The Stalking, page 5
“But?”
“Okay, so all the usual things were done—credit card checks on people, hotels, travel...and yes, Trudeau could have been in each of the locations when a woman was kidnapped. We don’t know where they were murdered, just where their bodies were discovered.” She hesitated. “I was working in Miami. I didn’t hear about it until the second victim... I was and wasn’t surprised when they called me up here on assignment. I knew right away someone was imitating the Artiste.” She sighed.
Andre took the armchair by the sofa facing her, and she set aside the toss pillow to lean forward, making sure she had his full attention. “I know that many people questioned whether Lassiter was the killer, decrying the death penalty,” she continued. “But he confessed, and from what I heard, he tried to bargain his way out of the death penalty, telling authorities that he would let them know where they could find more victims, women he had killed before becoming adept as an ‘artist.’ Lassiter was the killer. What’s odd to me is how this new man knows his methods so damned exactly. The new name came, from what I understand, because one of the cops who found the first victim said that it was heart-wrenching, that she was so pretty and perfect, it was just like she’d already been laid out by a mortician for a viewing or a wake.”
Andre hesitated a moment, thinking over what she’d said. “I’ve gone over the files,” he said quietly. “There is evidence that this man may have been the killer. But he’s dead—so there’s no questioning him about the woman who is still missing.”
“He didn’t kill himself,” she said.
“You’re here, so you’ve done your paperwork. Fournier?”
“Like I said, he’s a good man, and a good cop. But he wants to be done with this case.” She stared at him hard. “I know that you know that my cousin was murdered by the Artiste. Let me be very clear that I didn’t seek my own vengeance. I did major in criminology and become an FBI agent because of what happened. And though it’s flawed, I believe in the system. So maybe you thought that I was convinced that we had the right man, trapped and at our mercy, and that either I or Fournier tripped and killed the suspect, but it didn’t happen that way.”
“I never suggested that.”
“You looked at me as though I was a perp!”
He shook his head, annoyed. “I did not. I don’t know what you read in my look, but honestly, that wasn’t my intention. It was startling to be sent down here and immediately stumble on you and Detective Fournier over a body. That’s all. I haven’t been working this case, following your leads. There was no reason for me to step in at the time and so I didn’t. I do intend to be at the autopsy. Once again, I’m not thinking that you’re a vigilante agent on a vendetta, but it will be important to find out if it was suicide.”
“The autopsy. Yes, of course,” she murmured. “The thing is...there’s still a victim out there. We don’t know if she’s dead or alive. A picture of her was found in a restaurant on Bourbon Street. No pictures of her in death have been found, so...”
“So, she may still be alive. And if Trudeau was the killer, she’s imprisoned...somewhere...and we have no idea where. And if he wasn’t the killer...”
“She may still be enduring torture as we speak,” she said softly. Then she lifted her hands and let them fall. “Either way means she’ll die. And we have nothing else. Nothing at all, except...”
“Except?”
She didn’t answer, and he smiled. “I see. We have nothing except your instinct. You don’t believe that Trudeau killed himself or that he was the killer.”
“I don’t know. If we hadn’t found him dead, I’d have been far more convinced. But in my mind, there’s no way the Mortician would do that to himself, and therefore...”
“The actual killer killed him.”
“You think I’m grasping at straws.”
“No, I don’t.”
She gazed at him steadily. “I know that you were there the day in Broussard when we interred Janine in the family tomb...and the police took down Lassiter. I had to try to pin down why you were so familiar, but you were playing in the band with Jimmy.”
He nodded. “Jimmy is an old friend.”
She sat in silence, and he asked, “Do you have any other suspects?”
She grimaced and shook her head. “There are possibilities that we haven’t explored, and I admit, we didn’t expand our search at first.” She leaned forward, looking at him warily. “You’re not sitting there thinking that I’m way off base, are you? Do you think that Fournier is right and Braxton Trudeau knew he was going to get caught and stuck his blade in his own throat?”
“I’m open to all possibilities,” he said.
“All right, then,” she said, and took a deep breath before plunging in. “I think it has to be someone who knew Ryan Lassiter. Maybe even someone who was in on it—as if Lassiter had a protégé, someone who was maybe even aiding and abetting him.”
“Cheyenne, that was a long time ago.”
“Yes, I know. But we have no idea if this person hasn’t...practiced before. Here’s the thing, and it’s sad and tragic, but people disappear all the time. No one notices when it’s someone who is on the outer edges of society—say addicts who wind up on the streets, the homeless who have no one. Even with these recent killings—the killer started off with people on the fringes. Women who were prostitutes. We both know that police are overworked and overburdened. When families and/or the press get involved, the pressure is on. I was at a symposium last year and we learned that there are over two hundred thousand unsolved murders in the country, just since 1980. We don’t know the true extent of any killer. So... Andre, I think our killer could have been practicing for years to get the basics down before really becoming an imitator of the Artiste. And Lassiter was just executed last year.” She hesitated, grimacing. “Right now, I wish he was alive, and that we could question him. Oh, and as far as the death penalty, I don’t know how I feel. On the one hand, as a family member of a victim, for a while I thought that Lassiter shouldn’t just be executed—he should have been boiled in oil and slashed to ribbons. But on the other hand Lassiter might have helped us now, and maybe knowing that there is nothing left for a person in life but prison walls may be a punishment worse than death. I don’t know. It’s not my job to be judge and jury. I just want killers off the streets, unable to take that most precious gift of life from anyone again.”
She stopped speaking and looked a bit embarrassed.
“We’re both Feds,” he said, trying to make it easier for her. He was somewhat surprised that she’d been sent here. She was clearly too close to the original Artiste case. Then again, this killer needed to be caught—and fast. She might have insight that others did not.
As she was suggesting now.
“Yeah,” she muttered. Again, she took a deep breath. “Not to be horribly repetitious—Fournier is a good cop. We both know that New Orleans isn’t easy, especially for the poor patrol cops. When do you let people have fun, and when do you have to step in because a situation is getting dangerous? Anyway, my point is this—Fournier finished his paperwork, he was just about euphoric, and everyone was congratulating him, congratulating us both, even though I was saying that we can’t be sure that the right man is dead. I had to finish and get out as quickly as possible and...” She looked away. “Okay, so, you were the only one I thought might listen to me. My friend Keri Wolf called your boss, right?”
He nodded. “She’s living with one of our agents and their home is near our offices now.”
“I know. I called her the other day. I was frustrated, trying to do the right things, but not feeling as if I was making any headway. I asked her if she had any insight, and she said that she’d talk to a man named Jackson Crow.”
“Our field director,” Andre said.
“So, you’re here because of me—and because you’re from the area, too?”
He nodded. “I spent time living in a number of cities—Lafayette, Houma and obviously here, too.”
“Cool house,” she noted.
“Thanks. My parents own it. They live down in Florida now, but they’re still locals here at heart—they wouldn’t miss a Jazz Fest for anything. For Mardi Gras they prefer Lafayette—not as many people getting out of control. I was out by you during middle school, here in New Orleans for high school. And anyway, I’m here now. And they didn’t even know until I told Jackson that I’d actually been there the day Lassiter was brought in.”
He stood, thinking that it was great that she had come to him, that they were talking, and creating a good working relationship. Of course, maybe somehow something the next day would prove that they were done—that the dead man, Braxton Trudeau, was their killer.
But like her, he was afraid that wasn’t going to be the case.
It was a little distracting to feel as close to her as he suddenly did. She’d poured her heart out to him, showing him a vulnerability he was certain few people saw. It was almost as if he’d known her for years.
Well, in a way he had. But then again, not at all.
She was exhausted, he was sure.
“You’ve been working this 24/7, like Fournier?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Well, at the moment, we have nowhere to go,” he told her. “All we can do is think back, see what each of us can remember about everyone. Maybe we’ll head out to see Jimmy—he’s working with a band on Frenchman Street right now. For now, I’m going to get our board going.”
“It’s a plan,” she murmured. She settled back into the sofa.
“Hang on,” he said, then he went back to the hallway for his travel bag, opening the side with his computer and all the physical files Angela had gotten him.
He returned; she was just sitting, staring at the empty board.
“All right. The Rougarou.”
He pinned a sketch of the monster—much like the one he’d seen at the museum—on the top left corner of the board.
“That’s a picture of a legendary bayou monster, like a werewolf,” she noted.
“Right, because the killer referred to as the Rougarou, back in the 1800s, was never caught. Here we now have Emil Justine, owner of the plantation and cemetery at the time, suspected to be the killer.”
He put up a facsimile of Emil Justine, copied from a very old photograph of the man done sometime right before or after the Civil War. He looked extremely grim, but then, that was pretty much how most of the photographs from the time looked.
He had four more likenesses to put up—victims from the time: Ann Marie Matthews, Victoria Dupree, Melissa Carrier, and Alice DeMille. Two were also copies of old photographs. Two were sketches.
“There were probably more—many more,” Cheyenne murmured. “No internet at the time, news traveling slowly and a war going on.”
“Exactly. Okay, so, now, back in his day, he left sketches of his victims—except he had original photographs of Anne Marie Matthews and Melissa Carrier, as you see on the board. He was an expert with a knife, inflicting damage that he could hide once he ‘prepared’ them, but slicing them up all over, and thus his moniker back then—the Rougarou. When Lassiter decided that he liked the killing method, he was called the Nouveau Rougarou at first, but the press labeled him the Artiste, which stuck, and of course, made it clear which killer was being discussed.” He hesitated. “I guess you went through all this with Keri Wolf when she wrote her book?”
Cheyenne nodded. “It was one of her first books. She didn’t want to question me at first—she thought it would bring up bad memories. But...” She shrugged. “It was all right. I could tell her things about Janine, at least, that she couldn’t get anywhere else. And by college, I was just determined to do what I could to catch killers.”
He nodded, fascinated by her. She had taken a very bad situation and moved forward in life, rather than letting it bring her down.
Then again, maybe she had become a little obsessive...
“But I am not obsessed!” she snapped, as if she had read his mind.
“All right, so we both remember Lassiter’s crimes all too well,” he said then, going to the far right of the board. He put up a picture of Lassiter, and then pictures of his known victims—including a picture of Janine.
Cheyenne didn’t blink.
“And now the matter at hand,” he said, putting up a picture of the one real suspect they’d had—Braxton Trudeau, now deceased, and then pictures of his known victims: Alicia Holden, Anna Gunn, Cindy Metcalf—and the girl who was still missing, Lacey Murton.
Cheyenne Donegal stood, walking over to the board. “See?” she said, pointing to the arrangement of the girls’ hair over their foreheads. “Lassiter’s victims—and the new victims. See the way bangs are arranged, and when the girls had no bangs, the hair was brought over their foreheads in a slant. None of these pictures—those of the victims in death—were ever let out to the media. I’ve even checked online, in case someone had managed to leak an image. It may be a little thing, but it gets me back to thinking that whoever is doing this had to have studied Lassiter—maybe he even somehow aided or abetted Lassiter and knows exactly how he left his victims. There’s something more—something that’s so similar in the way the photos appear. I can’t place it yet, but’s it’s there. I can’t help but have this wrenching feeling that this killer was... I don’t know, and maybe not quite so dramatic, but an understudy.”
Andre studied the pictures; she was right about the strange slant on the hair—but did it mean anything?
And what else was it about the pictures that bothered her?
“All right, so who was close to Lassiter? I mean, that we know about?”
She walked back to the sofa and sat again, obviously drained.
“Can I get you something?” he asked her.
“You have any coffee in here? Oh, that’s right—you just got here. I’m fine.”
“I have coffee. My mother always leaves me coffee, and she keeps powdered creamer for herself, sugar and fake sugar in the cupboards.”
She grinned. “I’m an FBI agent. Just about as stereotypical law enforcement as you can get—black coffee would be delicious.”
“I’ll be right back,” he told her. He headed across the hallway to what his parents had called the music room, and which was actually a second parlor, identical to the other side, right down to having a hearth and mantel that doubled into the next room, the dining room on this side.
The music room, however, did have a fine grand piano, which his mother played exceptionally well, along with a few of his old guitars. The dining room had hutches full of dishes and crystal and a long table that would easily seat eight—twelve, if necessary. Behind the dining room was the kitchen, and as he had known it would be, the cupboard offered several pounds of Community Coffee.
He put a pot on to brew and headed back over to the parlor.
Cheyenne Donegal was sound asleep; she’d crashed over and was half sitting with her head resting on the occasional pillow she’d held earlier.
Andre found one of his mother’s old knit throws and set it carefully around her. She didn’t wake. He left her, went to his travel bag and dug out his computer, and headed to the room behind the parlor—his father’s office and library. Once there, he went over everything they had just discussed, considering her belief that the killer had to be someone who had known Lassiter.
That made him think back to the day of the funeral.
He hadn’t known Janine Dumas, though his family had known her family, and he had seen her about, but not often. His parents had lived in NOLA by then, and he’d gone back now and then for friends’ birthdays or the like.
Jimmy Mercury had been a longtime friend—they’d played ball together in high school. Lafayette was a fairly large city; New Iberia was small. The Dumas family had asked Jimmy about creating a jazz band for the funeral—jazz funerals being something Janine had always thought were terrific. Death, if they believed, was not the end, but a new beginning.
When it came to music, Andre couldn’t come near to Jimmy’s talent. But his mother had been almost as fine a piano player as she was an artist, and valued musical instruction, so he’d had lessons ever since he was a young boy.
If he thought back, he could remember the day—and a young Cheyenne Donegal.
She had stood near her parents, but her mother had been consoling her own brother, Janine’s father. And so, Cheyenne had seemed a bit apart—even from her school friends. She had been a few years younger than Janine.
Not far from her, there had been some of Janine’s classmates. Nelson Ridgeway and Katie Anson had stood near her—high school lovers from the get-go. He’d heard that they’d gotten married and—miracle of all miracles—they were still married. Mike Holiday, an extremely good-looking quarterback on the football team, had been there, too, tall and blond and somber, just about next to Mr. Beaufort, or Rocky Beaufort, then coach and gym instructor at the high school. Jimmy Mercury had told Andre that Rocky Beaufort was now the owner of a fitness studio in the French Quarter, though he hadn’t been there yet himself, and in fact, hadn’t seen him since that day.
Andre closed his eyes, trying to clearly picture the scene again: the plantation sat up on a very small hillock, and a stone path led down to the cemetery. The entire estate was walled with stone, but in places, the stones were broken. The wall was—tops—three feet high. Anyone could hop over it at night—and did.
The Dumas tomb was in the middle of one of about ten rows of family tombs, and the mourners had all followed the coffin down from the plantation to the site and stood angled around wherever they could as the priest gave the final service.
