DutyBoundARe (11 page)

She blew out a breath and punched in the digits to her phone. Mathieu squeezed her thigh as she pressed the speaker to her ear and listened to it ring. She stared across the room and let her eyes unfocus. Gator lifted his head, his long tongue lolling out to one side. They all seemed to be waiting, listening for the other end to pick up.

“Uh, hello?” a man’s voice she barely recognized said on the other end of the line.

“Lafayette?”

“Yeah…Lisette?”

She blinked a few times, an odd, twist of emotions in her chest. Was this hope? “Yeah. I didn’t think you had my number.”

“I didn’t realize I did either.” The awkwardness seeped over the line. They were siblings but had no connection. It was partially her fault. Even when she’d been on good terms with her family, she’d stayed away. “Wow, so—what are you up to?”

“Little of this and that.” There were too many real answers for this. “What about you?”

“I’m just hanging out today. This is really unexpected. I haven’t heard anything about you since, well, what Mom and Dad last said.” A door squeaked in the background and the sound of footsteps echoed.

“Yeah, that’s nothing but awkwardness and I don’t know how to explain it without making it all sound worse.” She cringed and glanced at Mathieu, who stroked her thigh. Gator belly crawled up the bed until he could put his head on Mathieu’s leg.

“About time someone else did something to get their panties in a twist.” Lafayette laughed.

“Pretty sure I’ve always been good at that.” The disapproving stares. The slight frowns. She’d never quite done what they wanted her to do.

“What? No. You were always the good one who behaved. When were you ever grounded? They rode my ass for years.” A can popped and he slurped a drink. Always with the slurping. Their parents had complained, cajoled and corrected him for ages, but it never stuck.

“Me? The good one? I’m sorry, this is your sister Lisette. Not Juliette.” Grounding hadn’t been an issue; it was everything else. Their expectations. Her nature. They didn’t align.

“Julie is a whiner, you were the good one. She whined her way out of everything. You? If you broke a rule, you went and told on yourself. Used to drive me crazy when they’d compare you and me every time I got in trouble.”

“Oh please.” She’d never heard that. Her? The good one? That was a joke. She was invisible.

“I’m serious. It’s good to know even the good ones have a bad streak in them. So what’s up? Why are you calling me now?”

Lisette glanced at Mathieu, unable to think of a good explanation.
My friend made me
, seemed awfully lame right now. She didn’t think he was ready for the whole, morbid story yet. If ever. There were some things in this world she wouldn’t want her family to know.

“I’m, well, I’m trying to put things back together. I didn’t think Mom, Dad or Julie would really talk to me. Thought you might answer my call at least.”

“Why wouldn’t I answer you?” he asked between slurps. “I don’t really care how you get your jollies, if that shit what’s-his-face was saying is even true. Is it?”

Seth. He was talking about Seth. The idea churned her stomach. She sucked down a deep breath and pushed it away. He couldn’t touch her here.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to,” she popped off.

Lafayette laughed, a deep, boisterous sound. He didn’t seem bothered at all by her possible taboo tendencies. Could he really not care?

“Hey, I can’t stay on very long, but what are you doing later?”

“No plans.” He’d talk to her again? The idea was surprising. A novelty.

“I’m going to call you back. We should catch up.” He sounded serious. Like he really meant it.

“I’d like that.”

“Yeah, me too. It’ll be a few hours, I have to run my roommate to the shop for his car, which probably won’t even be ready, then do a few errands. I’d keep you on, but he talks too loud and has no concept of being on the phone means not talking to him.”

She didn’t even know he had a roommate. There was so much about their lives she’d willingly let go of. Maybe she’d made the wrong choice all along.

“I’ll be around. Give me a ring,” she said.

“Okay, later.”

“Bye.”

Lisette hung up and stared at the phone. The call hadn’t even lasted fifteen minutes, but it changed things. She’d never been close to her brother. Hell, they’d barely known each other before she left for college, and now they were different people altogether.

She saved the number to her contacts and her mouth curled up into a smile.

“Well?” Mathieu asked.

She closed her laptop and put it and the phone on the floor. The seed of hope was taking root. If she could talk to her brother, get an actual relationship going, what next? Her sister and parents would be a long time coming, but there were possibilities. She curled up next to Mathieu, resting her head on his chest and splaying her hand over his ribs. Gator stared up at her with big, soulful eyes, as if waiting to listen to her.

“He’s going to call me later to catch up.” The idea made her smile.

“He didn’t hang up on you?” Mathieu stroked her back.

“No, it was weird at first, but I don’t know.”

“Are you glad you called?”

“I am. I won’t expect anything from him, but we’ll see.”

Mathieu took the file
from Amber and leaned against her desk.

“It’s bad,” she warned, pinching her lower lip between her teeth.

It was worse than bad.

The crime scene pictures documented everything. How the body had been found. Evidence. But the worst were the close up shots of the wounds. The bruises. The goose egg on the side of her face.

The woman had been pretty. Blonde like Lisette, which made it eerily easy to super impose the ghastly photos Lisette had shown him onto these.

“Well?” Amber prompted. She was a petite woman with long, curling red hair and pale skin.

“These ligature marks on her neck, I need to compare them to something. What are the chances I could get a copy?” He could do a rough estimation of the size of the perp’s hands from the marks left behind after the victim was strangled to death.

“I can do a color print, but not a photo.”

“That’s fine. Do you mind?”

Someone stopped outside of Amber’s cramped office and they both paused. Mathieu held his breath until the officer talking on his phone moved away.

The goose egg and the similarity in markings on the neck of the coffee shop victim were similar enough to Lisette’s. It made him increasingly uncomfortable. There was a sensation in his gut, that surety that he’d found something important, and he wished it weren’t there.

“What’s going on, Mouton? Tell me, please.” She hugged her arms around her, gaze pleading with him to tell her the truth.

“I’m looking for patterns. Someone came to me for help because there’s a guy the law hasn’t been able to touch. I didn’t believe her, but this is too coincidental. If I tell Rouge, I’ll have to hand the case over and if they pursue the guy, he’ll get off. He’s done it in at least two serious cases that should have put him behind bars and didn’t even get a slap on the wrist.”

Her eyes were round, jaw dropped. She put a hand over her mouth, brows drawing down. “What are you going to do?” she asked through her fingers.

“I don’t know.”

What could he do? Lisette was honest with him, which he was certain of, and she’d told him everything she knew. The only other direct source of information was her parents, and she wasn’t speaking to them. Would they talk to him? Could they know Seth’s whereabouts?

“I think,” he said slowly, “I’m going to have to ask some people uncomfortable questions, and I’m not sure yet how to do it without revealing what I know.”

“You’ll think of something. This woman, the one that came to you, is she okay?”

“She is. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“If you need anything, let me know?”

“You’re doing more than enough. I’d like to keep this as quiet as possible.”

“Of course.” Amber nodded hard enough her curls bounced around her shoulders.

“Just get me the copies before the end of the day. I need to go do some work I can actually talk about for a while before I look into this more.” He handed the file back to Amber.

“Do you want the whole thing? I’ll only have it for a little while longer.”

“Just get me the pictures.”

He left the office and made his way across the building to where he had a tiny bit of real estate. His office was a glass box in line with several other detectives. A few were still at their desks, but the rest weren’t anywhere to be seen. They’d had another missing teen report that morning. That made four this year. That averaged to a kid every week and a half. The media hadn’t put it together yet, but eventually someone would say what they were all thinking. There was a kid snatcher out there. It turned his stomach, this whole business did sometimes.

Mathieu sank into his desk chair and started the morning like he always did. There were three partitions of files on his desk: cold, closed and open.

The cold folders were three separate cases he could never give up. Every morning he flipped through the pages, snippets of conversation with the victim’s families and details that seemed as if they had to lead somewhere flowing through his brain. Someday, a lead or another angle would surface and he’d get to close these. But for now, these personal copies and cliff notes served as his personal reminder.

Closed cases were those moving on in the process. He’d done his job, found the perpetrator and now it was the responsibility of the judicial system to weigh the bad guy’s crime. He had one today which needed paperwork. No one had asked for it yet, but by the end of the day they would.

He pulled up the final forms and started the tedious process of documentation. It was an easy robbery case where he’d tracked the criminal down through pawn shop records.

While his hands filled in all the blank boxes and lines, his mind drifted back to the pictures. The barista case bothered him more than usual. He wanted to work it, but it had been assigned to a detective on duty when the body was found. It was probably a good idea to stay away from it. He was already too tied up in Lisette’s life as it was.

How far would he go for her?

It was a disturbing question he needed to know the answer to. He’d brought her into his home with the idea that she’d be around for a few days, but that had evaporated. Apart from wanting to be off the couch and forcing himself to keep his hands off her, he had no intention of letting her leave.

Then there was yesterday. Her tears, holding her through the emotionally wrought scene had changed something in him. He wanted her close, always. And that was dangerous. To him at least. She had a life back in Miami she would return to when all this blew over. New Orleans was where her family didn’t want her. There was nothing for her here. Just him. And he wasn’t enough to stick around for. Not with the sorry mess his life had become. He had nothing to offer her, and everything to lose.

Falling for Lisette all over again would be easy.

Maybe he needed to be a little more proactive. The longer she stayed near him, the more entwined he became, and he wasn’t ready to lose himself in another woman. Not when he was finally back to his old self. Perhaps it really was time to pay her parents a little visit.

chapter eight

Family

Mathieu studied the old antebellum house. If he didn’t know any better, the structure hadn’t been touched by time or storm or human hands. It appeared as serene and frozen in time as the one and only time he’d been by it. He hadn’t even gone inside back then, just waited for Lisette to dash out and dive in the passenger seat before speeding away.

He got out of his car and walked up the brick path to the house.

There were three vehicles in the drive, two Lexus sedans and a BMW sports car.

Who else did Mr. and Mrs. Babineaux have over?

Mathieu climbed the stairs and knocked on the front door. It was whisked inward almost immediately. A woman with glittering green eyes and pale hair swept up into some kind of twist stared back at him. Her expression didn’t relay a thought or emotion. She wore a sedate black skirt suit; everything screamed conservative.

“Hello, Mrs. Babineaux?” he asked.

“I am. And you are Detective Mouton, I presume?” Her voice curled around him, a melody of southern notes.

“Yes ma’am. Thank you for taking some time to speak with me.” He at least hoped she still would. The way her gaze flicked from his face to his jacket then shoes didn’t seem promising.

“Come in, please.” She stepped back and gestured for him to enter a narrow foyer. “My husband and daughter are expecting us. This way.”

Mathieu followed her into a formal, front sitting room. The furniture harkened back to an older date, with claw feet, doilies and rich upholstery, all done in tones of peach, cream and gold.

An equally stodgy older man in slacks and a button-down sat in an armchair with a paper. A younger woman with Lisette’s hair but none of her grace sat on a sofa, tablet in hand. He could only assume this was Juliette, the older sister. They glanced at him in unison.

There was a common thread here. None of the three showed any reaction to him. Clearly they had prepared for his visit.

“Detective. Hello.” Mr. Babineaux stood, tucking his paper under his arm and extending his hand to Mathieu.

“Hello, sir. Thank you for taking some time out of your busy day to talk to me.” He nodded at Juliette, who went back to tapping away at her screen, seemingly uninterested in him.

“Have a seat. Would you like to take off your coat?” Mr. Babineaux sat back in his chair, the wings curling around his head like some odd headdress.

Mathieu shrugged out of his jacket and Mrs. Babineaux reached for it, disappearing momentarily to tuck it away somewhere.

“This is my eldest daughter, Juliette.” Mr. Babineaux gestured toward the younger blonde woman.

“Hello, ma’am.” He nodded at Juliette, who merely gave him a tight-lipped smile.

It was so strange to think of Lisette being related to these people. She was full of life and fight. These three seemed poised to collect dust. Oddly, the tattoo choice made sense now.