Stop Me (33 page)

Romain was dialing the number Huff’s wife had given him. “I think Huff’s in New Orleans, and we need to get his help with this.” She stood up so fast she almost knocked over her chair. “What’s he doing here?”

“Apparently, he’s on business and he’s been trying to get a hold of me,” Romain said.

But Huff didn’t answer. After several rings, the phone transferred Romain’s call to voice mail.

“This is Alvin Huff. I’m not available to take your call right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

“It’s Romain. Call me,” he said and left Jasmine’s number.

They waited until dark to drive over to the Moreaus’. The house looked no different from the pictures Romain had seen of it in court almost four years ago.

Same drab appearance from the curb. Same peeling paint. Same feeling of neglect and isolation.

The fact that his daughter had been to this house under very different circumstances brought the memories flooding back. The call he’d received from the after-school babysitter, telling him Adele was no longer at her friend’s house but hadn’t come home, either. The surreal, frantic days that followed, when he’d slept only in short snatches and spent every waking moment sending out flyers, canvassing the neighborhood, working with police, appealing to the media. Detective Huff at his door four weeks later with the news that Adele’s body had been found. The call about the neighbor who’d come forward to give them a suspect—Francis Moreau.

The conversation where Huff explained all the evidence he’d uncovered in Moreau’s house. Seeing Moreau for the first time in court. All of it. The emotions triggered by these memories were almost more than Romain could take. Gritting his teeth, he had to stop before they reached the front door.

He expected Jasmine to ask if he was okay, but she didn’t. Instead, she put her hand on his back in a silent gesture of empathy and support. “I pulled the trigger,” he managed to say. “I could do it again. This minute.”

“That remains to be seen,” she said calmly. “Would you rather wait in the truck?”

197

Taking a deep breath, he shook his head. “No. I want to see this place for myself.”

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”

She’d already mentioned that the car she’d seen Phillip driving earlier was gone and so was the old Buick that’d been sitting in the drive when Beverly helped her out of the cellar.

“What does Francis’s mother do for a living?” Romain murmured.

“I don’t know,” Jasmine said. “The neighbor told me she works nights, but she didn’t say where. However, my investigator called while you were getting our pizza.

She apparently got a nursing degree years ago, so maybe she’s still in the medical profession.”

They’d parked two streets over and walked so they wouldn’t attract attention from the neighbors who, after all the police involvement, had to be especially interested in any activity at the Moreau residence. Romain imagined that, by now, the place had quite a reputation. Raw eggs were splattered around one window, suggesting that kids in the neighborhood had decided to use the house for target practice.

“They don’t seem too well-liked,” he commented.

“Whoever egged this place had better keep their distance in the future,” Jasmine said. “They have no idea how dangerous it could be.” She reached the door first. Romain hung back, trying not to feel the confusion and terror his daughter must’ve experienced at being dragged inside such a place by a complete stranger.

“What makes them do it?” he asked softly as he joined her on the front stoop.

“What makes a man as depraved as Moreau?”

“I wish I could tell you,” she whispered. “Most serial killers have had difficult childhoods, childhoods with a prevalence of inconsistent discipline and abuse. And many of them have suffered head injuries at one time or another. But those factors aren’t as reliable as you might want to believe. At this point, no one knows what causes such deviant behavior. Lust killers and thrill killers are just structurally different. And because we can’t understand or explain their behavior, we call them pathological.”

No one answered the door. But that didn’t surprise Romain. There wasn’t a single light on in the house—at least none that he could see.

“I think we might be out of luck,” she said.

“Dustin’s here.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they don’t take him anywhere. Even to the courthouse when his brother was standing trial for murder.” Romain knocked again.

“But where did he live back then?”

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“If his mother was in town, Dustin was in town.”

“I guess I’d have to agree with you there. It looked as if she’d been taking care of him for some time. But even if he’s here, he either can’t or won’t answer the door.”

“I can get in without him.” Romain tried the door. Finding it locked, he stepped back to survey his other options.

“You’re not breaking in,” Jasmine said.

“Yes, I am.”

She grabbed his arm. “Someone here, possibly these people, have killed one man already. Do you want to be next?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“But if we get caught—”

“We won’t get caught, because you’re going back to the truck.” She clenched her fists. “No way! You’re still on parole, aren’t you?” He didn’t answer. He was too busy wondering if he might find a spare key somewhere, or whether he’d have to break a window.

“You are!”

He didn’t correct her because she was right. “That means you could go back to prison!”

Pulling her into his arms, he gave her a long wet kiss, in case it was his last. “I think the police are the least of my worries, don’t you?” He slid his lips down her neck, then let her go.

“Stop kissing me!” she hissed, following him.

“Why?”

“I don’t like it!”

“You like it, you just don’t trust me anymore. And you have good reason. I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“You’re welcome. Now go wait in the truck.”

She clutched his arm. “Romain, don’t do this. We can come back when Phillip’s at home. He’s the one we really want to talk to, anyway. I got the feeling that he wanted to tell me something, as if…as if he had more to say.”

“We’ll talk to him. But I’m not going to miss this opportunity to lay eyes on Dustin.”

“The man who came after me is somehow tied to this place,” she argued. “He could be in there.”

“No one’s in there, except maybe Dustin.”

“There was someone here last time, even though I thought there wasn’t!” 199

He motioned for her to keep her voice down and lowered his own. “Stay with the truck. If I’m not back in ten minutes, bring a neighbor or use that cell phone of yours to get help.”

She remained stubbornly on his heels. “No. If you’re going in, I’m going with you.”

Considering what she’d already been through, she had guts. But he wasn’t about to let her take the risk. “It doesn’t require two people.” She hesitated, glanced nervously at the house and bit her lip. But he knew that if he could convince her it’d be safer for both of them if he went in alone, she’d relent.

“Help me out here, okay?” he said. “I’ll have less to worry about if you’re not involved. Get in the truck, lock the doors and keep your head down. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

Mumbling a string of curses he hadn’t heard from her before—which, under different circumstances, might’ve made him laugh because they seemed so out of character—she pivoted and started back. But a second later, she caught his hand and, when he turned to see what she wanted, pulled his face down to meet hers for another kiss, this one even longer and wetter than the last. “Don’t get hurt,” she said fiercely.

Then she released him and was gone.

Romain stared after her. She was making him crave comforts he hadn’t let himself crave since Pam died. If only wanting her didn’t make him feel as though he was letting Pam and Adele down…

He turned abruptly as he heard a noise coming from the house. A television.

Someone had cranked up the volume until it was blaring.

Was it Dustin?

Probably. Why he wanted the TV so loud, Romain couldn’t fathom. But it would cover the noise he was about to make, and for that he was grateful.

Breaking the screen on the back door, and then the glass, Romain used the sleeve of his leather jacket to protect his hand as he reached in and turned the lock.

200

The house smelled of cats. Two greeted him as he stepped inside, and the memory of how much Adele had loved animals nearly made him balk. Was he really prepared for what he might find?

He wasn’t sure, but a morbid curiosity, an exploration of his own pain, propelled him forward. This was most likely the last place his daughter had known, the place where she’d been sexually molested, strangled and dumped into the trunk of a car.

Who was the man who’d killed her? What kind of person could harm an innocent ten-year-old girl? If it wasn’t Moreau, what connection did the real killer have to this place and these people? And how did that connection affect Jasmine and her sister?

Romain moved silently through the kitchen. He couldn’t see very well in the dark, but he wasn’t in a hurry. A fierce, aching need to know had taken hold of him, causing him to slow down, to study and strive to understand.

The house looked just like his grandmother’s used to look. It had cheap knickknacks in every corner, a flour-sack dish towel hanging from a hook near the kitchen sink, doilies on every table and gilt-edged picture frames with photographs from years earlier.

Francis’s mother had lied for him in court. Didn’t she care that he’d be put back into society, that he might molest, if not kill, another child? What had she been thinking when she saw those images of Adele’s body shown in court? How could she not feel the poignant loss that’d made even the crustiest juror break down in tears?

He’d never understand, never fully grasp such a lack of human decency, he decided.

As he moved from the kitchen and the moonlight streaming in through the large window beside the door, the house became too dark to see. The blinds on the other windows were drawn, giving the place the feel of an underground burrow.

Refusing to fumble around, Romain found a switch and snapped on the light.

A black cat that’d been sleeping on a tattered recliner got up and stretched, regarded him indifferently, then jumped to the ground. Two others, almost identical to each other with short, gray fur, roused themselves from the sagging sofa, and a fourth, this one with a Persian-like coat, brushed past his leg. All four were adults and considerably overweight. One approached its bowl as he watched.

201

He could see why they’d chosen the living room instead of upstairs. The noise emanating from one of the bedrooms was deafening—so deafening Romain didn’t know how anyone could stand it. But, loud as it was, a voice suddenly rose above it.

“Mom? Where are you? Mom?”

At first Romain thought Dustin had heard him break the window and believed his mother was home. Or that he’d spotted the light from the living room. But a second later, he realized that whoever was calling for Mrs. Moreau didn’t expect a response. The words were more a wail, a lament.

The stairs creaked as Romain climbed them, but he doubted anyone could hear above that blaring TV. Whoever was in the back room was suffering. He’d heard the pain, the misery in that voice….

He walked down the hall, stopping in front of the last of three doors. “Dustin?” The volume went off and silence reigned for several seconds. Then a voice called out, “Is someone there? Phillip, is it you?”

“It’s me.” Romain opened the door to find a shriveled man lying in a hospital bed. There was no light other than that coming from the muted TV, but Romain could see an IV trailing from the man’s arm and a tray across his lap, which held a bottle of water and two remote controls. A radio sat on a small table against the wall; the television was affixed to the wall above the bed, close to the ceiling.

The man’s sunken eyes widened as they latched onto Romain. “I know you!

You’re the man who shot Francis. I saw it on TV!” Grabbing the metal rails of his bed, he tried to sit up but couldn’t. He pressed a button on one of his remotes, and the gears of the bed began to grind as they brought him up to a sitting position. “How’d you get in?”

“I broke the door.”

They stared at each other. Then Moreau’s brother, whom Romain wanted to hate simply because of who he was, said, “Are you here to kill me?” Romain could’ve hated him had there been the slightest hint of fear in his voice. But there was no fear—only hope.

Jasmine had the truck running so she could get the heater to work, but she couldn’t stop shaking. She kept thinking about how quickly and easily she’d lost the most important people in her life—her sister, her mother, her father. Maybe her sister was the only one actually gone, but her parents had been absent since that same day, their absence even more painful because it involved rejection.

She couldn’t stand the thought of losing anyone else, of losing Romain.

Grouping him in the same category as her family didn’t make sense. She’d known him for less than a week. But he stirred something in her she’d never felt before, something powerful and all-consuming. Something that wouldn’t allow them to be friends once she left.

202

She finally understood what he’d been trying to tell her about passion. About intensity. About loving.

“No, not loving,” she muttered aloud. She couldn’t be in love. Not that fast.

She’d never even had a schoolgirl crush. She was too defensive, too cautious, too practical. She was concerned about Romain, that was all—as she’d be concerned about any man who’d broken into the home of a known murderer. She’d be worried about Harvey, or Bob, her last boyfriend, or Steve, the one before that…

But not with the same level of desperation. She couldn’t sit out here anymore, wondering what was happening. Romain had just been gone a few minutes—not long enough to call the police and risk getting him sent back to prison for breaking and entering, but long enough for her to realize she’d made a mistake not going in with him. She had to make sure he was okay.