“Revenge,” Rachel said, looking at the word Red had written. “You’re forgetting a couple of things. Why leave Matt alive? Why kill his wife, and kidnap his kids? That doesn’t make sense. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see Chris hurting his brother just to get the house. The same house he
willingly
gave up years ago.”
“Right, well, someone had it out for Matt. They injured Matt but didn’t kill him. They wanted Matt to look like the fall guy, maybe? Then they killed Erin and dumped her body in a different area to throw the cops off. Kidnapped the kids…” Red trailed off.
“Who is
they?
” Rachel asked. “What is there to gain from having Matt take the fall for his wife’s murder?”
Red tapped his pen on the paper.
“The police and the FBI have questioned all his business associates, former and current clients, and all his friends and acquaintances. They’ve turned up nothing,” Rachel continued.
“Maybe they missed something,” Red answered. “We are missing something…”
M
att arrived at the FBI office on time. The expansive lobby held a reception desk and a waiting area with several couches and chairs. He announced himself to the receptionist, who asked him to wait for an escort. Instead of sitting, Matt walked to the end of the lobby and stared at the Wall of Honor, which displayed the names of FBI agents who had been killed in the line of duty. A short five minutes later, Agent Krapek stepped out of the elevator.
“Thanks for coming in, Mr. O’Malley. Please follow me.” Krapek turned and headed back to the elevator.
“You can call me Matt,” he reminded her again, as he’d done each time they’d met.
Krapek nodded silently as she pushed the number three button.
Matt decided to play her game and said nothing on their ascent. Chris had recommended that Matt call their attorney to accompany him to this meeting, but Matt brushed the idea off. He wanted to see what they had first before involving his attorney. The doors opened and he followed her out.
“Coffee or water?” she offered.
“No, thanks.”
“Right this way.” She led him to a small conference room, where Matt took a seat at the head of a glossy mahogany table. Agent Phipps came in with a manila folder.
“Hi, Matt. Thanks for coming in on such short notice. As Agent Krapek informed you on the phone, we’ve met with the man who found the, uh…arm that was caught on his fishing line. He gave us a description of another man who he spotted in the area earlier in the week. We had our sketch artist work with him to come up with this.” Agent Phipps pulled the sheet of paper out of the folder and put it in front of Matt. “We’re taking a shot in the dark here, but maybe you recognize this man?”
Matt slowly cast his eyes on the sheet of paper. He fought hard to keep his facial expression neutral. It wasn’t an exact match, but Matt did know the man in the photo.
It was Moses, aka DeShaun McAllister.
T
he Crescent City Brewhouse was crowded. Rachel scanned the bar and immediately saw Matt waving her over.
“Hey, you made it,” Matt greeted her. “What would you like to drink?”
“What are you having?” Rachel pointed to his glass.
“House brew. Red Stallion.”
“I’ll have the same,” Rachel said to the bartender.
“Johnny, put in an order of baked oysters for us?” Matt added. The bartender nodded. Matt turned back to Rachel and smiled. “You like oysters, I hope?”
“Sure.”
“Well, you’re in for a treat, then. They bake them three ways. Crab, spinach, and shrimp. Delicious.”
“Sounds good.” Rachel felt a weird vibe from Matt, like he was nervous or something. He hadn’t been talkative the other times she’d met him, but he certainly seemed that way now. “How did it go with Krapek?”
“It was interesting. The local who found Erin’s arm reported seeing a man he didn’t know trolling around the area. Krapek thought that was suspicious, so she had the local guy give an FBI
sketch artist some details, and they came up with a composite.” Matt paused before continuing. “I guess they thought I might recognize him as a former client or something.”
“Did you?”
Matt pulled out his cell phone, brought up a photo of the sketch, and handed it to Rachel. “I snapped it when Agent Krapek and her partner left the room for a moment. I wanted to show it to you. I wasn’t sure how to go about this. Since you work for me, you have to keep what I tell you confidential. Right?” Matt asked.
Now it was Rachel’s turn to feel uncomfortable. “As long as what you tell me is nothing illegal. I mean, I do have a moral obligation to inform the authorities if you tell me something that is life threatening to you or someone else.”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I started getting bits and pieces of my memory back the night we all met at my brother’s house. After the FBI left, I picked up a Bible in Chris’s office. It flipped open to a verse about Moses. That triggered a memory.” Matt took a sip of his beer. Some liquid courage, Rachel thought. He continued, “The afternoon of the incident, I was packing up the truck for soccer practice when a homeless man approached me. I gave him some money, and he thanked me and left. I remembered he told me his name was Moses.”
“That was the guy you saw in the sketch?” Rachel asked, going out on a limb.
Matt nodded.
“What did Agent Krapek say?”
“It turns out, this guy in the sketch is DeShaun McAllister. The same guy whose fingerprints were found on my truck. The same guy who I bonded out ten years ago.”
Rachel looked around the bar. No one seemed to be paying any attention to them. The TV was blaring a sports game, patrons were busy eating and drinking. She lowered her voice anyway. “So Moses and DeShaun McAllister are one and the same?”
“Right. When Krapek first questioned me about him, I told her I didn’t remember him as a client. Which is true. He was just a kid, barely eighteen when I first bonded him out. DeShaun looked different as Moses. I’m kind of surprised he ended up homeless.”
“Okay, let me get this straight. So you remember Moses from the night of the incident? As the homeless guy who asked you for money, but you didn’t put two and two together as him being a former client until Krapek told you about his fingerprints on your truck?”
“Correct.”
“And you don’t have any idea why Moses would be connected to your wife’s death?”
Matt nodded. “There’s more.”
Rachel felt her heart kick up a few beats. She waited for him to continue.
“There’s something that I did remember that I left out when I was talking to your friend Michelle. You see, I was afraid that you might think that I did have something to do with Erin’s disappearance if I told you. Even though I don’t have all my memory back, I know deep down that I had nothing to do with what has happened to my family. I love my wife and kids. I would never do anything to hurt them.”
“I’m not here to judge you, Matt. I only want to help you find them. Everything that you can tell me prior to the incident is helpful. You never know when that one little detail may make a difference between finding them or not.” Rachel paused to take a sip of her beer. “You can trust me. So let’s hear it. Tell me
everything
you’ve remembered.”
Matt told her the story about seeing Erin at the Flora Gallery and Coffee Shop with another man. He paused for a second before revealing the part he wished he could forget—the moment when he’d spotted the man kissing his wife outside on the patio.
Rachel took a minute to digest that information. “Well, I guess I can see why you would withhold that information. What did Erin say when you asked her about it?”
“I never told her that I saw the kiss. I just asked her how her day was. She told me everything except for her coffee break at Flora. Basically, she lied to me.”
“That happened approximately two months prior to the incident?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah, that’s about right.”
“So in those two months, you could have found out more about her affair or confronted her and just don’t remember it?”
Matt shrugged. “Anything is possible. I’m still getting it all back in bits and pieces.”
“I can see why you’re hesitant in revealing that to the police. You would be giving them a possible motive. But in order to find your kids, you have to tell them everything.” Rachel faltered at the worried look on Matt’s face. “No worries. I’m not going to say anything. Do you have any idea who the man was who kissed your wife?”
“No. I don’t.”
Rachel got out her notebook and jotted down the name of the coffee shop. She’d have Red check it out later if Matt was okay with it. The waitress brought over their food, and Rachel waited until she left to continue.
“Do you mind if I share this with my team? Red is one of the best private investigators around, and he may be our best shot at finding this man. You have my word that he’ll keep it under wraps.”
“I’ve already called in a favor with a PI that we work with. I called him the day I met with you and Michelle,” Matt said. He picked up another oyster. “I haven’t heard anything back yet. So I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have a couple people on this.”
“What about your brother? You think you might have discussed this upsetting situation with him?”
Matt thought about it for a minute. “Chris and I have always been pretty tight. That would’ve been something I may have shared with him.”
“I would ask him, Matt. You trust Chris, right?” Rachel thought back to her discussion with Red, who wanted to look into Chris’s background in more detail. He wanted to see if it was possible to connect the dots—and find something that would point to a motivation.
Matt did trust his brother. But lately, something was off with Chris, and he wasn’t sure what it was. Clearly, Chris’s marriage was on the rocks. Was anything else amiss?
He finally answered her. “Yeah, I trust him.”
“Then you need to ask him if he knows about Erin’s affair.” Rachel tried to collect her thoughts and digest all the information Matt had just given her. She put a baked oyster topped with spinach on a cracker and then doused it with hot sauce. When she finished eating it, she nodded her head in approval. She loved the food in New Orleans.
“Detective Jones, who has been working with Krapek, is trying to track down DeShaun McAllister for questioning. They are withholding that information from the media until he is found.” Matt ate his own crab-topped oyster before chasing it down with his beer. “There’s one last thing I wanted to ask you.”
Rachel waited for him to continue.
“Do you still think I’m innocent?”
R
achel walked down Market Street on her way to Madame Verdene’s Voodoo Shop. The streets were alive with people: some locals, some tourists who were either on their way back to their hotel after a night of cruising the bars or just beginning their day with coffee and beignets. She loved walking the city streets of New Orleans. She saw a mother pushing her child in a stroller, a couple holding hands, a group of young women who’d obviously been out partying all night, a homeless man asking for a handout, a business executive talking on his cell phone while juggling a cup of coffee and his briefcase—all coexisting together. There was something oddly comforting about it all. If she wasn’t working this case, Rachel thought, she could be one of those people having a leisurely breakfast and then maybe going to one of the many art galleries or museums that New Orleans had to offer. If she was a tourist, she seriously doubted she would be going where she was headed now.
After her meeting with Matt the night before, she’d relayed to Red what Matt had requested. With nothing much to go on, Red said he would see what he could do to find out the identity of Erin’s mystery man. While Rachel went to visit Madame Verdene—Red
had made it clear he couldn’t stomach another visit to the voodoo queen—Red had decided to take a trip to the Flora Gallery and Coffee Shop instead.
Rachel and Red both agreed with Matt that finding out the man’s identity could provide insight into Erin’s frame of mind before she was kidnapped. Although Rachel thought that Matt should share his information with Agent Krapek or the police, she didn’t push it. She’d try to stay good on her word to keep Matt’s revelation under wraps.
Rachel hesitated at the front door of the voodoo shop. She took a deep breath before opening the glass door. Red would probably flip if he knew why she was really here. Hell, she was even second-guessing herself. This went against everything she believed in. But, as her father would have said, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“Hello, Ms. Scott,” Debbie said from where she stood behind the counter. “Madame Verdene is waiting for you. Go on back.”
Rachel thanked Debbie and walked down the narrow aisle to the back of the store. She pushed through the curtain and saw Verdene dressed in her usual long flowing skirt and peasant blouse, her long hair hanging down her back in multiple colorful braids.
“Are you ready to get started?” Verdene asked, getting up from behind her desk.
Rachel nodded.
“Let’s sit down at the table.” Verdene turned down the lights while Rachel sat at the small table.
Verdene sat across from Rachel. She grabbed Rachel’s hand and covered it with her own. “Just relax.”
Rachel took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
After what seemed like an eternity, Verdene finally spoke. “As Queenie told us already, your child is alive. I can feel her spirit. The connection between you and your daughter is very strong. Still.”
Rachel felt her heart give a lurch. “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. Madame Verdene let go of her hands and closed her eyes. “Your grandmother wants to let you know that you mustn’t give up. She’s very insistent about that. Don’t give up, she says. She keeps repeating that over and over.”
“I won’t.” Rachel felt the familiar tugging in her chest. “Can she tell me where Mallory is?”
“She’s telling me that Mallory is happy. Healthy.”
Rachel felt torn by conflicting emotions. Relieved that her daughter was safe and happy. Sad that someone else was filling her shoes of being a mom. Angry that her daughter was ripped from her life. And also skeptical. Maybe none of this was real. Just hocus pocus, as Red would say.