by Brenda Novak
“What does Francis’s mother do for a living?” Romain murmured.
“I don’t know,” Jasmine said. “The neighbor told me she works nights, but she didn’t say where. However, my investigator called while you were getting our pizza. She apparently got a nursing degree years ago, so maybe she’s still in the medical profession.”
They’d parked two streets over and walked so they wouldn’t attract attention from the neighbors who, after all the police involvement, had to be especially interested in any activity at the Moreau residence. Romain imagined that, by now, the place had quite a reputation. Raw eggs were splattered around one window, suggesting that kids in the neighborhood had decided to use the house for target practice.
“They don’t seem too well-liked,” he commented.
“Whoever egged this place had better keep their distance in the future,” Jasmine said. “They have no idea how dangerous it could be.”
She reached the door first. Romain hung back, trying not to feel the confusion and terror his daughter must’ve experienced at being dragged inside such a place by a complete stranger.
“What makes them do it?” he asked softly as he joined her on the front stoop. “What makes a man as depraved as Moreau?”
“I wish I could tell you,” she whispered. “Most serial killers have had difficult childhoods, childhoods with a prevalence of inconsistent discipline and abuse. And many of them have suffered head injuries at one time or another. But those factors aren’t as reliable as you might want to believe. At this point, no one knows what causes such deviant behavior. Lust killers and thrill killers are just structurally different. And because we can’t understand or explain their behavior, we call them pathological.”
No one answered the door. But that didn’t surprise Romain. There wasn’t a single light on in the house—at least none that he could see.
“I think we might be out of luck,” she said.
“Dustin’s here.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they don’t take him anywhere. Even to the courthouse when his brother was standing trial for murder.” Romain knocked again.
“But where did he live back then?”
“If his mother was in town, Dustin was in town.”
“I guess I’d have to agree with you there. It looked as if she’d been taking care of him for some time. But even if he’s here, he either can’t or won’t answer the door.”
“I can get in without him.” Romain tried the door. Finding it locked, he stepped back to survey his other options.
“You’re not breaking in,” Jasmine said.
“Yes, I am.”
She grabbed his arm. “Someone here, possibly these people, have killed one man already. Do you want to be next?”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“But if we get caught—”
“We won’t get caught, because you’re going back to the truck.”
She clenched her fists. “No way! You’re still on parole, aren’t you?”
He didn’t answer. He was too busy wondering if he might find a spare key somewhere, or whether he’d have to break a window.
“You are!”
He didn’t correct her because she was right. “That means you could go back to prison!”
Pulling her into his arms, he gave her a long wet kiss, in case it was his last. “I think the police are the least of my worries, don’t you?” He slid his lips down her neck, then let her go.
“Stop kissing me!” she hissed, following him.
“Why?”
“I don’t like it!”
“You like it, you just don’t trust me anymore. And you have good reason. I wouldn’t trust me, either.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“You’re welcome. Now go wait in the truck.”
She clutched his arm. “Romain, don’t do this. We can come back when Phillip’s at home. He’s the one we really want to talk to, anyway. I got the feeling that he wanted to tell me something, as if…as if he had more to say.”
“We’ll talk to him. But I’m not going to miss this opportunity to lay eyes on Dustin.”
“The man who came after me is somehow tied to this place,” she argued. “He could be in there.”
“No one’s in there, except maybe Dustin.”
“There was someone here last time, even though I thought there wasn’t!”
He motioned for her to keep her voice down and lowered his own. “Stay with the truck. If I’m not back in ten minutes, bring a neighbor or use that cell phone of yours to get help.”
She remained stubbornly on his heels. “No. If you’re going in, I’m going with you.”
Considering what she’d already been through, she had guts. But he wasn’t about to let her take the risk. “It doesn’t require two people.”
She hesitated, glanced nervously at the house and bit her lip. But he knew that if he could convince her it’d be safer for both of them if he went in alone, she’d relent.
“Help me out here, okay?” he said. “I’ll have less to worry about if you’re not involved. Get in the truck, lock the doors and keep your head down. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
Mumbling a string of curses he hadn’t heard from her before—which, under different circumstances, might’ve made him laugh because they seemed so out of character—she pivoted and started back. But a second later, she caught his hand and, when he turned to see what she wanted, pulled his face down to meet hers for another kiss, this one even longer and wetter than the last. “Don’t get hurt,” she said fiercely. Then she released him and was gone.
Romain stared after her. She was making him crave comforts he hadn’t let himself crave since Pam died. If only wanting her didn’t make him feel as though he was letting Pam and Adele down…
He turned abruptly as he heard a noise coming from the house. A television. Someone had cranked up the volume until it was blaring.
Was it Dustin?
Probably. Why he wanted the TV so loud, Romain couldn’t fathom. But it would cover the noise he was about to make, and for that he was grateful.
Breaking the screen on the back door, and then the glass, Romain used the sleeve of his leather jacket to protect his hand as he reached in and turned the lock.
CHAPTER 18
The house smelled of cats. Two greeted him as he stepped inside, and the memory of how much Adele had loved animals nearly made him balk. Was he really prepared for what he might find?
He wasn’t sure, but a morbid curiosity, an exploration of his own pain, propelled him forward. This was most likely the last place his daughter had known, the place where she’d been sexually molested, strangled and dumped into the trunk of a car.
Who was the man who’d killed her? What kind of person could harm an innocent ten-year-old girl? If it wasn’t Moreau, what connection did the real killer have to this place and these people? And how did that connection affect Jasmine and her sister?
Romain moved silently through the kitchen. He couldn’t see very well in the dark, but he wasn’t in a hurry. A fierce, aching need to know had taken hold of him, causing him to slow down, to study and strive to understand.
The house looked just like his grandmother’s used to look. It had cheap knickknacks in every corner, a flour-sack dish towel hanging from a hook near the kitchen sink, doilies on every table and gilt-edged picture frames with photographs from years earlier.
Francis’s mother had lied for him in court. Didn’t she care that he’d be put back into society, that he might molest, if not kill, another child? What had she been thinking when she saw those images of Adele’s body shown in court? How could she not feel the poignant loss that’d made even the crustiest juror break down in tears?
He’d never understand, never fully grasp such a lack of human decency, he decided.
As he moved from the kitchen and the moonlight streaming in through the large window beside the door, the house became too dark to see. The blinds
on the other windows were drawn, giving the place the feel of an underground burrow.
Refusing to fumble around, Romain found a switch and snapped on the light. A black cat that’d been sleeping on a tattered recliner got up and stretched, regarded him indifferently, then jumped to the ground. Two others, almost identical to each other with short, gray fur, roused themselves from the sagging sofa, and a fourth, this one with a Persian-like coat, brushed past his leg. All four were adults and considerably overweight. One approached its bowl as he watched.
He could see why they’d chosen the living room instead of upstairs. The noise emanating from one of the bedrooms was deafening—so deafening Romain didn’t know how anyone could stand it. But, loud as it was, a voice suddenly rose above it. “Mom? Where are you? Mom?”
At first Romain thought Dustin had heard him break the window and believed his mother was home. Or that he’d spotted the light from the living room. But a second later, he realized that whoever was calling for Mrs. Moreau didn’t expect a response. The words were more a wail, a lament.
The stairs creaked as Romain climbed them, but he doubted anyone could hear above that blaring TV. Whoever was in the back room was suffering. He’d heard the pain, the misery in that voice….
He walked down the hall, stopping in front of the last of three doors. “Dustin?”
The volume went off and silence reigned for several seconds. Then a voice called out, “Is someone there? Phillip, is it you?”
“It’s me.” Romain opened the door to find a shriveled man lying in a hospital bed. There was no light other than that coming from the muted TV, but Romain could see an IV trailing from the man’s arm and a tray across his lap, which held a bottle of water and two remote controls. A radio sat on a small table against the wall; the television was affixed to the wall above the bed, close to the ceiling.
The man’s sunken eyes widened as they latched onto Romain. “I know you! You’re the man who shot Francis. I saw it on TV!”
Grabbing the metal rails of his bed, he tried to sit up but couldn’t. He pressed a button on one of his remotes, and the gears of the bed began to grind as they brought him up to a sitting position. “How’d you get in?”
“I broke the door.”
They stared at each other. Then Moreau’s brother, whom Romain wanted to hate simply because of who he was, said, “Are you here to kill me?”
Romain could’ve hated him had there been the slightest hint of fear in his voice. But there was no fear—only hope.
* * *
Jasmine had the truck running so she could get the heater to work, but she couldn’t stop shaking. She kept thinking about how quickly and easily she’d lost the most important people in her life—her sister, her mother, her father. Maybe her sister was the only one actually gone, but her parents had been absent since that same day, their absence even more painful because it involved rejection.
She couldn’t stand the thought of losing anyone else, of losing Romain.
Grouping him in the same category as her family didn’t make sense. She’d known him for less than a week. But he stirred something in her she’d never felt before, something powerful and all-consuming. Something that wouldn’t allow them to be friends once she left.
She finally understood what he’d been trying to tell her about passion. About intensity. About loving.
“No, not loving,” she muttered aloud. She couldn’t be in love. Not that fast. She’d never even had a schoolgirl crush. She was too defensive, too cautious, too practical. She was concerned about Romain, that was all—as she’d be concerned about any man who’d broken into the home of a known murderer. She’d be worried about Harvey, or Bob, her last boyfriend, or Steve, the one before that…
But not with the same level of desperation. She couldn’t sit out here anymore, wondering what was happening. Romain had just been gone a few minutes—not long enough to call the police and risk getting him sent back to prison for breaking and entering, but long enough for her to realize she’d made a mistake not going in with him. She had to make sure he was okay.
She cut the engine and started to get out when her cell phone rang. Caller ID indicated it was the police.
Surprised, she shut herself back in the truck so the sound of her voice wouldn’t bring out any of the neighbors and punched the talk button. “Hello?”
“Ms. Stratford?”
“Yes?”
“This is Sergeant Kozlowski.”
The desk sergeant who’d told her about Pearson Black. The one who’d also helped with the initial search. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”
“I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
“What kind of bad news?” she said, terrified that he was talking about Romain.
“A woman was murdered last night.”
Visions of that stranger coming through the window crowded Jasmine’s thoughts. She’d been expecting this, hadn’t she? And yet, the more hours that passed without confirmation, the more she’d managed to convince herself that it might’ve been a dream, after all.
“Who found the body?”
“The woman’s boyfriend. He kept calling, she didn’t answer. He went over to see what the hell was going on, and…”
“He found her body.” The news upset Jasmine, made her apprehensive, but not as apprehensive as the fact that Kozlowski had called her.
“That’s right.”
With a quick check of her watch, she decided to drive down Moreau’s street. Anxious as she was about this call, she was even more terrified for Romain. She started the engine again. “What made you think to tell me, Sergeant?”
“Are you sitting down?”
Putting the transmission in Drive, she gave the truck some gas and rounded the corner. “Yes.” She told herself she was completely prepared for whatever he might say. But she wasn’t.
“The killer wrote your name on the wall. In blood.”
She stopped so fast she nearly hit her face on the steering wheel. She’d been right. The killer had wanted her. “The way he wrote Adele’s name on the bathroom wall? With that odd mix of capitals, the strange e?”
“I can’t tell you that. You understand,” Kozlowski responded.
She understood that was basically a yes. But she couldn’t concentrate on the implications of this right now. Romain was in Moreau’s house. Put off the impact; think about it later.
She started driving again.
“Jasmine? Are you still there?”
A light glimmered around the edges of the blinds in the living room, a light that hadn’t been on when she and Romain had driven past. Had he turned it on? If so, she feared Mrs. Moreau or Phillip would notice the moment they came home….
“Hello?” Sergeant Kozlowski prompted.
She slowed to a crawl. “Someone’s getting nervous about my presence in New Orleans,” she finally said.
“That’s what I thought, too. And there’s more.”
“What?” She didn’t bother going around the block again. She pulled to the curb to watch the house.
“I saw a picture of the deceased.”
“Who was she?”
“A young professional, living alone. Her name was Pudja Vats.”
The was brought a sharp pain to Jasmine’s chest. Last night Pudja had been as alive as she was. “That’s an Indian name.”
“I know. And…”
Jasmine nervously clicked her nails together. “What is it?”
“She looked a lot like you.”
Of course. This Pudja woman had been Jasmine’s replacement. He’d killed her because of the resemblance. God…
“Do you know anyone in New Orleans who’d like to do you harm?”
“It’s the man who took my sister,” she said.
“How do you know?”
She wanted to say I saw him. She had seen him, on the stage of her mind. But she knew where that would lead and couldn’t afford to arouse police skepticism. “He sent me a package. My sister’s brace
let,” she told him.
“When?”
“A little over a week ago. Anyway, I’m meeting with a sketch artist on Tuesday. I’ll bring his likeness by the station when we’re done.”
“Are you staying somewhere safe?” he asked.
Her eyes fastened once again on the house, her heart pounding at how deceptively quiet it seemed. Why hadn’t Romain come out? “Yes.”
“Where?”
“In Portsville,” she said absently.
“Good. I’m glad you’re out of town. You’d better stay there until we catch this guy.”
Come on, Romain. “Is there any chance you can talk the lead detective into letting me take a look at the crime scene?” she asked Kozlowski.
“No. He won’t let anyone but the forensics team go near it.”
“But I can help. I know this guy.”
He hesitated, seemed to work through the scenario in his head. “I guess I could talk to him. If you’re good enough for the FBI, you should be good enough for us, right?”
“I hope so.” Jasmine checked her watch again. Romain had been gone for sixteen minutes—an eternity. “I have to go. I’ll call you later,” she said and shoved her cell phone into her pocket as she got out of the truck.
* * *
Jasmine could hear the murmur of voices coming from the far bedroom. As she climbed the stairs inside Beverly Moreau’s house, she recognized Romain’s. The other one probably belonged to Dustin, because it certainly wasn’t Phillip’s. They were talking about some adoption center where Beverly apparently worked.
Relieved to know Romain wasn’t in immediate danger, Jasmine returned to the living room. She couldn’t believe the Moreaus had lived here for only a few years; it looked as if they’d spent a lifetime in this place, acquiring worthless knickknacks.
Some photographs lined an old, broken-down piano. One was a family picture, taken when the three Moreau sons were quite young. The boy who was obviously Phillip, judging by his lighter coloring, stood behind his seated mother, his hand on her shoulder. Francis, with his black hair and black eyes, stood by Phillip’s side. A much slimmer version of Beverly in a lime-green dress and cat’s-eye glasses held the hand of a short, stocky man with hair and eyes as black as Francis’s. And a toddler, presumably Dustin, sat on his father’s lap. They could’ve modeled for the all-American family.