The Whispering Room (13 page)

“Is everything okay at home? Lynette sounded pretty upset.”

“I don't know. I need to drive out there and see what's going on.”

“Of course. If there's anything I can do…” She slid her hand over his and squeezed.

Don waited a moment, then slipped his hand away. They'd been careful to keep their relationship private. He didn't want word to get out until he'd had a chance to talk to Lynette.

Coward,
a little voice in the back of his head goaded him.

He'd had plenty of chances to talk to his wife. It wasn't like it would come as a total shock or anything. Lynette had to know things weren't right between them. It might even come as a relief.

Of course, Evangeline wouldn't take the news well. Not that it was any of her business. He'd had
reservations about her marriage to Johnny, but she hadn't been of a mind to listen so now she could just damn well sit back and bite her tongue the way he'd had to do for so long.

Vaughn would be okay. He was a lot less judgmental than his sister. He might not be thrilled by the news, but at least he'd be supportive.

“I don't know how long this will take. I might not make it back in time to have dinner with you,” he warned.

A little frown puckered Deanne's brow as she pouted her full lips. “I'll miss you.”

“I'll miss you, too.”

Her voice lowered and her eyes deepened. “What about…later?”

“I'll get away if I can. You know that.”

“Don?”

He'd started toward the door, but now he turned back. “Yes?”

She glanced around as if making sure they were all alone. “Come back to me,” she whispered.

His heart melted and he nodded.

He thought about Deanne all the way home, and it was only when he pulled into his driveway that his conscience started to act up again.

What was he doing? What the
hell
was he doing?

Men his age didn't have affairs. This was just crazy. Men his age gardened and golfed and took fishing trips with their buddies.

Men like him didn't cheat on their wives or turn their backs on a forty-year marriage. They didn't attract the attention and the affection of a woman almost half their age.

Except…miracle of miracles, he had.

And as he sat in his car and stared at the one-story ranch he and Lynette had shared for nearly as long as they'd been married, it hit him suddenly that this house was no longer his home. He didn't belong here anymore.

The only place he felt truly at peace was in Deanne's soft, warm embrace.

He was so preoccupied with getting back there, he didn't even notice the blond woman who watched the house from across the street.

E
vangeline was driving back from the lab late that afternoon when she got a call from Lapierre. As usual, the captain got right to the point.

“Did you hear from a woman named Lena Saunders today?”

“Yeah, I did,” Evangeline said. “She called you, too?”

“A little while ago. What did she tell you?”

“She said she had information that might help catch Paul Courtland's killer and she wanted to meet in person to talk about it. I told her I was no longer working that case. When I tried to redirect her to Mitchell, she hung up. I figured she was just some crackpot having a little fun.”

“She's not a crackpot,” Lapierre said. “At least, not the kind that we usually hear from on investigations of this nature.”

“Who is she, then?”

“She's a writer.”

“You mean like a reporter?”

“No, she writes books about true crime, mostly sensational murder cases in Louisiana. Turns out she's published several books over the past ten years or so.”

“So she's working on a book about the Courtland case already?” Evangeline's tone was skeptical.

“I don't know about that,” Lapierre said. “All I know is that she dropped some pretty big names during our phone conversation. By the sound of it, she's cultivated an impressive roster of sources in local law enforcement, including an NOPD deputy chief.”

“Which one?”

“Doesn't matter. What does matter is that the woman is well-connected.”

“Okay. So she's well-connected.” Evangeline was puzzled by the phone call. Why was Lapierre telling her all this? “Is she coming in to give a statement?”

“She claims she suffers from a mild form of agoraphobia. According to her, she's prone to panic attacks anytime she leaves her house. So I'm sending someone to her place in the morning to hear what she has to say.”

“If you don't mind my asking, why are you telling me about her?” Evangeline said. “I'm off the case, remember?”

“Oh, I remember all right. But Lena Saunders is refusing to talk to anyone but you, Theroux.”

“
Me?
Why? I don't even know her.”

“She says she knew Johnny.”

Evangeline was stunned into momentary silence. Her heart started to pound as she clutched her cell phone. “How?”

“Evidently, he was one of her NOPD contacts.”

“On which case?”

“She didn't say.”

Even though the name had sounded familiar to Evangeline earlier, she was almost certain she hadn't heard about Lena Saunders from Johnny. She would have remembered. And yet if he really had been one of the woman's contacts, why hadn't he mentioned her? He surely would have brought it up if he had talked with a writer.

“I still don't understand why she wants to see me.”

“You can ask her yourself tomorrow,” Lapierre said.

“Does this mean I'm back on the case?”

“Nice try, but this is a one-time-only situation. The woman claims to know something about the Courtland murder case and we need to know what that something is. And since she has some influential friends up the food chain, I'm inclined to accommodate her just this once. The last thing I want is a deputy chief breathing down my neck.”

Lapierre's voice lowered conspiratorially. “Look,
Theroux. I can't tell you what to expect when you go over there in the morning, but just watch yourself, okay? This woman may not be the kind of tinfoil-hat whacko we're used to dealing with, but if you ask me, she sounds like a real kook. This could be nothing more than a figment of her imagination, but we've got to hear her out anyway. When you leave her place, you come straight back to the station and see me. Don't talk to anyone else about this, not even Hebert. You got me?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Evangeline said, resisting the urge to gloat. The unintended consequence of Lena Saunders's request was that now Evangeline had more leverage than she'd had ten minutes ago. Not much more maybe, but if she played her cards right, she might just persuade Lapierre to put her back on the case.

“Where and when do I meet her?” she asked.

“Nine o'clock tomorrow morning at her house.” She gave Evangeline the Garden District address, then hung up.

A few minutes later, Mitchell called. “Thought you'd like to know, I just heard from Lorraine. She was over at Linda's house when Nathan called. Sounds like he's on his way to the cemetery. If you hurry, you can probably still catch him.”

“Hey, thanks for the heads-up.”

“No problem. You want me to meet you over there?”

“I'm only ten minutes away. He'd probably be gone by the time you could get there.”

“Yeah, you're probably right about that. Traffic's a bitch today. Anything else going on I should know about?”

Evangeline hated keeping things from Mitchell, but she also knew better than to get on Lapierre's bad side. “Same old, same old,” she muttered.

They chatted for a few more minutes, and then she called her mother to warn her she'd be late picking up J.D.

It wasn't until she'd hung up that Evangeline remembered she'd yet to thank her mother for the mobile.

 

The sun was just setting when Evangeline pulled her car to the curb near the cemetery gates. Killing the engine, she watched as a tour guide shepherded a group of tourists to a waiting bus.

That's good,
she thought.
Get them all out of there before dark.

Although popular destinations for tourists, New Orleans cemeteries were extremely dangerous at night. Common sense dictated that the narrow paths between the rows of vaults and tombs could effectively conceal a mugger, and yet every year people fell prey to vicious assaults, especially in the old cemeteries near the Quarter.

Before she climbed out of the car, Evangeline slid
her gun into the back pouch of her bag. Then she slipped the strap over her shoulder and across her body for easy access. As she walked across the street, she stayed alert for any untoward movement.

And for Nathan Mallet.

She'd already spotted his red Mustang across the street. The 1967 classic stood out among the SUVs and minivans of the tourists, and Evangeline remembered how much Johnny had always coveted that car.

But to her eyes, the Mustang looked worse for the wear since the last time she'd seen it, and she wondered again what Nathan had been up to since Johnny's shooting. Why he had felt the need to leave town so quickly.

Several people still milled about inside the brick walls even though the sun was already setting. By New Orleans standards, Mount Olive was relatively new, but it had many of the same characteristics as the older cemeteries. The rusty iron gates opened into an eerie necropolis of sun-bleached tombs and contrasting shadows cast by the crosses and statues.

If she had come to visit Johnny's vault, Evangeline would need to turn right inside the gates, but that wasn't why she was here. Her plan was to ambush Nathan on his way out.

But after a moment, she found herself threading through the ornate tombs and mausoleums to the row of vaults at the back of the cemetery.

Someone had placed fresh flowers and a votive
candle in front of Johnny's marker, and Evangeline wondered uneasily who had been visiting here while she'd been estranged.

She touched the bronze plaque, still warm from the day's heat, but she felt no connection to her husband's remains. It was strange, but here, where his body had been laid to rest, Evangeline couldn't feel his presence at all.

The sun dipped below the treetops and the promise of twilight settled over the vault. But she knew it wasn't a sign or a message from Johnny. Not this time. It was just the end of another day without him.

Turning to leave, Evangeline noticed a man coming toward her on the path. He was tall and thin with a pale, emaciated face that was badly scarred on one side. He was dressed all in black and his hair gleamed like India ink.

As he came closer, Evangeline could see that his lips were moving, and she thought at first he was speaking to her. Then she realized that he must be talking to himself.

An icy awareness slid down her neck. She wanted to look away, but there was something oddly compelling about the strange man. She was intrigued by the scar on his face, by the pallid gauntness of his features.

But what held her enthralled were his eyes. They were as black as night, and yet they seemed to burn with an inner fire that chilled her to the bone.

His disturbing gaze was still on her when he drew even with Johnny's tomb. He said something aloud, which Evangeline didn't understand.

“Excuse me?”

He kept on walking, cutting her a sideways glance as he went by.

When he was all the way to the end of the row, he looked over his shoulder. He said something else, and this time Evangeline could have sworn he mouthed her name.

She started toward him, but by the time she got to the end of the vaults, he'd disappeared behind a large mausoleum.

Slipping her hand into her bag, Evangeline closed her fingers around the handle of her weapon. Wary of a trap, she gave the mausoleum a wide birth as she circled around to the front.

The man was nowhere to be seen.

Light from the fading sun sparked off the crypt's stained-glass windows and a cross on the top cast a long shadow across the eerie landscape.

Something had fallen to the grass on the path in front of her, and as Evangeline drew closer, she saw that it was an origami crane.

She thought instantly of the mobile on her son's crib, and she had the strangest feeling that the dark-haired man had dropped it there for her to find. But why? She didn't even know who he was.

Searching the path ahead of her, she caught a
glimpse of him again. He was looking over his shoulder, smiling at her in a way that made her heart pound in trepidation. Who the hell was this joker and what did he want with her?

Evangeline started after him again, but he was adept at using the maze of crypts and vaults to conceal himself. She followed him for several minutes, catching enough quick glimpses to lead her back to the gates. But when she emerged onto the street, he was nowhere to be found.

Completely unsettled by the odd chase, Evangeline crossed the street and waited beside the red Mustang for Nathan Mallet. She kept an eye out for the scarred stranger, but he didn't show himself again.

Nathan came through the gates a little while later, but he didn't see Evangeline until he was almost in front of her. He looked up in astonishment, as if suddenly catching sight of a ghost.

“Evangeline? What are you doing here?” He was a lot thinner than the last time she'd seen him, and like his car, he looked a lot worse for the wear. His clothes were ragged, his hair unkempt and he seemed to have a hard time looking her in the eyes.

“I came to see you, Nathan.”

He glanced around nervously. “How did you know I'd be here? Never mind.” He lifted a hand and rubbed the scruff on his chin. “My sister's always had a big mouth.”

“Why haven't you returned any of my phone calls?” Evangeline asked.

Even in the disintegrating light, his eyes looked glassy and unfocused. “You know how it is. You never know what to say in a situation like that. Plus, I've got a lot of personal problems I've been dealing with lately.”

“We've all got personal problems.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Could we go somewhere and talk?”

“About what?”

His darting gaze made Evangeline uneasy. He was on something, which could also make him volatile.

“I've still got a lot of questions about the night Johnny died,” she said.

“What makes you think I know the answers?”

“You were working cases with him at the time of his death.”

“Yeah, but we didn't work every case together.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and stood looking out over the street. “You really shouldn't have come looking for me,” he said softly. “I'm not going to be able to help you.”

“Because you can't or you won't?”

“You need to just go on home to your baby.”

His tone deepened Evangeline's disquiet. “That almost sounds like a threat, Nathan.”

He shrugged. “You don't need to be afraid of me.”

“Is there someone else I should be afraid of?”

He paused. “Can't you just leave it alone? Johnny's gone. Nothing I can say will bring him back.”

“I know that. But I still want to talk to you. Can we sit in your car for a few minutes? I don't like standing out here in the open like this. I feel too exposed.”

He gave her a strange look, but he unlocked his car and they both climbed in. The interior smelled of reefer.