“It doesn’t matter. They don’t think it’s related to the other ones,” Bev says.
“What word did she say?”
“What do you mean, what word?” Bev’s beginning to think he’s getting loony.
“When she was begging. She must have begged for you to stop. What word did she say to describe it?”
“Describe what?”
“What it felt like to be so fucking afraid of pain and death! What word did she say!”
“I don’t know.” Bev tries hard to remember. “It seems like she said, Why?”
THE ROOM WAS COOL, and there were no odors.
Nic has read that line at least five times. Her mother might have been murdered just minutes before her husband—Nic’s father—got home. Nic wonders if the killer heard her father’s car and fled, or if it was just fate that the son of a bitch left when he did.
It is ten p.m. Nic, Rudy, Scarpetta, Marino and Lucy sit inside Dr. Lanier’s guest house, drinking Community Coffee, the local favorite.
“Multiple abrasions and lacerations to the face,” Scarpetta reviews the autopsy report.
She said right off that she did not intend to gloss over any detail in order to spare Nic’s feelings. She would not be helping Nic if she did that.
“Abrasion and laceration of the forehead, periocular ecchymoses, fracture of the nasal bones, frontal teeth are loosened.”
“So he beat her face up pretty good,” Marino says, sipping his coffee, which is just the way he likes it, white with Cremora and heavily laced with sugar. “Any possibility this was someone she knew?” he asks Nic.
“She opened the door for him. She was found right near the door.”
“Was she careful about keeping the doors locked?” Lucy looks at her intensely, leaning into the conversation.
Nic stares back at her. “Yes and no. At night, we locked up. But she knew Papa and I would be coming home soon, so she may not have had the door locked.”
“That doesn’t mean the person didn’t ring the bell or knock,” Rudy points out. “It doesn’t mean your mom was afraid of whoever it was.”
“No, it doesn’t mean that,” Nic says.
“Blunt-force trauma to the back of the head. Stellate laceration of vertex, three by four inches. Massive hematoma of vertex and back of the head. Fifty milliliters of liquid subscalpular blood . . .”
Marino and Lucy trade scene photographs back and forth. So far, Nic has not looked at them.
“Blood on the wall just left of the door,” Marino observes. “Hair swipes. How long was your mother’s hair?”
Nic swallows hard. “Shoulder length. She had blond hair, pretty much like mine.”
“Something happened the minute he walked in. Blitz attack,” Lucy says. “Not so different from what happened to Rebecca Milton. Not so different from what happens in any blitz attack, when a victim really enrages the perp.”
“Would injuries like this be consistent with her head being slammed against the wall?” Rudy asks.
Nic is stoical. She reminds herself she is a cop.
Scarpetta meets Nic’s eyes. “I know this is hard, Nic. We’re trying to be honest. Maybe you won’t have so many questions if we’re honest.”
“I’ll always have questions, because we’re never going to know who did this.”
“Never say never,” Marino replies.
“Right.” Lucy nods.
“Comminuted non-depressed fracture of the biparietal and occipital bones, fractures of the orbital roofs, bilateral subdural hematomas, thirty mls free blood over each . . . okay, okay, okay . . .” Scarpetta turns a page. It is typed, not computer-printed. “She has stab wounds,” she adds.
Nic shuts her eyes. “I hope she didn’t feel any of this.”
No one comments.
“I mean”—she looks at Scarpetta—“was she feeling all this?”
“She was feeling terror. Physically? It’s hard to say what pain she felt. When injuries occur so quickly . . .”
Marino interrupts. “You know when you stick your hand in a drawer and cut yourself with a knife and don’t feel it? I think it’s like that unless it’s slow. Slow like in torture.”
Nic’s heart seems to flutter, as if something is wrong with it.
“She wasn’t tortured,” Scarpetta says, looking at Nic. “Definitely not.”
“What about the stabs?” Nic asks.
“Lacerations of fingers and palms. Defense injuries.” She glances at Nic again. “Punctures of the right and left lung with two hundred mls of hemothorax on each side. I’m so sorry. I know this is hard.”
“Would that have killed her? The lung injuries?”
“Eventually. But in combination with the head injuries, absolutely. She also had fractured fingernails on the right and left. Nonidentifiable material recovered from under the nails.”
“Do you think it was saved?” Lucy asks. “DNA wasn’t as advanced then as it is now.”
“I wonder what the hell nonidentifiable is,” Marino says.
“What kind of knife?” Nic asks.
“Short-bladed. But just how short-bladed, I can’t tell.”
“Maybe a pocketknife,” Marino offers.
“Maybe,” Scarpetta says.
“My mother didn’t have a pocketknife. She didn’t have any . . .” Nic starts to tear up, then regains control. “She wasn’t into weapons, is what I’m saying.”
“He might have had one,” Lucy tells her kindly. “But my guess is, if the weapon was a pocketknife, he didn’t think he needed a weapon. Might have just been something he carried around with him like a lot of guys do.”
“Are the stab wounds different than the ones we saw today?” Nic asks Scarpetta.
“Absolutely,” she says.
NIC BEGINS TO talk about her mother’s antiques store.
She says her mother owned it but only worked there part-time to be available to her family. She says her mother was acquainted with Charlotte Dard.
Nic stares at her mug of coffee. “If I fire this thing up one more time in the microwave, you think I’ll have caffeine D. T.’s tomorrow?”
“Your mother and Charlotte Dard were friends?” Marino asks. “Shit. You don’t mind my asking, why the hell haven’t you mentioned this before?”
“This is the God’s truth,” Nic replies. “I never remembered it until just now. I guess I blocked out so much. I almost never think about my mother, or at least I didn’t start to until these women began disappearing. Then today . . . that scene. What he did to Rebecca Milton. And now.”
She gets up to reheat her coffee. The microwave runs loudly for a minute, the door opens, and she returns to the sofa, steam rising from coffee no longer fit to drink. It smells overcooked.
“Nic,” Scarpetta says, “is your married name Robillard?”
She nods.
“What is your family name?”
“Mayeux. My mother’s name is Annie Mayeux. That’s why hardly anybody realizes I’m her daughter. With time, people forget anyway. Cops who remember her death never associate me with her. I never say anything.” She sips her coffee, not seeming to mind the taste. “Her antiques shop specialized in stained-glass windows, doors, shutters, old salvage stuff, some of it really nice if you knew what you were looking for.
“And a lot of furniture was handmade out of cypress. Charlotte Dard was one of her customers, was remodeling her house and buying a lot of things from my mom’s shop, and that’s how the two of them got friendly. Not close.” She pauses, searching her memory. “My mom talked about this rich woman with a sports car and how beautiful her house was going to be when it was all done.
“I guess Mrs. Dard’s business helped out a lot. Papa never made much as a schoolteacher.” Nic smiles sadly. “Mama did really well and was frugal. Most of what my father lives off now came from my mother, from how well she did with that shop.”
“Mrs. Dard was a drug abuser,” Scarpetta says. “She died from a drug overdose, an accident
or a homicide. I suspect the latter. She supposedly was suffering blackouts not long before her death. Do you know anything about that?”
“Everybody around here does,” Nic replies. “It certainly was the talk of Baton Rouge. She dropped dead in a motel room, the Paradise Acres Motel, sounds like the name of a cemetery. Off Chocktaw, a terrible part of town. Rumor was, she was having an affair and met up with the person there. I don’t know anything more than what was in the news.”
“What about her husband?” Lucy asks.
“Good question. I’ve never heard of anyone who’s met him. How strange is that? Except he’s some sort of aristocrat and travels all the time.”
“Have you ever seen a picture of him?” Rudy asks.
Nic shakes her head.
“So he’s not in the news.”
“He’s really private,” Nic replies.
“What else?” Marino asks.
“Yeah, there’s some kind of weird connection going on here, right?” Rudy looks at Scarpetta. “Some pharmacist came up as a suspect, and Rocco Caggiano was his lawyer.”
Marino gets up for more coffee.
“Think,” Lucy encourages Nic.
“Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “Okay. Here’s something. I think Charlotte Dard invited Mom to a cocktail party. I remember. Mom never went to cocktail parties. She didn’t drink and was shy, felt out of place among uppity people. So this was a big deal that she was going. It was on the plantation, the Dard plantation. Mom went to drum up business for her shop. And out of respect for her best customer, Mrs. Dard.”
“When was this?” Scarpetta asks.
Nic thinks. “Not long before my mother was killed.”
“How long is not long?” Rudy asks.
“I don’t know.” Nic swallows hard again. “Days. Days, I think. She wore this dress, had to go out to buy it.” She shuts her eyes again. A sob catches in her throat. “It was pink with white piping. It was still hanging on her closet door when she got killed, you know, hanging there to remind her it needed to go to the dry cleaner’s.”
“And your mother died less than two weeks before Charlotte Dard did,” Scarpetta remarks.
“Kind of interesting,” Marino points out, “that Mrs. Dard was so fucked up and having violent fits, and nobody worried about her throwing a fancy garden party?”
“I’m thinking that,” Rudy says.
“You know what?” Marino adds. “I drove almost twenty hours to get here. Then Lucy made me airsick. I gotta go to bed. Otherwise, I’ll be making deductions that will cause you to arrest Santa Claus for something.”
“I didn’t make you airsick,” Lucy says. “Go to bed. You need your beauty sleep. I thought you were Santa Claus.”
He gets up from the couch and leaves, heading to the main house.
“I’m not going to make it much longer, either.” Scarpetta gets up from her chair.
“Time to go,” Nic says.
“You don’t have to.” Scarpetta tries hard to help.
“Can I ask you just one last thing?” Nic says.
“Of course.” She is so tired, her brain feels frozen.
“Why would he beat her to death?”
“Why did someone beat Rebecca Milton to death?”
“Things didn’t go the way he planned.”
“Would your mother have resisted him?” Lucy asks.
“She would have clawed his eyes out,” Nic replies.
“Maybe that’s your answer. Please forgive me. I can’t be much use to you now. I’m too tired.”
Scarpetta leaves the small living room and closes her bedroom door.
“How are you?” Lucy moves to the couch and looks at Nic. “This is tough, really tough. Too tough to describe. You’re brave, Nic Robillard.”
“Worse for my father. He gave up on life. Quit everything.”
“Like what?” Rudy asks gently.
“Well, he loved to teach. And he loves the water, or used to. He and Mom. They had this little fishing camp where nobody would bother them. Out in the middle of nowhere, I mean nowhere. He’s never been there since.”
“Where?”
“Dutch Bayou.”
Rudy and Lucy look at each other.
“Who knew about it?” Lucy asks.
“I guess whoever my mother chatted about it to. She was a talker, all right. Unlike my dad.”
“Where’s Dutch Bayou?” Lucy then asks.
“Near Lake Maurepas. Off Blind River.”
“Could you find it now?”
Nic stares at her. “Why?”
“Just answer my question.” She lightly touches Nic’s arm.
She nods. Their eyes lock.
“Okay, then.” Lucy doesn’t stop looking at her. “Tomorrow. You ever been in a helicopter?”
Rudy gets up. “I gotta go. I’m beat.”
He knows. In his own way, he accepts it. But he’s not going to watch.
Lucy gives him her eyes, aware that he understands but in a way never will. “See you in the morning, Rudy.”
He walks off, his feet light on the stairs.
“Don’t be reckless,” Lucy tells Nic. “You strike me as the type who would and probably has been.”
“I’ve been engaging in my own sting operations,” she confesses. “Dressing like potential victims. I look like a potential victim.”
Lucy examines her closely, looking her over, making an assessment, as if she hasn’t been making assessments all night.
“Yes, with your blond hair, body build, air of intelligence. But your demeanor isn’t that of a victim. Your energy is strong. However, that could simply present more of a challenge to the killer. More exciting. A bigger coup.”
“I’ve been wrongly motivated,” Nic chastises herself. “Not that I don’t want him caught. More than anything, I want him caught. But I admit I’m more aggressive, more bullheaded, maybe putting myself in danger, yes, because of a task force that doesn’t want small-town girls like me in their club. Even though I’m probably the only one who’s been trained at the best forensic academy in the U.S., trained by the best. Including your aunt.”
“When you’ve been out there putting yourself in danger, did you observe anything?”
“The Wal-Mart where Katherine was abducted. I was there within hours of it happening. One thing still stands out, this lady who acted peculiar, fell down in the parking lot, said her knee went out from under her. Something bothered me. I backed off and wouldn’t help her up. Something told me not to touch her. I thought her eyes were weird, scary. And she called me a lamb. I’ve been called a lot of things, but never a lamb. I think she was some homeless schizo.”
“Describe what she looked like.” Lucy tries to remain calm, tries not to make the evidence fit the case instead of the other way around.
Nic describes her. “You know, the funny thing about it is, she looked a bit like this woman I saw a few minutes earlier inside the store. She was digging around in cheap lingerie, shoplifting.”
Now Lucy is getting excited.
“It’s never occurred to anyone that the killer might be a woman or at least have a woman who is an accomplice. Bev Kiffin,” she says.
Nic gets up for more coffee, her hand shaking. She blames it on caffeine. “Who is Bev Kiffin?”
“On the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.”
“Oh my God.” Nic sits back down, this time closer to Lucy. She wants to be close to her. She doesn’t know why. But the near proximity of her is energizing and exciting.
“Promise me you won’t go out there prowling again,” Lucy tells her. “Consider yourself on my task force, okay? We do things together, all of us. My aunt, Rudy, Marino.”
“I promise.”
“You don’t want to tangle with Bev Kiffin, who is probably bringing the abducted women to her partner, Jay Talley, number one on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.”
“They hiding out here?” Nic can’t believe it. “Two people like that are hiding out here?”
“I can’t think of a better place. You said your father has a fishing shack that he abandoned after your mother was murdered. Any possibility Charlotte Dard might have known about it, known where it was? Or is.”
“Is. Papa never sold it. The place must be half-rotted by now. Mrs. Dard might have known, since my mother was so into salvage, the stuff she sold in her shop. She liked old weathered wood, would recommend using it for fireplace mantels, exposed beams, whatever. Especially, she liked the thick pilings the fishing shacks are built on. I don’t know what she might have said to Mrs. Dard. But my mother was completely trusting. She thought everybody had their good qualities. The truth is, she talked too much.”
“Can you show me where the fishing shack is, the one your father abandoned?”
“It’s in Dutch Bayou, off the Blind River. I can show you.”
“From the air?”
“I’m pretty sure,” Nic says.
BENTON LEAVES HIS JAGUAR tucked in a church’s back parking lot less than half a mile from the Dard plantation house.
Each time he hears a car or truck approaching from either direction, he crashes through underbrush and hides in thick woods across the road from the Mississippi River. In addition to not knowing who might come along, he is well aware that it would appear odd to see a man in a black suit, black T-shirt, black cap and black butt pack walking along the side of a narrow road in the rain. Someone might stop and ask if he’s had car trouble. People would stare.
When he spots the gates that he drove past late last night, he leaves the pavement and enters the woods, this time penetrating deeper, until the mansion rises above trees, his scan constant. Looking where he steps, he does his best to avoid snapping fallen branches. Fortunately, the dead leaves are wet and silent. When he scouted the area last night, he didn’t venture into the woods because it was too dark to see, and he didn’t dare use a flashlight. He did, however, climb over the gate, getting rust all over his jacket and jeans, one of many explanations for why he opted to wear his suit again.
He wondered how much the place had changed since he had been here last. In the dark, it was difficult to tell whether it had been kept in good repair, but his last act was to toss a rock near shrubbery around the front to see if the motion sensors lit up. They didn’t. He tried again, and not a single light was triggered. If any of them are still in working order and he activates them this morning, they won’t be conspicuous, even though the sun is blanketed in gray. The grounds used to have an elaborate camera system, but there was no way Benton would have been foolish enough to test cameras, to see if they would turn red and follow him as if they were alive.