Cry Wolf

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chad Garrett tipped his battered Saints cap back on his head and let the sunrise hit him flush in the face. Above the Atchafalaya the sky was aglow with soft stripes of color. Orange the shade of a ripe peach, warm and estival. Pink as vibrant and silken as the underside of a conch shell. Deep, velvet blue, the last of the night, set with a diamond that was the morning star.

He grinned to himself at the image he had painted with his thoughts. He had a natural gift for words. He figured he would write down the description as part of his makeup work for playing hooky from school. Mrs. Cromwell would give him a thundering lecture for missing English class again, but she would melt like butter when he handed in his short story about dawn in the swamp and the peace a man could find on the water. She'd do handsprings over his new word-"estival"-and that was an image that nearly made him chuckle. Mrs. Cromwell was fifty-eight and wore support hose and dresses that had enough fabric in them to clothe a family of four.

She was a good old girl, though, and Chad liked her as well as he liked any of his teachers. He was a good student, bright, capable. Hardly knew what a B was. But he didn't really care much for school, and, to the dismay of his teachers and the heartbreak of his mother, had no immediate plans to further his education once he graduated in June. This was where he wanted to be. In the swamp, observing nature, absorbing the beauty, the peace. He supposed he would relent after a year or two, go up to USL and study to become a naturalist or an environmental scientist of some kind or another. But for a while all he wanted to do was just be. He figured he would only be eighteen once. Might as well enjoy it.

He was his father's son in more respects than his big, raw-boned frame and square, good-looking face. Hap Garrett knew the value of contentment. He usually just smiled and turned a blind eye on those mornings when Chad didn't quite make it out of the boat shed without getting caught. As his dad liked to remind him, he'd been young once, too, and hadn't had much use for advanced algebra himself.

Chad steered his bass boat toward the shallows along a shaded bank, where a bit of yellow plastic ribbon marked one of his nets. The catch was good. He would make a couple hundred dollars today if his luck held down the line. The economics would appeal to Mr. Dinkle, whose class at ten he would miss.

He dumped the crawfish into an onion sack, sorting out the contorted body of a drowned water snake, which he tossed onto the bank. Some hungry scavenger would make a meal of it. Nothing went to waste in the swamp. Chad figured, if he was real lucky, he would witness nature's recycling, and that would appease Mr. Loop, fourth-period biology. He didn't figure he would have much of a wait. There was something up on the bank creating a powerful stink, the gagging, curiously sweet stench of death. The scent would act as a beacon.

Curious, he waded ashore and tied off his boat on a hackberry sapling. While he might not have given a fig how the balance of world power worked or how to find the square root of a negative, Chad wanted to know every detail about the life of the swamp.

It looked to him as if something had been dragged up on the bank. The weeds were bent and stained with blood. Might have been a deer that had gotten itself in trouble with a gator while drinking from the stream. It could have pulled itself back up onto the shore only to die of blood loss and shock. Or it could have been that a bobcat had caught himself a coon or a possum or a nutria, ate his fill, and left the rest. There were a dozen possibilities he could think of.

He pushed aside a tangle of branches and stopped cold in his tracks. Of the dozen possibilities he had considered, he hadn't included this. For the rest of his life he would see that face in his nightmares-beauty distorted grotesquely by death and the plain, hard realities of nature, blue eyes forever frozen in a shocked stare that made him think she had witnessed her own terrible fate and had seen beyond it to a terrible afterlife.

A woman lay dead at his feet. Horribly dead. Hideously dead. Naked and mutilated, with a white silk scarf knotted around her throat and a scrap of paper clutched in her stiff, lifeless hand.

Laurel woke alone. She wasn't surprised, so she told herself she couldn't be disappointed. But she was. Her brain told her she was foolish, that it wasn't practical or smart to want a future with Jack Boudreaux. He had too many ghosts, too much emotional baggage. But her brain couldn't do anything to banish her memories of the night-Jack's tenderness, the longing in his eyes, the pounding of his heart beneath her hand. Her heart was determined to hold on to those memories and the slim hope that went with them. Foolish, foolish heart.

He had gone at first light, she knew. Just as she had done before. She swept her arm across the vacant space beside her, finding nothing but a tangled sheet and a twisted spread. Not even his warmth lingered, just the scent of man and loving.

What would she do about him? What could she do? She couldn't change his image of himself. She had enough on her hands as it was.

That reminder brought thoughts of Savannah, and Laurel's stomach tensed like a fist at the thought of the conversation she would have with Aunt Caroline this morning. Restless, anxious, she climbed out of bed, pulled on a T-shirt and panties, and went in search of her pocketbook and the roll of Maalox tablets therein. It lay on the bench in the courtyard, where she had left it, the fine calfskin coated with thick, velvety dew. She wiped it off with the tail of her oversize T-shirt and went back upstairs to sit on the bed.

Careless, Laurel thought, reaching into the bag in search of her antacid tablets. She knew better than to leave a purse lying around, especially one with a semiautomatic handgun in it. Instead of the roll of tablets, she came up with the gaudy heart-shaped earring that had no mate and no explanation. The ear wire had caught the chain of the little gold necklace, and she fished that out as well to untangle the mess and to work at untangling the mystery. It would give her mind something to do besides worry about her sister for a few moments. It would delay her conversation with Caroline.

The chain was twisted and knotted, and there seemed to be too many dangling ends. Strange, she thought, noting dimly that her heart was beating a little faster and her fingers fumbled at their task. She plucked at the gold butterfly and tugged a little harder at the chain, her breath coming in shorter bursts. Tears brimmed up in her eyes, not from frustration, not for any discernible reason. Silly, she thought, scratching at the tangle with the stub of a fingernail.

The butterfly and its necklace came free of the snag and fluttered to Laurel's lap, forgotten as cold, hard fingers of terror gripped her throat and squeezed. Hanging down from her trembling fist was a fine gold chain, and from the chain, swaying gently, a diamond chip winking as it caught the morning light, hung a small gold heart.

Savannah's.

"Oh, God. Oh, my God."

The words barely broke the silence of the room. She sat there, shaking, icy rivulets of sweat running down her spine. Her lungs seemed to have turned to concrete, crushing her heart, incapable of expanding to draw breath. She stared at the pendant until her eyes were burning, fragmented thoughts shooting across her mind like shrapnel-Daddy standing behind Savannah at twelve, fastening the chain, smiling, kissing her cheek; Savannah at twenty, at thirty, still wearing it. She never took it off. Never.

It swung from Laurel's fist, the tiny diamond bright and mocking, and dread crept through her like disease, weakening her, breaking her down. Tears blurred the image of the heart as she thought back to the night she had gone into Savannah's room. The feeling of stillness, of loss, of an absence that would never be filled.

"Oh, God," she said, choking on the fear, doubling over. She pressed her fist and the necklace against her cheek as scalding tears squeezed out from between her lashes.

She couldn't deal with this, couldn't face what she knew in her heart must be true. God, she couldn't go to Aunt Caroline and Mama Pearl-She couldn't go to Vivian-She didn't want to be here-should never have come back. She wanted Jack, wanted his arms around her, wanted him to be the kind of man she could lean on-

Selfish, weak, coward.

The recriminations came hard, as sharp as the crack of a whip. She had to do something. She couldn't just huddle here on her bed, half naked and sobbing, wishing someone else would be strong for her. There had to be something she could do. It couldn't be too late.

"No. No. No," she chanted, stumbling away from the bed.

She repeated the word over and over like a mantra as she tore open her wardrobe and drawers and grabbed a wrinkled pair of jeans, never letting go of the necklace. It wasn't too late. It couldn't be too late. She would go to Kenner and make him see. She would call in the damn FBI. They would find Savannah. It couldn't be too late.

Wild urgency drove her as she tugged on the jeans. At the heart of the feeling was futility, but she refused to recognize it or accept it. The situation couldn't be futile. She couldn't lose her sister. She wouldn't let it happen. There had to be something she could do. Dammit, she would not let it happen!

Frantic, she flung the bedroom door back and ran down the hall and down the stairs, the railing skimming through one hand, Savannah's necklace gripped tight in the other. Her sneakers pounded on the treads, her pulse pounded in her ears. She didn't register the pounding at the front door.

Caroline came into the hall from the dining room, already dressed for the day in stark black and white. She glanced up at Laurel, concern knitting her brows, her hand reaching out automatically for the brass knob.

As if in a dream, time became strangely elastic, stretching, slowing. Laurel's perceptions became almost pain-fully sharp. The blocks of white in Caroline's dress hurt her eyes, the smell of Chanel filled her head, the creak of door hinges shrieked in her ears. She tightened her fist, and the golden heart burned into her palm.

Kenner stepped into the hall, lean and grim, eyes shaded. The shadow of death. His hat in his hands. His lips moved, but Laurel couldn't hear his words above the suddenly amplified roaring of her pulse. She saw the color drain from Caroline's face, the stricken look in her eyes. Together Kenner and Caroline turned and looked up at Laurel, and the knowledge pierced her heart like a knife.

"NO!!!" The denial tore from her throat like a scream. "NO!!!" she screamed, stumbling down the last few stairs.

She hurled herself at Kenner, striking his chest with her fists.

Surreal, she thought dimly, a part of her feeling strangely detached from the turmoil of the moment. This couldn't be happening. She couldn't be yelling or lashing out at Kenner. This couldn't be the real world, because everything in her field of vision had become suddenly magnified, as if she were shrinking and shrinking. And the sound of Caroline's voice came to her as if through a fog.

"Laurel, no! She's gone. She's gone. Oh, dear God! She's dead!"

Another cry of anguish and shock reverberated against the high ceiling of the hall. In her peripheral vision, Laurel could see Mama Pearl, her face contorted, reaching for Caroline with one hand, the other groping along the wall as if she had gone blind.

"God have mercy, I love dat chil'. I love dat chil' like my own!"

"Mama doesn't love me," Savannah said, her voice hollow and sad, breaking the stillness of the cool fall night.

They lay in bed together, wide awake, way past Laurel's bedtime. She cuddled against her sister, knowing she was supposed to be too old for it but afraid to move away. Not a week had passed since Daddy's funeral, and she was too aware of the precious, precarious state of life.

It was a knowledge no child should ever have to grasp. The weight of it was terrible. The fear it inspired had been with her day and night-that the world could be tipped upside down in a heartbeat. Everything she knew, everything she loved could be snatched away from her without warning.

Knowing that made her want to hang on with both hands to everything that was dear to her-her dolls, the kittens old mama cat had hidden in the boat house, Daddy's tie pin, Savannah. Most especially she wanted to hang on to Savannah-the person who loved her most after Daddy, the person who kept her from being alone.

"I love you, Sister," she said, quivering inside at the desperation in her voice. "I'll always love you."

"I know, Baby," Savannah murmured, kissing the top of her head. "We'll always have each other. That's all that matters."

Laurel sat down on the bottom step, dazed and weak, her stunned gaze locked on the small pendant that dangled from her fist. And the feeling she had feared so badly all those years ago crept over her and into her, spreading through her like ink, opening her heart like a chasm that grew wider by the second.

The sister who had loved her, protected her, defined her world, was gone. And it didn't matter that she was thirty, or that there were other people in her life now who mattered. In that moment, as she sat there on the step, she was ten years old all over again, and she was alone. Her world had turned upside down, and the most precious thing in it had been snatched away, leaving nothing behind but a small heart of gold.

"I want to see her."

They sat in the parlor at Belle Rivière, Kenner, Danjermond, Laurel, and Caroline. An incongruous scene. The parlor with its soft pink walls and quietly elegant furnishings, a place of serenity and comfort, filled with brittle tension and people who had gathered to talk of a brutal, heinous crime. Men for whom this death was a part of their business, and family who couldn't reconcile the idea of one of their own being torn from their lives.

The sound of Mama Pearl weeping drifted in from the kitchen, breaking the silence that hung as Kenner and Danjermond exchanged a look. Laurel set her jaw and rose from the camelback sofa to pace.

Caroline sat at the other end of the sofa. Her aura of power and control had been snuffed out, doused by a tidal wave of shock and grief, leaving her powerless. A queen who had suddenly been stripped of her potency. For the first time since her brother had died she seemed completely at a loss, so stunned by the news that she wasn't even sure this was really happening. But of course it was. Savannah had been found murdered. That was the terrible reality.

Lifting a crumpled tissue to her eyes, Caroline looked up at Laurel, who paced the width of the Brussels carpet like a soldier, shoulders back, chin up. She had been this way when her daddy had died, as well, full of stubborn denial and anger. Ten years old, demanding she be taken to him, insisting that he wasn't dead.

She could remember too clearly the rage, the fear, the heartbreak, Vivian telling the girls to cry softly into their hankies like little ladies. Caroline had gone up to Savannah's room with them, and they had all lain on the bed and sobbed their hearts out together.

"I want to see her," Laurel said again.

Caroline caught her eye and shook her head sadly, reproachfully. "Laurel, darlin', don't…"

Laurel jerked away, clinging to her stubbornness like a life preserver. After her initial reaction to the news Kenner had brought, she had slammed the door on her grief, bottling it up, saving it for later. For now, she had to hang tough, she had to keep her head… or lose her mind altogether.

Kenner rose from the armchair, restless, unnerved by what he'd seen this morning out on Pony Bayou. If he lived to be a hundred, his sleep would forever be plagued by Annie Gerrard and Savannah Chandler, their bodies carved up like biology experiments, rotted and bloated by the effects of death and the merciless southern sun.

"I don't think that would be a very good idea," he murmured.

Laurel wheeled on him, ears pinned, eyes flashing fire. "You didn't think she was in any danger, either. You didn't think she would be anyplace but in bed with one of a hundred men," she said bitterly, stalking him across the carpet. Toe to toe with him, she glared up into his lean, hard face and narrow eyes. "Pardon me if I don't have a whole helluva lot of faith in what you think, Sheriff."

He glanced away from her, unable to meet the accusation in her eyes. His gaze landed on a graceful side table that held framed photographs of the Chandler girls, Savannah's senior year high school picture catching his eye. He had a daughter nearly that age.

"Next of kin has to make a positive ID," Laurel said, grasping hold of practicality for an excuse. She wasn't feeling practical. Desperation was like a wild thing inside her. She had to see her sister now, sooner than now. Maybe someone had made a mistake. Maybe it wasn't really her. Maybe Savannah wasn't really dead. God, she couldn't be dead. They had parted so angrily, left so many things unsaid. It just couldn't be true-

"We already have an ID, Laurel," Danjermond said, his smooth, low voice penetrating her thoughts. He sat in Caroline's throne, his masculine grace perfectly at home draped over rose damask. He met her gaze evenly. "Your stepfather came down to the funeral parlor."

He could just as well have slapped her. The idea of Ross Leighton's being the first of them to see Savannah appalled her. The bastard had dealt Savannah enough degradation in her life. He shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near her in her death. Fresh hot tears welled in Laurel's eyes, and she turned her back on the district attorney.

"Sheriff Kenner and I realize the grief you've been dealt, Laurel," he said, "but time is of the essence here if we're to catch your sister's murderer. We need to talk about this necklace you found. You were a prosecutor. You understand, don't you, Laurel?"

Yes, she understood. Business. Danjermond and Kenner would take her sister's death and boil it down to facts and figures. It was their job. It had been her job once too.

"The necklace was Savannah's," she said flatly. "She never took it off. This morning it was in my pocketbook."

"Do you have any idea how it might have gotten there?"

"I expect someone put it in there, but I didn't see it happen."

"You think the killer put it there?"

Killer. Her stomach churned at the word, sending sour bile up the back of her throat. She choked it down and snatched a quick, hard breath, rubbing a hand at the base of her throat. "No one else would have gotten it off Savannah. It meant the world to her. She would never have willingly taken it off."

Danjermond rose and came around to face her, his hands in the pockets of his gray trousers. His expression was one she had seen in the courtroom a hundred times, a look she had honed to perfection herself-subtle disbelief, designed to rattle a witness. "You think the murderer took it off her and somehow slipped it into your handbag without your knowledge-for what purpose?"

The rush of anger was welcome. It distracted her, focused her attention on something she could affect the outcome of-an argument. She went to the Sheraton table and with jerky, angry movements, dug through the purse she had left there, tossing out Kleenex, Life Savers, a tampon. In one handful she scooped out the heart-shaped earring and the butterfly necklace and dumped them on a silver tray, then swung around to face Danjermond again. "For the same reason he made certain I found these."

The idea shook her to the core. A murderer, a psychopath had singled her out to send his trophies to. Why? To taunt, to challenge? She didn't want the challenge. She hadn't come here to be sucked into something twisted and sinister. The thought that someone was trying to do that made her want to cut and run as far as she could go, as fast as she could get there.

Danjermond pulled a slim gold pen out of his jacket pocket and poked at the items like a scientist, frowning. Kenner's eyes caught on the butterfly necklace, and he swore long and colorfully.

He shouldered Danjermond aside and bent to stare at the evidence Laurel Chandler had been carrying around in her handbag. "That was Annie Gerrard's. Tony gave it to her. He asked about it when he picked up her personal effects." Hard and sharp, his gaze cut to Laurel. "Goddammit, why didn't you bring this to me?"

"Why would I?" Laurel snapped back. "I found it in an envelope on the seat of my car. Why would I have assumed a serial killer had sent it to me? Why would I think you would do anything about it but laugh in my face?"

"Where'd you find the earring?" he demanded, knowing in his gut it belonged to another victim. The killer had kept a souvenir from each.

"I found it on the hall table. Savannah told me she brought it in from my car." She felt violated as she thought of it. The animal who had killed her sister, who had killed at least half a dozen women, had let himself into her car, touched things she touched, left behind mementos of his crimes. A shudder passed through her at the idea, chilling her to the marrow.

Kenner straightened, still swearing half under his breath. He couldn't believe this was happening in his parish. He ruled with an iron fist and an eagle eye. How could this have happened? He felt like a cleanliness fanatic who had turned a light on only to find roaches in his kitchen.

"I'm impounding the car," he declared, stalking across the room in search of a telephone. "We'll dust it for prints, have the lab boys from New Iberia go over it for trace evidence. And I'll take the handbag too."

Laurel nodded.

He snarled and turned to Caroline. "I need to use a phone, and I need to bag this jewelry as evidence. Have you got any Ziploc bags?"

"I don't know," she murmured, rising, shaken anew by this bizarre turn of events. She fussed with the black beads she wore, trying without success to think clearly. "They would be in the kitchen, I suppose," she mumbled, her gaze darting nervously to Laurel, to Kenner, to Danjermond, and back, as if one of them might have the answer. "Pearl would know. We'll ask Pearl."

They went out and down the hall. As the parlor door swung open then shut, the sound of Mama Pearl's wailing rose and fell. Laurel stood staring down at the cheap, gaudy earring with its chips of colored glass. Some woman had thought it was pretty, had worn it to feel special, had died wearing it. Had she died a brutal death, as Savannah had, suffering horribly, alone with her tormentor, begging for death? Tears rose in her eyes, in her throat. She held them at bay with sheer willpower.

"Why you, Laurel?" Danjermond's voice flowed over her like silk, the question burned like acid.

"I don't know," she whispered.

"Why would he single you out? Is he someone you know? Are you someone he wants?"

She flinched at the thought, struggled to hang on to her logic. "I-I d-don't fit the pattern."

"No, you don't." He hooked a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face, as if he thought he might see the answers in her eyes. "Does he want you to catch him, Laurel? Or does he want to show you he can't be caught?"

She met his steady green gaze, felt it probing, felt its power. She backed away from it, from him, shaking her head, feeling too raw for this kind of cross examination. "I don't know. I don't want to know."

He arched a brow. "You don't want to see him caught?"

"Of course I do," she said vehemently. She paced away from him again, raking a hand back through the hair she hadn't even combed yet today. "I want him caught," she said, her voice trembling with the need for it. "I want him tried and convicted and sentenced to a death worse than anything the courts would allow." She stopped and glared up at him, hating him for his calm control. "If I could, I'd be the one to drive the stake through his heart with my own two hands."

"You have to catch him first."

"That's Kenner's job, your job," Laurel said, backing down again mentally and physically. "Not mine."

Danjermond lifted the earring on the end of his fine gold pen, watching as it twisted in the air and caught the light like a Christmas ornament. "I don't think he would agree, Laurel."