“What do you make of those letters?”
“I think better with a cold one in hand.”
“That’s a lot of trouble for Fauk to go through, don’t you think?”
“Some people don’t like their mail being read. If there were five of those envelopes, at least one of them must’ve gone to his people, whoever arranges the payments. That’s how they’d know the others were sent. I could check with the carriers and see who made a delivery to that address, and where it came from. . if you’ll do me a little favor and refill the cooler.”
I ignore him. “I think I know where those fat envelopes were going: Brad Templeton.”
“The writer?”
“He let slip that he’d been in contact with Fauk, and he’s the one who primed the Sheriff’s Department with all these supposed serial killer victims.”
“And you think they came straight from Fauk.”
“Maybe. Something did.”
“Now will you get me a beer?”
“This appeal has been a long time coming. Somehow they managed to get the DNA evidence to disappear so it can’t be retested. Then they planted the serial killer theory-or at least got the ball rolling, trusting Templeton’s creative mind to connect the dots. Before tonight, I assumed they cooked up this false confession angle, too. Now I don’t know.”
He shifts in his chair. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You admitted it, didn’t you?”
“Now listen here, brother. You and me just turned in a sterling piece of police work, and in record time, too. Don’t go ruining the moment.”
“It was special, you’re right. But did you not sit in that very chair a couple hours ago and confess to beating a confession out of someone?”
“A guilty someone.”
“What about Donald Fauk? He was guilty.”
“Are you for real, March? You’re honestly gonna ask me if I forced a confession from that man? You and me both know he was dying to give it up. That guy was touched in the head, and he was only too happy to admit what he’d done.”
“Did he admit it to you?”
He glances away.
“Gene, don’t lie to me.”
“Listen, while you and your partner were gone, you think I sat with the man and asked what he’d been up to? In case you don’t remember, there were more pressing concerns at the moment. Does 9/11 ring any bells? Excuse me if I don’t take a piece of wife-murdering scum like Fauk too seriously on the same day somebody flies jets into the Twin Towers. I guess I lost a little perspective.”
“So he didn’t say anything to you?”
“It’s been ten years. I don’t remember what was said.”
“But something was?”
He throws the ice pack at my feet, sending half-melted cubes skittering across the concrete. The chair creaks under his weight as he rises.
“You’re worse than fish,” he says. “You stink from day one.”
He goes inside, slamming the door behind him. A tiny slice of moon hovers in the sky overhead. In the far distance the lights on a jetliner twinkle red. I wait for him to come back, but he doesn’t. I relax and let my eyes close.
There’s no point in staying longer than I have to. First thing in the morning I’ll make the drive back to Houston and try to forget this little episode ever occurred. Gene’s confession. The cemetery. The prostitute on the bed. It takes a toll, seeing all that. Like Charlotte said. My legs are like rubber, my arms sore, my neck and shoulders tight from carrying unseen weight. I could sleep right here under the hiding moon if I didn’t know Gene would be back any moment, flush with bottles, holding himself up to me like a mirror. A reflection of what I might have been, and what in the eyes of the people closest to me I am either becoming or already am.
“Last chance,” he says, coming through the door and depositing a bottle in my lap. The cap is already off, sloshing amber fluid onto the sweats.
I lift the bottle, measuring its heft in my hand. Before he can stop me, I send it spinning across the yard, thumping to a halt at the base of the fence where the contents gurgle out into the grass.
CHAPTER 19
MONDAY, DECEMBER 14 — 4:46 A.M.
I wake up on the couch, sticky with sweat, the sound of Gene’s snoring in my ears. He lies sprawled in a recliner surrounded by bottles, his leg elevated, a deflated rag still dripping across his swollen knee. The blanket, now coiled around my ankles, must have been kicked off during sleep, during my muddled recurring dreams. The girl on the bed was there, but she was dead now and her face didn’t belong anymore to the teenage New Orleans prostitute. That one I saved, but the girl in the dream I didn’t. As far as I know, the dream girl lies at the bottom of the Gulf, left there by two policemen, one of whom I killed.
The green Ford was there, too. Leaving the bedroom, I walked out onto the churning pavement, where the silent dog barked and the gleaming car from thirty years ago made its circuit around the park, a recurring thump buckling the metal trunk lid, like something wanted out.
My bones ache as I hoist myself up, padding across the carpet toward the bathroom, where I borrow Gene’s cheap space-age-looking Gillette to hack at my face, then dress in my clothes from yesterday sitting cold and wrinkled in the dryer.
There’s a can of chicory in Gene’s pantry and an electric kettle on the counter, but instead of settling for a pot of instant, I gather my things and slip out the front door. Café du Monde, open twenty-four hours, beckons from across the river. Coffee and beignets, and then I’ll start the seven-hour drive home. As I climb into my car, the horizon glows in anticipation of sunlight.
My grasp of the geography fails me. After a wrong turn, I end up cruising along River Road, feeling a deep kinship with the immobile rust-colored barges out on the Mississippi that, like me, could probably use a dry dock and refitting. But they still get the job done, regardless of looks.
The thought of me running through a graveyard, winded, while Gene clutches his blown knee brings a smile to my lips. Old men playing at what looks to be a young man’s game.
With some effort I find the highway and cross the river into downtown, driving in the general direction of Jackson Square. My tourist’s knowledge of the city is long out of date, forcing me to resort to a little trial and error until I find Decatur and take it all the way, pulling into one of many empty parking spots along a stately and semi-decayed building with a series of French doors on the ground floor and wrought-iron galleries decked with hanging plants on the two above.
As I cross the street to the porticoed café, my phone buzzes in my pocket. The screen reads CARTER ROBB.
“It’s a little early for you to be up, isn’t it?”
“Roland? It’s Carter.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Are you. . I need to. .” He lets out a sigh. “Listen, the first thing is, everybody’s okay. There’s no need to worry. But I have to tell you. . Something bad happened.”
Despite the preamble, my heart constricts.
“What happened?”
“Someone broke into the house.”
“Was Charlotte there? Is she all right?”
“She’s a little banged up,” he says.
“Let me talk to her.”
“They’re with her now. She’s the one who told me to call.”
“Who’s with her?”
“The police. They’re here. Gina called 9-1-1.”
My legs go weak. I lean against one of Café du Monde’s pillars for support, clutching the phone with one hand and my forehead with the other. I tell him to go back to the beginning and talk slow, explaining everything that happened.
At four thirty in the morning, Carter woke up to the sound of his phone ringing. When he answered, Charlotte whispered to him that she’d heard a noise and there was somebody in the house. He roused his wife and told her to call for help, then descended the apartment stairs to the back door of my house, keeping the line to Charlotte open. He found the door ajar and went inside. There was a crashing sound from upstairs.