“That’s the point. To show precisely that.” He wanted to compare Anne’s case to her mother’s, to illuminate the progress forensics had made in criminal investigation, but show that ultimately, the human factor couldn’t be removed from the justice system. It was people who solved crimes, who convicted or acquitted, not physical evidence.
She pursed her lips before saying, “You want to show the autopsy report from my mother’s case, don’t you?”
“It would be the best way to illuminate the difference forensic science has made in criminal investigation. But only if you’re comfortable with that.”
“It’s okay. It’s not like it’s a secret how she died. The papers and the news trotted out every gory detail.”
And she had gotten the pictures to prove it.
Chapter Eleven
“So we need to list the similarities between the two cases.” Gabriel was frustrated by the limitations on what he could tell Sara, but he had to be realistic in how he could write the book anyway. His personal knowledge of a lot of facts couldn’t be explained.
“Boyfriends that were the last one to see them alive. Facial and upper body mutilation. Use of a bowie knife. Attacked while in bed. No sign of forced entry. No sign of sexual intercourse.” Sara typed into her laptop computer as she spoke. “Anything else you can think of?”
“Does Rafe have a drinking problem?” He had wondered about that since the very first article he’d read.
Sara looked at him like he had completely lost his mind. “No. Not even close.”
“Is he religious?”
“No. You asked me that before and I told you no. Honestly, I’ve never known him to go to church or to even mention God.”
That struck Gabriel as completely odd, given the quote he’d read in the online article. He was tempted to open it in the folder he’d stored it in on his computer and read it to Sara, but he resisted. “So, in your opinion, where did the investigation into your mother’s death go wrong?”
Sara hesitated. “I don’t know. I understand it wasn’t an easy case. There was no trace evidence really . . . no semen, no blood that didn’t belong to my mother, no fingerprints other than the one print of Rafe’s. There were no witnesses, no unusual cars, no noise, no strange activity around the house in the days leading up to the murder. The blinds were closed, the window closed. No one saw or heard anything.”
Gabriel had to ask, just like she had asked about John Thiroux. “Why don’t you doubt Rafe? What makes you so sure he didn’t do it?”
“Because he loved my mother. He’s a doctor. He’s a very charming, protective, healer type of personality.” Sara glanced down at her computer, shoving it off her lap. Then she met his gaze. “I can’t be wrong. He just couldn’t have done it. Because if I am wrong, that means I have no ability to judge a killer from a nice guy.”
So that was the real root of her stubbornness. No one wanted to think that someone they had cared about, spent time with, championed, could have been lying to them, conning them, their smile hiding a heart filled with evil intentions. “Sara, if he is guilty, then it’s not your fault for not recognizing it. It isn’t. Remember when we talked about psychopaths? They’re charming, attractive, and they fool everyone. That’s how they’re able to kill and get away with it.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better. Don’t you see how if it was Rafe, which I really, truly don’t think it was, that I would feel like I should have known? Should have done something to prevent it?”
“I know. But you can’t do that to yourself. You couldn’t have known. You couldn’t have prevented it.”
“That’s very easy for you to say. You don’t have any guilt to live with.”
That was a ridiculous, sick understatement. “You think I don’t have any guilt?” Gabriel dropped his arms and scoffed. “My guilt could fill the Superdome. You asked me why I write true crime books? It’s retribution. My lame, half-ass attempt to make up for the fact that my girlfriend was killed and I didn’t, couldn’t stop it.”
It was reckless, dangerous, to tell her that, but he was too angry to care. She thought she was the only one who had suffered, the only one who staggered under the burden of guilt that she was alive while a loved one was dead. He had felt the weight of that so oppressively for a hundred and fifty years it was amazing that he was still mobile.
“What?” She looked slapped. Her cheeks drained of color. “Oh my God,” she murmured. “Oh, God. That’s why you started drinking, isn’t it? That’s why you don’t paint, why you don’t hear music . . . Oh, Gabriel, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
It wasn’t right to accept her pity. He didn’t want it, hadn’t earned it, wasn’t entitled to it. So he said, aware of how harsh his voice sounded, “Don’t. It’s not your problem. It’s mine.”
“I know it’s not my problem. But Gabriel, you have the same problem I do. And I’ve been sitting here acting like the victim, like I’m the only one who has suffered, when you obviously have too. I’m sorry for that.”
She looked so plaintive, so concerned, that he was exasperated. He wanted to be angry, and she prevented him from having that release. She sucked all the anger right out of him with her soft features and luminous eyes. Which irritated the hell out of him. “Don’t be sorry for anything. You have your shit to deal with and I have my shit to deal with. It’s all even.”
“I wasn’t suggesting a tally sheet. What I’m saying is that I’ve been so wrapped up in my own grief, I couldn’t see yours.”
“I don’t have any grief.” It was guilt. Disgust. Self-recrimination and a desire to find some kind of meaning in a long, endless existence.
“No. You have a determination to ignore your grief.”
Gabriel didn’t know when the conversation had turned into her trying to enlighten him, and he moved away from her, determined to end the ridiculous dissection of his psyche.
“You deny yourself pleasure—physical and emotional pleasure—as a punishment for yourself. God, I should have guessed about your girlfriend. It’s so obvious to me now.”
That sparked his anger again. He wasn’t obvious. He was a demon, for hell’s sake. She didn’t know any fucking thing about him. “Well, congratulations.” He knew she was coming up behind him, with the purpose of touching him, so he shifted, avoiding her touch, but turned back and locked gazes with her. “You think you’ve figured me all out. And while I know you’re wrong on a lot of levels, you got one thing right. I do deny myself physical pleasure. I can’t handle it. Alcohol, sex. I can’t handle it. I don’t want to handle it.”
“Maybe I can’t either,” she said, her voice soft, sad. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing!” She had nothing to be sorry for.
But she winced at his vehemence and he felt like a complete asshole. “Sara,
I’m
sorry. Damn it, how did we wind up here?”
She just looked at him and said matter-of-factly, “Murder. That’s how we wound up here.”
It was so bold, so obvious, so harsh, that all his anger deflated. “That’s certainly true, isn’t it? And it sucks.”
She didn’t answer him. Instead she moved around him to his desk. “What are these?” She touched one of his spoons.
“Absinthe spoons.” Rather a disturbing little habit he had—to buy them whenever he ran across one in an antique or vintage shop—but it actually helped him. It kept his present life in perspective to have a constant reminder in front of him of his past.
“That’s what an absinthe spoon looks like? I had no idea . . .” She touched one, running her finger along the tip, frowning. “I was reading about them in the police reports, but I didn’t really know what one looked like. Why do you think John Thiroux had two spoons in the room with him? Why would he need two?”
“I don’t think he would, unless he was double-fisting drinks.” That had always perplexed Gabriel, but he had attributed it to the fact that Anne kept his spoons at the time. Maybe she had gotten one out, then forgotten and gotten another. Or maybe he had brought one with him for no apparent reason other than that the fleur-de-lis spoon had been his favorite, because it was wide in the middle due to the pattern and he didn’t spill any precious drops over the side when he poured.
“And why did one end up on the floor and not the other?”
“I’m sure he knocked it to the floor when he stood up to look at Anne.”
Sara was touching each spoon, making them swing back and forth. She was clearly thinking, their disagreement or burst of anger or whatever it had been clearly passed, forgotten. Suddenly she grabbed the one she’d been swinging and whirled around. “Wait a minute.”
“What?”
“If the crime was a crime of passion, not planned on the part of John Thiroux, why would he be carrying a bowie knife? Who carries a bowie knife in their pocket for no reason? Did John Thiroux hunt or fish?”
Gabriel almost snorted. Hardly. The extent of his sportsmanship had been driving, riding, and boxing. He had never had an interest in wildlife. “I don’t think so. He was an artist. Records indicate that drinking was his hobby, not gutting his catch of the day.”
“Then seriously, why would he be carrying a knife?”
“He said in court it wasn’t his knife. That he never carried a weapon. But the prosecutor maintained that he could be lying, since it was a dangerous part of town. It would have made sense to carry a weapon.”
“But a bowie knife?”
“I agree, it’s illogical. A bowie is meant to gut or kill and it’s big, cumbersome.”
Sara shook her head. “He wouldn’t have carried that unless he had intended to murder her. And I don’t think he would have drunk himself into a stupor or stuck around after the fact if he had intended to kill her. If it was a spontaneous crime, you would think he would pick up the nearest weapon—the absinthe bottle, a glass, the absinthe spoon, or even his bare hands—and kill her. Hell, he could have strangled her with her hair ribbons or smothered her with the bedsheets or beaten her to death with his fists. Do you think the knife could have belonged to her?”
“It’s possible.” Actually, Gabriel was almost certain it hadn’t been Anne’s, but damn it, he couldn’t share what he truly knew with Sara. He couldn’t tell her that he knew the knife didn’t belong to John Thiroux, knew Anne wasn’t street-wise or hard enough to carry a weapon of that power. That it would have scared her. “What about in your mother’s case? Who would have had access to that type of knife?”
“I don’t know,” she said, biting her lip and leaning back against his desk. “Rafe isn’t the outdoors type. And he wasn’t carrying a knife in his shorts and golf shirt when I saw him at dinner.” She gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “God, the idea of Rafe with a knife like that is just insane. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“We should see if we can find out who sent those pictures to you. There’s got to be a tracking number or something.” That bothered him. There didn’t seem to be a logical reason for those pictures to be sent to her, especially without any explanation or instructions. And it had taken effort to locate her temporary address in Louisiana.
Sara shuddered. “I know. But I’m almost afraid to find out who sent them. Or to find out we can’t find out who sent them, you know what I mean?”
“I know.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “Arrgh. I just want to solve all of this. I want it to go away. I want murder to go away. I’m so goddamn afraid and I hate it, I hate this.”
And Gabriel wasn’t afraid at all. Not of what Sara feared, which was death. Gabriel would embrace death, would welcome a return to the other world, but that was not his choice, not an option open to a sinner like himself, and he wasn’t stupid enough to wish for Hell. He had to stay on earth, mortal, alive, until he paid for his sins. It made him weary, exhausted from the strain of living day in, day out, with no goal, no meaningful friendships, no sense of purpose other than making it through, one step at a time. He was worn out, fucking tired, and he wanted it to either end or he wanted to find a future.
What he feared was that neither one would ever happen, and he was destined to stagnate, to fester indefinitely in his own personal hell.
The more Sara thought about it, the more she was convinced that John Thiroux was a psychopath, an attractive, charming killer, who may have murdered other women before Anne Donovan, and possibly after. In the twenty-four hours since she’d packed her bag and battened down in Gabriel’s apartment—determined to find something, anything, that smacked of an answer to any of her thousands of questions— she had tried to find information on John Thiroux before and after his murder trial and had drawn a complete blank.
Gabriel had dropped her off at the library for several hours while he went to track down where the pictures of her mother had been sent from. As Sara sat at the computer, stiff from immobility and cold from the overzealous air-conditioning, she suspected he wasn’t having any more luck than she was. John Thiroux appeared in the society pages of the
New Orleans Bee
for the first time in 1847, at a large party hosted by a congressman, then disappeared without a trace after early 1851, when she’d found record of his selling his property on Royal Street.
A search of Ellis Island and Port of Orleans records showed no evidence of his arrival in the United States, though she did discover that one Anne Donovan, age thirteen, had arrived in New Orleans in 1839 in the company of her mother, Mary Donovan, age thirty-four. Sara wasn’t sure if it was the same Mary Donovan, but she did find a death certificate for the same name, same age, a mere three years later. Which might explain how Anne Donovan had wound up a prostitute, if she had no family and no income at the age of sixteen.
But John Thiroux was a mystery, and Sara’s research skills weren’t up to the task of ferreting him out. Maybe he was innocent, maybe he had just moved a lot, and historical records were spotty, but it still seemed more and more likely to her that John Thiroux had killed Anne, and that it had been planned. He had brought his bowie knife and slashed Anne to death intentionally, counting on his position in society and his remaining in the room to guarantee he wouldn’t be charged with the crime.