Face Behind the Mask

by Leo King

  “All right, hun. See you soon.”

  Hanging up, he saw that Landry and Rivette were gone and the door to Ouellette’s office was still closed. The floor was quiet save for Breaux working on some reports.

  Aucoin pulled his jacket on and called out, “Gary! Hey, man, when the commander comes out, let him know that I checked in but then went out to lunch with Dixie. Afterwards, I’ll head back to Metairie.”

  Breaux nodded and went back to his work. Aucoin slipped out, but not before stopping by Rodger and Michael’s old desk, which had remained enshrined since their deaths.

  Wish you guys were here.

  When Aucoin arrived at the Morning Call café in City Park, it was already noon. The café was packed, with very few places to sit—only a few tables outside and the bars inside. All around, the picturesque beauty of the park, from the green, drooping cypresses to the blossoming magnolias, was just starting to take on color. Winter was over, and spring was struggling to be more than a cool, wet season.

  He searched for Dixie and Gino, first out on the patio, and then inside.

  “Kyle! Over here!”

  Dixie was waving from one of the corner tables, a coveted spot. It wasn’t the least bit surprising. Despite being a bustling city with a rising crime rate, New Orleans was in the South, and Southern hospitality would always give the best seat in the house to an expectant mother.

  Gino was sitting next to her, protectively holding her hand. Her midsection was bulging, and she looked both fatigued and radiant at the same time. For a moment, it reminded Aucoin of when Cathy was pregnant with Cheryl. He pushed that memory away, shaking Gino’s hand and then hugging Dixie. “Good to see you.”

  “Good to see you, Kyle. Have a seat. We’ve already ordered lunch.”

  He sat down and skimmed the menu. Other than beignets and coffee, the Morning Call also served gumbo, jambalaya, and a few other hearty items. Between the atmosphere and the lovely view of the park, this had been their favorite place to eat when they were partners.

  He ordered the jambalaya and a coffee and then leaned back. “So, Dix, you don’t mind if I just get straight to the point, do you?”

  When she shook her head, he started. “So, I want to talk about Sam—specifically, about how her stories paralleled Dallas’s murders. What did we discover? It was a modem in her copier that was transmitting her stories to Kent and Nick Bourgeois, right?”

  “Correct,” Dixie said. “She would copy her manuscripts, and the copier would send a fax to Kent, who would then forward the information to Dallas. Dallas would then pattern his crimes off her stories. This was, of course, to frame her for the murders, isolate her from her friends, and make it easier to take her in the end.”

  Aucoin nodded. His jaw locked tightly as he remembered. Everything about the case was screwed up. Richie, the prick from Pittsburg, turned out to be the subservient personality of Dallas, the monster who killed his Cheryl.

  “So, Kyle, why did you want to talk about this? Just wanting to clarify things?”

  Coming out of his thoughts, he realized that both Dixie and Gino were waiting for him. “No. I was wondering how you thought it could be replicated. You know, if someone else could do it again, maybe with something other than a copier.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “A silver pen, perhaps?”

  She blinked. “A what now?”

  “Heh… just humor me, but what if there was a pen, and whatever you wrote with it, it happened?”

  For a few more seconds, she nibbled on her thumb. He knew that meant she was in deep thought. Then, quite suddenly, all color drained from her face. “Oh, my God, so that’s what the krabinay meant by ‘magic pen.’ Kyle, what have you done?”

  Her reaction caught him completely off guard. “Um, Dix, you’re making no—”

  “I’ve got to go,” she said, getting paler. She struggled to stand, getting help from a concerned-looking Gino. “Sorry, Kyle. I need to call Dr. Lazarus.”

  “Dr. Lazarus? Dix, what did I say?”

  “You didn’t say anything, Kyle. It’s just that… if I’m right about this, you’re in serious danger.”

  Sweat broke out on his brow. “Um, what? Dix, you’re starting to scare your old partner.”

  She grimaced, her face wrought with anxiety. “Let me think on things. I’ll call you in a few days. For now, don’t write anything with that pen, OK?”

  As she started leaving, she added, “Gino, can you give Kyle Tania’s card?”

  Gino reached into her purse, took out a business card, and slid it across the table. “If not for that woman, we’d be dead right now.”

  Aucoin read the name on the card out loud. “Tania Patterson. That’s Blind Moses’s sister, right?” It had a phone number and an address for Jackson Square.

  “Yes,” Dixie said. “I’ll call you soon. If, um, weird, crazy things start to happen, you contact her immediately.” Gino led her away.

  He called out after her. “What crazy things?”

  “You’ll know, Kyle,” she said. “You’ll know.”

  After leaving Morning Call, Aucoin met up with Bradley and received news that Harry had approved his plan to stake out Fat City. He spent the rest of the day setting it up with the Jefferson Parish police. By that evening, Fat City was as secure as the French Quarter had been after the mayor had declared martial law back in August.

  When Aucoin arrived at home, there were two messages on his machine.

  The first was from Cathy. “Kyle, I’ll be in town tomorrow around noon. I’d really like to meet you for lunch. I’m going to the Copelands on Carrollton Avenue. I’ll be there until two o’clock. If you show up, lunch will be on me.”

  He deleted it, pushing thoughts of her from his mind for the moment. He had other, more pressing concerns.

  The second was from Dixie: “Hey, I’ve been thinking about what we talked about today. Can you do me a favor? Please check whatever you wrote back around the end of October. I mean your therapy writings. I’m specifically searching for anything around or before the twenty-sixth. And remember, don’t write anything with that pen tonight.”

  He deleted the message. “This is freaking crazy.”

  After taking a shower, he sorted through his notebooks, finding the one he had been writing in near the end of October. Flipping through the pages, he found an entry on the twenty-fourth.

  Little Lindsey hated her family. She blamed them for the death of someone she loved. Lindsey wanted revenge, but it had to be complete. No loose ends. So Lindsey waited one night until the family was busy. Her father was watching the big game, her mother was crocheting, and her brothers and sisters were preoccupied. The perfect time for the perfect crime. Grabbing a kitchen knife, Lindsey slit their foul throats and bathed in their blood. A fitting end for a fucked-up family.

  Aucoin said, “So whatever, right? I mean, why did she want me to look at—oh, my God…”

  His detective skills, which had atrophied in the months succeeding Cheryl’s death, were reawakening. “I wrote something very similar to the Davis family murders only two days before they occurred.”

  He scanned the pen he had used to write that story. It was silver, with the name “Castille” etched into the side. It was the pen he had taken from the ashes of Sam’s townhome, a pen he had felt oddly obligated to pick up.

  Come to think of it, whenever I want to write, I feel compelled to use it.

  He uncapped the pen, sniffed the ink on the tip, turned it around, and examined every aspect of it. Nothing really stood out. It was a nice pen, obviously well-made and expensive, but there wasn’t anything he could see that was special about it.

  So Aucoin spent another hour going through each notebook, comparing each of his stories with murders that had happened throughout the city. What he soon realized made him feel sick to his stomach. Almost every story was similar to a real-life murder, some of them as far away as Alexandria and Grand Isle—all parts of southern
Louisiana. The parallels, while not as concise as they had been with Sam, were still too alike to be coincidence. And, as each month passed, the areas affected were farther away. Was its sphere of influence growing?

  He picked up the pen and examined it again. The light sparkled off its surface.

  With a sigh, he added, “Can this pen only do evil? Or can it do good as well?”

  That was something he wasn’t about to leave to chance. Flipping to a fresh page in his notebook, he wrote:

  The Fat City Stabber cornered his latest victim, a girl who had just had a fight with her father. He took out his knife and lunged at her, but before he could cut her, he was shot and then arrested by Detective Mike Bradley.

  Capping the pen, Aucoin closed the notebook. He then felt a chill as well as a tingle rippling down his spine. “There! If this pen can actually make things happen, then tonight, the Fat City Stabber will be arrested.”

  Chapter 19

  Another Chance

  Date: Friday, March 23, 1993

  Time: 4:00 a.m.

  Location: Kyle Aucoin’s House

  St. Bernard, New Orleans East

  Aucoin dreamed of running down a long, lonely hallway, his footfalls reverberating all around. From the darkness ahead, he heard Cheryl calling out, her voice sounding the same as before she had died.

  “Daddy? Daddy, please help!”

  “Cheryl?” Sensations of panic welled up until they choked him. He willed himself to run even faster.

  “Daddy! I’m so scared.” Cheryl now sounded younger, like a tween.

  “I’m coming, honey! Daddy’s coming!” He went even faster, pushing himself until he felt like he was running on all fours.

  Then he broke out of the darkness and into a mist-covered forest, the shadows around him moving as if they were alive, and the haze was like a thick blanket. Cheryl’s sobs came from up a large hill. “I’m coming, baby!” Going up felt like moving through syrup.

  “Daddy! He has a knife!” She now sounded like a child.

  He reached the top of the hill, his throat tight with panic, where a lone chapel stood in a small graveyard. With a roar, he burst inside.

  Cheryl, no more than five years old, was tied to a cross. All around were men and women wearing devil masks and holding torches. A masked man stood before her with a dagger.

  He took off his mask. It was Dallas.

  “Hey, Daddy. We’re gonna carve your baby girl up and eat her for dinner, all right?”

  He stabbed into Cheryl’s heart. Aucoin reached out, unable to move, and cried, “Nooooo!” The grisly scene stretched away until it was a single, white dot in the distance. Then the dot spread into a slit, which turned out to be his eyelids opening as he woke up.

  He was sitting in his chair, reaching out to the darkness and sweating so badly, he felt soaked. His throat hurt. Next to him, the phone rang, but he didn’t answer it. Instead, he continued reaching out to where his dream of Cheryl had been. I couldn’t save her. Even in my dream, I couldn’t save my daughter.

  Then his answering machine kicked on. “Hey, this is Kyle. Leave a message.”

  It beeped, and then Ouellette’s voice spoke up. “Aucoin, when you hear this message, get your ass down to the station. We need to talk. Something happened in Fat City a little while ago.”

  Aucoin finally settled back down. It took a few more minutes for the shock of the dream to fully wear off. Then he got up and listened to the message again.

  He was perplexed. “What the hell happened?”

  “Come in, close the door, and sit down.” Ouellette looked exhausted. The bags under his eyes were heavier than usual.

  Aucoin did so. “Am I in trouble? Do I need to get my union rep or something?”

  Ouellette shook his head and chugged a cup of black coffee. “No, you’re not in trouble. But you are going to get grilled later today by Harry Lee.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “You worked with Detective Bradley these past few days. What did you think of him?”

  His brow tightening, Aucoin shifted in his seat. Had Bradley shot the killer, like in his story, or did something else happen, debunking his theory about the silver pen? “I saw him as a good cop, like most of us here. I think he was a bit tired all the time because of his daughter, but I’m sure he’ll be the guy to catch the Fat City Stab—”

  “Excuse me one second,” Ouellette said, getting up. He stormed over to the door and threw it open. “Landry, what is your major malfunction? I called you in here early to find that goddamn book, not to eavesdrop on my conversations.”

  As Ouellette stormed out, Aucoin caught a glimpse of Landry tripping over desks to get back to his. He couldn’t figure Landry out. How did the commander even know he was there?

  Shrugging, Aucoin turned away. It wasn’t any of his business. As he heard Ouellette reading Landry the riot act, his eyes fell upon a folder on his commander’s desk. It was simply labeled “Castille.” Sucking on his bottom lip, he checked back outside. Ouellette was still reaming Landry. Well, Dixie did say she wondered what the commander’s up to, so…

  As quietly as he could, Aucoin slipped over to the folder and peeked inside. Within were dozens of old newspaper clippings. A couple of them were from the original Bourbon Street Ripper case, including photographs of Vincent Castille during his trial. Some were of the old Knight Priory of Saint Madonna. There were also a few articles on Guinea during the First World War and a photograph of Ouellette and his platoon during the Vietnam War.

  Aucoin touched the photo and snickered. “The old son-of-a-bitch looked the same back then. Some guys have all the luck.”

  The sound of someone clearing his throat caught his attention. Ouellette was standing in the doorway, looking irritated. “Getting in some casual reading, Aucoin?”

  Holding out his hands, Aucoin backed away. “I didn’t mean anything by it, sir. I just… Well, I just…”

  “You were just snooping around in my shit. I swear, you and Landry are like two little fucking kids.” He slammed the folder shut and then waved toward the chair. “Sit your ass down. I catch you on this side of the desk again, and I’ll suspend you for a month.”

  Without a word, Aucoin did as he was told.

  “Right. So I asked you about Bradley because he was killed last night.”

  The shock was so sudden that he just sat there, mouth agape. Then he asked, “Who did it? Was it the Fat City Stabber?”

  Ouellette got a thoughtful look and then said, “Yes. Yes, you could say that.”

  Something about how he phrased that didn’t sit well with Aucoin. “What do you mean, sir? What exactly happened?” Did he somehow cause this with the silver pen?

  Leaning forward and staring into his eyes, Ouellette said, “Bradley shot himself in front of his seventeen-year-old daughter last night.”

  Aucoin felt a chill descend upon him. The words he had written—“cornered his latest victim” and “shot and then arrested by Detective Mike Bradley”-—resounded mercilessly in his skull.

  “Commander, what are you saying?” He covered his face, feeling panic, anxiety, and even anguish. His stomach felt like it was in knots.

  With a sigh, Ouellette said, “I’m saying that Detective Bradley was the Fat City Stabber, and when he realized he had chosen his own daughter as his next victim, he blew his own goddamn brains out.”

  Sitting back, Aucoin stared ahead, feeling what little sensation he had left drain from his face.

  What have I done?

  “Thank you for having lunch with me, Kyle,” Cathy said, seated at a booth in Copeland’s. She was already on dessert, with the check waiting on the table. She watched him softly, with the gentlest expression she had given him in many years. She was lovely, especially with her hair recently colored and styled, and with new earrings in her ears.

  “Well, it turns out I’m not as busy as I thought,” he said, taking off his jacket and sitting across from her. He had spent most of the morn
ing dealing with the fallout from Detective Bradley’s death, all while trying to sort through the revelation about the pen. Finally, he decided to ignore the issue until he could speak with Dixie again. Any other way would likely strip him of his sanity.

  She smiled. “I’m glad, Kyle. I wanted to see you. So how have you been holding up?”

  He recognized that she was trying to reach out again. The last few times, however, it hadn’t worked out. When he had needed her after Cheryl’s death, she had pulled away. And then when she’d come to him, he’d pushed her away. It was a sordid dance that had contributed heavily to the end of their marriage. But now she wanted to reconnect.

  So he smiled back. “I’ve been OK. Ouellette has me working a new case, so I feel… well, I feel like my old self again.”

  “Oh that’s wonderful!” She reached over and placed her hand over his, squeezing. He knew she wanted him to hold her hand, but he didn’t move.

  Her expression faded. “What’s wrong?”

  “Things have been happening that have brought back a lot of memories about, um, Cheryl.”

  Cathy squeezed his hand a little harder. “What happened?”

  “A girl named Misty watched as her father, a cop, committed suicide in front of her. She’s gone completely crazy. I’m told she’ll be committed. Anyway, the fact that I couldn’t save this girl reminded me of how useless I was with our daughter.”

  She rubbed her thumb over his hand. “Oh, Kyle.”

  He clenched his jaw. “I think what’s really gotten to me all this time isn’t so much what happened but that I felt completely helpless. When she needed me, when it really counted, I couldn’t be there for her. I couldn’t protect the one I love.”

  For a few more seconds, Cathy was silent. Then she covered his hand with both of hers and squeezed. “Kyle, you’re a good man and a good cop. You always have been.”