Greg Iles: Blood Memory

“ You killed Dr. Malik,” I think aloud. “You’re the one who knocked me out in the motel.”

“He left me no choice,” she says. “He was going to give us up to the police.”

“Why would he do that?”

“To save himself from going to jail,” says Angie Pitre.

“Dr. Malik wasn’t in any danger of being convicted for murder.”

“You don’t know that,” says Lorio. “But all he really cared about was his personal crusade. His master plan. He wanted us to go to trial. He wanted the world to see what sexual abuse had driven us to do.”

“I don’t care who knows,” Angie says, suddenly upset. “We did what we had to do. God only knows how many kids we saved.”

Lorio looks at Angie like a protective older sister. “That’s right, Ang. But there’s no need for you to waste your life in jail. Not to make old Nathan famous. The world’s not going to understand what we did. And a lot of men would try to make sure we got the death penalty.”

“I think you’re wrong, Stacey,” I say in the most submissive voice I can muster. “I think a lot of people would understand.”

She laughs. “That’s easy to say. But I’m not spending my life in prison just to be the flavor of the week on Oprah. We accomplished what we set out to do. It’s over now.”

“Is it? What about me?” I look down at Sean, who hasn’t moved once. “What about him?”

“You two stuck your noses in where they didn’t belong. I can’t help that.”

“Are you going to kill me? I’m just like you, Stacey. I was molested, just like you.”

“You’re like me?” Her eyes are cold. “You’re nothing like me.”

“Are you that blind, Stacey? You think being raised with money can protect you from your own father? Or your grandfather?”

Angie Pitre is wringing her hands. “Stacey, this isn’t what we said, you know? Nobody else would go along with this.”

Lorio looks sharply at Angie. “Nobody else had the nerve to go through with any of it, did they? They sat back while we did their dirty work for them. They watched the people who hurt them beg for forgiveness on TV, but did they lift one fucking finger? Did they get their hands bloody?”

Angie shakes her head. “I know, I know, but still-”

“Still what ?”

“She’s like us, Stacey!”

Lorio jerks the gun toward Sean. “And him? He’s a cop. A homicide detective! He wants to send you to the death house. You heard what he said. It’s time to make some calls. Do you want to ride the needle, Ang? Shit, you can’t even give blood without puking.”

“I know, but…God, I don’t know.”

Lorio’s lips tighten into a white line. “ I know, baby. You just go in the kitchen while mama takes care of business.”

Stacey Lorio pulls a cushion off the sofa with her free hand, and I know then that I’m living the last moments of my life. I got away from Billy Neal. I won’t be so lucky again. My eyes go to my purse on the floor, but it might as well be a mile away. Lorio takes a step toward me, puts the gun behind the cushion, and fires.

Everything registers out of order. A horse kicks me in the belly. Tiny fragments of foam rubber fill the air. Wet red blood washes down my stomach, and a muffled boom sounds in my ears. Then a woman screams.

“What?” I ask, walking backward, trying to stay on my feet.

“Stacey, no!”

Lorio is following me with the cushion, the black barrel of Sean’s Glock protruding through the foam padding. She’s two feet away when Angie Pitre jumps on her back and yanks back both arms. They go down in a pile of flailing limbs.

I want to help Angie, but instead I sit down hard on the love seat.

“Oh, God,” somebody moans.

It’s me. The blood has run down my front and begun soaking my crotch. The gun explodes again, and somebody shrieks, but the women keep fighting.

I can see my purse on the floor, but I can’t bend to reach it.

Stacey Lorio is sitting on Angie’s chest now, screaming at her to stop fighting, but Angie keeps flailing like a crazed little girl. With a loud curse, Lorio turns the gun in her hand and smacks Angie across the face with its butt.

Angie Pitre stops fighting.

Stacey is climbing off her when Sean’s hand rises from the floor and grips her elbow. He must be only half-conscious, because Lorio laughs and shucks his grip as easily as the hand of a little boy. Walking with calm assurance, she lifts the other cushion off the couch and lays it over Sean’s face.

I look down at my purse, willing myself to bend at the waist.

Stacey presses the barrel of Sean’s gun over the cushion, right about where Sean’s forehead would be, and fires.

As I scream in rage, a tiny hole appears between Stacey’s breasts. It looks almost painted on, but within seconds she is sucking for air as though steel bands have been locked around her chest. Sean’s featherweight Smith amp; Wesson is shaking in my hand.

Stacey opens her mouth to speak, but a geyser of blood erupts from her throat.

Angie screams.

Stacey knees buckle, and she falls into a kneeling position beside Sean. She looks down at him, raises the gun over the cushion, then keeps raising it, trying to bring it to bear on me.

“Don’t,” I whisper, but the gun keeps rising.

I shoot her in the face, blowing a fine red mist into the air behind her.

As Stacey Lorio falls, all I can think of is the terrible irony that it was my grandfather who taught me how to shoot a handgun.

Then everything goes black.

I spent much of the week after I was shot going to funerals. Two were expected, one was not. Two were postponed until I was discharged from Tulane University Hospital, and thanks to Stacey Lorio, I had to ride in a wheelchair to all of them. The bullet she fired from Sean’s gun tore through my stomach and lodged in a muscle in my back. I lost a lot of blood and also my spleen.

But I didn’t lose my baby.

Sean nearly drowned in his own blood. His head had been turned sideways beneath the couch cushion when Lorio fired, so instead of drilling through his forehead-as she had intended for it to do-the bullet punched through his right cheek a couple of inches anterior to his ear. It smashed five teeth, shattered his hard palate, and pulped part of his maxillary sinuses. Sean owes his life to Angie Pitre, who, instead of fleeing the scene, called 911 and stayed with us until para-medics and police arrived.

Stacey Lorio died instantly from my second bullet. I feel a deep sadness at the childhood trauma that created the hate-filled adult she had become, but I feel no guilt over killing her. She meant to murder both Sean and me in cold blood. Sean blamed himself for not cracking Lorio’s “rock solid” alibis for the murders, but no one else had either. It turned out that her ex-husband was a drug addict. Because Stacey kept him supplied with pills from the clinic where she worked, he would have given her alibis for a dozen more murders and sworn to them all under oath. Lorio’s other alibis had been provided by two women later identified as members of Group X. With hindsight all seems obvious.

Special Agent Kaiser spent a lot of time in my hospital room. The doctors tried to keep him out, but Kaiser can be pretty pushy when he wants to be. He demanded to know every detail of what had happened to me during the case, and of how I had solved the riddle of who was doing the killing. He was obsessed with determining once and for all whether the six murders in New Orleans had any connection to the events in Natchez and on DeSalle Island. Given the link between Ann and Dr. Malik-and in a way, Malik and me-it seemed inconceivable that they were not causally related. But they weren’t. Not really.