Detective Defender

by Marilyn Pappano

  “Did you believe her?”

  Again, Taylor took a moment before answering. Jimmy knew from his own experience that the detective was replaying the scene in his head, looking at it from every angle. Finally, he shrugged. “No reason not to. She knew where Fletcher kept the gun. He’d taught her how to use it in case she ever needed to defend herself. He’d moved them around an awful lot—never stayed at a job more than a year. He took her and the daughter away from their family and friends, the girl had trouble fitting in at new schools over and over, they had money problems, and there were those rumors. Plus the gun, and her prints were on it and the bullets still loaded. We couldn’t ask for more.”

  With that evidence, Jimmy would have believed her, too. “Why did he change jobs so often?”

  “We checked with the schools where he used to work. Never fired, just resigned at the end of each year. Wife said he wanted to experience life elsewhere. Not something she was aware of when she met him.” Taylor shrugged again. “I got the impression she wouldn’t have married him if she’d known he was going to uproot them every year.”

  Wouldn't have married him. Not the sign of a happy marriage.

  And never fired meant nothing. Jimmy had heard of too many problem teachers who’d never been fired—just forced into resigning by a school district willing to keep silent as long as they got to pass the problem on to someone else. Thieves, dopers, philanderers, abusers, pedophiles. Fletcher appeared to qualify on at least two counts.

  What better motivation for killing a husband than his messing with her kid? Whether Fletcher had gotten too friendly with Irena, like he did with the girls at school, or had just made her life miserable because of his choices, Katie Jo might have felt drastic action was necessary.

  Beside him, Martine spoke up. “Why didn’t she want a trial? It seems she might have gotten some sympathy from a jury.”

  Taylor shifted in his chair, crossing one ankle over his knee. He didn’t have to consult his notes. He’d probably refreshed his memory after Jimmy’s call yesterday, but a lot of cases stuck with a cop, and this was probably one of Taylor’s never-forgets. “She didn’t want her girl to have to go through that. She’d done the crime, and she was willing to do the time. She said the sooner it was over, the sooner Irena could get on with her life. I suspect she also didn’t want anything coming out at trial that would tarnish Irena’s memory of her stepfather, or maybe she didn’t want her to hear the details of what she’d done herself.”

  “Maybe she was a killer with a conscience. I’ve run into a few of those over the years.” Jimmy hesitated, glanced at Martine, then quietly asked, “Did you know the victim’s nickname at the local high school was Fletcher the Letcher?”

  * * *

  The detective had not known that. An hour later, back in the car and buckling her seat belt, Martine marveled over the fact. As Jimmy stowed the detective’s folder—including Taylor's own personal investigative notes—in the back seat, then fastened his own seat belt, she sighed. “Every girl in high school that year knew about Fletcher. It was about as far from being a secret as anything could be. With that many people who knew, how is it possible that not one of them ever said anything to a mother, a sister, another teacher or a counselor?”

  He gave her a steady look. “You were one of those girls. Did you tell your mom?”

  Slowly, regretfully, she shook her head. “I never considered it.”

  “Your parents would have been upset. They would have wanted to know if he’d touched you, and when and where. They would have made a big deal of it, invading your privacy, making you feel guilty or dirty or somehow responsible. And you didn’t want anyone thinking, even for a minute, that you might have been Fletcher the Letcher’s victim. So you stayed quiet. So did your friends, for the same reasons. So did all the girls, and the boys who knew.”

  She pressed her fingertips to her temples, rubbing to lessen the tension gathered there. “Poor Irena knew.”

  “And she stayed quiet, too. That’s how these guys get away with it. In the beginning, no one wants to believe they’re capable of it. No one wants to believe it’s serious, that it wasn’t just a bump or an accident, and when they figure out it is serious, no one wants to be the one to complain. No one wants to be labeled a victim. No one wants to face the scrutiny and the questions and the gossip that come with speaking out.”

  He was right on every point—he had a good grasp of the way teenage girls thought—but she couldn’t help but feel ashamed. “It was a really crappy thing for us to do.” If they’d come forward, told their parents, made complaints, how different would Katie Jo’s and Irena’s lives have been? How many girls would have escaped the letch’s attention?

  Jimmy twisted in the seat to face her. That intensity had returned to his face and his voice, strong with emotion and understanding and an expression she was beginning to think of as his driven-to-get-justice look. “Would it have been nice if you’d all stormed the principal’s office the first time he touched one of you? Sure. Are you somehow culpable for what he did because you didn’t? Of course not. You were kids. You’d be surprised how many adults can’t or won’t speak up. I can’t count how many murders I’ve investigated that took place in restaurants, bars, crowded places, and nobody saw nothin’. I work months to solve cases where all the victims’ families and friends know who killed them, but they won’t tell me a damn thing. That’s the job.”

  “Sounds frustrating.”

  “It can be.”

  “So why do you do it?”

  His grin came unexpectedly, lightening the tension in his face, making his eyes dance with smug macho arrogant sweet-talking pretty-boy satisfaction. “It’s not what I do. It’s who I am.”

  Last week she would have scoffed at that. He was a legend in his own mind, she would have said. Pity the people of New Orleans, she would have added.

  This afternoon, she took it at face value. He was a dedicated cop with a better understanding of people than she’d ever given him credit for. And not just understanding but acceptance, too. He knew what motivated people, what scared them, what drove them and what held them back, when she’d thought he was just a complete and total jerk.

  Now she was coming to realize that he was just a partial jerk, and since the same could be said of her...

  He started the engine, then pulled out of the parking space. “How do we find these woods of yours?”

  “Go straight.” She gazed out the side window at familiar old buildings, most occupied by unfamiliar businesses. The dress shop on the corner was now a bookstore; the mom-and-pop pharmacy that still had a soda fountain into her teens was an insurance office; and the shop where her dad had gotten his hair trimmed every few weeks was empty, the striped barber pole still in place outside, its glass cracked.

  But the diner where the Broussards had eaten breakfast every Sunday was still in the same spot with the same specials advertised on the windows. She looked longingly at it even after they’d passed, wishing they were going there instead of to the woods.

  “I don’t know if the woods are even there anymore,” she said as the diner faded from sight. “The property was owned by the Winchesters. They might have sold it when they moved away. It had waterfront access, sort of. There’s a creek that leads to the lake where they’d built a dock, and Mr. Winchester took his boat out from there. We used to picnic and play and swim there, though as we got older, we mostly just laid in the sun. They called it Twins’ Landing after Callie and Tallie.”

  Her chest burned, and she realized she’d run out of air. She filled her lungs, then let the breath out slowly. The burning from the lack of oxygen eased but moved instead to her throat and made her eyes go damp. It was one thing knowing that Paulina and Callie were dead, to even see the picture of Paulina, pale and still, but being in Marquitta made it worse. Made it more real. She’d ridden bikes down
these streets with them; they’d gone to movies at the theater just ahead; they’d attended that elementary school together and played in that park. They’d learned to drive here, had their first dates, first kisses, first sex here.

  They’d lived here—still lived here in her memories, a little fuzzy and distant but here.

  Would it still be the five of them here after she returned to New Orleans today, or would only three of them remain in those fuzzy, distant images?

  When Jimmy’s hand took hold of hers, she startled, her eyes jerking open, her breath catching. For just an instant she’d forgotten him, had been so lost in the past and the sadness and the regrets. He didn’t say a word but curled his fingers, warm and strong, over hers, and held on tightly.

  She held back just as tightly.

  When their turn appeared ahead, she had to clear her throat to speak. “Turn right at the light.” That would take them to the neighborhood where her and Paulina’s families had lived since before they were born, where the other three families had moved in and completed their tight-knit little circle.

  Jimmy made the turn before he began talking in an idle manner that struck her more as thinking out loud than actual conversation. She was happy for the distraction, though.

  “So...as far as Taylor knows, Katie Jo is still in prison, and Irena went to live with her mother’s sister in Idaho. Irena probably wasn’t crazy about her stepfather, given that he created so much disruption in her life and that she managed to hide the fact that he was her stepfather for the entire school year. She probably came back to Louisiana to visit her mom—maybe even moved here when she was able, so I’ll check on her and Katie Jo when we get back. I’ll go through Taylor’s notes, too, see if there was any evidence of the affairs.”

  “Turn left here,” Martine said absently. Katie Jo Fletcher had gotten a life sentence, according to Detective Taylor. She hadn’t negotiated, hadn’t tried to get herself any kind of deal whatsoever. Martine couldn’t imagine giving in so completely.

  But it was even harder to imagine being in a marriage so bad that murder seemed the only way out.

  “Do you think she planned it? Practiced her grief-stricken widow routine until it came naturally? Waited until graduation so Irena wouldn’t have to change schools again? Slept on the couch because she couldn’t bear to lie in bed with him one more night? Got up and checked on her daughter to make sure she was still asleep and wouldn’t see anything? Walked into the bedroom and shot her husband, went out into the woods to hide the gun, then came back and called the police?”

  “Maybe. Probably. Though the grief-stricken part might not have been such a stretch. Some people don’t realize the impact of killing someone until they've done it. They’ve been exposed to so much violence on the streets, in the news, on TV shows and in movies, and they think it’s no big deal. You point the gun, pull the trigger, and boom, it’s over. But once it’s done, once they see the blood, once they realize that person is truly dead and is never coming back, it can haunt them.

  “I suspect Katie Jo falls into that group. Whether it was one moment of rage or a calculated plan, it changed her whole life. It changed Irena’s whole life. Katie Jo didn’t want that much out of life, and all she got was prison. The sad fact is that if she believed murder was her only option—and she must have, since that's the one she chose—then prison was probably better than what she had before.”

  It was way beyond sad, but Martine didn’t want to focus on that now. “Stop here,” she said, leaning forward to look past him at the house across the street. “That’s my house. My mom’s house. I grew up there.”

  He glanced at her, then the house. It was a great place, big and white with deep green trim, new enough to lack the headaches of a truly old home but built to look as if it had been there a hundred years. She’d spent entire chunks of her life on that broad front porch with her girlfriends, her boyfriends, her mom’s cats, her parents and other family when they visited. This house had been the center of her life.

  A life she wanted desperately to distance herself from.

  She pointed out the four other houses as they followed the winding streets to the back of the neighborhood. The Winchesters’ house was last, set in the middle of a lot twice the size of the others, a mini-mansion, bordered on three sides with woods.

  “We’ll have to walk from here,” she murmured, huddling deeper into her jacket. Jimmy pulled to the curb and shut off the engine. She got the impression he would let her linger if she wanted, but she opened the door immediately. Any lingering she did today would be at home, in the comfort of her secure little apartment, herself locked in and the world locked out.

  The idea of Martine Broussard going into hiding would make most people who knew her snort...but most people who knew her knew nothing about the voodoo ritual or Fletcher’s death or Katie Jo’s life sentence or the harshness of Irena’s life. They didn’t know about Callie or Paulina. They didn’t know that for the first time in her entire life, Martine was scared. If it wasn’t for Jimmy, she would be too scared to set foot outside her apartment.

  Jimmy DiBiase making her feel safe. Now, that was a thought worthy of all the snorts in the world.

  * * *

  Maybe it was the cold, the gray, the surrounding dampness, but the clearing Martine led Jimmy to in the woods seemed an unlikely haunt for five teenage girls. The thick carpet of pine needles dampened sound, and there were enough leafy trees and shrubs to provide a barrier outside of which anyone could hide, especially after dark, and spy on them. A thought that had likely never crossed their minds.

  Had Katie Jo done just that? Had she come upon them out here and watched, listened, wished for her daughter to have that kind of friendship? She’d wanted a happy, normal life for Irena, for herself, and thanks to her husband, neither of them had it.

  “Do you think he molested Irena?” Martine asked.

  Jimmy turned to her, standing at the edge of the clearing, huddled in her slicker. She looked cold and miserable, and neither had to do with the weather. A drop of rain plopped on her forehead, and she looked at the sky with annoyance before pulling the hood into place.

  “He could have married Katie Jo with the idea of having his own little victim in-house. Or he could have discovered the joys of perversion after they married and turned to the girls he had easy access to at school rather than the one who lived in his house. Some guys like to keep it in the family. Some don’t take it anywhere near them.”

  But Katie Jo’s willingness to give up her right to a trial... Protecting Irena from knowing ugly stuff about her parents, Taylor had thought. It could just as easily have been protecting Irena from having to divulge ugly stuff about how her stepfather had abused her.

  “Do you know where the Fletcher house was from here? Pickering Road?”

  Martine’s brow furrowed, then she pointed downstream. “A mile or so that way. You can’t get there from this neighborhood. You have to go back to the main road, turn left, then turn left again after a ways. It’s a dirt road, maybe a thousand feet before it dead-ends.”

  An easy enough walk for Katie Jo if she’d needed to get out of the house for a while. She could have stumbled on the girls here and stayed hidden, making silent wishes for her daughter. She could have heard them talk about her husband’s behavior at school with shock, if she hadn’t known before, or disgust if she had. It could have been the breaking point for her, and the ritual could have inspired her.

  Jimmy wasn’t about to share that last thought with Martine. The other four had believed all along that they were somehow responsible for Fletcher’s death. If Martine thought Katie Jo might have gotten the idea from their game, the guilt would embrace her as surely as it had the others.

  And it would be so much crap. You could put an idea into a person’s head, but the responsibility for acting on it belonged entirely to that person. The t
eenage girls down the street made me do it just wouldn’t fly as an excuse.

  He looked around one last time. There was really nothing to see, just a spot where for years kids had sneaked off to do the things kids did: Martine and her friends two decades ago, the current neighborhood kids today if the small collection of empty beer cans and used condoms behind a fallen tree was anything to judge by. Kids who had friends and drinking buddies and hookup partners.

  He started to turn, but something held him there, his gaze shifting over the live oak that sheltered the clearing. Its branches were huge, some dipping down to rest on the ground before arching back up into the sky, all of them capable of bearing the weight of anyone who wanted to spy.

  Any teenager not invited to the party. Any jealous, lonely misfit who wanted desperately to have just one friend. Any awkward, shy kid who couldn’t imagine much better than being welcomed into the coolest group of girls at the school. Anyone who knew they hung out here, who lived near enough to walk along the creek under cover of darkness and watch and wish and want.

  Maybe Katie Jo Fletcher hadn’t killed her husband. Maybe she had been genuinely horrified by his death. Maybe she’d known where to find the gun because someone had told her. Maybe she’d been willing to go to prison because she hadn’t wanted to ruin her daughter’s life any more than William Fletcher already had.

  Maybe it had been Irena Young standing next to her parents’ bed, gun in hand, guided by the ritual she’d just witnessed, killing the bastard who’d made her life so hard.

  Justification, Jimmy thought again. It would have been easier for Katie Jo to spend her life in prison—her punishment for bringing Fletcher into their lives—than to stand by and let her daughter go. The best of Irena’s life could still be ahead, while the worst of Katie Jo’s would end.

  Jimmy blew out a deep breath, then refilled his lungs, the air heavy with the smells of the creek, the trees, the decay. If Katie Jo had gone to prison for the crime her daughter committed, the guilt must have eaten at Irena every single day. Had she honored her mother’s sacrifice by living the absolute best life she could live? Or had she let resentment and anger slowly destroy her until she latched on to someone else, anyone else, to blame for losing Katie Jo?