Cry Wolf

Chapter Twenty-Five

The summons to Beauvoir came before Laurel could leave the house for Prejean's. Vivian was on the brink of one of her spells, distraught over the news of Savannah 's death. Dr. Broussard and Reverend Stipple had been sent for, but what she really needed was the comfort of having her only remaining child nearby.

Laurel 's strongest urge was to say no. Vivian had disowned Savannah in life, had long ago ceased to love her. She couldn't keep from thinking that this was a ploy to gain attention, not a plea for sympathy or support. Vivian and Savannah had been rivals since the day of Savannah's birth. Why would that change after her death?

But the burden of guilt and family duty won out in the end. Laurel found herself in Caroline's burgundy BMW, turning up the tree-lined drive of her childhood home, cursing herself for being weak. She could almost envision Savannah looking down on her with disapproval. Still scrambling for Mama's love, Baby? Aren't you pathetic.

She cut the engine and lay her forehead against the steering wheel for a moment, shutting her eyes against the exhaustion that pulled at her. She couldn't have felt more battered if someone had taken a club to her. Every part of her felt bruised, every cell of her body ached-her skin, her hair, her teeth, her muscles, her heart. Most especially her heart.

Images of Jack kept rising before her mind's eye, and her besieged brain struggled to rationalize in the name of self-preservation. He had pushed her away because he was afraid of hurting her. He had pushed her away because he was afraid of being hurt. But nothing she came up with could refute the evidence she had held in her hands.

God, he'd been studying her, jotting down notes, formulating theories as if she were nothing more than a fictitious character. The pain of that was incredible.

And still she wanted him to love her. The shame of that was absolute. She wanted him to come to her and tell her it was all a mistake, that he loved her, that he would be there for her as she struggled with the grief of loss. What a fool she was. She'd known from the start he wasn't the kind of man to depend on.

She sucked in a jerky breath, fighting the tears. She would get through this. She would get over it. She would get over him. She would find some way to be strong for Savannah.

Olive answered the door, looking appropriately dolorous, her skin as gray as her uniform, her eyes bleak. The maid led the way up the grand staircase and down the hall, and Laurel followed automatically, her mind on other times spent here.

Like ghosts, she heard the voices of her childhood-Savannah's wild laugh, her own shy giggle, Daddy promising he would come find them and tickle them silly. The memories bombarded her-good and bad. She remembered walking down this same hall to her mother's room the day of Daddy's funeral, and watching while Vivian applied her makeup artfully around her puffy red eyes.

You must endeavor to be a little lady, Laurel. You're a Chandler, and that's what's expected.

Then Vivian had loaded up on Valium and sat through the funeral in a daze, while her daughters struggled to weep gracefully into their handkerchiefs.

Vivian's spell of depression after Jefferson's death had lasted two months. Then Ross Leighton had begun worming his way into their lives.

Vivian's rooms comprised a spacious suite that saw a decorator from Lafayette once a year. The latest incarnation was a festival of floral chintz in shades of teal and peach. Olive escorted Laurel through the sitting room with its clutter of English antiques, knocked on the door to the bedroom, and opened it an inch when the muffled invitation came from within. Eyes downcast like a whipped dog, the maid slunk away as Laurel went in.

Her mother stood by the French doors, wrapped in teal silk, one arm banded across her middle, the other hand rubbing absently at the base of her throat. Opals glowed warmly on her earlobes. A ring with a stone the size of a sparrow's egg drew the eye to the hand pressed against her chest. She turned as Laurel entered the room, her features drawn tight, eyes looking dramatically sunken beneath the camouflage of dark eye shadow.

"Oh, Laurel, thank God you've come," she said, her voice reedy and strained. "I had to see you for myself."

"I'm here, Mama."

Vivian shook her head in disbelief and paced listlessly. "Savannah. I just can't accept what the sheriff had to say. That she was murdered. Like those other women, she was murdered. Strangled." She whispered the word as if it were profane, her right hand still rubbing at her throat. "Right here in our own backyard, practically. I swear, I can't bear the thought of it. The instant he told us, I nearly fainted. My throat constricted so, I could barely breathe. Ross had to bring my medication to the parlor, and I could hardly swallow it. He brought me straight to bed, but I couldn't rest until I'd seen you."

"I was on my way to the funeral home," Laurel said, toying with an arrangement of tiger lilies that filled a Dresden pitcher. "Would you like to come?"

Vivian gasped and sank down on the edge of the bed, careful to keep her knees together and tilted properly, one hand expertly seeing that her robe was tucked just so. "Heavens, no! I just couldn't bear it. Not now. I'm simply not up to it. I-I'm just weak with shock from it all, and filled with such emotions-"

She broke off as her beautiful aquamarine eyes filled, plucked a lace-edged hankie out of her breast pocket, and blotted at the moisture.

Anger built inside Laurel as she watched from beneath her lashes. Her sister was dead, and their mother sat here doing a one-woman show for sympathy. Poor Vivian lost the daughter she never loved. Poor Vivian, so fragile, so sensitive, like something out of Tennessee Williams.

"I haven't had a spell in so long," she went on, twisting her handkerchief in her fingers. "But I can feel it coming on, stealing over me like a shadow of doom. You can't know how I dread it. It's a terrible thing."

"So is your daughter's murder," Laurel said tightly.

Her mother's eyes went wide. Her hands stilled in her lap. "Well, of course it is. It's horrible!"

Laurel turned and gave her a hard look of accusation. "But the most important thing is how it affects you. Right?"

"Laurel! How can you say such a thing to me?"

She shouldn't have. She knew she shouldn't have. Good girls didn't sass back. Ladies kept their opinions to themselves. But all the dictates from her upbringing couldn't hold back the rage she had stored inside her all these years. In her mind she could see Savannah lying dead, could hardly allow herself to imagine the way her sister had suffered. And here was Vivian, playing Blanche DuBois. Always the center of attention. Never mind who else might be in pain.

"It was just the same when Daddy was killed," she said, her voice trembling with the power of her emotions. "It wasn't a matter of all of us losing him. You had to turn it around so the focus was on you, so people flocked out here to check on you, so they all went around town saying 'Poor Vivian. She's in such a state.' "

"I was in such a state!" Vivian exclaimed, pushing to her feet. "I had lost my husband!"

"Well, it didn't take you long to find another one, did it?" Laurel snapped, the pains of childhood flowing through her like fresh, hot blood.

Her mother's eyes narrowed. "You still resent my marrying Ross. All the sacrifices I made for you and your sister, and all I get in return is bitterness and criticism."

"Daddy was barely cold in the ground!"

"He was dead," she said harshly. "He was gone and never coming back. I had to do something."

"You didn't have to bring him into this house, into Daddy's room, into our lives."

Into Savannah's bed. God, if it hadn't been for Ross Leighton, Savannah might still be alive. She might have grown up to fulfill all the potential he had crushed out from inside her.

"Ross was a fine catch," Vivian said defensively, fussing with the lace at the throat of her nightgown. "From a good family. Respected. Handsome. Wealthy in his own right. And willing to take on the children of another man. Not every man is willing to do that, you know. I can tell you, I was very grateful to have him come calling. I couldn't manage the plantation by myself. I was in such a weakened state after Jefferson died, I just didn't know if I'd ever function again."

And along came Ross Leighton. Like a vulture. Like a wolf scenting lambs. Willing to take on another man's children? Willing to take their innocence. Vivian had no idea just how willing Ross had been.

Because Laurel had never told her.

"Don't tell Mama… No one will ever believe you…"

She wheeled toward her mother to let the terrible secret loose at long last, but the words turned to concrete in her mouth. What good would it do now? Would it bring Savannah back? Would it give them back their childhood? Or would it only prolong the pain and mire them all more deeply in the muck of the past?

"I did what was best for all of us," Vivian said imperiously. "Not that you or your sister ever showed a moment's appreciation. Your father spoiled you both so.

"And Savannah was always jealous of any attention I might have garnered for myself from Jefferson. She was no different with Ross. I swear, I don't know where that girl got her wildness, her stubbornness. I'd say from Jefferson's side; Caroline is just that way, you know. But Caroline never had an interest in men-"

"Stop it!" Laurel shouted, her voice ripping across the quiet, elegant room. Her mother gaped at her, mouth working soundlessly, like a bass out of water. "It's none of your business who Aunt Caroline sleeps with. At least she's happy. At least she's not deluding herself into believing she needs to have a relationship with a man no matter what kind of slime he is."

"No, she's not like Savannah that way, is she?" Vivian said archly.

Her own anger simmering, she resumed her pacing along the length of the half-tester bed. "I don't know how many times I told her to be a lady. All the hours of training, of showing by example how a lady should comport herself, and none of it doing any good at all. She lived like a tramp-dressing like a slut, going off to bed with any man who crooked his finger. God, the shame of it was almost too much to bear!" she said bitterly. "And now she's killed because of it."

She shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself as if trying to physically hold herself together. A fresh sheen of tears glistened in her eyes as she resumed her pacing. "I don't know how I'll be able to hold my head up in town."

"That's all you care about?" Laurel demanded, stunned. "You think Savannah embarrassed you by falling prey to a psychopath?"

Vivian wheeled on her, eyes flashing. "That's not what I said!"

"Yes, it is! That's exactly what you said. Christ, she was your daughter!"

"Yes, she was my daughter," Vivian snapped, her face turning a mottled red as long-held feelings surfaced inside her. "And I will never understand how that could be, how God could give me a child like her-so beautiful on the outside and rotten to the core. I will never understand-"

"Because we kept it from you!" Laurel cried.

She clamped her hands on top of her head and turned around, everything within her in turmoil. She had tried to tamp the truth down inside her again, to bury it for all time, but it ripped loose and clawed its way free. Savannah was dead indirectly because of what Ross had made her into. And because I kept the silence.

The guilt was like a vise, twisting and twisting, crushing her. She couldn't change the past, but someone had to pay. Vivian couldn't go on living in her watercolor fantasies. Ross couldn't be allowed to escape the consequences of his actions. Justice had to be served somehow, some way.

Vivian watched her with wary eyes. She swiped a strand of ash blond hair back behind her ear in an impatient gesture. "What do you mean, 'kept it from me'? Kept what from me?"

"That Ross, the wonderful, well-bred, charitable knight in shining armor who swept in and rescued you, molested your daughter." She met her mother's shocked stare evenly, unblinking. "He used her, in the carnal sense, night after night, week after week, year after year."

"You're lying!" Vivian said on a gasp. She clutched a hand to her throat and swallowed twice, as if the words Laurel had spoken were gagging her. "That's a horrid lie! Why would you say such a thing?"

"Because it's the truth and because I'm sick to death of keeping it a secret!" Laurel advanced on her mother, her hands balled into tight, white-knuckled fists at her side. "Everything Savannah became is because of Ross Leighton. Now she's dead, and the one person who should be inconsolable is more concerned about her own image than her daughter's murder. I can't stand it!"

The slap connected solidly with her cheek and snapped her head to the side. She didn't try to block it or the second blow Vivian glanced off her shoulder. She deserved worse-not for what she had said to her mother, but for what she hadn't said all those years ago. Vivian shoved her, then backed away, her eyes wild, her lips twitching and trembling.

"You ungrateful little bitch!" she spat, her silky hair falling across her forehead and into her eyes. "Lies. That's all you have in you is lies! You lied to those people in Georgia, now you're lying to me! You hated Ross from day one. You'd do anything to hurt him!"

"Yes, I hate him. I hate him for taking my father's place, but I hate him more for taking my sister." The incredulity she had known during those years came back in a violent rush. How could their mother not have realized? How could that have gone on in her house without her suspecting? "Didn't you ever wonder where he was all those nights, Mama? Or were you just thankful he wasn't coming to your bed?"

Vivian's face washed white, and she brought a trembling hand up to press against her mouth, to press back the cry, to hold back the bile that rose in her throat. She'd never cared for sex. It was messy and revolting, all that grunting and sweating. She'd never questioned Ross's calm acceptance of her disinclination to share her bed. She'd never thought once of where he might be relieving his manly urges-as long as he was discreet, she didn't care. But with her own daughter?

No. It couldn't be. Things like that didn't happen in good families.

"No," she said softly, rejecting the possibility with her mind, with her body. She flung her hands out as if to push the idea away.

"Yes," Laurel insisted. "He came to her room two or three nights a week and had his way with her, whatever way he happened to be in a mood for-intercourse, oral sex-"

"Shut up! Shut up! I won't listen to this!" Vivian planted her hands over her ears to try to block out the ugly accusations. Laurel grabbed her wrists and jerked them down, shouting in her face.

"You will listen! You should have listened twenty years ago! If you had given a damn about anyone but yourself, you would have seen, you would have known," she said, the realization bringing tears of bitterness to cloud her vision. "I wouldn't have been afraid to tell you. I wouldn't have been afraid of losing your love. I was too young to know you weren't capable of giving any."

Her mother pulled back from her, reeling as if she had been struck full in the face. "I always loved you!"

"When it was convenient. When we were good little girls and no trouble. That's not love, Mama," Laurel murmured, despair choking her. "If you had loved us, you would have seen that Savannah needed help, that something was wrong, that Ross was a child molester."

"He wasn't!" He couldn't be. She couldn't bear the thought of it.

"Ross Leighton treated your daughter like a whore until she believed that was all she could ever be."

The red had crept back into Vivian's face, and her eyes bulged out like T-Grace Delahoussaye's. "I don't believe you. You're a vicious little liar. Get out. Get out of my house!" she screamed. "You're not my daughter! I don't have any daughters!"

Laurel gave her a long, hard stare. The hurt was sharp and deep, the disillusionment absolute. "You know something," she said quietly, the fury spent. "I wish to God that were true."

She left the room without looking back, without acknowledging the maid who had been eavesdropping in the hall. The more people who knew the truth, the better. Now that it was out of that terrible little black box of secrets inside her, Laurel had every intention of making Ross Leighton's perversity common knowledge in Partout Parish. He would never face the charges in court, but he could damn well face them every time he walked down a street or walked into a store or a restaurant. He would never do time inside the walls of a penitentiary; a sentence of public disgrace would have to suffice.

The front door swung open as Laurel came down the grand staircase, and her stepfather ushered in Reverend Stipple.

"Laurel," Ross said, beaming one of his bland smiles up at her. "I'm so glad you could come for your mother's sake."

"You won't be." Laurel stepped down onto the polished marble and cut a glance at the minister, whose small eyes widened as he scented trouble like a mouse scenting the approach of cats. He took an instinctive step back, his bony hands fumbling to straighten his limp seersucker jacket. Laurel wondered what he would think of Ross Leighton now; if he would condemn, or in his weak and ineffectual way find some excuse to make it all right.

"I told her," she said, turning back to her stepfather.

Understanding dawned like shock in his eyes, but he pretended not to know, as he had pretended innocence all these years. "Told her what, darlin'?"

"The truth about the way you used my sister when she was too young to stop you. The truth about the way you turned her into a whore for your own personal enjoyment."

Reverend Stipple gasped at the words and their implications. Color crept up Ross's thick neck and into his face. He opened his mouth to protest, but Laurel cut him off with a sharp motion of her hand.

"Don't bother denying it while I'm standing here, you son of a bitch. I know what happened. I knew all along. I know what you turned her into. I know that she's dead because of it. I kept the silence all this time, kept that terrible secret inside me, let you get off scot-free. Not anymore," she promised, her voice trembling as badly as the rest of her.

"I told Vivian," she said, glaring up at him-hale and hearty with his suntan and his swept-back hair, the man of wealth and leisure in his green country club shirt and khaki slacks. He should have been the one cut up and left for dead. "I told Vivian, and I sincerely hope that she kills you."

Ross caught her arm as she started toward the door. "Laurel, wait-"

She jerked away from him with a violent move, her eyes burning hate into his. "No. I waited long enough."

Hatred boiling inside her like a poison, she left the house and left the grounds, the tires of the car flinging crushed shell up in its wake.

And Ross Leighton stood at the door of the mansion he had taken from another man, and watched her go, panic writhing like a snake in his gut.

"Jesus Christ, I hate religious fanatics." Kenner stretched back in his chair, trying to work out the kink between his shoulder blades. His gaze trailed the followers of The True Path out of the outer office and into the hall. He especially hated that they were men who lived around Bayou Breaux and were of an age to vote. That meant he had to give at least some token credence to what they had to say.

He turned his narrowed eyes on their ringleader, who still sat in the visitor's chair on the other side of the desk. Slick. That was the way he would describe Jimmy Lee Baldwin. He hated slick. Slick was damn near always trouble.

"So you think Jack Boudreaux strangled all them girls and cut 'em up for kicks?"

Jimmy Lee steepled his fingers and looked concerned, his tawny brows drawing into a little tent above his eyes, his tongue worrying over his chipped teeth. "You've heard the testimony of my deacons, Sheriff. I'm not alone in my suspicions."

"No. Well, other people have other suspicions." Kenner shook a cigarette out of the crumpled pack on his desk and searched in vain for his matches. Danjermond, who was standing against the row of file cabinets, came forward and offered him a light from a slim wand of twenty-four karat gold. The sheriff inhaled deeply and blew a stream of blue at the grimy ceiling, never taking his eyes off Baldwin. "What would you say if I told you someone came to me with a little story about you and Savannah Chandler?"

The preacher closed his eyes and shook his head as if he were in deep emotional pain. "Laurel," he murmured, privately cursing her to hell and gone. "She came to me with the same story. Apparently the workings of Savannah's sadly twisted mind. Heaven only knows where she might have come up with such tales of depravity. I fear she walked a dark path," he said with a dramatic sigh.

Kenner sniffed in derision and cleared his throat noisily. "I don't give a rat's ass what path she walked. Why would she have it in for you?"

Jimmy Lee cut the theatrics in half. The sheriff was not a patient man. "She was a regular at Frenchie's Landing. I would see that den of iniquity shut down."

"You ever tie a woman up to have sex with her?" Kenner asked bluntly.

"Sheriff! I am a man of God!"

"Plenty of shit gets done in the name of God. Did you ever?"

Jimmy Lee looked him square in the eye, as innocent as an altar boy. "I wouldn't dream of it."

But he was dreaming of it when he left the sheriff's office five minutes later. And the face of the woman bound beneath him was Laurel Chandler's.

Kenner stubbed his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray and swung his chair around to face Danjermond, privately wondering how the district attorney could manage to stay looking like some cover boy from GQ while he looked and felt and smelled like a survivor of a jungle campaign. They had all been putting in hellish hours since the discovery of Annie Gerrard's body. The stress, the fatigue rolled off Danjermond like oil off Teflon.

"What do you think, Steve?" Kenner asked. "Is the preacher a pervert, or is Jack Boudreaux our man?"

Danjermond tightened his jaw at the nickname, but made no comment. Twisting his signet ring on his finger, he wandered to the window, noticing with irritation that the blind had been hung crooked. "I can't think that Annie Gerrard would have had anything to do with Baldwin, considering he was trying to shut down her parents' bar. He denies involvement with Savannah Chandler. No one has actually seen them together. As to Savannah's accusations-well, we know she was a woman who might say or do anything. She may well have had a grudge against him. We'll never know."

"And Boudreaux?"

"Certainly has the kind of imagination it would take. If his books are anything to go by, he has a taste for violence. He knew both women. He has a reputation as a ladies' man."

"But no stories floating around about him tying them up or getting rough."

Danjermond turned from the window, pinning the sheriff with a penetrating stare. "He may have killed his wife back in Houston, Sheriff Kenner," he said darkly. "Is that rough enough for you?"

Frowning hard in thought, Kenner reached for the pack of Camels on his desk, shook out the last one, and dangled it from his lip. "Maybe we'd better have us a little chat with Mr. Jack Boudreaux."

It was late afternoon by the time Laurel made it to Prejean's Funeral Home. Aunt Caroline had tried to talk her out of it. Hadn't the day been terrible enough? Wouldn't it be better to wait until after the autopsy and after Mr. Prejean had done his part? Wouldn't she rather remember her sister as something other than the victim of a brutal crime?

Yes, but she was the victim of a brutal crime, a crime she had suffered through alone. Laurel couldn't bear the thought of it. They had always had each other. Even when Ross was making his secret visits to Savannah's room, they had still shared the pain afterward. The idea that her sister had faced her killer all alone, in the swamp, where there was no one to hear her cries for help, where there was no such thing as forgiveness, no mercy…

Blinking back the tears, she pulled open the front door and stepped into the hall, then gagged at the heavy perfume of carnations and Lemon Pledge. A vacuum cleaner was droning in the Serenity room. Mantovani seeped out of the speaker system-syrupy violins and twittering flutes.

Lawrence Prejean stepped out of his office and walked right to her, as if he had sensed her presence. He was a small man, not much taller than Laurel, spare and wiry with an elegance that had long made her think of him as a Cajun Fred Astaire. He had a thin layer of neatly combed dark hair and big, liquid brown eyes that were perpetually sympathetic.

"Chérie, I'm so sorry for your loss," he said softly, sliding an arm around her shoulders.

Laurel wondered dimly how, after so many losses, so many tragedies, he could still dispense such genuine feeling to the bereaved.

"Your Tante Caroline called to tell me you were coming down," he said, taking her by the hand. "Are you sure you want to do this, chère?"

"Yes."

"You know we are transporting her to Lafayette tonight?"

"Yes, I know. I just want to sit with her for a while. I need to see her."

She almost choked on the words, and shook her head, annoyed with herself. She had gone back to Belle Rivière from Beauvoir, taken a long shower, followed the dictates of Mama Pearl and lay down for a time, thinking all the while that she was composing herself, that she would be able to do this without breaking down. "Comport yourself as a lady, Laurel. You're a Chandler; it's expected."

Prejean paused at the door to the embalming room and patted her hand consolingly, his big dark eyes as warm and deep as an ancient soul's. "She was your sister," he murmured. "Of course you need to see her. Of course you will cry. You need to grieve. Grieve deeply, chérie. There is no shame in that you loved your sister."

Her eyes glossed over, and she dug a hand into the pocketbook she'd borrowed from Caroline to pull out a crumpled pink tissue.

He ushered her into the room with a gentle hand on her shoulder. The aromas of flowers and dust spray were replaced by medicinal and strongly antiseptic scents, reminiscent of a high school biology lab. And beneath the overpowering smell of formaldehyde and ammonia, the fetid stench of death lingered. The room was as neat as any operating room, as cold and sterile. The linoleum shone under the glare of fluorescent lights. In the center of the floor stood the table.

Laurel stood beside the draped figure, still managing to find some fragment of hope that it wouldn't be her sister. Prejean pulled a chrome-and-plastic chair over and situated it in a way that suggested he thought she might pass out.

"You're ready, chère?" he whispered. After all his years in this business, he seldom tried to contradict the wishes of those who were left behind. Death stirred up many needs, both bright and dark. Only the one experiencing the loss could know what those needs were and how they had to be met.

At Laurel's nod he slowly folded down the drape, uncovering only the dead woman's face and carefully arranging the sheet so that it covered the horrible discoloration on her throat.

Laurel took one long, painful look at her sister's face, swollen and distorted, and that small, irrational part of her mind tried to tell her that her most desperate hope was a reality. This wasn't Savannah. It couldn't be. Savannah was beautiful. Savannah had always been the pretty one, and she had always been the little mouse. This couldn't be Savannah's wild, silken mane, this dull, matted tangle of hair. This couldn't be Savannah's elegant, patrician face, this flat-featured, gray mask.

But another part of her brain, the logical, practical part, overruled with a harsh voice. That's your sister. Your sister is dead. Dead. Dead. Dead… Her gaze seemed to zoom in on the grotesquely distorted features, on the single gold earring still pinned to the right ear-a loop of brightly polished, hammered gold that hung from a smaller loop of braided gold wire. Savannah had had a pair made in New Orleans. A present to herself for her last birthday. This is your sister, this ugly corpse. She's dead. The truth filled her mind, the putrid smell of it filled her nostrils and throat.

With a weak, piteous sound mewing in her throat, she sank down into the plastic chair and bent over her knees, torn between the need to cry and the need to vomit. Prejean had anticipated the possibility and sat a stainless steel bucket beside the chair. He squatted down beside her and brushed cool, soft fingers against her cheek.

"Are you all right, chérie? Should I call someone to take you home?"

"No," she whispered, swallowing hard and willing her stomach to settle. "No, I just want to sit here for a while, if that's all right."

He patted the hand that gripped the arm of the chair. She was a brave little thing. "Stay as long as you need, petite. The sheriff will be coming later. If you need anything, there's a buzzer near the door."

Laurel nodded, knowing the procedure. She had always stood on the other side of it, where it looked logical and necessary. From where she sat now, her perceptions distorted by emotion, it seemed unbelievably cruel. Her sister had been taken from her, killed, and now the authorities would put her through the indignity of dissecting her body. The ME might find some crucial evidence that could solve the case and condemn the killer, she knew. But in that moment when grief threatened to swamp all else, she had a hard time accepting.

Questions from childhood drifted up through the layers of memory. Questions she had asked Savannah about death. "Where did Daddy go, Sister? Do you think he's with the angels?" They had been raised to believe in heaven and hell. But doubts had edged in on those beliefs from time to time, as they did for every child, for everyone. What if it wasn't true? What if life was all we had? Where would Savannah go? Savannah, so lost, so tormented. Oh, please, God, let her find peace.

Time slipped away as she sat there wondering, remembering, hurting, grieving. She let go of all the tears she had tried to hold on to, of all the pain she had been so afraid to feel. It all came pouring out in a torrent, in a storm that shook her and drained her. She knew Prejean checked on her once, but he left her alone, wise enough to realize she had to weather the onslaught of her grief alone. Alone, the way her sister had died.

She thought of that when the tears had all been cried. The way Savannah had died, the way Annie had died, the way their killer had chosen her to play games with.

"Does he want you to catch him, Laurel? Or does he want to show you he can't be caught?"

"I'll catch you, you bastard," she whispered, staring hard at the shrouded body on the table. "I'll catch you before you can put anyone else through this hell."

The "how" of that question eluded her for the moment. She had no jurisdiction here. Kenner wouldn't let her interfere. But the "how" was unimportant just now. The vow was important. She had come home to hide from the shame and the failure of Scott County, where justice had not prevailed. She had wanted to turn away from the challenge here. She had watched Danjermond poke through the pieces of jewelry with his slim gold pen and listened to him ask her questions in his smooth, calm voice, and she had wanted nothing more than to turn and run. But she couldn't.

Justice would win this time. It had to. If there was no justice, then all the suffering was for nothing. Senseless. Meaningless. There had to be justice. Even now, even too late, she wanted justice for Savannah.

"What are you trying to atone for, Laurel?" Dr. Pritchard asked, tapping his pencil against his lips.

For my silence. For my cowardice. For the past.

Justice was the way.

She couldn't just put the past behind her. It would never be forgotten. But there could be justice, and she would do everything in her power to get it, she vowed as old fears and old guilts settled inside her and melded and solidified into a new strength. She would fight for justice, and she would win it… or die trying.

They came for the body at seven-thirty. Kenner and a deputy. They would escort the hearse to Lafayette and witness the autopsy, which would be performed by a team of pathologists. Partout Parish had neither the budget nor the need for the kind of equipment necessary for detailed forensic work. Laurel went out into the hall and stood there, not able to watch them zip her sister into a body bag. But she stayed until she heard the cars drive away and Prejean came back out of the room.

"I'll bring some clothes for her tomorrow," she said, her heart like a weight in her chest. "And there's a necklace-something our father gave her. I'll have to get it back from the sheriff. She wouldn't want to go anywhere without it."

"I understand."

But would Kenner? she wondered as she walked out into an evening that smelled of fresh-mowed grass and approaching rain. The necklace was evidence.

How had it gotten into her pocketbook? When? These were questions she had gone over with the sheriff half the morning. She turned them over and over again as she leaned on the roof of the BMW and watched the thin stream of traffic pass on Huey Long Boulevard. She either had to have been separated from the bag when it happened or had to have been in a crowd. Someone could have come into the house, into her room, but that seemed far too risky for a killer as smart as this one.

If not for the fact that she was now on her way to an appointment with a coroner, Laurel knew she once might have suspected Savannah, and the shame of that curled inside her. She hadn't wanted to think about it, but her mind had sorted all the information into logical rows and columns, and, God help her, the theory had begun to take shape. Savannah-unstable, jealous, filled with hate for the image she had of herself as a whore, a violent temper simmering just beneath the surface. Savannah-her big sister, her protector, the one person in the world she loved above all.

"I'm sorry, Sister," she whispered, squeezing her raw, burning eyes shut against a fresh wave of guilt.

Think. She had to think. Savannah was gone; it wouldn't do any good to be sorry now.

The necklace could easily have been planted while she was in a crowded room. It would have been a simple matter of stepping close, making the drop, walking away. Easier than picking a pocket.

A crowd. Annie's wake. The thought that the killer might have come to his victim's wake was almost too ghoulish to contemplate. He might have stood in that room, as a hundred people had stood in that room, witnessed the kind of pain he had caused T-Grace and Ovide and their family, and felt what? Triumph? Amusement? It turned her stomach to think of it.

Half the town had crowded into the Serenity room to pay their respects to the Delahoussayes. She had wound her way through them, taking little notice of whom she passed or brushed up against. It literally could have been anyone.

A gleaming black, late-seventies Monte Carlo wheeled into Prejean's drive and pulled in behind the BMW. The tinted window on the driver's side slid down to reveal Leonce and a red leather interior. Beausoleil was playing on the tape deck, Michael Doucet's frenzied fiddle unmistakable. Leonce turned it down to a whine, then leaned out the window.

"Hey, chère, I heard about Savannah," he said, frowning beneath the brim of his Panama hat. "I'm really sorry."

"Thank you, Leonce."

"She was kinda wild, dat one, but me, I always liked her." He shrugged. On the leather-wrapped steering wheel his fingers absently drummed time to the music. "She just liked to pass a good time."

Laurel couldn't find a suitable comment. Savannah had been far too complex to be described in one light sentence.

"Look," he said. "Why you don' come with me out to Frenchie's, chère? The bar's still closed, but there's a few of us gettin' together to talk and lift a few in Savannah's name. It might make you feel better. You can ride out with me."

She was standing beside a perfectly good car with the keys in her hand. Why would she want to ride with him?

Her mind was working like a prosecutor's. She started to chide herself for it, but stopped short. She had every reason to be cautious and suspicious. Six women were dead. A killer had singled her out. Leonce had known both Annie and Savannah…

She looked at him, at the scar that slashed across his face, at the tilt of his dark eyebrows and the neatly trimmed Vandyke, scrambling to say something before the silence became strained. "Oh, I don't think so, Leonce…"

"Come on," he cajoled, motioning her closer with a flick of his wrist. "It's good to talk through grief with friends."

"I appreciate the thought, but I'm really not up to it. It's been a very long, very trying day." That was the truth. She couldn't remember ever feeling as drained in quite the same way.

Leonce frowned and gunned the engine of the Monte Carlo. "Suit yourself."

"I should get home to Aunt Caroline. Thanks anyway."

Without another word, he pulled back into the car, buzzed the window up, and wheeled out of Prejean's circular drive. The Monte Carlo hit the street and pulled away with an impressive show of horsepower and what Laurel imagined was a small show of temper.

The wheels of her mind began to turn again. Leonce. Jack's friend. Ovide and T-Grace treated him like a son. He took care of the bar in their absence and dispensed beer, shots, taproom wisdom… and milk. He had guessed at her stomach problems and given her a glass of milk the night they found Annie. Not the attitude of a homicidal misogynist.

Yes, he had known Annie and Savannah, but did she have any reason to suspect he killed them? Or was it only his appearance that made her see him in a sinister light? The scar that cut across his face both fascinated and repulsed her, but it wasn't proof of guilt. And she knew only too well that looks could be deceiving.

She was too exhausted to think straight; her beleaguered brain kept dropping the ball. Shaking loose the key to the car's door, she blew out a breath and tried to think of only one thing instead of ten-Belle Rivière. She would be in bed within the hour. If she was very, very lucky, she wouldn't dream.