Greg Iles: Blood Memory

Sean leans over the table. “You’re too close to this subject to make objective decisions.”

Yet again, Dr. Malik’s words come from my mouth. “You’re right. This isn’t something anyone should be objective about. It’s the worst crime in the world. That’s what Malik told me when I first met him, and now I know he’s right. The victims are innocent children. Totally unable to protect themselves.”

Sean holds up the photo of Evangeline Pitre. “This isn’t a helpless child. She’s twenty-two years old.”

“You’re speaking in chronological terms.” Still quoting Malik. “You have no idea what’s going on behind that girl’s eyes. For all you know, she may never have matured past the age of six. Not emotionally.”

With a groan Sean gets up and takes a beer from my refrigerator. When I see the sweating bottle, I crave alcohol for the first time in many hours.

“I’ve almost shitcanned my career,” he says, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Over you and me, Cat. If we do what you want now, and we get caught…that’s it for me.”

I just stare at him. “You made your choices freely. You broke the rules on your own. I never asked you to do that. I’m going to talk to Evangeline Pitre tonight, with or without you. But be warned, Sean. If you try to go around me on this-if you call the task force before I’m satisfied that I’ve gotten the truth from Pitre-then I’ll go to your wife and tell her everything we ever did. And everything we ever planned to do.”

He goes pale. “You wouldn’t do that.”

“Look at me, Sean. I will.”

He gazes at me as though seeing me for the first time.

“You have no idea of the intensity of emotions we’re dealing with here,” I tell him. “I know what an abused woman is capable of, okay? And before we throw Evangeline Pitre to the wolves, I’ve got to understand what happened.”

He drains his beer in one long swallow, then tosses the bottle in the trash. “No backup,” he says. “Dumb as it gets.”

A surge of relief goes through me. He’s going to come. “At least Malik is dead,” I tell him, getting to my feet. “If he was Pitre’s accomplice, as you believe, you have one less threat to worry about.”

Sean slips his jacket on over his shoulder holster. Then he bends, takes a small revolver from an ankle holster, and checks the cylinder. “And if it’s one of these other women? Or all of them?”

“Pitre lives alone. It’s a weeknight. She has to work tomorrow, and she’s not expecting anything. We go in forcefully, scare her, then show her a way out.”

“And if someone else is there with her?”

“We take the photos with us. If we recognize one of the other women, we still go in. You take your Glock. I’ll carry your throwdown in my purse. We’ll be fine.”

“How do I explain your presence?”

“The same way you always did when you took me on interviews.”

Sean shakes his head, but a hint of a smile animates the corners of his mouth. “Shit, we were crazy, weren’t we?”

“Certifiable. But we stopped some killers.”

He nods. “Yeah. We did that.”

“We’re going to do it again tonight. Just not the way we used to. This time it’s not about thrills or promotions or even personal satisfaction. It’s about justice.”

He raises one eyebrow. “You figure it’s up to you to mete out justice?”

“This time, I do.”

Sean passes me his throwdown gun, a Smith amp; Wesson featherweight.38. “Four in the cylinder, an empty chamber under the hammer.”

I nod but say nothing.

“Could you use that on Pitre if you had to?” he asks.

As I feel the cold weight of the gun in my hand, an image of Billy Neal’s bloody corpse rises behind my eyes. I can still feel his hot blood spurting into my mouth. Could I do something like that to a woman?

“Cat?”

“It’s not going to come to that.”

Evangeline Pitre lives in a dilapidated white house on Mirabeau Street in Gentilly, a tree-shaded working-class neighborhood of one-story clapboards. It’s full dark when Sean parks his Saab behind a beat-up Toyota Corolla at the curb out front-a car that Sean’s partner just told us belongs to our suspect. Sean hangs up his cell phone and surveys the house with a veteran cop’s eye.

“Joey talked to the detectives who interviewed Pitre after her father’s murder. They said they’d hardly asked anything when Kaiser showed up and took over the interview.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I say, trying to keep the tension out of my voice. “You think Kaiser sensed anything about her? He was a profiler at Quantico for a long time.”

“He may have.” Sean looks across the street, then back at the intersection behind us. He already made two passes along the street, looking for signs of surveillance. He saw none.

“We’re way off the reservation here, Cat. Farther than we’ve ever been. If Kaiser already suspects Pitre, we could fuck this case up bad.” He looks at me, his eyes sincere. “You don’t want to call him?”

I give Sean a hard look, then get out of the car and hurry up the sidewalk to the screened porch. I hear the fast clicking of heels as he catches up to me.

“Move out of the light,” he says.

While I stand in the darkness under the eaves, Sean makes a quick circuit of the house. The main sound in this neighborhood is the steady hum of air-conditioning units, punctuated by the muted blare of televisions.

“Can’t see shit,” Sean says, trotting up to me. “Curtains closed all the way around.”

Before he can bring up more reasons to wait, I walk up the three concrete steps and knock on the door.

Quick footsteps sound inside. Then the curtain in the window to our left flips sideways, and a dark silhouette peers out. Before I can get a closer look, the curtain drops back into place.

“Who is it?” calls a muffled female voice.

“Police,” says Sean, all authority. “Please open the door, ma’am. I’ve got identification.”

After a few moments, the doorknob clicks, and the door opens to the length of a chain latch. Sean flips open his wallet and holds his badge up to the crack in the door.

“Detective Sergeant Sean Regan, ma’am. NOPD Homicide. Are you Evangeline Pitre?”

“Maybe.”

“I was a friend of your father’s.”

“I don’t remember you. What do you want?”

“You are Evangeline Pitre?”

“Yes. What’s this about?”

“Your father’s murder.”

There’s a pause. “I already talked to some detectives. The FBI, too.”

“I’m aware of that, ma’am. But we take the death of a fellow officer very seriously. We need to speak to you again.”

“Well…”

The door closes, but after a brief rattle, it opens again, revealing the face from the photograph I studied under the vanity light during the drive over. Evangeline Pitre looks older than she did in the photo. And though her name is Cajun, she looks like a blend of Cajun and mountain blood. Dark hair and eyes mated with pale skin, and thin to the point of emaciation. Her lank hair hangs as if it hasn’t been washed in days, and there’s a purple suck mark on her neck.

“Sorry,” she says. “I’ve been paranoid ever since it happened. How can I help you?”

“Could we come inside?” Sean asks.

“Is it going to take that long?”

“It could. You do realize we’re dealing with a serial killer here?”

“That’s what the papers say.” Pitre looks doubtfully behind her, as though unwilling for us to see the squalor in which she lives. “Do you really need to come in?”

“We’d prefer it. You know how nosy neighbors can be.”

A quick flash of hatred in the eyes. Evangeline Pitre doesn’t get along with her neighbors. “Okay,” she says finally. “Come on in.”