by Tami Hoag
She left the room without looking back, without acknowledging the maid who had been eavesdropping in the hall. The more people who knew the truth, the better. Now that it was out of that terrible little black box of secrets inside her, Laurel had every intention of making Ross Leighton's perversity common knowledge in Partout Parish. He would never face the charges in court, but he could damn well face them every time he walked down a street or walked into a store or a restaurant. He would never do time inside the walls of a penitentiary; a sentence of public disgrace would have to suffice.
The front door swung open as Laurel came down the grand staircase, and her stepfather ushered in Reverend Stipple.
“Laurel,” Ross said, beaming one of his bland smiles up at her. “I'm so glad you could come for your mother's sake.”
“You won't be.” Laurel stepped down onto the polished marble and cut a glance at the minister, whose small eyes widened as he scented trouble like a mouse scenting the approach of cats. He took an instinctive step back, his bony hands fumbling to straighten his limp seersucker jacket. Laurel wondered what he would think of Ross Leighton now; if he would condemn, or in his weak and ineffectual way find some excuse to make it all right.
“I told her,” she said, turning back to her stepfather.
Understanding dawned like shock in his eyes, but he pretended not to know, as he had pretended innocence all these years. “Told her what, darlin'?”
“The truth about the way you used my sister when she was too young to stop you. The truth about the way you turned her into a whore for your own personal enjoyment.”
Reverend Stipple gasped at the words and their implications. Color crept up Ross's thick neck and into his face. He opened his mouth to protest, but Laurel cut him off with a sharp motion of her hand.
“Don't bother denying it while I'm standing here, you son of a bitch. I know what happened. I knew all along. I know what you turned her into. I know that she's dead because of it. I kept the silence all this time, kept that terrible secret inside me, let you get off scot-free. Not anymore,” she promised, her voice trembling as badly as the rest of her.
“I told Vivian,” she said, glaring up at him—hale and hearty with his suntan and his swept-back hair, the man of wealth and leisure in his green country club shirt and khaki slacks. He should have been the one cut up and left for dead. “I told Vivian, and I sincerely hope that she kills you.”
Ross caught her arm as she started toward the door. “Laurel, wait—”
She jerked away from him with a violent move, her eyes burning hate into his. “No. I waited long enough.”
Hatred boiling inside her like a poison, she left the house and left the grounds, the tires of the car flinging crushed shell up in its wake.
And Ross Leighton stood at the door of the mansion he had taken from another man, and watched her go, panic writhing like a snake in his gut.
“Jesus Christ, I hate religious fanatics.” Kenner stretched back in his chair, trying to work out the kink between his shoulder blades. His gaze trailed the followers of The True Path out of the outer office and into the hall. He especially hated that they were men who lived around Bayou Breaux and were of an age to vote. That meant he had to give at least some token credence to what they had to say.
He turned his narrowed eyes on their ringleader, who still sat in the visitor's chair on the other side of the desk. Slick. That was the way he would describe Jimmy Lee Baldwin. He hated slick. Slick was damn near always trouble.
“So you think Jack Boudreaux strangled all them girls and cut 'em up for kicks?”
Jimmy Lee steepled his fingers and looked concerned, his tawny brows drawing into a little tent above his eyes, his tongue worrying over his chipped teeth. “You've heard the testimony of my deacons, Sheriff. I'm not alone in my suspicions.”
“No. Well, other people have other suspicions.” Kenner shook a cigarette out of the crumpled pack on his desk and searched in vain for his matches. Danjermond, who was standing against the row of file cabinets, came forward and offered him a light from a slim wand of twenty-four karat gold. The sheriff inhaled deeply and blew a stream of blue at the grimy ceiling, never taking his eyes off Baldwin. “What would you say if I told you someone came to me with a little story about you and Savannah Chandler?”
The preacher closed his eyes and shook his head as if he were in deep emotional pain. “Laurel,” he murmured, privately cursing her to hell and gone. “She came to me with the same story. Apparently the workings of Savannah's sadly twisted mind. Heaven only knows where she might have come up with such tales of depravity. I fear she walked a dark path,” he said with a dramatic sigh.
Kenner sniffed in derision and cleared his throat noisily. “I don't give a rat's ass what path she walked. Why would she have it in for you?”
Jimmy Lee cut the theatrics in half. The sheriff was not a patient man. “She was a regular at Frenchie's Landing. I would see that den of iniquity shut down.”
“You ever tie a woman up to have sex with her?” Kenner asked bluntly.
“Sheriff! I am a man of God!”
“Plenty of shit gets done in the name of God. Did you ever?”
Jimmy Lee looked him square in the eye, as innocent as an altar boy. “I wouldn't dream of it.”
But he was dreaming of it when he left the sheriff's office five minutes later. And the face of the woman bound beneath him was Laurel Chandler's.
Kenner stubbed his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray and swung his chair around to face Danjermond, privately wondering how the district attorney could manage to stay looking like some cover boy from GQ while he looked and felt and smelled like a survivor of a jungle campaign. They had all been putting in hellish hours since the discovery of Annie Gerrard's body. The stress, the fatigue rolled off Danjermond like oil off Teflon.
“What do you think, Steve?” Kenner asked. “Is the preacher a pervert, or is Jack Boudreaux our man?”
Danjermond tightened his jaw at the nickname, but made no comment. Twisting his signet ring on his finger, he wandered to the window, noticing with irritation that the blind had been hung crooked. “I can't think that Annie Gerrard would have had anything to do with Baldwin, considering he was trying to shut down her parents' bar. He denies involvement with Savannah Chandler. No one has actually seen them together. As to Savannah's accusations—well, we know she was a woman who might say or do anything. She may well have had a grudge against him. We'll never know.”
“And Boudreaux?”
“Certainly has the kind of imagination it would take. If his books are anything to go by, he has a taste for violence. He knew both women. He has a reputation as a ladies' man.”
“But no stories floating around about him tying them up or getting rough.”
Danjermond turned from the window, pinning the sheriff with a penetrating stare. “He may have killed his wife back in Houston, Sheriff Kenner,” he said darkly. “Is that rough enough for you?”
Frowning hard in thought, Kenner reached for the pack of Camels on his desk, shook out the last one, and dangled it from his lip. “Maybe we'd better have us a little chat with Mr. Jack Boudreaux.”
It was late afternoon by the time Laurel made it to Prejean's Funeral Home. Aunt Caroline had tried to talk her out of it. Hadn't the day been terrible enough? Wouldn't it be better to wait until after the autopsy and after Mr. Prejean had done his part? Wouldn't she rather remember her sister as something other than the victim of a brutal crime?
Yes, but she was the victim of a brutal crime, a crime she had suffered through alone. Laurel couldn't bear the thought of it. They had always had each other. Even when Ross was making his secret visits to Savannah's room, they had still shared the pain afterward. The idea that her sister had faced her killer all alone, in the swamp, where there was no one to hear her cries for help, where there was no such thing as forgiveness, no mercy . . .
Blinking back the tears, she pulled open the front door and stepped into
the hall, then gagged at the heavy perfume of carnations and Lemon Pledge. A vacuum cleaner was droning in the Serenity room. Mantovani seeped out of the speaker system—syrupy violins and twittering flutes.
Lawrence Prejean stepped out of his office and walked right to her, as if he had sensed her presence. He was a small man, not much taller than Laurel, spare and wiry with an elegance that had long made her think of him as a Cajun Fred Astaire. He had a thin layer of neatly combed dark hair and big, liquid brown eyes that were perpetually sympathetic.
“Chérie, I'm so sorry for your loss,” he said softly, sliding an arm around her shoulders.
Laurel wondered dimly how, after so many losses, so many tragedies, he could still dispense such genuine feeling to the bereaved.
“Your Tante Caroline called to tell me you were coming down,” he said, taking her by the hand. “Are you sure you want to do this, chère?”
“Yes.”
“You know we are transporting her to Lafayette tonight?”
“Yes, I know. I just want to sit with her for a while. I need to see her.”
She almost choked on the words, and shook her head, annoyed with herself. She had gone back to Belle Rivière from Beauvoir, taken a long shower, followed the dictates of Mama Pearl and lay down for a time, thinking all the while that she was composing herself, that she would be able to do this without breaking down. “Comport yourself as a lady, Laurel. You're a Chandler; it's expected.”
Prejean paused at the door to the embalming room and patted her hand consolingly, his big dark eyes as warm and deep as an ancient soul's. “She was your sister,” he murmured. “Of course you need to see her. Of course you will cry. You need to grieve. Grieve deeply, chérie. There is no shame in that you loved your sister.”
Her eyes glossed over, and she dug a hand into the pocketbook she'd borrowed from Caroline to pull out a crumpled pink tissue.
He ushered her into the room with a gentle hand on her shoulder. The aromas of flowers and dust spray were replaced by medicinal and strongly antiseptic scents, reminiscent of a high school biology lab. And beneath the overpowering smell of formaldehyde and ammonia, the fetid stench of death lingered. The room was as neat as any operating room, as cold and sterile. The linoleum shone under the glare of fluorescent lights. In the center of the floor stood the table.
Laurel stood beside the draped figure, still managing to find some fragment of hope that it wouldn't be her sister. Prejean pulled a chrome-and-plastic chair over and situated it in a way that suggested he thought she might pass out.
“You're ready, chère?” he whispered. After all his years in this business, he seldom tried to contradict the wishes of those who were left behind. Death stirred up many needs, both bright and dark. Only the one experiencing the loss could know what those needs were and how they had to be met.
At Laurel's nod he slowly folded down the drape, uncovering only the dead woman's face and carefully arranging the sheet so that it covered the horrible discoloration on her throat.
Laurel took one long, painful look at her sister's face, swollen and distorted, and that small, irrational part of her mind tried to tell her that her most desperate hope was a reality. This wasn't Savannah. It couldn't be. Savannah was beautiful. Savannah had always been the pretty one, and she had always been the little mouse. This couldn't be Savannah's wild, silken mane, this dull, matted tangle of hair. This couldn't be Savannah's elegant, patrician face, this flat-featured, gray mask.
But another part of her brain, the logical, practical part, overruled with a harsh voice. That's your sister. Your sister is dead. Dead. Dead. Dead . . . Her gaze seemed to zoom in on the grotesquely distorted features, on the single gold earring still pinned to the right ear—a loop of brightly polished, hammered gold that hung from a smaller loop of braided gold wire. Savannah had had a pair made in New Orleans. A present to herself for her last birthday. This is your sister, this ugly corpse. She's dead. The truth filled her mind, the putrid smell of it filled her nostrils and throat.
With a weak, piteous sound mewing in her throat, she sank down into the plastic chair and bent over her knees, torn between the need to cry and the need to vomit. Prejean had anticipated the possibility and sat a stainless steel bucket beside the chair. He squatted down beside her and brushed cool, soft fingers against her cheek.
“Are you all right, chérie? Should I call someone to take you home?”
“No,” she whispered, swallowing hard and willing her stomach to settle. “No, I just want to sit here for a while, if that's all right.”
He patted the hand that gripped the arm of the chair. She was a brave little thing. “Stay as long as you need, petite. The sheriff will be coming later. If you need anything, there's a buzzer near the door.”
Laurel nodded, knowing the procedure. She had always stood on the other side of it, where it looked logical and necessary. From where she sat now, her perceptions distorted by emotion, it seemed unbelievably cruel. Her sister had been taken from her, killed, and now the authorities would put her through the indignity of dissecting her body. The ME might find some crucial evidence that could solve the case and condemn the killer, she knew. But in that moment when grief threatened to swamp all else, she had a hard time accepting.
Questions from childhood drifted up through the layers of memory. Questions she had asked Savannah about death. “Where did Daddy go, Sister? Do you think he's with the angels?” They had been raised to believe in heaven and hell. But doubts had edged in on those beliefs from time to time, as they did for every child, for everyone. What if it wasn't true? What if life was all we had? Where would Savannah go? Savannah, so lost, so tormented. Oh, please, God, let her find peace.
Time slipped away as she sat there wondering, remembering, hurting, grieving. She let go of all the tears she had tried to hold on to, of all the pain she had been so afraid to feel. It all came pouring out in a torrent, in a storm that shook her and drained her. She knew Prejean checked on her once, but he left her alone, wise enough to realize she had to weather the onslaught of her grief alone. Alone, the way her sister had died.
She thought of that when the tears had all been cried. The way Savannah had died, the way Annie had died, the way their killer had chosen her to play games with.
“Does he want you to catch him, Laurel? Or does he want to show you he can't be caught?”
“I'll catch you, you bastard,” she whispered, staring hard at the shrouded body on the table. “I'll catch you before you can put anyone else through this hell.”
The “how” of that question eluded her for the moment. She had no jurisdiction here. Kenner wouldn't let her interfere. But the “how” was unimportant just now. The vow was important. She had come home to hide from the shame and the failure of Scott County, where justice had not prevailed. She had wanted to turn away from the challenge here. She had watched Danjermond poke through the pieces of jewelry with his slim gold pen and listened to him ask her questions in his smooth, calm voice, and she had wanted nothing more than to turn and run. But she couldn't.
Justice would win this time. It had to. If there was no justice, then all the suffering was for nothing. Senseless. Meaningless. There had to be justice. Even now, even too late, she wanted justice for Savannah.
“What are you trying to atone for, Laurel?” Dr. Pritchard asked, tapping his pencil against his lips.
For my silence. For my cowardice. For the past.
Justice was the way.
She couldn't just put the past behind her. It would never be forgotten. But there could be justice, and she would do everything in her power to get it, she vowed as old fears and old guilts settled inside her and melded and solidified into a new strength. She would fight for justice, and she would win it . . . or die trying.
They came for the body at seven-thirty. Kenner and a deputy. They would escort the hearse to Lafayette and witness the autopsy, which would be performed by a team of pathologists. Partout Parish had neither the budget nor the n
eed for the kind of equipment necessary for detailed forensic work. Laurel went out into the hall and stood there, not able to watch them zip her sister into a body bag. But she stayed until she heard the cars drive away and Prejean came back out of the room.
“I'll bring some clothes for her tomorrow,” she said, her heart like a weight in her chest. “And there's a necklace—something our father gave her. I'll have to get it back from the sheriff. She wouldn't want to go anywhere without it.”
“I understand.”
But would Kenner? she wondered as she walked out into an evening that smelled of fresh-mowed grass and approaching rain. The necklace was evidence.
How had it gotten into her pocketbook? When? These were questions she had gone over with the sheriff half the morning. She turned them over and over again as she leaned on the roof of the BMW and watched the thin stream of traffic pass on Huey Long Boulevard. She either had to have been separated from the bag when it happened or had to have been in a crowd. Someone could have come into the house, into her room, but that seemed far too risky for a killer as smart as this one.
If not for the fact that she was now on her way to an appointment with a coroner, Laurel knew she once might have suspected Savannah, and the shame of that curled inside her. She hadn't wanted to think about it, but her mind had sorted all the information into logical rows and columns, and, God help her, the theory had begun to take shape. Savannah—unstable, jealous, filled with hate for the image she had of herself as a whore, a violent temper simmering just beneath the surface. Savannah—her big sister, her protector, the one person in the world she loved above all.
“I'm sorry, Sister,” she whispered, squeezing her raw, burning eyes shut against a fresh wave of guilt.
Think. She had to think. Savannah was gone; it wouldn't do any good to be sorry now.
The necklace could easily have been planted while she was in a crowded room. It would have been a simple matter of stepping close, making the drop, walking away. Easier than picking a pocket.
