Tami Hoag - Cry Wolf

"I'm impounding the car," he declared, stalking across the room in search of a telephone. "We'll dust it for prints, have the lab boys from New Iberia go over it for trace evidence. And I'll take the handbag too."

Laurel nodded.

He snarled and turned to Caroline. "I need to use a phone, and I need to bag this jewelry as evidence. Have you got any Ziploc bags?"

"I don't know," she murmured, rising, shaken anew by this bizarre turn of events. She fussed with the black beads she wore, trying without success to think clearly. "They would be in the kitchen, I suppose," she mumbled, her gaze darting nervously to Laurel, to Kenner, to Danjermond, and back, as if one of them might have the answer. "Pearl would know. We'll ask Pearl."

They went out and down the hall. As the parlor door swung open then shut, the sound of Mama Pearl's wailing rose and fell. Laurel stood staring down at the cheap, gaudy earring with its chips of colored glass. Some woman had thought it was pretty, had worn it to feel special, had died wearing it. Had she died a brutal death, as Savannah had, suffering horribly, alone with her tormentor, begging for death? Tears rose in her eyes, in her throat. She held them at bay with sheer willpower.

"Why you, Laurel?" Danjermond's voice flowed over her like silk, the question burned like acid.

"I don't know," she whispered.

"Why would he single you out? Is he someone you know? Are you someone he wants?"

She flinched at the thought, struggled to hang on to her logic. "I-I d-don't fit the pattern."

"No, you don't." He hooked a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face, as if he thought he might see the answers in her eyes. "Does he want you to catch him, Laurel? Or does he want to show you he can't be caught?"

She met his steady green gaze, felt it probing, felt its power. She backed away from it, from him, shaking her head, feeling too raw for this kind of cross examination. "I don't know. I don't want to know."

He arched a brow. "You don't want to see him caught?"

"Of course I do," she said vehemently. She paced away from him again, raking a hand back through the hair she hadn't even combed yet today. "I want him caught," she said, her voice trembling with the need for it. "I want him tried and convicted and sentenced to a death worse than anything the courts would allow." She stopped and glared up at him, hating him for his calm control. "If I could, I'd be the one to drive the stake through his heart with my own two hands."

"You have to catch him first."

"That's Kenner's job, your job," Laurel said, backing down again mentally and physically. "Not mine."

Danjermond lifted the earring on the end of his fine gold pen, watching as it twisted in the air and caught the light like a Christmas ornament. "I don't think he would agree, Laurel."

News of the murder cut through Bayou Breaux like a hurricane that left emotional devastation and uprooted fears in its wake. By noon there wasn't anyone in town who hadn't heard a telling and a retelling of Chad Garrett's story. It was the hot topic over comb-outs and manicures at Yvette's House of Style, where Savannah had had her nails done by Suzette Fourcade only days before. Suzette was near to inconsolable with hysterical grief over the loss of a friend and the idea of having touched someone who had since been killed. Yvette waited for the call to come from Prejean's asking her to do the grim honors of fixing Savannah's hair and makeup for her final public appearance before being laid to rest.

The story was served up with coffee and beignets at Madame Collette's, where Ruby Jeffcoat pontificated on the evils that awaited girls who wore skirts cut up to their fannies and no underwear, and Marvella Whatley refilled cups absently as her mind wandered back over the years she had served the Chandler girls rhubarb pie and Coca-Cola.

The old men on their bench in front of the hardware store shook their heads over the state of the world and watched the street with rheumy eyes that held anger and fear, and frustration that they were too old to protect their loved ones or to avenge them. And down at Collins Feed and Seed the boys all patted a dazed Ronnie Peltier on the shoulder and gathered in the break room without him to retell the tales of his and others' sexual exploits with Savannah. She was a legend among the male population of Partout Parish. If it hadn't been so gruesome, her sensational death would have seemed almost fitting.

All over town the details of the crime were broken down, scrutinized, analyzed, compared to the details of Annie Gerrard's death. Both women had been strangled. Both had been raped-or so everyone figured; the sheriff was keeping mum on that particular topic. Both had been subjected to the kind of horrors folks in Bayou Breaux had never dreamed one human being could put another through. But someone had dreamed it. Someone had done it. And rumor had it Savannah Chandler had been found with a page from a book clutched in her hand. A book called Evil Illusions by Jack Boudreaux.

"No one ever did know what to make of him," Clem Haskell said, stirring a third packet of sugar into his coffee. Doc Broussard was after him to cut calories and reduce the size of the spare tire around his middle, but he was a cane grower and hell would freeze over before anyone got him to put chemical sweetener in his coffee or anyplace else. The stuff caused cancer and who knew what all, he was certain. His spoon rattled against his saucer, and he took hold of the cup and raised it to his lips, wishing he had something stronger to fortify his nerves. Too bad Reverend Baldwin frowned on strong drink.

March Branford forked up a chunk of cherry pie and stared down at it, his appetite in revolt as images of dead women flashed behind his sunken eyes like scenes from a movie. "What kind of twisted mind writes trash the like of that? No normal God-fearing man," he ventured, putting the fork down to tug on one long earlobe. "The Lord never intended for man to profit from evil. That's the work of the devil, that's what that is."

"That it is, Deacon Branford."

Jimmy Lee nodded sagely, sadly, looking out on the audience of eavesdroppers in Madame Collette's as he ran his tongue along the jagged edges of two chipped caps. There wasn't a soul in the place who didn't look edgy. They'd had two murders in a matter of days. Annie Gerrard wasn't even in her tomb, and now poor Savannah Chandler was dead. People wanted an explanation. They wanted someone to be guilty. They wanted to be able to point a finger and say, "He did it," so they would be able to sleep nights. Jack Boudreaux seemed a prime candidate.

"Didn't I say the very same to y'all when last we met to pray?" he said, struggling to keep from lisping through the cracks in his dental work. "Those books are the product of an evil mind. The poisonous spewings of Satan."

Ken Powers knew all about poisonous spewings. His stepson Rick listened to rock groups with names like Megadeth and Slayer. Bunch of long-haired drug freaks who screamed out nothing but Satanic messages. And the kid was rotten to the core because of it. No respect for God or man. Sneaking pornographic magazines into the house and doing who-knew-what with that crowd of hoodlums he hung out with. They probably all read Jack Boudreaux's books and acted out the sex and violence with rock music blasting in the background.

"I knew the minute he bought that whore's house there was something strange about him," Ken said, planting his elbows on the table and leaning toward the reverend, his round, pink face shining with conviction. He was himself a good Christian man, and wanted everyone to know it. By God, him and Nan and the rest of their kids would show the whole town what upstanding people they were. Never mind the bad seed son Nan had spawned from her first husband.