Greg Iles - Dead Sleep

“Yes. They’re all nudes, and the women are posed like they’re either asleep or dead. Ms. Laveau, I’m trying to find out if my sister is alive or dead, and the FBI is helping me. Or letting me help them, rather.”

“Why would they do that?”

I feel odd talking to a crack in a door, but I’ve done it more than once in my life, and you work with what you have. “Because my sister and I were identical twins. The FBI is parading me in front of suspects, hoping I’ll rattle the killer into revealing himself.”

“Or herself?” asks Laveau. “Is that what you’re telling me? That I’m a murder suspect because of some brush hairs?”

“No one really believes you’re involved, but the fact that you have access to these special brushes forces the FBI to try to rule you out.”

“I guess you want to come in?”

“I’d like to, if you’ll talk to me.”

“Is my choice you or the FBI?”

“That’s pretty much it, yes.”

The eye disappears, and I hear her sigh. The door closes, the chain rattles, and then the door opens again. I slip through before she can change her mind, and she shuts it behind me.

Facing Thalia Laveau at last, I realize how misleading the photograph of her was. In the pictures I saw last night, her black hair looked cornsilk fine, but it must be kinkier than that, because today it’s done in long thick strings that look like dreadlocks but aren’t, and that hang almost to her midriff. Her skin is as light as mine, despite her African blood, but her eyes are a piercing black. She’s wearing a colorful robe that looks Caribbean, and her expression is that of a woman comfortable in her own skin and amused by the pretensions of others. The overall effect is exotic, as though she were a beautiful priestess of some obscure tribe.

“Why don’t you come into the back?” she says, waving at the tiny front room. “There’s not enough room in here to cuss a cat without getting fur in your mouth.”

Her voice is throaty and devoid of accent, which tells me she’s worked hard to get rid of the sound of her childhood. I follow her through an empty door frame into a larger room.

I half expected a den filled with beads, incense smoke, and voodoo charms, but instead I find a conventional room furnished with rather spartan taste. There’s a comfortable sofa, which she motions me to, and a chair with an ottoman, which she takes. After she sits, a heavy striped cat that looks half wild creeps out from behind her chair. It gives me a suspicious glare, then leaps onto Laveau’s thighs, preens, and settles into her lap. Laveau tucks her feet beneath her and strokes it between the ears. She sits with remarkable ease, watching me as though she could wait forever for me to explain myself.

On the wall behind her is a painting of the St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square. This surprises me, because the cathedral is probably the most overpainted image in New Orleans, done and redone by students and hacks who hawk them to the tourists in Jackson Square. It seems an unlikely adornment for the apartment of a serious artist, though this rendering seems several cuts above the usual.

“Did you paint that?” I ask.

Laveau chuckles softly. “Frank Smith painted it, as a joke.”

“A joke?”

“I told him he wasn’t a New Orleans artist until he’d painted the cathedral, so he took an easel, walked down to the square, and sat for four hours. You never saw anything like it. By noon all the artists in the square had gathered round him like the Pied Piper. They couldn’t believe how good he was.”

“That sounds like him.”

“You’ve talked to Frank?”

“Yes.” Suddenly self-conscious, I pull my skirt down over my knees to be sure she can’t see the transmitter taped to my thigh.

“Who else?”

“Roger Wheaton. Gaines.”

“So, you saved me for last. Is that good or bad?”

“The FBI suspects you the least.”

She smiles, revealing white teeth with a hint of gold toward the back. “That’s good to know. Did your plan work? Did any of the others freak out when they saw you?”

“It’s hard to say.”

Laveau nods, acknowledging the fact that I can’t be completely candid about some things. “Were you close to your sister?”

The question takes me aback, but I see no reason to lie. “Not in the way most sisters would say they were. But I loved her.”

“Good. What was your name again?”

“Jordan. Jordan Glass.”

“I like that.”

“However things were between my sister and me, I have to find out what happened to her.”

“I understand. Do you think she could still be alive?”

“I don’t know. Will you help me find out?”

“How can I?”

“By telling me what you know about some things.”

Her lips disappear between her teeth, and for the first time she looks uncomfortable. “Talk about my friends, you mean?”

“Is Leon Gaines your friend?”

She wrinkles her lip in distaste.

“May I call you Thalia?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t lie to you, Thalia. After I leave, the police are going to come here and question you about your whereabouts on the nights the women disappeared. Will you have any trouble giving alibis for those nights?”

“I don’t know. I spend a lot of time alone.”

“What about three nights ago, after the NOMA event?”

Confusion clouds her eyes. “The papers said the woman taken that night was unrelated to the others.”

“I know. The FBI has its own way of working.”

“Then – oh God. He’s still taking them. And you think I-”

“I don’t think anything, Thalia. I was just asking a question and hoping you had an answer that could keep the police off your back.”

“I came straight home and did some yoga. It was a week-night, and I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Did anyone see you or call you? Anyone who could confirm that?”

Lines of worry now. “I don’t remember. I don’t think so. Like I said, I’m alone a lot.”

I nod, uncertain which way to go with her.

“You are too, aren’t you?” she says.

My first instinct is to change the subject, but I don’t. Sitting here facing this woman I’ve never met, it strikes me that I’ve been surrounded by men ever since I arrived from Hong Kong. There’s Agent Wendy, of course, but she’s fifteen years my junior, and seems almost like a kid. Thalia is close to my age, and I feel a surprising comfort with her, a kind of relief in the essentially feminine security of her home.

“I am,” I concede.

“What do you do?”

“How do you know I do anything? How do you know I’m not a housewife?”

“Because you don’t act like one. And you don’t look like one, even in that skirt. You should pick a better disguise than heels next time, unless you have plenty of time to practice in them.”

I can’t help but laugh. “My sister was a housewife. Before she disappeared, I mean. I’m a photojournalist.”

“Successful?”

“Yes.”

She smiles. “I’ll bet it feels good, doesn’t it? That validation?”

“It does. You’ll get there too.”

“I wonder sometimes.” Thalia strokes the cat’s back, and with each caress it rises against the pressure of her hand. “I see you want to ask me questions. Go ahead. I’ll tell you if I mind.”

“Some of these questions are the FBI’s. But if I don’t ask you, they will.”

“I’d rather have you ask them.”

“Why did you leave Terrebonne Parish and go to New York?”

“Have you ever been to Terrebonne Parish?”

“Yes.”

Surprise flickers in her eyes. “Really?”

“I worked for the newspaper here once. A long time ago. I spent a few days down there.”