The Boy

by Tami Hoag

  The sound of her breathing on the phone—shallow and quick—suggested she was injured. The possibility made him sick and angry.

  If Dutrow had put a hand on her, nothing was going to save him.

  Annie believed Dutrow was physically abusive to his fiancée. But it was the thing the woman had said during the phone call that stood out to Nick now: “I had to stop her! I didn’t know what else to do!”

  And what had Dutrow said before that? “What dead girl? What are you talking about?”

  “Cameron . . . Dead girl . . . Stop her . . .”

  “I saved my son.”

  Nick slipped his weapon out of the holster and let himself in the gate to the backyard. Lights were on in what was probably a bedroom or laundry room at the rear corner of the house. The shades were drawn. There were no silhouettes being cast against them. He could hear no voices.

  He needed to see what he was dealing with. He couldn’t go in blind and get Annie or himself killed for it. Dutrow would be armed, and he would be angry and vengeful, and more than willing to take his rage out on Annie, not just because she was Nick’s wife but because she had stepped into the middle of his domestic situation.

  He had no way of knowing if the fiancée might be armed as well, but her words on that phone call gave him pause:

  “I had to stop her! I didn’t know what else to do!”

  Not everyone who needed help wanted help. Domestic calls were among the most dangerous calls for law enforcement because of the unpredictable nature of emotional people.

  Farther down, along the back of the house, a soft glow came through a bay window that looked out on the patio dining area. There would probably be a table and chairs sitting in the alcove created by the window—potentially good cover for a Peeping Tom. Beyond the table would likely be the kitchen.

  Crouching low, Nick moved toward the light.

  * * *

  * * *

  ANNIE HAD MANAGED to turn onto her side and curl into a fetal position mostly under the table, trying to minimize the trembling, trying to breathe slowly to stave off the nausea from the concussion. Trying to make herself into a smaller target. Dutrow’s and Sharon’s attentions were on each other, but eventually, attention would be turned to the inconvenient loose end on the floor. Sharon hadn’t hesitated to try to beat her head in. She hadn’t hesitated to put a knife in Kelvin Dutrow.

  Annie considered her options with a foggy, swelling brain. She couldn’t get up and run. She would be lucky to make it to her feet at all, let alone get her legs under her enough to stay upright and move forward. She could maybe draw her sidearm, but she didn’t think she had the strength to raise and point it, let alone pull the trigger. And which of the triple images she was seeing would be the one to aim for? Shoot the one in the middle and hope for the best?

  The strongest temptation she had was to close her eyes and go to sleep, but she knew she needed to stay awake, to stay alive. Nick was on his way, she told herself.

  She hoped that was true. She hoped she hadn’t imagined his call. Everything seemed unreal now, like she’d fallen into a nightmare—the girl in the bedroom, Sharon attacking her, Dutrow walking in. He made no move to help her. He didn’t even say her name. None of it seemed real.

  Annie watched the scene between the two of them play out. They looked so surprised, she thought, both of them shocked that Sharon had somehow found the nerve to stab him.

  Sharon stared at the knife in her hands, the horror of what she had done slowly dawning on her as her fiancé’s blood dripped from the blade onto her spotless kitchen floor.

  Dutrow’s pallor had gone a sweaty, sickly gray. He was shivering visibly as shock set in. He went to reach for his gun, staggered sideways, and sank down to the floor, leaning against the cupboards. His hand pawed at his weapon with clumsy fingers.

  “I’makillyou,” he mumbled, fumbling for the gun. “I’makillyounow . . .”

  His whole body convulsed and he vomited down the front of his shirt, making no effort to lean out of the way. Slowly, he tried to raise his weapon, but his arm was shaking badly, as if the gun weighed a hundred pounds.

  It fell from his hand, clattering to the floor beside him. His empty hand trembled for a moment then fell limp at his side, and he made a terrible, mournful groan as he realized he was dying.

  This wasn’t how Kelvin Dutrow would have pictured his death, Annie thought. There was no glory in this death. There was nothing distinguished or dignified about it. He wasn’t brave or heroic. He hadn’t gotten up that morning thinking this would be his last day on earth. He hadn’t come to this house tonight thinking he would bleed to death on the kitchen floor, stabbed by a woman he had chosen for her acquiescence. But he died just the same.

  Expressionless, Sharon turned and went to the small sink in the kitchen island to wash his blood from her knife.

  “It’s very important to make sure the blade is clean and dry before putting a knife away,” she said, her trembling voice betraying the emotions welling inside. “To avoid rust, of course. And one must always wash a good knife by hand. Never, ever in the dishwasher. That is the secret to maintaining sharp cutlery.”

  She slipped the knife back into its slot in the block on the island, folded the dish towel, and carefully smoothed the wrinkles from it.

  There was something strangely heartbreaking in her actions, Annie thought. Despite the fact that she had just watched Sharon Spicer kill a man, the overwhelming emotion she felt for the woman was pity. Not anger or fear or disgust. Pity. This proper, tidy, fussy woman had spent her whole life building a world that made sense to her, a world with a place for everything, where she made sure everything was in its designated place. That world had spun off its axis and shattered into a million vicious shards she would never be able to put back together. Now, she stood at the island of her lovely kitchen, trying to do something normal and orderly, something that made sense to her, something she was good at, knowing all the while that it didn’t matter. Despite her best efforts to hold it together, the life she had built was over.

  “I don’t understand why this happened!” she cried in anguish and desperation. “I just wanted everything to be perfect!”

  FIFTY-THREE

  The first thing Nick saw when he peered in the window was the back of Annie’s head. She lay on her side on the floor, motionless. His own breath caught in his throat, he stared at her until he could see the slight rise and fall of her side. She was breathing. She was alive.

  The second thing he focused on was Dutrow, sitting on the floor, slumped against the kitchen cabinets. He looked dead. His weapon lay on the floor beside him.

  Nick grabbed his phone and texted GO to Stokes as he ran for the nearest door, thinking the worst—that Dutrow had shot her—that Annie was lying on the floor dead or dying.

  The deputies burst in the front door as Nick tried the knob on a side door, finding it unlocked. Leading with his weapon, he ran down a hallway toward the kitchen.

  Shouts of “Sheriff’s Office! Sheriff’s Office!” came from the deputies. They converged on the kitchen, guns drawn. Sharon Spicer cried out in alarm.

  “’Toinette! ’Toinette!”

  Nick hit the floor on his knees, skidding across the tile to his wife’s prone body.

  “Baby! Baby, are you awake? Can you hear me?”

  His hands were trembling as he touched her pale face, touched her shoulder. He put two fingers to her neck and felt her pulse.

  “About time you showed up,” she murmured, struggling to smile. She reached out a hand to touch his face and missed by six inches.

  “Where are you hurt, baby? Are you shot?”

  “No. My head . . . She hit me . . . with something.”

  “Who? Who hit you?” he asked, gingerly touching the back of her head, his hand coming away sticky with blood. “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Sha
ron,” she said, squinting against the pain. “She stabbed Dutrow. I think he’s dead.”

  “Holy shit!” Stokes exclaimed as he entered the kitchen and saw Dutrow.

  “See if he’s alive,” Nick ordered over his shoulder. “And take the lady into custody.”

  “Nick—the back bedroom,” Annie said with urgency, gripping his wrist hard. “Nora Florette . . . I thought I felt a pulse.”

  “What?”

  She sounded delusional. Her eyes were glassy, her pupils unequal in size. She had a concussion or worse.

  “She’s back there,” she insisted, tears rising. “Hurry! And you have to find Cameron . . . He hurt that girl . . .” She paused to concentrate on breathing for a moment. “And he shoved her under his bed. She’s been there . . . all this time.”

  “Oh, my God,” Nick murmured. He turned to Stokes. “Go! See!”

  “I think there’s a good chance . . . he killed Dean, too,” Annie said.

  “No! He’s a good boy!” Sharon insisted. “He didn’t mean to hurt that girl! I know he didn’t! He tries so hard to do everything right. He would never have hurt her on purpose!”

  “And did he put her under his bed by accident?” Nick asked, horrified by the thought. The boy was how old? Fourteen? And he’d put a girl under his bed and kept her there for days. Thinking she was dead? Hoping she would die? There wasn’t any part of that story that wasn’t monstrous.

  Two full days had gone by since anyone had seen Nora Florette. If she lived, it would be a miracle.

  “Nick?”

  “What, baby?” he asked, turning back to Annie, leaning down close. She was breathing too hard, and trembling.

  “I’m scared,” she confessed, her small hand tightening on his wrist. “S-stay with me?”

  As the siren of an ambulance drew near, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  The rain stopped around three. Genevieve hadn’t slept. She sat by the window in her room at Evangeline House and stared out at the street, feeling restless and exposed, all her nerve endings raw.

  She hadn’t spoken of Kelvin Dutrow to anyone, ever. What was the point? She had been so young, and so naive, stupid enough to think life might yet be good to her and give her a knight in shining armor. She had found it romantic when he told her their love was their secret, and that they needed to be discreet because of his position.

  In truth, she had been his secret, and “discreet” had meant he could absolve himself of the sin of her with no one the wiser. And when she had become inconvenient to him, he had turned on her in the worst way.

  She should never have gotten pregnant. That had been a foolish choice on her part. She should never have assumed that because he was a responsible man, established in his career, that he would do the “right thing” and marry her.

  So many wrong choices. One begat the next. All her life, if there was a choice to be made, she had chosen wrong and blamed someone else.

  She never should have come here. After her last affair had crashed and burned, and she had been told to find another job, she had by chance seen on the news that Kelvin Dutrow had become the sheriff in Partout Parish, and she had convinced herself that, if she could only be near him, let him see her again, remind him . . .

  She wasn’t even sure anymore what her end goal had been—to rekindle a romance that had never been, or to extract payment in return for her silence? She didn’t know which reason was worse. She only knew that the one who had suffered most for that choice had been KJ, the only innocent in the story. None of it had been his fault, but he had paid with his life. And now she would make the only right choice she had ever made and pay with her own.

  She took a handful of the pain pills the hospital had given her, slipped out a side door, and as the first faint glow of dawn softened the night sky in the east, she walked slowly down the street to the bayou, singing softly to herself, “If I die young . . .”

  * * *

  * * *

  CAMERON WATCHED FOR hours from his hiding place in the back seat of the neighbor’s car. He’d been afraid to go home earlier in the evening. A cruiser from the Sheriff’s Office had taken his mother from the park. Had she been arrested? Had they taken her in and interrogated her? What would she have said to them? That there was something wrong with him? That she thought he needed counseling? Or that she planned to send him away?

  And when he had finally walked home, a cruiser had been parked in front of the house. Were they waiting for him? He was afraid to go to jail. Junior high was bad enough.

  Tired and hungry and scared, he had slipped into the car in his neighbor’s driveway to get out of the rain. He’d watched Detective Broussard arrive, and Kelvin sometime after her. They would all be talking about him. Detective Broussard might have guessed about Dean. They might be discussing how, when Dean had been beating on him in the park that afternoon, Cameron had grabbed a rock and smashed him in the face over and over and over and over until he didn’t have a face at all. They couldn’t know how good that had made him feel, how powerful. Turning the tables on someone who had tormented him every single day. They would think he should be sorry, but he wasn’t sorry at all. He was sorry about other things, but he was not sorry he had killed Dean. Dean Florette was a terrible person, and the world was a better place without him. But Kelvin would be happy to put him away for killing Dean, and his mother would be glad to be rid of him.

  He wanted to go sleep in his own bed, but more cop cars arrived, and ambulances, and the same hearse that had taken Dean Florette out of the park.

  A deputy had led his mother out of the house in handcuffs. Cameron felt as if she had looked right across the street and straight at him, but she hadn’t seen him or waved or anything. And then the car had taken her away and it never came back.

  All night long the cop cars and crime scene vans had come and gone, people in and out of the house. He had watched and wondered and worried. And then finally they were gone, and Cameron sat and watched the yellow crime scene tape flutter in the wind.

  He had never felt so alone. He had never felt so small or so childish. He wanted his mom. He wanted the teddy bear he was supposed to have given up two years ago. He wanted his life to be something different from what it was, but he knew it wasn’t going to get better. It was only going to get worse. People would find out about the things he’d done, and everyone would hate him, and no one would ever understand.

  Better if he just didn’t exist, then no one would have to bother to try.

  It wasn’t still night and it wasn’t quite morning when he slipped out of the car and walked across the street. He didn’t see another living thing, not a person or a dog or a bird. He was all alone in the world as he slipped into the house, gathered what he needed, and slipped out again, walking down the driveway toward the dock.

  He had never meant to do a bad thing. That was what no one would ever understand, because bad things had happened. That had never been his intent. Unlike Dean Florette, who had gotten up every day plotting to make Cameron’s life a misery, Cameron had never meant for anything bad to happen. He had never set out to hurt anyone.

  He had gone to Vanessa Theriot because he didn’t think she would care. He just wanted to see if what Dean said about him was true. Every day Dean called him a fag, the Houma Homo, and taunted him because he didn’t have a girlfriend and he didn’t want to grab girls by their body parts, and he didn’t want to look at Dean’s dirty magazines. Cameron didn’t know if it was true. He was afraid to find out, afraid of getting laughed at, afraid someone would tell on him and his mom would be so angry and so disappointed in him, and Kelvin would be disgusted by him and say he wasn’t a man.

  It didn’t seem that bad to go to Vanessa, who would never tell, who probably wouldn’t care. He had been to her house with the other kids who went to s
chool with her sister, and she had smiled at him. She wasn’t afraid of him. She didn’t laugh at him. He hadn’t meant her any harm. He was just curious. He even took her a present for letting him touch her, a little trinket box he didn’t think his mother would ever miss.

  Not in a million years had he ever thought things would turn out the way they had. Dean Florette had done bad things every day of his life on purpose, and no one had ever really cared. Stupid Nora shoplifted all the time and the worst that ever happened was her mother grounding her. Cameron hadn’t meant to do anything bad, but bad things had happened anyway. Terrible things.

  He walked down to the dock and climbed into the little rowboat Kelvin had given him. If he rowed out a hundred yards, the water was deep enough and too far from shore. He would drown and die because he wasn’t any better at swimming than he was at any other sport. And everyone would be happier. He would no longer be an embarrassment to Kelvin. He would no longer be a burden to his mother.

  She could have a happy life without him, and he would never have to tell her how Nora Florette had come over with KJ after school that day, even though she knew he wasn’t allowed to have anyone over without an adult present. Nora had already gotten in trouble for coming over once before, and she had done it anyway, taunting him and teasing him. She had decided she had a crush on him. She had given him one of her stupid friendship bracelets.

  He had told her to leave a hundred times, but she wouldn’t. She had followed him out to the pool, pestering him as he skimmed the leaves off the water. That was one of his chores, and he had to get it done before Kelvin came for supper. And stupid Nora had pestered him and pestered him, because she thought it was funny or cute or he didn’t know what.

  And then she laughed and said, “You have to like me. I know about the trinket box.”

  Cameron hadn’t meant to hurt her. He had just shoved her away. He was angry and scared, and he was going to be in so much trouble. And she fell, and hit her head on the step, and she was dead.