"I don't fit the pattern," she said. "I'm not promiscuous."
"You been sleeping with me, haven't you, 'tite chatte?"
Laurel scowled at the sardonic edge in his voice. "That's different."
He gave an exaggerated shrug. "How is that different? You hardly know me, we go to bed together, we have sex. How is that different? You think this killer is gonna split hairs?"
"Stop it!" she snapped, hating him for belittling what they had had together. Even if he didn't want to call it love, it was more than sex. It certainly wasn't in the same category as what Savannah had shared with the likes of Ronnie Peltier and Jimmy Lee Baldwin. Her fingers curled over some of the papers he had swept off his desk in his rage, and she snatched them up and threw them at him, a gesture that was more symbolic of futility than fury.
"You amaze me," Jack said, grabbing hold of his anger with both hands. Better to be angry than afraid. Better to push her away than to cling to her when he knew he'd lose her in the end anyway. "You think you're Wonder Woman or something. Every bad thing that happens, you think you could have stopped it, you think you have to solve it, win the day for justice."
"Oh, excuse me for being a responsible person!"
"That's not responsibility, that's arrogance."
Laurel gasped as the jab stuck deep. "How dare you say that to me!" she said, her voice a trembling whisper that rose in pitch and volume with each word. "You sit up here in this private prison you bought yourself, drinking your liver into a knot, taking the blame for someone else ending their own life! Everything that happened was your fault-but, no, it's not really your fault because your father was a son of a bitch. Let's get him up here and we can have us a real finger-pointing session."
"We can't," he shouted, leaning over her.
"Why not?" she yelled, meeting his glare.
"Because I killed him!"
Like a marionette whose strings had been cut, Laurel plopped down on the floor amid the drift of manuscript pages and scribbled notes, stunned speechless.
"With my own two hands," Jack whispered, lifting his hands for examination, the long, elegant fingers spread wide as he turned them this way and that.
He rose slowly to his feet, a strange calm settling inside him. He had wanted to be rid of her. Wasn't that what he had told himself as he walked the deserted streets of town in the gray mist before dawn? Loving her hurt too much, and the end, which was inevitable, would be excruciating. This was his chance to make the break, his chance to show her once and for all just what he was. Then she could walk away from him.
"He hit Maman one time too many. He knocked me aside too many times without ever thinking one day I wouldn't be puny and weak."
He stared right through her, into his past, seeing it all once more-the shabby kitchen that smelled of grease, his mother cowering by the stained sink, Blackie going after her with his arm raised.
"I grabbed an iron skillet off the stove-it was the first thing that came to hand-and I hit him, smashed his skull in like an eggshell," he said flatly, as if he needed to unplug all emotion to be able to tell the story. "I don't think I meant to kill him," he said, though after all these years he still wasn't sure. Christ knew he had wished Blackie dead often enough, to put an end to the fear and the shame. "I just wanted him to stop hitting Maman. I was finally big enough to make him stop. That's all I wanted-for him to stop, for him to leave us alone."
He sniffed and held his breath a moment, fighting the rise of childhood feelings and gathering the old bitterness as fuel to go on. "And while my mother sat on the floor with blood running out of her broken nose, crying over this man who had abused her and her children for seventeen years, I dragged his body out to our bâteau. I took ol' Blackie for a ride into the swamp, tied an anchor around his middle, and dumped him in the deepest, darkest water I could find. No need for a decent burial when he was going straight to hell anyway. No need to drag the sheriff into it. We all just pretended he went out on a bender and never came back.
"That's the kind of man you think you fell in love with, sugar," he said, his voice low and rough. "You think you know me? You think you've got me pegged? You think mebbe there's something worth loving under all the scars? Think again. I killed my own father, drove my wife to suicide. I went from a profession where I got paid to lie and cheat to one that inspires twisted minds to commit murder." A bitter smile twisted his mouth. "Yeah, I'm a helluva guy, chère. You oughta fall in love with the like of me."
She didn't say a word, just sat there staring up at him with those wide eyes, and he knew he would have given anything to be the kind of man she needed. A bitter thought. A foolish thought. He was the last man she needed. Laurel deserved a champion, a knight in shining armor, not a jaded mercenary, not a man with ghosts. He was nothing but the worst kind of bastard. What he was doing to her now was absolute proof of that. Dieu, she'd just lost her sister, and here he was breaking her heart just to save what was left of his own.
One of the papers on the floor caught his eye, and he bent and grabbed it up, a sad parody of a smile pulling at his lips as he read his own handwriting. He had forgotten all about his ulterior motive for getting to know her. Such a poor ruse, he hadn't made more than a token effort to convince himself. But here it was in black and white, just in time to finish the job of cutting his own throat.
"Here," he murmured, handing it to her. "Here's the kind of man you come to in your hour of grief, angel. I'm sorry you didn' believe me the first time I told you."
Laurel didn't look at the piece of notebook paper she held in her hand. She stood up slowly on rubbery legs and watched Jack walk away from her. He went out onto the balcony without looking back, and she felt as though he had taken her heart out there with him. When she finally dropped her gaze to the carelessly scrawled notes, she knew he had pitched it off the balcony and into the murky waters of the bayou.
Laurel-obsessed with justice. A burden of guilt from past sins, real or imagined. Subdues femininity (unsuccessfully) with baggy clothes, etc. Represses sexuality (perfect conflict with prospective hero). A fascinating dichotomy of strength and fragility. Strong ties to dead father.
Need to get details on case that sent her over the edge. Were the accused guilty? Did she just want them to he? Why? Could write abuse into background.
A character profile. He'd been studying her, making notes for future reference. Her gaze fell to the floor, picking out the odd newspaper clippings among the sheets of typing paper and lined paper. The headlines jumped up at her as if they were three-dimensionaclass="underline" Scott County Prosecutor Cries Wolf. Charges Dismissed, Chandler Resigns.
She wouldn't have believed it was possible to hurt more than she already did. She would have been wrong. A new spring of pain bubbled up inside her. It was on a different level than the pain of losing Savannah, but it was no less sharp, no less acidic.
It wasn't as if he hadn't warned her, she thought, lashes beating back a fresh sheen of tears. It wasn't as if she hadn't warned herself. He wasn't the man for her. This wasn't the time. Too bad she had never gotten her heart to listen.
"Was it all grist for the mill, Jack?" she asked, going slowly, shakily to the open French doors. "The way we made love? The way you cried when you told me about Evie? The way Annie died, and Savannah-is that all plot for the next best-seller?" The thought sickened her. "Everything we did together, everything we-I-felt…" The words trailed off, the prospects too cruel to consider aloud.
"You missed your calling, Jack," she said bitterly. "You should have been an actor."
He said nothing in his own defense. He just stood with his hands braced on the balcony railing, broad shoulders hunched, gaze fixed on the bayou. His expression was hard, closed, remote, as if he had taken himself to some dark place of solitude-or torment-within himself. Laurel wanted to hit him. She wanted to pound a confession out of him, a confession that refuted the damning evidence he had handed her himself. But she didn't hit him, and he didn't recant a word of his testimony. There wasn't a judge in the country who wouldn't have convicted him-for crimes of the heart, at the very least.