Mostly Murder

by Linda Ladd

  Rene still procrastinated. He wasn’t keen on discussing the subject. He no doubt felt that he had put it to bed a long time ago and didn’t want to wake it up. “I didn’t destroy anything. Everything the police came up with I’ve got right here in my safe. I took the whole thing out of storage after the case was sealed and went cold. Nobody knows about that, and nobody can know. I’ve come too far in my career to get busted for stealing a police file going back twenty years.” He frowned some, obviously perturbed at the thought, and then he drained his glass and leaned toward her. “Claire, I’ve got to warn you. The photos in that file are pretty hard to look out. I know how much you loved the LeFevreses.”

  “Go get it, Rene, please. It might help me bring in a serial killer who’s been on the loose way too long.”

  “God, it’s just hard to deal with this all over again.”

  Rene hesitated, wasted more time, the story dragging out as slow as twenty-degree molasses. Claire tried to be patient, but the problem was, she wasn’t patient.

  “There’s something else, too. Something even Clyde and Gabe and the other guys don’t know. I’ve never been able to bring myself to tell them. It’s just too ugly.”

  Claire tensed for the coming blow. Then she realized there couldn’t be anything worse than what she’d already heard. Ugly seemed to be the word of the day. So, okay, bring it on, the next chapter in this sordid tale. “All right, let’s hear it.”

  “I uncovered some dirt on Bobby. Something real bad. I didn’t like it. You won’t, either.”

  Claire mentally braced herself. She did not like where this was going. She’d been hit with so many curveballs during the last week that she felt like a Major League backstop.

  “I hate to say this, but, well, he got himself in trouble, involved with the Mob operating out of Algiers. He went on the take.”

  As a cop, that hit Claire pretty hard. She found it hard to believe, too. And again Black’s black-sheep brother was cropping up in the investigation, which was never good. “I can’t imagine that. He was as straight as they come.”

  “I found evidence of it and confronted him. He begged me not to tell Kristen, but I told him that I couldn’t let it ride, that I had to take him in. He wouldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t stand for her to know he was dirty.” He paused again, looked unhappy, and his next words dragged out, his voice heavy with sorrow. “You know what I think happened? I think he killed Kristen and then committed suicide.”

  Well now, that scenario certainly didn’t jibe with what Gabe had just told her. “So now you’re telling me that they weren’t murdered?”

  “I can’t prove it, no. But they were killed with a .45 and his service weapon was right there beside him.”

  “Did the ballistics check out?”

  “They were inconclusive, but I think he wanted to end it all and couldn’t bear to leave her behind. You know how he felt about her.”

  Yeah? Only thing was, none of that made a lick of sense. And it sure didn’t measure up with Gabe’s version of witnessing a masked man kill his parents. “That’s not what Gabe saw. And if it was a murder/suicide, who took Gabe and Sophie? And why?”

  “Gabe saw the murder? He remembers what happened to him? Why, he never even mentioned it to any of us.”

  “No, he kept it to himself. He wanted to find the killer and avenge his family.”

  “So he can identify him?” Rene sounded excited at the idea. “We can get him?”

  “No, the killer wore a mask. He thinks he can recognize his voice though.”

  “Man, no wonder he takes the chances he does. I’m sorry he remembered. It had to have been horrible. The way we found his parents out in the bayous with the kids missing, and all that. We searched out there for days, but didn’t find a damn thing until Gabe finally showed up, half dead, his memory gone.”

  “Yeah, I know all that. Just give me that file, Rene. Let me read through it. Maybe I’ll see something that you’ve always been too close to see.”

  Rene didn’t argue further. He got up and left the room. Claire stood up, too, restless and full of suppressed emotion. All this was coming at her a little too fast and too furiously. Too many angles, too many theories that just didn’t add up the way they should.

  Moving over to the open French doors, she inhaled the cool night air. Somewhere nearby, she could hear Christmas music. “Jingle Bell Rock.” A happy sound. She wished she were happy. She wished this case hadn’t come up now. She wished she and Black could put up that huge evergreen tree he’d brought from New York or go shopping at the Riverwalk Marketplace or have some fun groping each other under some mistletoe, something, anything that was cheerful and pleasant. It sure would beat looking at a police file with horrible pictures of dead people she had loved dearly. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the wail of police sirens that drowned out the happy sounds of Christmas. Well, that was just par for the course. She only hoped the NOPD wasn’t headed for her house.

  She glanced down at the round glass-topped table beside her. It displayed lots of framed photographs. She bent down and looked at each one in turn. Many were of Rene himself, at places unknown, young and handsome, rugged and tanned. A few more were of him in his dress police uniform, both recent and long ago when he had been a rookie patrol officer. Yet another was one with Bobby LeFevres. The two men were posed together beside a black-and-white police car with a third man that she didn’t recognize. Grinning arrogantly at the camera, both dark and good-looking and proud. She wondered who the other man was. He wasn’t in uniform, but he had his arm hooked familiarly around Bobby’s neck. She put the picture down and found a smaller one, in a shiny silver frame, sitting behind the others. She picked it up.

  It portrayed a group of young friends, having fun and posing, grabbing each other. Rene, Bobby and Kristen LeFevres, and the fourth person looked like a very young Clyde LeFevres, displaying his usual irrepressible smile. All looked to be carefree teenagers, laughing, as they sat together on the front steps of an old house. Rene had on a maroon and white letter jacket with a football letter and had his arm draped around Kristen’s shoulders. Bobby sat one step down, leaning against Kristen’s legs and wearing a similar letter jacket with football insignia. Kristen had her fingers entwined in Bobby’s thick black hair.

  All of them were smiling straight into the camera. Claire marveled at how much Gabe now looked like his dad had back then, both having those ultra-intense brown eyes. Also wearing an identical letter jacket, Clyde was sitting in front of Kristen, smoking a cigarette, turned slightly and looking adoringly up at her. They had all been in love with her, Claire suddenly realized, all three men. And she had been so beautiful back then, with her pale blond hair and clear green eyes and quick smile. She had been beautiful when Claire lived in their home, too. Claire remembered that about her.

  She examined the house behind them in the photo, trying to see if it was the one she’d lived in with them and the location of the Christien crime scene. It looked very old, rundown, peeling white paint, some of the wood splintered or boards completely ripped off. Up on the porch behind them, there was a boarded-up front door, but then she saw it, and her heartbeat slowed to a standstill. A fancy fleur-de-lis was carved into the newel post just behind where they sat. She brought the photo up closer to her eyes, and then she held it underneath the lamp, just to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. There was no doubt. The carving was the very same fleur-de-lis that she’d seen earlier. The snapshot had been taken on the front steps of Rose Arbor, Jack Holliday’s plantation house out on River Road.

  “You like that picture, eh? That was back in our first year in high school. We were all freshmen. Except for Clyde, he’s a junior in that picture, not long before he went to sea.” Rene stood in the threshold of the corridor. He had a large black three-ring binder in his hand.

  Claire held up the photograph. “Where was this taken, Rene?”

  “We were out at an old abandoned plantation house on the river. We used to
hang out there all the time, pickin’ up pecans off the ground and sellin’ them for change.” He laughed. “And then we’d all go to the movies together. All of us guys used to fight over who got to sit by Kristie. Times were pretty simple back then. I miss those guys. The way we were then. We couldn’t’ve imagined what the future was bringin’ down the road. Good thing, too.”

  “Who took the picture?”

  “Nat, I guess. I don’t remember. He’s always been a good friend of Clyde’s, older than him, though. Back then he was the caretaker and lived somewhere down behind that house, still does, I think. It’s Jack Holliday’s now, you know. His family bought it a long time ago and restored it. They call it Rose Arbor.”

  “Yeah, I met Old Nat out there. Who carved that fleur-de-lis on the banister?”

  “Nat did, I think. He likes to carve things, does good work, too, or used to. Don’t know about now. He carved Kristie a fleur-de-lis necklace, too. Her mom decided to bury her in it.” Rene shook his head. “That was a sad time for all of us.”

  “Do you remember when the place was restored?”

  “No. It’s always been a beautiful house place, up there on the hill overlookin’ the Mississippi. We had lots of good times out there. Nat was pretty good about givin’ us the run of the place. As long as we didn’t break out any windows or steal anything off the property, he let us be.”

  “So he was the caretaker that far back?”

  “Yeah. He loves that place.”

  “Is that the murder file?”

  “Yeah, and everything’s still here.”

  Claire took it from him and sat down in a chair beside a bronze floor lamp, the glass shade painted with beautiful pink roses. Rene poured himself another drink, but this time he didn’t offer her one. Then he lounged down on the couch where she had been earlier. She put the binder on her knees and opened the front cover. It was mainly composed of graphic crime scene photographs, all right, all of them old Polaroid insta-prints, now faded and curling around the edges. At the back of the notebook, she found some typewritten reports, the paper also yellowed with age.

  She stared at the photograph on the first page. Kristen LeFevres. Lying on a red-and-white-checkered quilt, a bullet hole in her forehead. Claire swallowed hard, remembering the woman’s warm laugh, her tight good-night hugs, the homemade sugar cookies she always kept in the cookie jar. She had died in a blue gingham, long-sleeved dress with a scooped neck edged with white lace. Yellow flowers were printed all over the skirt. A large yellow rose was pinned in her silky blond hair behind her left ear. There were several strands of colorful Mardi Gras beads around her neck. The dress had a large bloodstain in the bodice where the assailant had shot her in the heart.

  Somewhere in the deepest reaches of her mind, a misty picture tried to rise up and take form. Kristen, strolling along a bayou path holding Sophie’s hand, her shoes crunching on the tiny white shells. She had turned around and smiled back at Claire and Gabe. They had gone on lots of picnics when she’d been there, all of them together, always on the edge of the bayou.

  The second picture was of Bobby LeFevres. He was dressed in a white sweatshirt and jeans with the same Mardi Gras beads around his neck. He lay on his side, his service weapon on the ground beside him. Had he really used it to kill himself and his wife? Had Gabe’s mental and physical abuse played tricks on his memory? His legs were sprawled apart, one arm bent and pinned beneath his torso. His eyes were open, as if staring at the camera lens. Blood was dried in streaks down over his nose and mouth from a bullet wound to his forehead.

  Claire stared at him a long time. After carefully examining the placement of Bobby’s body and the gun, she realized that it was entirely possible that he had shot himself. On the other hand, she felt fairly certain that he had not. The man she remembered could never have killed his wife, never. They had been inseparable. If he had been standing when he’d shot himself, the gun could have fallen out of his hand and landed where it was depicted in the photo, as Rene had surmised, but percentages were against it. She tried to make sense of it all, bring all the parts together into some kind of plausible scenario. She glanced up at Rene. He was watching her closely, his glass propped on his knee.

  “I don’t believe he killed her. I think the same guy who took Gabe killed them both, just like Gabe said. He said he saw a masked man do it.”

  “And it could’ve happened that way, sure it could’ve. I know that. But it was a long time ago, and Gabe was just a boy and probably in total shock if he saw it all go down. Then right after that, we think he might’ve been drugged. There’s no evidence to prove what happened one way or the other. Believe me, I tried my best to find a clue, something, anything. I’m just telling you what might’ve happened. I don’t wanna believe he killed Kristen, any more than I wanted to believe he was dirty, but I do think it’s possible. I’ve kept all this to myself all these years to protect the family, especially Gabe.”

  Claire picked up the next photograph. This one was of Gabriel. He didn’t look much older than he had when she had been with his family. Dark and striking and good-looking, even then. He was lying unconscious in a hospital bed. He had two black eyes, horribly swollen, bandages everywhere, and he wore no shirt. His naked torso was practically skin and bones, indicating he’d been starved, with awful stripes cut into his chest where he’d been flogged. A second picture was a close up of his back, with stripes and crisscross patterns that indicated he’d suffered blow after blow after blow. How could he live with what had been done to him? It was too horrible to imagine.

  There were more pictures of the crime scene from lots of different angles. The blood on the quilt, the fishing poles lying on the bank, a Folgers coffee can full of bait worms found in the bushes near the abduction point. All of which verified Gabe’s version of the crime.

  Rene said, “Gabe was barely breathing when they found him on that bank. All covered in blood and algae and mud. The doctors told us it was a miracle that he survived—just take a look at his wounds. Most of them were infected, too.”

  “Who could do something so inhuman to a child? What kind of sick and twisted mind could do it?”

  “I’ve run into my share of psychotic killers and so have you, from what I’ve heard. But I haven’t seen anybody else like this guy. He has to be a sadist, some kind of a pedophile, and a child killer. Whoever he is, he’s probably long gone.”

  Claire looked up at him. “Do you mind if I take this file with me? I want to read the reports and think everything through.”

  Rene did not look thrilled, but he finally agreed. “Okay, just don’t let anybody else see it.”

  When Claire stood up to go, binder in hand, Rene hugged her tightly, but all she wanted was to get away, go off somewhere by herself and figure out what the hell was going on. The killer, the man who had done such unspeakable things to Gabe, was still walking around, still getting away with his heinous crimes. She knew it, felt it in her bones. He was their killer. They had to catch him, and they had to do it before he struck some other innocent family.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Across the street from Rene’s house, Claire got into her vehicle and sat there in the driver’s seat, thinking about everything Rene and Gabe had told her. Then she opened the binder, using her flashlight app to scrutinize the photographs and reports again. One by one, she sorted through them, studying each one in minute detail. Ten minutes later, she leaned her head back against the seat and shut her eyes. She was so tired; she needed to get some sleep. But she couldn’t quit thinking about the terrible things that Gabe had endured all those years ago after she left his house in the bayous.

  Surprisingly, her mind kept returning again and again to a particular photograph, as jarring and terrible as the images she’d just seen had been—the one of the LeFevreses and Clyde and Rene sitting on the steps at Rose Arbor. Something about it struck her as odd, something wrong, something out of place, something that didn’t sit so well in her mind. It seemed way too much
of a coincidence that they had been photographed on the front gallery of Jack Holliday’s family’s mansion, and possibly by Jack Holliday’s current caretaker, the ever weird and armed-to-the-teeth Old Nat. But the snapshot had been captured many years ago. Gabe had said he and Sophie had been held captive in an old house. Could it really be the same one? And was it just a coincidence that Jack had been implicated in her current cases and lived in the house the killer had used as a lair? How could that have happened? Most of all, why did that picture bother her so much?

  But it did, and continued to do so, and yeah, enough that she gripped the steering wheel, wrenched a sharp U-turn and headed for River Road and Rose Arbor. Maybe Jack knew something about the history of the house that could provide her with a clue, something he had either intentionally or unintentionally left out. Who had owned the house before his grandmother? Nat Navarro? And had he really carved that fleur-de-lis in the banister? And when? The carving was not professionally done. It was a nice rendering but slightly rough in spots, probably the work of an amateur, maybe even dug out with a pocket knife. Why? And why had Jack’s grandmother left it there when she’d renovated everything else in the house? It was certainly out of place when every other feature was pristine and beautiful and restored, and meticulously so.

  The photograph was the key, she knew it, especially after Rene’s talk about his high school friends. Plagued by suspicions and doubts, she tried to figure out the root of her misgivings. It bothered her more than even the pitiful images of Gabe, abused and whipped and heartlessly discarded in the swamp like a dead dog. She kept thinking about him, wondering how he could bear such destructive memories. Now that she understood just how bad a time he had gone through, she was surprised he’d ended up on the right side of the law instead of becoming a drunk or an addict or a felon or a real drug-dealing biker.