by Linda Ladd
Claire insisted that she and Black follow the ambulance to the jail, not about to let anything go wrong. If she had to babysit Rene until they strapped him to the table in the death house, she was going to do it. Rene was going to pay and pay hard.
Sheriff Friedewald was standing outside the jail as Rene was taken inside in a wheelchair. Gabe was with him. More worrisome, he looked pale and gaunt and had the thirst of murder shining brightly out of his eyes. She stopped him before he could follow after the man who had beat him senseless and left him for dead so long ago. He wasn’t wearing his sling. Now she was wearing one. Both of them had injuries that had been inflicted by the man they’d trusted.
“How’d you know we were here, Gabe?”
“Nick called home and told us what happened to you. He told me everything. Are you okay? You look pretty busted up.”
“I’ve been better.”
“Me, too. How bad is Zee?”
“Rene shot him in the back, but they think he’s gonna pull through, thank God. He’s in intensive care. They’re taking good care of him, and Black’s working on having him transferred over to the Tulane Medical Center in New Orleans.”
“That bastard shot him in the back? Look, Claire, I want some time alone with Rene. Can you fix it?”
“No, I cannot fix it, and I wouldn’t, even if I could.”
“I deserve a chance to talk to him. I wanna know why he hurt Sophie and me. That’s all. I just wanna know why.”
“Of course, you do, Gabe, but you’re a DEA agent. I’m a cop. We’re not going to act like vigilantes, no matter how much we want to. I had to stop myself from shooting him dead on the way back here. But I controlled myself and so can you.”
Gabe frowned, rubbed the back of his neck, and muttered a few choice curses under his breath. “Will Russ let me talk to him? Privately, in one of the interview rooms? I won’t lay a finger on him, I swear to God, I won’t.”
“He might. If all of it’s on tape and you don’t assault him. His lawyer probably won’t allow it, though.”
Inside the jail, they got a surprise when Russ told them that Rene had requested to be interviewed, and he wanted Gabe and Claire to do it. Russ gave them the option, and they grabbed it.
Rene Bourdain was waiting in Interview One, and not in the best shape physically. Friedewald and Black, and Nancy, who’d shown up about fifteen minutes after they had arrived, along with most of the other Lafourche Parish detectives, were in the adjoining surveillance room, watching and filming the interview through a two-way mirror.
Outside the door, Claire stopped Gabe with a hand on his arm. “I got us permission, Gabe, but you gotta promise me that you won’t touch him. You cannot hurt him.”
“I’m not stupid, Claire. We finally got the bastard. I’m not gonna mess that up and give him a reason to yell police brutality.”
Claire wasn’t so sure. Gabe’s anger was ingrained, had been buried for decades, and he looked like he was going to choke the life out of his tormentor as soon as the door shut behind them. Just like Jack Holliday had nearly done. “Give me your word. Promise me. Please, Gabe.”
“Okay, you got it. Now open that door. I want to see him.”
Claire opened the door with her good hand. Rene was sitting at the metal table. His hands were cuffed and attached with chains to the arms of his wheelchair. One of his arms was in a cast, and Claire was glad she’d gotten that satisfaction, at least. His face was so beaten and swollen that they barely recognized him. His nose was broken, his eyes were black and blue and nearly swollen completely shut, his front teeth were missing, and the rest of his face was a mess of cuts and black and purple bruises.
“Holliday did that to you, Bourdain? Remind me to buy that guy a drink,” Gabe said through tightly clenched teeth.
Rene only gave a strangled sneer, and it made his nose start bleeding again. Close beside her, Claire felt Gabe’s muscles tighten up, and he started shaking. She took his hand in hers and squeezed it. Gabe calmed down some, but his arm still felt rigid.
Wiping his nose on his shoulder, Rene said, his voice was slurred, almost indistinguishable because of his cut and swollen lips, “Thanks for comin’ in, kiddos.”
Claire felt her own anger shoot up inside her, but she forced the resentment down and glanced at the mirrored window. “Okay, we’re here, Rene, let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”
“Sit down, make yourselves at home. I wondered if this day was ever gonna come, ’specially after you came back, li’l girl.” Everything he said took a long time, uttered between labored and hoarse and painful breathing.
“Don’t call me that.” Angry, too, Claire sat down with Gabe, both across the table from Rene. Gabe’s jaw was working, muscles tightening in both his cheeks. He was balanced on the edge of violence. She knew it and hoped he had enough willpower to remain in control. She hoped she had that kind of willpower. She still couldn’t believe it. Rene. Rene, who had been like a favorite uncle to both of them, especially to Gabe. He had wanted them both dead. Why?
Claire heaved in a deep breath. “Rene, I’m going to give you your rights. Do you understand that?”
“Well, I should. I’ve been giving them to criminals since before you was born.”
It took him a while to get all that out in his raspy slur, and Claire repeated the familiar words, loud and clear for the video camera, and then she asked him if he understood after each one. Rene Bourdain was a clever man. He had gotten away with horrendous deeds for years. He wasn’t going to get off on a legal technicality—no way in hell would she ever let that happen.
Rene smiled at them, as best he could. It was more of a twisted, unpleasant, and disgusting grimace. “Okay, I get it. Here’s what I want. I tell you everything you wanna know. You agree to a plea bargain and the death penalty’s off the table. Fair enough? I know good and well you wanna know who my victims were and where I dumped them. No way, not until you take off the death penalty.”
It took him a long time to say all that, too, and it made his nose bleed down the front of his hospital gown, which didn’t bother either of them one iota.
“We’ve got your little trunk of souvenirs, Rene. That ought to tell us plenty.”
Rene actually chuckled a little. “That’s just a drop in the bucket to what I’ve done, chère. I’ve had a long and lucrative career. Oh yeah, believe it.”
Claire kept her cool, how she did not know, but it took some time and struggle. So did Gabe, thank God. She had already discussed the terms with Sheriff Friedewald and the prosecuting attorney. They had agreed to set aside the death penalty for life in prison without the possibility of parole, but only if Rene legally agreed to waive any future appeals and if he gave them the names of his victims and their burial places.
Claire gave him the terms, and then she said, “That’s provided that you tell the truth and give us enough to make it worth the trade-off. Frankly, I’d like to see you stood up against this wall and shot dead right here, right now. I’d like to do it myself, Rene.”
“Of course, you would. You always were the one with the gumption. Even when you were a little kid. I could see the fire you had burnin’ inside you. That’s why I liked you the best.” He looked at Gabe. “And you had guts like no other kid I ever ran up against. You could take my blows for hours.”
“Yeah, and you’re the lowest scum that ever walked this earth.”
Rene sighed, and then he croaked out some more infuriating words. “I had a good run, almost made it through to retirement. If it wasn’t for you, Claire, I’d still be out there at the maze, havin’ a good old time.”
“Just start at the beginning and tell us everything.”
And so he did, if only part of it. He spoke slowly and painfully, but with relish, as if he got off on the murders a second time in the telling.
“Gabe’s family was my first, except for the ones I killed overseas. Madonna and Wendy and Jack’s sisters, all of them were taken after I hit their parents. There
are others, too, lots of ’em that you don’t know about. I’ll tell you who they are, but not until my lawyer gets this plea deal signed and in writing. I ain’t no fool.”
Gabe said, “Why start killing us off now, Rene? Most of us have been around all these years without being able to identify you. Why now?”
“Because that bastard Jack Holliday and his P.I. came snoopin’ around, getting too close for comfort. I left some messy loose ends in the beginning when I didn’t know what I was doing. I had to take care of them, in case they remembered something and put the police onto me.”
“So you had to get rid of those two innocent girls, just in case?”
“One of ’em might’ve ended up putting two and two together. Made me damn nervous.” He stopped and looked back at Claire. “Especially after you showed up out of the blue and got involved in Madonna’s murder. I was plannin’ to take over the case and weed out anything that could incriminate me. I thought I could scare you off with that voodoo doll and you’d hand the case to me, after all the things you’ve been through lately.” He stopped speaking, licked blood off his lower lip, seemed to like the taste of it. His voice was gravelly and hard to understand, but he kept talking. “And it worked ’til you and your partner came up to her apartment and refused to back off. Holliday was askin’ questions all around the Quarter, about you, Gabe, about your parents, about what happened to them. It was just a matter of time before somebody fingered me.”
“Why did you kill Gabe’s parents? Bobby was like a brother to you. You always said that yourself. You told me that.”
“Bobby took Kristen away from me, that’s why. She loved me first.” Rene stopped, and Claire realized that he was getting riled up. He was panting, trying to talk faster but having trouble moving his swollen lips. “We were gonna get married, had made some plans before I got in trouble, but then Bobby moved in on her and took her away from me. I hated their guts, after that. And I hated you, Gabe. I still hate you. You’re the reason she had to marry Bobby.” He stopped, breathing heavily, bleeding profusely down the front of his shirt now. “He knocked Kristie up with you. That’s why I beat you so hard. I waited for the right time, and then I got ’em back for what they’d done to me. And I got you back for causin’ it.”
He is completely insane, Claire thought, and then she realized he was actually enjoying throwing his crimes in their faces. “Are you the Mob assassin known as the Snake?”
Rene tried to grin, but his mouth barely moved because of the stitches in his split lips. “You turned out to be a better detective than I figured you for. How’d you get that information, anyhow? I thought I had that buried, nice and deep, never to be found out.”
“Answer me. Were you the Snake?”
“Yeah, I sure am. How you think I came by all that money, chère? Workin’ as a cop, like you two? Come on.”
“You said you inherited it.”
“Yeah, and everybody believed me. Every single word I ever said. It’s a gift.”
“Why’d you kill Sophie?” That was Gabe, in a tightly reined, icy, awful voice.
“I wasn’t going to. I was gonna let you go after a while if you didn’t see my face. But then you got away, and she saw me that night, so I had to get rid of her. So it’s really your fault she’s dead. So now you can blame yourself for that, too, for the rest of your life.”
Tired of his rasping, self-satisfied rant, Claire wanted to get up and walk out. She said, “What about Jack Holliday’s family? Why them? They lived out in Colorado. Why’d you go after them?”
He leaned back in the chair and swallowed a few times, licked his cracked lips. His jaw was turning a deeper shade of black now. “Jack’s stepdad witnessed a Mob hit in Chicago. He was gonna testify. It took a while but I found him. You know what a good detective I am.”
“And his little sisters?”
“I like little kids, always have.” He stopped again, breathed heavily. “They’re always so scared, so eager to do whatever I tell them to. The fear in their eyes excites me. Except for you, Gabe. You always looked at me with such hatred that it was almost scary, even with you tied up and helpless.”
“You filthy pedophile freak,” Gabe ground out between set teeth. “I wish I’d been the one to find you last night. You’d be floating face down in that swamp right now.”
“Yeah, I believe that. You still got that hate inside you. I can see it in your eyes right now. That’s why I always thought so much of you.”
“I ought to kill you right now. Just choke the fuckin’ life out of your rotten body.”
“Gabe, stop.” It was sickening, horrific, everything Rene croaked out with such misguided pride, but they really were the lucky ones. They were the only ones still left breathing. And Zee, if he survived—and he would, she told herself firmly. He would. He would be fine.
“Who are the others?”
“Told you that I ain’t sayin’ until I see the signed plea deal in my lawyer’s hand. I will say, though, that most of them were the kids of my hits. Couldn’t just leave them all alone in the house with the corpses of their mommies and daddies, could I? I’ve got some compassion. Figured they were better off with me, at least until I had to kill them. That’s all I’m sayin’ about that until my lawyer gets down here.”
“You killed your victims and buried them in the cemetery out at Rose Arbor, is that correct?”
“Most of ’em. I disposed some in the swamp for the gators to feed on. It just depended on my mood at the time.”
“How many?”
“Eighteen, or thereabouts, give or take a few. Most of my Mob hits had at least a couple of kids. You were lucky to make it out of there in one piece, Gabe.” Rene stopped, hacked out a deep, painful cough before he continued. “Not many did, none of the ones I kept out at the maze. But I didn’t know what I was doing the first time. Got careless. My skills weren’t so polished back then.”
“Madonna and Wendy got away, too.”
“Ah, Madonna and Wendy. That was a bit different. I hit Madonna’s mom and dad, but unfortunately, somebody happened by when I had them out on a voodoo altar. So I had to leave them behind. That was the first and last time that happened. I wasn’t sure if they saw me, or not, so I had to take care of them.”
Gabe leaned forward. “You just killed them, after all these years. Just to cover your tracks?”
“They’re part of your investigation. Couldn’t take that chance. Claire’s too good. Although I did throw you off with that phony restraining order I wrote up on Jack Holliday, didn’t I, Annie? Sent you running after him, just like I planned. He tried to smile at Claire. He was having trouble breathing now, all the talking making his throat dry. The air was wheezing in and out of his broken nose and making low, whistling sounds. “I’ve always been proud of you two. Both of you. You’re tough. You turned out to be good cops.”
“What about the old man? Nat Navarro? How did he figure into all this?”
“He was my mentor back in the day. Introduced me to the lucrative parts of working hits for the Mob. He knew too much, plain and simple. He’s the one that let me use the root cellar down at Rose Arbor when I needed a place to keep my kids back when I first got started. We were in the Merchant Marine together and he taught me how to kill people. In the end, he was the obvious one for me to frame because I knew you already suspected him. Worked, too. I’m surprised you fell for it, but the evidence I planted was damn indisputable.”
“I hope you die hard, Rene,” said Gabe. “I hope you suffer and then burn in hell.”
“Oh, I will, no doubt about it.”
Claire glanced at the big mirror, but she didn’t really care who heard her next words. “I hope you suffer as much as Gabe and Sophie suffered. I hope you never have another moment of joy or peace in your miserable life.”
Gabe got to his feet. He took a step around the table toward his abuser, his face like a stone mask.
Claire stood up, too. “Let’s get out of here, Gabe. We got what we
wanted. We’re finished. Somebody else can take over from here.”
Gabe hesitated a long moment, fists balled at his sides, and then he turned around and walked out the door. Claire followed him, but paused and turned around when Rene called out her name.
“I always loved you the best, Annie. That’s the truth. Back then, and all over again when you showed up down here. You got in my way, bested me, but I still love you. You’ll always be my special li’l girl.”
For a moment, Claire understood what Gabe and Jack felt: rage, pure and simple and black and unbridled, gushing up to fill her head. But they were free of him now. He would pay for his crimes for the rest of his life, for all his victims. It was over. Claire walked out to where Black was waiting for her in the hallway. She didn’t look back. It was over.
Hours later, when Claire and Black finally climbed the curving staircase of the house in the French Quarter, they took a long, hot, slow shower together, and Black dried her off around her injuries. Then they got into bed and made slow, tender love that lasted for a long, long time. Then they lay in each other’s arms and didn’t talk about what had happened that day, not a single word. They had seen enough misery and grief and uncovered enough horror and despair. Their thoughts were their own thoughts, none of which were pretty, at least not in Claire’s mind. But it felt so good to feel Black’s long, muscular body stretched out beside her, and she held on to him, glad to have him with her, safe and sound, his heartbeat steady under her ear. She had a feeling her ghastly nightmares would come back as soon as she shut her eyes and tried to sleep. But Black was always there when she needed him, and she needed him tonight. She loved him for that, and yes, for so many other things, too.
