the driveway. Kelvin frowned, easing his Suburban alongside it. Sharon seldom entertained friends during the week. Perhaps this was a woman from one of her committees or someone she had called for moral support after the scene in the park.
He liked that second idea not at all. He would have to have a serious talk with her about discretion. He didn’t want her having a confidante. He didn’t want to have to worry about her confessing details of their private life to some gossipy woman friend. He was still upset that Annie Broussard had witnessed the tensions of the night before. Clearly, she had voiced her concerns to her husband, and he now felt free to make remarks about the abuse of women. Kelvin would be glad to be rid of the pair of them. The sooner, the better.
Annoyed at having to park farther away from the door than should have been necessary, he got out of his vehicle and made a dash for the front door.
“Sharon?” he called. He shrugged out of his rain slicker and hung it on the coat tree in the foyer.
She didn’t answer. He didn’t think that much of it. She was probably in the kitchen with the owner of the SUV. He could smell the coffee. They were probably working on the details of some project, the kitchen table strewn with paperwork.
There were no lights on in the living room, which struck him as odd. Sharon liked the house staged—lamps on in the evening, seating areas arranged invitingly with throws and pillows, stacks of books or magazines on the side tables. It didn’t matter if no one actually used the room. It was the suggestion that counted. The house was ever-ready for a magazine photo shoot.
“Sharon?”
“Kelvin?” she called from the back of the house.
She sounded hesitant. Understandable, he thought. She was anticipating him being angry, and rightly so.
“Whose car is that in the driveway?” he asked.
She came from the kitchen partway into the dining room, a dish towel in her hands. The dining room was dark as well, leaving Sharon lit from behind and on one side, half of her face light and half dark.
“What car?” she asked, her expression oddly blank.
“The car in the driveway. The black SUV.”
“Oh, that deputy brought me home,” she said.
“And I sent him on his way,” Kelvin said. “I mean the black SUV in the driveway.”
“I don’t know,” she said stupidly, twisting the towel in her hands.
“How can you not know, Sharon?” he asked, irritated. “There’s a strange car in the driveway. Who else is in the house? Did someone bring Cameron home?”
“No, he’s not home,” she said, her voice getting shaky.
Kelvin heaved an impatient sigh. “I expect he’s hiding somewhere, sulking.”
“He doesn’t want to be here,” she said.
“Well, that’s gonna work out fine for all of us,” Kelvin muttered.
* * *
* * *
“SHARON?”
Dutrow’s voice in another room brought Annie out of her trance.
She never would have counted on him to save her, she thought. If he knew she was here, dying on his kitchen floor, would he just leave? Would he save his fiancée over her? He would do whatever was best for himself.
For a moment she lay still, listening to her own breathing, which sounded shallow and labored. She could feel something w
et inching down her neck. Blood, she supposed. Whatever Sharon had hit her with had cut her.
“Whose car is that in the driveway?” Dutrow asked.
Annie wanted to muster up the strength to call out, but she couldn’t seem to pull it off. Her thought process was scrambled. Her mouth felt dry. Her breath caught in her throat like a crust of bread. The cry for help turned to ash on her tongue.
You’ve gone and done it this time, girl, she thought, fear stirring in her chest. Her brain was throbbing like it wanted out of her skull. Consciousness kept trying to fade away. She felt like her being might abandon her body at any moment.
“I don’t know,” Sharon said.
“How can you not know, Sharon?” Dutrow said irritably.
Just inches from her fingertips, Annie’s phone began to vibrate with an incoming call. The screen lit up, but she couldn’t seem to raise her head to see the name of the caller. Nick, she thought—she hoped. He would be wondering where she was, thinking she should have been done here by now. He hadn’t wanted her to come to this house by herself. She should have listened to him.
She took as deep a breath as she could and tried one more time to reach those extra few inches. If only she could touch the screen . . .
* * *
* * *
“OH!” SHARON SAID. “It must belong to that detective! Detective Broussard. She came by to ask about Cameron.”
“She’s here now?” Kelvin asked, his temper growing shorter. Now he would have to get rid of Annie Broussard before he could have his conversation with Sharon. Broussard, who had already decided he was abusive and had relayed that to her husband. She would try to linger and meddle, as she had the night before.
“No,” Sharon said. “She left.”
“How did she leave without her car?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she got a ride with someone.”
“Why would she leave her car?”
“I don’t know, Kelvin!” Sharon snapped. “Maybe she’s outside, looking for Cameron. My son is missing! Do you understand that? And a boy was murdered tonight!”
“It wasn’t Cameron,” Kelvin said flatly, already weary of Sharon’s emotions. “I’d like a cup of that coffee I smell. We need to talk about what happened in the park tonight, Sharon.”
She blocked him as he went to step past her, clutching her dish towel to her like a security blanket.
“Why don’t you go sit down in the family room, Kelvin?” she suggested. “I’ll bring it to you.”
There was something not right about her demeanor. That thought raised a small flag in the back of his mind, but he was too tired and impatient to think about it.
“I’ll have it in the kitchen.”
“I have such a mess in there!” she said with a strangely hysterical little laugh. “I was just cleaning up.”
She was lying. She wasn’t good at it. Her eyes went too wide. She forgot to blink. Her mouth moved like a fish’s, waiting for words that never materialized in her brain.
“I don’t have the patience for this tonight, Sharon,” he snapped. “Is there someone in the kitchen? Who’s in there with you?”
“No! No one!”
“Don’t you lie to me!” he snapped.
She cried out as he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her in close, leaning down over her, enjoying the way it made him feel—the exact opposite of the way he had felt in his office with Fourcade stalking him and taking away his weapon. He didn’t have to feel that way now. Now he was the strong one, the intimidating one.
“Do you never learn?!” he snarled in her face. “Don’t lie to me!”
“Kelvin, you’re hurting me!” she sobbed, shrinking downward.
He yanked her past him into the dining room and let her go. “She’s still here, isn’t she? Broussard?”
Jesus Christ, he thought, Broussard was in the next room, listening to all of this—
“Kelvin, no!” Sharon cried, hurrying behind him as he headed toward the kitchen. “I have to explain! You won’t understand!”
“Understand what?”
“I didn’t know what else to do! She was going to call the ambulance. That girl is dead. I can’t change that. I’m sure it was an accident. I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt her—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Kelvin demanded, glancing back at her as he stepped into the kitchen.
“I don’t want him to go to prison!” Sharon cried.
“Who?”
“Cameron!”
“You’re talking crazy!” he snapped. “What dead girl? What are you talking about?”
“I had to stop her! I didn’t know what else to do!”
She was looking past him, into the kitchen, tears welling up and rolling down her face. He followed her gaze and stopped dead in his tracks.
Annie Broussard lay on the kitchen floor, half under the table in a puddle of blood.
“Oh, my God,” he murmured. “What have you done?”
“I saved my son!” she cried. And in one quick motion, she dropped the dish towel she had been holding all this time and pushed a knife into his belly.
FIFTY-TWO
Hey, ’Toinette? Where y’at, bébé?” Nick asked as he drove out of the SO compound.
She hadn’t answered his last text. He hadn’t heard from her in more than an hour. He hadn’t wanted her to go to that house without him. Now her phone picked up but she said nothing. The silence sent a chill through him.
He pulled the Jeep to the shoulder of the road, pressed the phone directly to his ear, and strained to listen. Was it a bad connection or a bad situation?
Rain pelted him through the broken window. A jacked-up pickup swept past, fat tires hissing on the wet pavement. In the relative silence that followed, he thought he could hear breathing, shallow, quick inhalations.
“I’m listening, baby,” he whispered, hoping she could hear him. Hoping no one else would.
In the background, a woman’s voice and a man’s voice, upset, angry. He could read the tone but not make out what they were saying. The volume rose, slightly louder and louder . . . “No . . . understand . . . Cameron . . . crazy . . .”
“What dead girl? What are you talking about?”
Dutrow’s voice.
Woman’s voice: “I had to stop her! I didn’t know what else to do!”
Dutrow: (indistinct mumbling).
Woman’s voice: “I saved my son!”
And then Annie’s voice—weak and frightened, a single, breathless plea: “Hurry.”
Sick with dread, Nick flipped on the dash light and hit the gas.
* * *
* * *
“YOU BITCH! YOU stabbed me!” Kelvin said stupidly.
Shocked, he watched as Sharon pulled the knife out of his belly and stepped back. He couldn’t see any blood against the black of his shirt, and initially, there was no pain. His brain tried to tell him nothing had happened. He was fine. She couldn’t have stabbed him. Then, suddenly, came a searing-cold sensation that turned instantly white-hot, taking his breath away. He put a hand to his belly. It came away bright red with his blood.
“Oh, my God!”
Panic bolted through him like a runaway horse. His heart was racing. He was hyperventilating. In the back of his mind, he was thinking he should have had his tactical vest on, but he had removed it for his appearance on the ten o’clock news because it made him look heavy on television. A ridiculous thought. He had no reason to wear ballistic armor to see his fiancée—or so he would have thought.
Sharon gasped, as if in shock, then stepped in close and stabbed him a second time, before he could react at all. The knife came up and into him at a forty-five-degree angle, slightly higher than the first time and just left of center mass.
She ran backward away from him, screaming, looking at
the bloody chef’s knife as if she’d had no control over it, her eyes wide with surprise.
Shock swept through Kelvin’s body in an ice-cold wave, leaving him dizzy and weak. It felt as if every ounce of blood and energy was rushing out of him like water swirling down a drain. The pain now was excruciating, and he had to fight to get a breath.
He was furious and terrified, outraged and shocked that a woman had done this to him. The woman he had chosen to be his perfect partner in the public eye. How could that be? How could he have misjudged her so badly?
“I saved my son,” she’d said.
That was his mistake. He never should have let the boy stay.
“You bitch!” He spat the word as he reached for his weapon and staggered sideways as the floor seemed to tilt beneath him. His knees buckled and he sank to the floor, falling against the cupboards.
The thought occurred that he was dying. He dismissed it. This wasn’t how he would die—bleeding out on his kitchen floor, stabbed by a woman. He was destined for so much more.
“I’makillyou,” he mumbled, the words a single slurred jumble of syllables.
His fingers fumbled as he tried to get his gun free of its holster. His motor skills had begun to fail.
“I’makillyounow . . .”
* * *
* * *
NICK ROLLED IN to the Blue Cypress development with no lights. He pulled up behind Dutrow’s Suburban, blocking it in the driveway.
He had deputies coming, running dark and silent, with instructions to sit on the front of the house. Stokes would be right behind them. Nick wouldn’t wait for any of them. Procedure be damned. He needed to get to Annie.
She was armed. She carried a Glock 9mm as her sidearm, and wore a little Kurz Backup in an ankle holster. She was quite proficient with both. If she couldn’t get to either, something was very wrong. She was being restrained or watched or something worse.