The Whispering Room (24 page)

She'd expected the house to be dank and smelly and layered with years of grime, but instead of cobwebs hanging from the ceiling and creepy-crawlies rustling around in dark corners, the scent of lemon oil clung to the silent rooms. Which was odd. According to Thibodaux, the place had been abandoned for years.

But in the light that filtered in through the broken windowpanes, the house looked freshly scrubbed from top to bottom.

It made Evangeline think of something Rebecca Lemay had told her:

Mama always kept a spotless home, but that day she scrubbed and mopped and dusted until every room sparkled. She worked at it for hours, on into the night.

Mary Alice had been preparing the house for
what was about to happen. And now Evangeline couldn't help wondering if someone had made preparations for the same reason.

As she stood just inside the door, a deep foreboding settled over her. She didn't want to stay in that house a moment longer. It was as if some invisible force tugged her back outside, into the sunlight and safety of the clearing.

But Evangeline ignored the warning and instead of retreating, she pulled back the receiver on her gun, easing a round from the clip into the chamber. Steadying her nerves, she slowly walked through the house, checking each room and finding the next as spotless as the last.

Most of the furniture had long since been destroyed or stolen, but the classroom at the back of the house looked just as it must have all those years ago when Mary Alice had homeschooled her children. The chalkboard was wiped clean and an eraser and fresh chalk rested in the tray.

The books were stored neatly in the shelves, but underneath the lemon oil, Evangeline could smell the invasive scent of mildew and rot.

Retracing her steps, she ended up back in the front hall, her gaze lighting on the latched door beneath the stairwell.

The whispering room.

I stayed in there for a long time with the baby. Until all the screaming finally stopped.

That's where Daddy used to make us wait for him. That's why we were never allowed to talk above a whisper. He didn't want anyone to hear us.

Those little-girl whispers seemed to echo through the empty house as Evangeline reached for the latch. Taking a deep breath, she threw open the door to the light.

Something rushed out at her and she screamed as she jumped back. Losing her footing, she fell with a hard thud against the wood floor.

The flashlight flew out of her pocket, but somehow Evangeline managed to cling to her gun, and now she swung the .38 from side to side, her heart pounding inside her chest.

Something dark circled the room, and as it swooped toward her, Evangeline ducked her head under her arms and squealed. When she looked up, the bat had flown into the screen door and clung like blight to the torn mesh.

Struggling to her feet, she brushed off the seat of her jeans and retrieved the heavy Maglite that had rolled away. She switched it on, relieved to find that the bulb still burned steadily, and walked back over to the door. As the beam prowled the close space, Evangeline's mind once again conjured an image of two little girls huddled inside, whispering words of comfort as they clung to one another in the dark.

She could still hear those whispers, and as the
hair lifted at the back of her neck, she glanced over her shoulder.

No one was there.

The whispers were all in her head.

An oppression she couldn't explain settled over her as she closed and latched the door, then moved to the stairs. The house had a very dark history and the weight of those memories pressed down on her with each step that she climbed. The whispers in her head turned to screams as she reached the top of the stairs.

This was where it had happened. Up here, in one of these rooms.

Evangeline paused, her legs suddenly leaden. She didn't want to go on.

Then just leave. What did you think you would accomplish by coming here anyway?

She had been hoping to find Rebecca Lemay. The woman had invaded her home, threatened her son, and Evangeline needed to know why. She needed to make sure that it never happened again.

Taking a deep breath, she continued her search. As she entered the largest bedroom, she kept her weapon at the ready, both hands sweaty on the grip. She moved quickly to the closet, threw back the door and glanced inside.

Satisfied that neither bat nor human would jump out at her, she walked over to the window and stared out at the water. A lone heron circled above the swamp grass, its wings gilded by the late afternoon
light. Through the broken window, Evangeline could hear the matinee song of the cicadas and bullfrogs drifting up from the bayou, and the metallic tinkle of an old wind chime.

She started to turn away, then froze.

Someone stood beside her car.

He remained so still that Evangeline had to stare for a long moment to assure herself he was real and not a shadow. Then his head tilted and she knew that he'd spotted her in the window.

Even from a distance, she could feel the impact of his eyes, the shock of his unwavering scrutiny.

He was tall, thin and very pale. His black hair gleamed like a raven's wing in the light, and as their gazes clung, Evangeline felt the thrill of familiarity charge through her veins.

He was the man from the cemetery.

She couldn't see the scarred side of his face, but she knew he was the same man.

But what would he being doing way out here?

Unless he'd followed her.

Maybe he'd followed her to Mount Olive that day, too.

Whirling away from the window, Evangeline sprinted across the room and rushed down the stairs. Weapon still clutched in both hands, she lunged across the front hall to the screen door, paused to glance out, then bolted onto the porch, the gun sweeping from side to side.

He was gone.

She checked both sides of the porch to make sure he wasn't lying in wait for her. And as she turned back to the yard, she spotted him again, this time at the edge of the woods.

He stopped and turned, as if waiting for her to come after him. It was the same cat-and-mouse game he'd played with her at the cemetery.

“Hey!” she shouted as she clamored down the steps. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

He waited until she'd closed some of the distance between them before turning to disappear into the trees.

“Stop! I'm a police officer!”

She tore after him, but the moment she plunged into the forest, Evangeline knew she was out of her element. The dense trees provided too many hiding places, and she'd already lost sight of her quarry. If she'd learned anything in her years as a cop it was to never knowingly put herself at risk of an ambush.

She retraced her steps to the clearing and walked over to her car. The thought crossed her mind as she opened the door that while she'd been in the house, the man had had plenty of time to tamper with her engine. She hadn't locked the car, so he would have had easy access to the hood release. He could have removed the fuel pump fuse or disconnected the coil input wire. There were a number of ways to disable a car quickly for someone who knew what they were doing.

Evangeline climbed into the car and started the ignition. The engine turned over immediately, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she backed to the end of the driveway and turned the car toward the road.

By the time she reached the highway, the sun had dropped below the treetops and the sky turned crimson on the horizon.

As she turned into the sunset, a flash of fire hit her in the eyes, temporarily blinding her. Her sunglasses had fallen to the floor on the passenger's side, and as she leaned across the console to reach them, she saw the dull gleam of a black tail protruding from underneath the front seat.

Evangeline jerked her hand back just as the snake slithered onto the floorboard. It was huge, the body as thick as a man's arm and the head the size of a fist. A musty smell filled the car, along with the dank odor of the swamp and something far more foul.

Sensing danger, the diamond-shaped head lifted nearly a foot into the air, and the slitted eyes focused on Evangeline, paralyzing her with a cold, stark terror. The mouth gaped, revealing the cottony interior and the long fangs that were as sharp as needles.

She tried to tell herself not to panic. She'd read somewhere that adult pit vipers rarely released all of their poison on humans. They reserved it for prey that it could more easily kill.

But tell that to the huge moccasin on her floorboard.

Trying not to make any sudden moves, Evangeline carefully eased her leather bag toward her on the seat. The car careened off the road and she tried to swing it back on the pavement. But the tires spun on the wet shoulder, and before Evangeline could gain control, the vehicle plunged down the steep embankment, bumping over the wild terrain at a terrifying speed before plowing through swamp water into a tree.

Evangeline had no idea where the snake was, whether it had coiled for a strike or slithered back under the seat. She didn't take time to find out. Fighting off the deployed air bag, she tumbled out the door into ankle-deep water.

Her bag was still in the car and the last thing she wanted to do was reach back inside. But she needed her phone and her gun.

She was stranded in the middle of nowhere with a psycho and a cottonmouth water moccasin on the loose.

T
he tow truck dropped Evangeline and her car off at the nearest garage and, while the lone mechanic checked the extent of the damage, she called Sheriff Thibodaux to let him know what had happened.

“You sure you didn't leave your door open? Maybe that's how the dang thing got inside.”

“I didn't leave my door open and I only had my window cracked. Someone put the snake in my car,” Evangeline said.

“This fellow you said you saw out there…what did he look like?”

“Tall and thin with black hair and a big scar on one side of his face. Have you seen anyone around town lately that fits that description?”

“No, but there's a lot of fishing cabins back in the swamp. Could be somebody staying in one of those. I'll keep an eye out for him. Meanwhile, I'll send a
deputy out there first thing in the morning to have a look around.”

“Thanks. I'd appreciate a call if you find out anything.”

“You bet.”

As she hung up the phone, the mechanic came around to give her the bad news.

“Two words,” he said as he rubbed at a grease streak on the side of his nose. “Busted radiator.”

“Oh, man, I was afraid of that. Any chance you can fix it?”

“You mean tonight? 'Fraid not. It's already past closing time. I can get to it tomorrow after lunch, but that's the best I can do. You need a ride somewhere?”

“You're not headed to New Orleans, are you?”

“That's a long way from here.”

“Yeah.” She gave him her card. “I'll need an estimate before you start to work.”

“No problem. You sure you'll be all right here?”

“Don't worry about me. I'll figure something out.”

What that something would be, she wasn't sure. She could call her mother, but Lynette would worry herself sick the whole way. Besides, she had the baby today. As for the rest of her family, Vaughn's old Plymouth probably wouldn't even make it out of New Orleans, and at the moment, Evangeline wasn't all that anxious to spend time cooped up in
a car with her dad. She'd probably end up saying something she'd later regret.

So she called Nash.

 

When the black sedan finally pulled up beside Evangeline, she got up slowly and walked over to the car. The side window came down, and she leaned down to peer inside.

“Thanks for coming.”

“No problem,” Nash said.

“No, seriously, this is a huge imposition, and I'm really sorry to put you out like this. But I didn't want to call my mother. She has the baby today and my brother's car—”

“Evangeline?”

“Yeah?”

“Just get in.”

She opened the door and climbed in.

The interior of his car smelled of leather and aftershave, and Evangeline drew a long breath. She still had the fishy odor of the swamp in her nostrils, but this helped.

She turned to Nash. “I really am sorry to trouble you. This is a lot to ask of someone you hardly know. I'm a little surprised you agreed to come.” When he merely shrugged, she said, “You could have said no. Why didn't you?”

“You know why.”

Dusk was drifting into night, and the lights from
the oncoming cars polished his dark hair and reflected like pools of moonlight in his eyes.

Evangeline's heart beat even harder as he reached for her hand. He held it until she slid hers away on the pretense of pushing her hair out of her face.

She turned back to the window because she didn't want to look at him, didn't want to acknowledge the attraction that suddenly smoldered between them. She wondered if he realized what it had cost her to reach out to him. If he knew, even now, how hard she had to fight an overwhelming sense of guilt and betrayal.

No man had tempted her since the moment she met Johnny, but now when she thought of him, remembered what he'd done, she wondered if her love for him could even be real because the man she'd married had never really existed.

“You okay?”

She turned, met his gaze, then glanced away again. “I'm fine.”

“What did you find out?”

“Not a lot more than I already knew, but one thing's certain. Something really creepy is going on here.” She took a few minutes to tell him about the man she'd seen beside her car and the snake that had crawled out from underneath the front seat.

“I know he put that snake in my car,” Evangeline said. “It didn't just crawl in there by itself. Luckily, I had a fingerprint kit in my trunk and I managed to
lift some latents from the door handle while I waited for the tow truck.”

“Give them to me,” he said. “I'll run them through our computer.”

“Thanks.” She paused for a moment, watching the dark landscape flash by. “And then there's the trail of origami cranes that someone has been leaving me.”

He turned with a puzzled frown.

“On the same day that Paul Courtland's body was found, someone sent my son a mobile made out of origami cranes. I thought my mother had sent it, but she didn't. Later, I saw one at the cemetery near Johnny's vault and another in my brother's office. Earlier today I drove up to the psychiatric hospital where Mary Alice Lemay is incarcerated. She tried to give me a crane that looked identical to all the other ones. The doctor I spoke with said she makes them all the time. It's almost an obsession. At first, I thought the cranes were some kind of message, but now I think someone has been leading me to Mary Alice this whole time.”

Nash scowled at the road. “For what purpose?”

“I'm starting to wonder if all this could somehow be connected to Johnny.”

He gave her a startled glance. “Johnny? How so?”

“He knew Lena Saunders. According to her, he's the reason she insisted on talking to me. When I saw her that first day, she said if I'd locate Rebecca
Lemay for her, she'd help me find out what really happened to Johnny. She's the one who gave me your name.”

Nash's gaze seemed frozen on the road. “How did she know about me?”

“She claims to have a lot of contacts in law enforcement. And evidently she does because she was right about you.”

When he didn't respond, Evangeline shrugged. “The point is, maybe she struck the same deal with Johnny. Maybe he went to the parking garage that night looking for Rebecca Lemay.”

“You saw the files,” Nash said softly. “You know what he was into.”

“I can't accept that's all there is to it.”

He waited a beat, then said, “You're not going to let this go, are you?”

“I'm not very good at letting things go,” she said. “It's a weakness. When Johnny died, I would catch glimpses of him everywhere. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, so certain he'd been standing over me, I'd get up and search the house. He was on the other end of any hang-up call. Hidden behind the tinted windows of every car that drove by the house. Sometimes his presence was so strong, I thought I must be going crazy.”

Nash's eyes were dark and penetrating as he turned to stare at her. “You're still in love with him, aren't you?”

They were crossing over the Huey Long Bridge, and the lights dancing off the dark surface of the river looked like stars twinkling against a black sky.

They were heading back into the city, back to the world Evangeline had shared with Johnny.

“A part of me will always be in love with him,” she said.

“Even after everything you know about him.”

“Yes. I still want him back. If I had the power, I'd still turn back the clock. No matter what.” She paused and drew a breath. “So with all that considered…maybe this wasn't such a good idea.”

He shrugged. “You're probably right.”

She turned back to the window, strangely disappointed that he had acquiesced so easily.

 

Nash dropped her off at her house and waited while she went across the street to her neighbor's to pick up the keys to the new locks that had been installed on both front and back doors earlier that morning.

Letting herself in, she stood at the window and watched as he drove off. Then she showered and grabbed a bite to eat while she waited for Lynette to bring the baby home.

After she fed him, she filled his little bathtub and washed the pureed carrots out of his hair as he splashed in glee. He loved bath time and the warm water seemed to relax him. By the time Evangeline lifted him from the tub and wrapped him in a big,
fluffy towel, he was already rubbing his eyes. Freshly diapered and dressed in a sleeper, he lay cuddled against her shoulder as she rocked him to sleep.

As she placed him in his crib, her shoulder bumped the mobile, setting the cranes in motion. A shiver streaked up her spine, and for the longest moment, she stood gazing down at her slumbering son, wondering why she'd suddenly been drawn into Mary Alice Lemay's dark and troubled life.

Walking over to open the window, Evangeline stood gazing out. The evening was soft and dreamy, with moonlight pooling on the grass and the scent of her neighbor's roses filling the dusky heat.

It was very still out. No movement at all in the yard except for the subtle shift of shadows as the moon floated across the sky.

Evangeline leaned a shoulder against the window frame. Loneliness settled over her, but she welcomed it tonight. The desolation was like an old friend. Familiar and almost comforting.

She closed her eyes and tried not to think of Declan Nash.

 

A little while later, Evangeline curled up on the couch and closed her eyes.

For the longest time after Johnny's death, she'd felt helpless and broken, so lost and lonely, she wondered how she would be able to get through another
night. She knew that some women in her situation turned to other men, but the momentary solace of a stranger's warmth was not for her.

Still, on some of the long, sleepless nights, she would allow herself to remember the comfort of a man's arms around her, the erotic thrill of a gruff whisper, a shared laugh in the heat of the night. The intimate look that passed between a man and a woman when they wanted one another.

As she rolled onto her back, a soft knock sounded on the door. Evangeline closed her eyes. This was a complication she didn't want or need in her life right now.

She swung her legs over the couch and sat for another moment before she got up to let him in.

“I'm surprised you're still up,” Nash said.

“I'm too wired to sleep.” She stepped back from the door. “You want to come in?”

His gaze met hers for a moment, and then he moved past her into the living room.

She followed him in. “What are you doing here?”

“I've been thinking about those origami cranes,” he said. “You think someone left you a trail that led you to Mary Alice Lemay, but my question is…why you?”

Evangeline shrugged. “I guess it could be something as simple as my being assigned to the Courtland murder case.” She headed for the kitchen. “I could use a drink.”

She brought back a bottle of wine and a couple of
glasses. Motioning him to a chair, she poured the wine and settled down on the sofa. “Did you really come all the way back over here to talk about origami cranes?”

Light pooled in his eyes, making them seem dark and light at the same time.

He leaned forward and set his glass on the coffee table. His gaze never left hers. “I've got a lot of baggage, Evangeline.”

She set her wineglass aside, too. “What am I supposed to say to that?”

He didn't answer. “Two failed marriages, a daughter in prison. In prison. A job that sometimes demands a twenty-four-seven commitment.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You know why.”

Evangeline saw the desire in his eyes before he could cloak it with the shadow of his past. She got up and went over to the window to glance out at the street.

“You're not the only one who's made mistakes, you know. We all have crosses to bear.”

He got up and came to lean against the window frame. “Is Johnny your cross?”

Outside, the palm trees were like shadows against the soft violet of the city sky. A few stars twinkled out, but the moon was obscured by a bank of clouds moving in from the gulf.

She glanced up at Nash. He was staring out, too, his face calm and pensive.

“You wanted me to find out about him, didn't you?”

For a moment, he looked caught. Then his gaze went back to the darkness outside the window.

“Are you surprised I'd figured that out?”

“No, not really.”

“Why did you come to the crime scene that day when you already knew you were going to have me removed from the case? You didn't even bother disguising the fact that you were the one pulling the strings.”