Greg Iles - Blood Memory

She backs up, giving us room to enter.

The front door opens into a den. I’ve seen a lot of houses like this one in New Orleans. A door at the back of the den opens directly into the kitchen. Through it I can see glass doors that will open from the kitchen to a square cement patio outside. To my right is a hallway that leads to a couple of bedrooms-three at most-and a bathroom at the end of the hall.

The den is furnished with a flower-print sofa/love-seat combination that looks like it was bought at a thrift store. The sofa stands against the wall opposite the front door, with a rectangular coffee table in front of it. The love seat faces the left wall, where an old television shows the Home Shopping Network. A La-Z-Boy recliner faces the TV, and an old bureau of some kind stands against the wall behind me. Cigarette smoke hangs lazily in the air. I trace it to a cigarette burning in an ashtray on the floor beside the La-Z-Boy.

Evangeline Pitre has not once turned her back to us. She backed slowly into the den, then folded her arms and continued moving backward to the sofa, navigating around the coffee table without even looking down. She either grew up in this house or has lived here a long time.

“Seat?” she offers.

“Thanks,” says Sean.

He turns the La-Z-Boy around so that it faces the sofa and sits. I perch on the love seat with my purse in my lap, barely able to restrain my curiosity. Evangeline Pitre bends her knees and alights on the edge of the sofa like a bird, as though she might take flight at any moment.

“Ms. Pitre,” Sean begins, “we’d like to-”

“Angie,” she cuts in. “Call me Angie.”

Sean gives her his charming smile, but the official tone remains in his voice. “All right, Angie. My colleague is a forensic expert we sometimes consult on cases like this. She wants to ask you some questions about…”

His words blend into a meaningless monotone in my ears. He’s following the script we worked out during the drive over, but now that I’m here, I think it’s a waste of time. We don’t need complex psychological tactics to get this woman to open up to us.

“Angie,” I say in a familiar voice, “Detective Regan isn’t telling you the whole truth.”

Sean stares openmouthed at me.

“I am a forensic expert, but I’m not here to talk to you about forensics. I’m here to tell you what we know about these murders.”

Pitre looks to Sean as though for help. She liked his officious fiction better than the frank tone of my truth. But Sean says nothing.

I set my purse on the floor, thinking for an instant of the revolver inside, then intertwine my fingers over my knees and give Pitre my most confiding smile. “Angie, have you ever seen me before?”

She shakes her head.

“I was a close friend of Dr. Nathan Malik.”

Something has changed in her face. What? A tightening of the jaw? A new rigidity in the neck? Whatever caused the change, it’s so profound that I feel as though a second set of eyes has opened behind the ones I can see. Eyes glinting with a primitive awareness whose only objective is survival. I’ve never met Evangeline Pitre in my life, but I know her.

She is me. I have that second set of eyes, too. The ones that watch in the quivering darkness, waiting for him to come-

“What is it?” Angie asks. “You’re looking at me funny.”

“Angie, my name is Catherine Ferry. Do you know that name?”

She blinks once, slowly, like a cat feigning boredom to a passing mouse. “No.”

“I think you do.”

She swallows.

“I know your father was a bad man, Angie. Other people thought he was good, but I know what he really was.”

Her eyes have taken on a dull glaze.

“I know he touched you, Angie. I know he came to your bed in the dark. He probably hurt other children, too. That’s why he had to die, isn’t it?”

For the briefest instant, her eyes dart toward the back hall. Is she looking for escape? Or for help?

Sean stands quickly. “Do you mind if I take a look around the house?”

I expect Angie to bound to her feet in protest, but instead she settles back against the flowered fabric of the couch. “Sure,” she says. “Whatever.”

Sean moves into the hallway, drawing his gun from beneath his jacket as he goes. To keep the girl from panicking, I engage her in conversation.

“Were you one of the original members of Group X, Angie?”

A faint smile touches her lips.

“You’re afraid to trust me, but you don’t have to be. I know about Dr. Malik’s movie. He wanted to give me the tapes for safekeeping, but I couldn’t take them. The FBI was after me then. They’re still after me now.”

“Why would they be after you?”

“They think I’m involved with the murders. I don’t mind that. They don’t have any real evidence. I also killed a man about four hours ago. He was trying to rape me, and I killed him.”

The hidden eyes probe me for deception, but they find none. “I don’t get it,” she says. “You’re with a cop.”

“Sean’s not a regular cop. He’s my boyfriend. I was molested, just like you, Angie. I know how it feels to go through that. And I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help.”

Her eyes narrow in suspicion. I can only imagine what has been done to this girl by people who promised to help her.

“But for me to help you, you’re going to have to tell me the truth.”

“What about?”

“How it started. I know those six men were punished for what they did. But I need to know how it started.”

Angie’s face is as blank as the head of a mannequin.

“Did you ever meet a woman named Ann Hilgard?”

For the first time, I see fear in her eyes. Why should the mention of my aunt’s name generate fear in this girl?

“Angie, if you don’t talk to me tonight, Sean is going to have to tell the task force what I figured out about these murders. About how you’re involved. And I won’t be able to help you after that.”

The fear ratchets up a notch. “What are you talking about? What did you figure out?”

Here goes …“I know you’re taking saliva from a baby at the day-care center where you work and putting it into the bite marks on the dead men.”

Pitre’s eyes widen, and her bottom lip quivers like a five-year-old’s.

“What I need to know is, have you done all this on your own, or is somebody helping you? Was Dr. Malik helping you? I know he knew about the killings. He told me that. He was going to talk about them in the movie, wasn’t he?”

Angie’s hands are shaking now, and her left leg is bouncing up and down. She’s like a machine that has run reliably for twenty-two years, but is now about to vibrate to pieces. Sean was right: Angie Pitre couldn’t have committed the murders alone.

“Did you videotape the killings for Dr. Malik, Angie?”

She stands so suddenly that I jerk back in my chair.

“This isn’t right!” she cries, jabbing her sinewy arm at me. “You’re not supposed to talk to me like this! You don’t have proof of nothing!”

Sean races back into the den, gun in hand. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” I motion for him to put the gun away.

He doesn’t. “Bathtub’s full of hot water,” he says to Angie. “Why?”

“I was about to take a bath.”

He points at the cigarette burning in the ashtray by the recliner. “Looks like you were watching TV to me.”

“I was waiting to buy some earrings.”

He studies her for a few moments, then holsters his gun and takes his seat in the La-Z-Boy. “What did I miss?” he asks, glancing at the hall.

“Angie was about to tell me who’s helping her punish those men.”

“What will happen to me if I talk to you?” she asks Sean.