The Whispering Room

Twenty

As soon as she could get away the next day, Evangeline drove over to see Lena Saunders. Josh opened the door, showing not the slightest bit of surprise at her unannounced visit.

“Nice to see you again, Detective. I’ll go get Lena.”

This time he merely waved her into the living room as he continued down the hallway toward the back of the house.

Lena Saunders appeared a few minutes later. Today she was dressed all in white and her blond hair fell in thick, gleaming waves to her shoulders.

“Hello,” she said as she glided into the room. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon. I’m delighted, of course.” She waved toward the chair Evangeline had occupied the day before. “Please have a seat.”

“I don’t need to sit,” Evangeline said. “This won’t take long.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“I’ve made some calls, done some background research,” Evangeline said. “I don’t have anything to report yet on Rebecca Lemay’s whereabouts, but I’m working on it. I spoke to the administrator at Pinehurst Manor and he’s agreed to see me. I’m driving up there as soon as I can get away. It’s possible the hospital will have a forwarding address for Rebecca.”

“What about the old Lemay house?” Lena asked. “I’m convinced someone saw Rebecca there a few days ago.”

“I’ll have a look around,” Evangeline said. “But it’s out of my jurisdiction. All I can do is ask a few questions. The sheriff down there is under no obligation to cooperate.”

Lena nodded. “I understand. But hopefully you’ll be able to get more out of him than I’ve been able to. You’ll give me a call if you find out anything?”

“Yes, but don’t expect a daily report. This could take a while. It’s not like I can devote myself to it full-time. Unless Lapierre sees fit to put me back on the Courtland case, I’ll have to do most of the legwork on my own time.”

“How will you explain your absence when you drive up to Pinehurst?”

“I’ll take a personal day,” Evangeline said. The first one since she’d returned from maternity leave.

“I’ve made some calls, too,” Lena said as she crossed the room to a sleek black writing desk. Opening a small notebook, she ripped off the top sheet. “I was afraid at first I wouldn’t have much to report. My sources at NOPD were reluctant to talk about Johnny’s case. Now I know why. Were you aware that the FBI has taken over the investigation?”

“What?” Evangeline stared at her in shock. “Why would the FBI have Johnny’s case? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I agree,” Lena said. “But that’s a question for this man.” She handed Evangeline the slip of paper she’d ripped from the notebook. “As I understand it, he’s the one who’s been put in charge of Johnny’s case.”

Evangeline looked down at the name neatly written in black ink.

Special Agent Declan Nash.

Nash could have refused to see Detective Theroux, but he suspected she would camp out in the parking lot until he left for the night.

Might as well let her have her say, he decided.

He went downstairs and got her himself. She had to sign in and surrender her weapon before passing through the metal detector, and as she walked toward him, clipping the visitor’s badge to her lapel, he could see that her eyes were burning with anger. She was absolutely furious and he wondered what she’d managed to dig up in the short time since he’d last seen her. Her resolve was pretty formidable.

“Let’s go upstairs to my office,” he said as he headed for the elevators.

She was silent on the way up. Facing forward, she glanced neither to the right nor left, and when they reached his floor, she disembarked and stepped aside so that he could lead the way.

Once they were in his office, he closed the door and motioned to a chair as he settled in behind his desk. “What can I do for you, Detective Theroux?”

“You can start by telling me why the FBI has taken charge of my husband’s murder investigation. Or more specifically, why you’ve taken charge of it.”

“You’ve obviously been misinformed. Again.”

“And you obviously still think I’m an idiot. You’ve been manipulating this whole thing right from the start. What I can’t figure out is why. I’m guessing Johnny had something to do with the Sonny Betts operation, am I right? Did he—how did you put it?—blunder in over his head and you failed to wade in and pull him out in time?”

Nash studied her from across his desk, wondering who in the hell at NOPD was leaking information to her.

He didn’t like loose lips and he liked mistakes even less, especially when they were of his own making. He’d made a gross miscalculation with Detective Theroux. He’d done the one thing he’d sworn he wouldn’t do. He’d underestimated her.

In spite of her impressive record, in spite of everything he knew about her, he’d never expected her to get this far.

He’d used bad judgment, including his failure to bring in Nathan Mallet when he had the chance. Now the poor bastard was dead, and some of his blood might arguably be on Nash’s hands.

But not Johnny Theroux’s blood.

That situation had already been set in motion before Nash had ever even arrived in New Orleans. His job had been the cleanup.

He was still cleaning up.

Rising, he walked over to the window to stare down at the parking lot. Some view, he thought.

“You’ve got some of it right,” he finally said as he turned back to face Evangeline.

Her blue eyes burned with anger. “Which part?”

“It does have something to do with the Betts operation. Johnny walked in on a buy.”

“You mean a drug deal?”

“Drugs, arms. Like I said, Sonny Betts has his fingers in a lot of pies these days. Whether Johnny knew what he was walking into or not, we don’t know. Maybe he was tipped off, maybe he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Her eyes were still blazing, but her voice was unnaturally calm. “Nathan Mallet told me that Johnny went to the parking garage to meet a woman that night.”

“I wouldn’t put too much stock in anything Nathan Mallet had to say. I’m sure his main interest was getting you off his back.”

“Why?”

He turned back to the window for a moment, frowning into the sunlight. “Mallet was a dirty cop. He’d been on the take for years.” When she didn’t respond, he glanced over his shoulder. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“About Nathan? I guess I’m not. The way he behaved after Johnny’s shooting…I knew something was wrong. Was he working for Betts?”

“That’s a reasonable assumption.”

She looked annoyed by his parsing. “Is that a yes or a no?”

“I can’t give you a definitive answer.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

He shrugged.

She decided to try another tack. “Did Nathan lure Johnny into the parking garage that night?”

“He might have, if he thought Johnny was onto him.”

She got up and came over to the window where he stood. “You do know Nathan’s dead?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you do,” she said ruefully. “You probably knew before we did. You probably also know that he was killed the same way Johnny was. Three shots—two to the chest and one to the face.”

“Sounds like somebody wanted to make sure he didn’t talk.”

“You think Betts had him killed?”

“I think there were a number of people who wanted Nathan Mallet to go away.”

“Including you guys?”

“We’re not in the extermination business,” he said.

“Not lately, anyway,” she muttered. She walked back over to the chair, but she didn’t sit. She was too amped for that. “Why wasn’t I told any of this before?”

“You weren’t asking questions before. When you came back to work after your baby was born, you started shaking things up. That’s when you got our attention. We couldn’t allow you to take things too far.”

“Allow?” Her outrage flared. “That’s why you had me removed from the Courtland case. You didn’t want me connecting it to Johnny.”

“We didn’t want you going anywhere near Sonny Betts with some half-cocked notion of revenge.”

“I’m not into revenge,” she said. “What I am into is justice.”

“You’ll get it,” he said. “It may take a while, but you’ll have your justice.”

“And why should I believe that?” she asked coldly. “When I haven’t been able to trust a single word out of your mouth yet.”

Nash stood at the window and watched her stride across the parking lot to her car.

He’d done a piss-poor job of containing this whole situation, but at least now he was dealing with Evangeline Theroux face-to-face.

He’d never had much of a taste for the machinations that came with his job. He preferred a much more straightforward approach, though he didn’t delude himself into thinking this was over. Evangeline Theroux was now a woman on a mission, and he knew she wouldn’t give up without a fight. She’d keeping digging and digging until she uncovered the truth.

But truth was a relative term.

The question now wasn’t so much if she found out, but when and how. It was a matter of degrees and increments. Control was the key.

His phone rang and he removed it from his pocket to glance at the name on the display: Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women.

He closed his eyes and drew a breath. “Hello?”

“Dad?”

At the sound of his daughter’s voice, Nash’s chest tightened and he felt a familiar wave of helplessness wash over him even as he tried to keep his voice calm and normal. “Hi, baby. How are you today?”

“Not so good. This place is awful, Dad. I don’t think I can stand it here one more day. I’m going crazy. Sometimes I wish I could just…” Her voice caught as she trailed off. She sounded like the lost little girl that she was. “I just want to come home.”

“I know you do.” He drew another breath as he ran a hand through his hair. “But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

“I know.”

“I’ll try to come up there to see you this weekend,” he said. “Would you like that?”

“Yes. But, Dad… when’s Mom coming? It’s been so long since I’ve seen her. Is she mad at me?”

“No, baby. She’s just busy. New husband and all that. I’ll give her a call and see if we can stagger our weekends. That way it won’t be so long between visits. Would that help?”

“I guess so. I just want to get out of here. Please, Daddy. Please. There must be something you can do.”

She started to sob quietly into the phone.

Nash looked out over the sun-baked parking lot as his throat tightened and his chest felt ready to explode. “You killed someone, Jamie. I can’t make that go away.”