Amanda Stevens - The Dollmaker

Afterward, he’d left her fuming at the motel while he drove home to his wife and kid. And he liked to think that if things had turned out differently, he would never have put himself in that situation again. But he couldn’t be sure. Back then he’d been reckless with the things he cared about the most.

Claire’s call had come as he’d peeled out of the parking lot, and all he could think on his frantic drive home—and for days, months, years afterward—was that his daughter had been kidnapped while he’d been holed up in some motel room with another woman.

He’d never told Claire about that day, but she knew. When she hadn’t been able to reach him right away, she’d sensed something was wrong. He could see it in her eyes. He could hear it in her voice every time she spoke to him. Claire knew, and she blamed him for not being there to protect their daughter. She knew and she would never be able to forgive him.

And because of his moral frailty they’d lost their daughter forever.

Pain seared through his chest and he glanced up from the file to stare off across the water, letting the glide of a blue heron capture his attention, giving him a moment’s reprieve before the suffocating guilt settled back in his lungs. And with it came the longing.

All he had to do was walk over to Marsilius’s place and take a bottle of beer out of the tub. For a moment, Dave let himself imagine the twist of the bottle cap between his fingers, the taste of the icy liquid in his throat and the soothing numbness that would come later when he moved on to the hard stuff. His need was so great that he actually got up from his chair and opened the screen door.

Marsilius stood on the other side. Dave hadn’t even seen him come up, but now he felt annoyed and relieved at the same time by his uncle’s unexpected appearance.

Peering around Dave, Marsilius glanced at the papers scattered on the floorboards, where the folder had slid from his lap when he stood. “You going somewhere?”

“Just got up to let you in,” Dave lied. He moved back so that Marsilius could step up on the porch. “What’s up?”

“Thought I’d come over and make sure you’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

Marsilius shrugged, but his blue gaze was direct and slightly accusing. “You were out pretty late last night. Must have been after two when I heard you come in.”

“You keeping tabs on me?”

“What if I am?”

“Well, you can relax.” Dave let the spring snap the screen door closed. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I drove into New Orleans to visit a sick friend.”

“A sick friend, huh?” Marsilius looked as if he wasn’t buying it. “This sick friend wouldn’t happen to be named Jim Beam, I don’t reckon.”

“I wasn’t drinking, Marsilius.”

“Never said you were.” But Dave saw a flicker of relief on his uncle’s face as he took out a white handkerchief and mopped the back of his neck. He sat down heavily in the rocker and stretched out his bad knee. “Gonna be a hot one today. Barely eight o’clock and it must be close to ninety.”

“It’s the end of July. What do you expect?”

“Heat gets to me worse every year, seems like. Maybe I’ll sell my place and head north one of these days.”

North to the Creasy clan was anything above I-10. “You’re not going anywhere, old man. You’d freeze your ass off up north.”

Marsilius grunted as he leaned over and absently rubbed his knee. He was a big, muscular man with grizzled hair and a broad face weathered from the years he’d spent under a sweltering Gulf Coast sun. He wore faded jeans, a Mardi Gras T-shirt from twenty years back and a pair of old Converse high-tops he’d bought at the Salvation Army.

Dave pulled out a lawn chair, but didn’t sit. “You want some coffee?”

“I wouldn’t say no.” Marsilius folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the drowsy ceiling fan. “I heard the boat go out earlier,” he called after Dave. “How’s she running?”

“Purring like a kitten.” Dave poured the coffee, then carried both cups out to the porch. Marsilius had picked up one of the folders from the box and was glancing through the contents. “That’s private business,” Dave told him.

“Saw the name on the box and couldn’t help myself.” Marsilius exchanged the folder for the coffee. “Why you hanging on to those files anyway, son? That was a bad time for you back then. You’re not doing yourself any favors by dwelling on that old business.”

Dave sipped his coffee. “I haven’t had a look at those files since I’ve been sober. Thought I might have missed something. Besides, some new information has come to my attention.”

Marsilius frowned. “What kind of information?”

“Have you seen the news reports about that murdered Tulane student?”

“It was all over the news a few weeks back, but what’s that got to do with Renee Savaria?”

“They both worked at a strip joint on Bourbon Street called the Gold Medallion. The owner’s a greaser named JoJo Barone. He goes all the way back to your old vice squad days. You wouldn’t happen to remember anything about him, would you?”

“Nothing more than what I told you seven years ago.”

“I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly seven years ago. Refresh my memory.”

Marsilius shifted his weight to accommodate his knee as he looked out over the bayou. Dave followed his gaze, and for a moment they both seemed to get caught up in the sway of the Spanish moss that fell, like an old woman’s knotted hair, from the water oaks in the yard. The motion was hypnotic in the silent heat. Then another heron took flight from the marsh, breaking the spell, and Dave watched until it was out of sight before turning back to his uncle.

“Well?”

“All I remember is that JoJo had a lot of irons in the fire back then. Besides the skin club in the Quarter, he ran a couple of massage parlors out on Chef Menteur Highway. Had a bunch of Haitian drug dealers for clients, low-life badasses that used to necklace Aristide’s political opponents back in the early nineties. Bastards like that have antifreeze in their veins. I saw one of ’embite the head off a chicken one night and drink the blood like it was pop.”

“Did you ever bust JoJo?”

“We ran him in two or three times, but he had the juice on some pretty high-up officials back then. They always got a little nervous whenever JoJo was in custody, so the charges had a way of disappearing.”

“Did you ever spend any off-duty time at his establishments?”

Marsilius’s features tightened as if Dave might have hit a sore spot. “Chef Menteur Highway was always a place where a guy could get into trouble pretty damn fast. I never went out there unless I had to. And anyway, JoJo didn’t hire the usual crack whores you saw hanging out in the Quarter. His girls were quality and they didn’t come cheap. Where would a cop get that kind of coin?”

Dave laughed.

Marsilius didn’t. He was like a lot of cops Dave had known over the years. He hadn’t been above taking a little something under the table now and then in exchange for muscle or protection, but he didn’t like getting called on it. “Where you going with this, Dave?”

“Maybe nowhere. But now that I’ve got a clear head, I’m starting to remember some things.”

“Like what?”

Like a diary entry with initials and an address on Chef Menteur Highway, Dave thought.

The discovery of Renee Savaria’s diary was the first break he’d had in her case for weeks, and it had come seemingly out of the blue when her roommate called him at the station and asked to meet at a bar on Magazine Street. She was a dancer at the Gold Medallion, too, but that day she’d traded her G-string and pasties for dark glasses and a black head scarf. She’d sat huddled in the back booth of the bar, fear dripping from every pore as she sipped a whiskey sour and chain-smoked Lucky Strikes.