"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."
Chapter Twenty-Four
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.
"He bought the house of a harlot who died a violent death. He writes of evil and vileness and sin. Now one of our own fallen daughters is found dead with a page from one of his books. It's a sign, as sure as the sign of Lucifer himself."
Jimmy Lee bowed his head and folded his hands on the Formica tabletop. "Amen, Deacon Powers. If only our good Sheriff Kenner could be made to see the light."
While his deacons grumbled among themselves over who would have the honor of representing them with the sheriff, Jimmy Lee rubbed his tongue over his ruined teeth and wished Jack Boudreaux a nice trip to hell via Angola Penitentiary.
At that same moment Jack stood on the balcony at L'Amour, staring out at the bayou, suffering through a kind of hell Jimmy Lee Baldwin had never known-the hell of conscience. He had wandered the empty streets of town after leaving Laurel, trying to clear his head, and had ended up at Madame Collette's for a cup of coffee just as the breakfast crowd was coming in. Ruby Jeffcoat had wasted no time telling him the news, her eyes gleaming with malicious relish. Her sister Louise was a dispatcher in the sheriff's office and had it all firsthand. Some maniac had up and killed Savannah Chandler and left a page from one of Jack's books in her hand-stuck right under her thumb, so as not to blow away.
The rest of her juicy details had glanced off Jack. He didn't hear a word about how Chad Garrett had gotten sick and started a chain reaction with the deputies at the scene. He didn't hear Ruby's first sermon of the day on how women who behaved as whores were just asking for the kind of end Savannah Chandler had met. He didn't hear the clatter of coffee cups or the ring of flatware on china. He sat there at the counter, feeling as if he were having an out-of-body experience, and fragments of something Jimmy Lee Baldwin had said flashed in his head like lightning. "… unstable minds… commit unspeakable acts…"
Savannah was dead. All that wild, tormented spirit gone, wrung out and discarded like a rag. She had been so vibrant, so full of need and hate. He could hardly imagine all of that energy simply ceasing to exist.
No, not simply. There had been nothing simple about her death. It had been prolonged and hideous. "… unstable minds… unspeakable acts…" And she'd been found with a scrap of one of his books in her hand.
Stupidly, he wondered which book, which page, calling to mind a hundred scenes of death that had been telegraphed from his imagination down through his fingers and onto the pages of a book. Which one had Savannah been forced to endure?
Furious with himself, he stalked back into his bedroom and went to his desk. He didn't write to inspire; he wrote to entertain. He wrote to exorcise his own inner demons, not to lure others' out of hiding. He couldn't be held responsible because someone had used him as an excuse to commit murder. If it hadn't been his book, it would have been a song on the radio or a voice on television or a telepathic message from God. Blame could always be placed elsewhere.