“So what's this got to do with my case?”
Prod, prod, pulllll it out of him.
“First off, I told you a lie when you interviewed me. I have been to Madonna's house. Several times.”
Holy crap
. “You lied to the police? That's a crime. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I didn't touch her. I went there for another reason, I swear to God. Something personal. And I did drink out of that glass you found.”
“Why in holy hell did you lie about it?”
Holliday stood up and started pacing around the room. Black leaned back and waited. He was the patient one, not her. Claire frowned, thinking this whole conversation was way weird. Then he started to talk as he walked back and forth in front of her. “When I first started playing in the NFL, my mom and stepdad were murdered.”
Well, that was the last thing Claire had expected him to say. “I'm sorry, Jack. I didn't know.”
“Yeah, it was pretty awful. I went home for Christmas. They lived out in Arvada then. Colorado.” He stopped and sat down and leaned toward her as he spoke, pretty eager now that he got started. “It happened on Christmas Eve. We had dinner, sang carols, opened presents, the whole family, and then we went to bed. Somebody broke into the house that night. We never found out who it was. They shot my mom and stepdad, once in the head and once in the heart, with a silencer, execution style, and then they took my two little sisters. Neither of them has ever been found.”
Claire was appalled, mostly by the pain twisting Jack Holliday's features. This man had not gotten over the murder of his family, not by a long shot. But the M.O. sounded a lot like the one described by Father Gerard. “What about you, Jack? You were there, too, right?”
“I left the house just after midnight to meet my girlfriend.”
“Well, thank God, or you'd probably be dead, too.”
Jack's jaw tightened, and his eyes grew hard. “I should've been there. I could've stopped it.”
“You can't blame yourself, Jack,” Black said in his calm and perfectly modulated shrink voice.
“Well, I do.”
“It wasn't your fault,” Claire said in her regular and un-modulated cop voice.
“That night? I was changing clothes and getting ready to go meet Amber, and one of the twins, my little half-sis, Jenny, she came into my room. She was three. I can remember that so clearly, every single word we said.” His eyes were recalling it now, reliving it, going back to that night. “Jenny and Jill were just beautifulâidentical, big brown eyes and this shiny long platinum-blond hair that fell down their backs in ringlets. They looked like my mom. That night Jenny was barefoot and she had on this little red fleece nightgown with a picture of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on the front. I'll never forget that gown. It had a nose made out of one of those little red fuzzy pom-pom things. My mom gave them matching gowns to wear on Christmas Eve.”
He started prowling around the room again. Claire glanced at Black, and he shook his head.
“Jenny was scared. She said the bogeyman was out in the yard. She said that she saw him hiding out in the trees when she looked out her bedroom window. I was in a hurry, and young and stupid and self-centered, so I told her to quit being a baby and go back to bed, that there wasn't any such thing as a bogeyman. Then I told her that Santa Claus wasn't going to come if she didn't hush up and go to sleep.”
His voice actually broke when he said the last part. Claire understood his guilt. She had done things she regretted in her past, was still doing them. “And you think the killer really was outside, waiting?”
“Yes, and so did the police. Mom and Roger were material witnesses to a Mob hit. They were going to testify that coming February. That's what the police believed. But the killer was a real pro. He left nothing behind. The case eventually went cold.”
“Jack, I am so sorry that happened to you.”
“I got home around three o'clock in the morning. That's when I found my mom and stepdad shot to death in their bed. The back door was open. Jenny and Jill were gone. I called 911, and then the real nightmare began.”
“They accused you.” Claire realized how that could happen. In fact, that would be proper police procedure. Always check out the remaining family members first. “But you managed to prove yourself innocent.”
He nodded. “My girlfriend and her parents vouched for me. I was at their house the whole time.”
“But you still blame yourself.”
“I could've stopped it. I know I could have. If I hadn't gone out that night, if I had just listened to Jenny and looked around outside, told my parents, let them call the police, they'd all still be alive.”
At that point, it occurred to Claire that this was the kind of story that would be hard to hide from the media. “I did a background check on you, Jack. Nothing about these murders turned up.”
“My mom had remarried, had a different name. We lived in a different state. I hadn't played in the Super Bowl yet so wasn't all that famous except at Tulane. The media never got hold of it.”
“And they never found the perpetrator?”
“No, but it was Mob related. Mom and Dad were going to testify against a Chicago mafioso. I never could prove it, and the police gave up. The guy left no clues. After that happened, I blew out my knee and couldn't play anymore so I joined the military and flew as a helicopter pilot for several years. After I got discharged and started working as a sports agent, I tried to find the killer on my own, but never could find out anything. So I finally hired John Booker to investigate the murders. Nick put me on to him. He's been working on it for the last three years.”
So Jack Holliday hadn't led such a charmed life, after all. He had mourned, lost loved ones, suffered survival guilt and loneliness. Claire knew exactly how all that felt, and all too well. “Has he found out anything? Do you think it's the same guy we're looking for? The one who killed Madonna and Wendy?”
“Yeah, I do. Book finally ran that down. He uncovered other murders around the country with the same M.O. as my parents.”
“Good, I need to talk to him. Compare notes. This could be the break that we've been waiting for.”
Jack frowned, heaved a deep sigh, and took another swig of beer. “Nick doesn't like you being involved in this, but I can't help it. You're already involved.”
Suddenly, something in their serious expressions brought up a new wave of innate wariness that gripped Claire hard, because now she was not quite sure where it was going. But it wasn't going to be good, no matter what it was. “Of course, I'm involved. I want this guy as much as you do.”
Black put his hand on her knee. “Listen, Claire, one of the cases Booker turned up concerns Madonna and Wendy.”
Claire turned and searched his face. “So Madonna Christien has a credible connection to the murder of Jack's family? How is she connected?”
Jack said, “It's the abduction when she was little, but she survived. Her parents were also murdered when a killer came into their house and took her captive, but she and Wendy got away. The killer marked the inside of their wrists with that voodoo symbol, but they didn't see his face. He wore some kind of mask.”
Claire nodded. “Yeah, we saw the tats. Wendy told us about the abduction and so did Madonna's grandmother. It's got to be the same guy.”
“Yeah, that's what we think, too. He took my sisters, just like he took Maddie and Wendy. They were just too little to get away from him.”
“This is going to complicate our case, but maybe the information Booker's got on the killer can help us. We're getting close now. We found information that this guy is a homegrown assassin or Mob hit man, something like that, and he's probably still around here, waiting for his next contract kill.”
Jack said, “We think he's killing off any surviving victims, one at a time.”
Everything he said had concrete connections to her case. Claire was getting excited and eager to compare notes. She jumped up. “Let's go. I want to talk to Booker and read that file. I'm calling Zee and getting him in on this.”
Black shook his head. “Wait a minute, Claire. There's more.”
Claire sank back into the chair. “What? Tell me. Hurry, we need to get going on this. This could be exactly what we've been looking for.”
Holliday looked uncomfortable. Apparently, they'd saved the best for last. “You're involved, too, Claire.”
“You bet I am. I'm gonna help you get this guy. I can't wait to get him. And the puzzle's coming together. I just found out that this assassin was known to take children out of the home after he hit a family. Don't you see? That ties him to your family and Madonna's, just like you said. We've just got to put together the connections, figure out how the two families were chosen, find the common denominator.”
“Your involvement's more than that, Claire,” Black said quietly.
Now he had her. What was coming next, she could not imagine. “Okay, shoot, out with it. Just tell me! For God's sake, what's the matter with you two?”
Holliday looked away, looked back, looked everywhere but at her. “He hit somebody close to you, too, Claire.”
Relaxing, Claire knew then that he was way off base. “A lot of stuff happened to me in my childhood, bad stuff, but nothing that concerned a sanctioned hit.”
Black said, “It's Gabe, Claire.”
“Gabe?”
“Booker found out about him. He was abducted, too, when he was young. He and his little sister named Sophie. We think the same guy that took them also took Jenny and Jill.”
“No, his parents and sister died in a car crash somewhere down in Alabama a year or so after I left. Gabe survived. I didn't find out about it until years after it happened.”
Holliday said, “We think Gabe and his sister were taken by this same man. We found out that he held them for a month, after he shot Gabe's mom and dad to death. Just like my mom and stepdad.”
“But that's just crazy. Somebody would've told me. Gabe would've told me.”
Black said, “Maybe they had a reason to cover it up. We're sure of our facts, Claire.”
Claire got up and did some pacing herself. “Why would they want to cover it up? It doesn't make sense.”
Black stood up. “Maybe we should go down to the
Bayou Blue
and ask the LeFevres brothers, or simply confront Gabe about it. See if they'll tell you the truth now. But we're gonna have to talk to them, Claire. We didn't want to do it without telling you first. Gabe survived. He just might have the clues we need to find the killer. If he does, we want them.”
Claire stared mutely at them, lapsing into near shock mode. She stared at Holliday and then at Black. What they said didn't make sense, but they were both convinced it was true. Something bizarre was going on. “If this is true, I can't think of a single reason why they wouldn't tell me. Gabe and I are tight. I haven't seen him much through the years, but we've run into each other a few times.”
Jack said, “Maybe the killer saw everyone coming back here, saw me talking to Madonna, saw you investigating, meeting up with Gabe, all of that stuff. Maybe that's the reason he lobbed a grenade at you the other night, to get rid of Gabe and you both, since you're investigating him. All that together could be making him nervous enough to try to kill off anybody that might be able to ID him.” He paused. “And there's something else.”
“Great.”
“Madonna didn't seek me out. When Booker told me that she and Wendy had been kidnap victims, I approached Wendy and tried to get her to talk and see what she remembered. When she told me about Madonna, I spent time with her, too, secretly, you know, buttered her up some, I guess you'd say. That's when she started hounding me. Wendy was more sensible. I found out they were scared back then but that they'd seen him with paint on his face and a mask. They were going to let us do an artist's sketch of the kidnapper's mask. Somehow he found out about it, I guess. I don't know. Then all of a sudden she was dead. And then Wendy was dead. And then you and Gabe and Nick were attacked on the houseboat and left for dead.”
Trying to absorb it all, Claire had to have time to think about it. And there were lots of people she wanted to talk to. “Okay, I've got it now. Gabe will talk to me, if I confront him. He trusts me. Let me look into this. But I'll tell you one thing. I'm not so sure I believe the part about Gabe. But I'm sure as hell going to find out right now.”
“And I'm going with you,” Black said.
Jack handed over Booker's file, and they took off in Claire's SUV and headed back to town. “Let's go to the
Bayou Blue
first, Black. I want to know what Clyde and Luc and the others know about all this before I bother Gabe with it.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I'm just trying to figure out what's going on. This is all crazy. We're talking crimes that were committed decades apart.”
“Take a look in Booker's file. See if that convinces you.”
Claire picked it up and used her new phone's flashlight app for illumination. She did not want to do this, but she had to. She opened the green file and picked up the first page and started to read.
Chapter Twenty-three
The
Bayou Blue
looked deserted, both restaurants closed up for the night. The rain poured down in a flood and made it hard for Black to see the road. He pulled in close to the steamboat's gangplank. Claire felt confused, trying to figure out where all this was going and if Gabe had really played a part in Jack Holliday's scenario of the killer's past crimes. Had the murders of Madonna Christien and Wendy Rodriguez really been perpetrated by the same man who'd killed Jack's parents? And why hadn't Gabe told her about that, instead of allowing her to believe his family members had died in an automobile accident? They had mentioned it just the other night.
It was just way too bizarre, all of it. Right now, she was after answers. And she was going to get them from the LeFevres brothers, whether they liked it, or not. The more she had run through the facts with Black during the ride over, the less likely it seemed that everything was connected. Black believed Jack's theory, but she felt there had to be another explanation, mistaken identity or something.
Clyde LeFevres was sitting at the bar in the Cajun Grill, relaxing in a sleeveless ribbed undershirt and khaki pants, white suspenders hanging down at his sides. He was drinking the strong mud he actually described as coffee. When he saw Claire barge through the door in a state of stiff-jawed determination with Black right behind her, he stood up, seemed delighted to see her, waving and grinning, but that certainly wasn't going to last long.
“What you doin' here so late,
chère
? C'mon, let me get you a bit of dis nice strong coffee, yeah?”
“Okay. Sure.”
“How 'bout you, Nick?”
“Yes, please.”
Keep calm, keep calm, approach the interview like a detective, not a betrayed friend.
Claire perched herself on a stool and watched him round the bar and pour all of them a cup from a carafe. “You just in time. Rene comin' in to play some poker wit' us. He be here any time. How you doin', Nick?”
Black chatted with Clyde for a moment, but Claire sat there and said nothing. Clyde placed a thick white mug down in front her and smiled. She only stared at him, mute and disbelieving. How could he have lied to her all these years? Even after she'd moved back to New Orleans and met up with them again, Clyde had not told her the truth.
“What, Annie? You got problems with dat case, dat poor gal got killed down dere on our bayou? Somet'ing messin' you up?”
“Oh, yeah you could say something's messing me up.”
Under the bar, Black put his hand on her knee again, tacitly warning her to stay calm. He appeared laid-back enough for both of them. Funniest thing, she did not feel calm. She felt lied to and duped. Clyde leaned both elbows on the bar and leveled worried dark eyes on her face. “What you mean,
chère
? You okay, ain't you?”
Well, okay, since he asked
. “I mean that I just found out the truth about how Gabe's mom and dad died. How Sophie died, too.”
The stunned look on his weathered face alerted Claire right off that everything Booker and Holliday had dug up on the LeFevres family was true. Clyde tried to cover up his knee-jerk reaction but wasn't quick enough or sincere enough to fool Claire. “What'd you mean?”
“I mean that I know they were murdered and all of you have been lying to me all these years. And I know Gabe was probably a victim of some psycho killer, and so was poor little Sophie.” Claire paused there, the idea of such a complicated hoax, so entirely alien to her and to the family she thought she knew so well, that it was absolutely mind-boggling. Her voice clogged with emotion. She swallowed hard and steeled herself. “So now, Clyde, I want the truth, and you're going to tell me, and you're going to tell me right now, and then I'm going to go talk to Gabe.”
Clyde looked like he wanted to collapse to his knees and crawl under the bar. “Who done tole you such t'ings?”
“Believe it or not, Jack Holliday told me. He found out and laid it out for me, and now I'm asking you for the truth.”
“Holliday found out what?”
The deep voice came from the doorway, and they both turned and found Rene Bourdain walking toward them. Great, now he was going to get involved. She wished he had not shown up. She had enough trouble.
“Jack Holliday found out something about you, I hear that right?”
“This is a private conversation, Rene. Why don't you give me a few minutes alone with Clyde?”
That sounded rude, and the hurt on his face was easy to read and made her regret her short fuse. That upset her, too. Everything was in a steep downhill slide, all right.
Black tried to throw her a lifeline. “How about you and I go down and have a drink at the Creole's bar and let them talk, Rene?”
“Thanks, but I really think I should hear this. Is this connected to the Christien or Rodriguez case, Claire? I'm working those, too, you know.”
“Okay, if you must know, everybody's been lying to me about what happened to Gabe's family for years. So Clyde here needs to fill me in on the what and why and when. Right, Clyde?”
Rene and Clyde exchanged a somber look. Somehow Claire knew in that instant that Rene was just as guilty as the rest of them.
“Oh, my God, Rene, don't tell me you've been lying to me, too?”
Frowning, Rene placed his hand on Claire's back. “Just relax, kiddo, take a deep breath. There's a lot more goin' on here than you know.”
“No kidding. Well, c'mon, let's hear it. You tell me what really happened and what it's got to do with my case.”
Silence. Then Clyde said, “Gabe don't need to know what happened to his family, Annie. He t'inks dey died in that wreck.”
“What?” Claire looked at him in disbelief. “Are you telling me that Gabe doesn't know the truth, either? Oh, my God. How could you do that to him?”
“No, he don' know, and it gonna kill him to know de truth.”
“Well, guess what? Somebody tried to kill him the other night, and Black and me, too. I think it just might have something to do with this big lie you've been feeding him all these years.”
“He okay, right?”
“Maybe. After his dislocated shoulder, concussion, and other injuries heal up.”
More silence and exchanged guilty looks. Wow, and now the phrase
family conspiracy
took on a whole new meaning. It was even worse than she had originally thought. Suddenly the story had gone from bad to very, very bad, hard to listen to, hard to accept, then lastly, rotten to the core. Claire debated whether they were right, whether Gabe was better off not knowing the truth. Whatever it was, it was going to change him, maybe forever. She felt something nasty move way down in her gut, like a spider skittering across its web to a moth struggling to get free. Who were these people whom she'd thought she could trust? What the hell was going on? She fought the urge to get out of there and never come back.
Black said, “You guys need to tell her the truth. It's over now. Whatever the reason for the secret, whatever happened, it's over, and she needs to know about it. So does Gabe.”
As usual, Black's measured voice and steady presence helped her keep it together. So she took a deep breath, clasped her hands together atop the bar, and looked at each man in turn. “Okay, I'm as calm as I'm gonna get. Let's take this slow and easy, and hey, maybe we can even throw in some truth, if we try real hard. Jack told me that Gabe's mom and dad were murdered. He also said that Gabe and Sophie were abducted as children. Is any, or all of that true?”
“Yes,” said Clyde, about as hangdog as a proud Cajun could get. “All of it's true.”
“Okay. Okay. Now we're getting somewhere. He also said the same thing happened to his own family. He thinks it's the same predator, the same killer, and that it all ties together somehow. What do you know about that?”
Sighing, Clyde picked up a dishrag and nervously began wiping up nonexistent spills off the granite counter. “I don' know nothin' 'bout Jack Holliday, and nothin' 'bout his family.”
Claire turned to Rene. “What about you, Rene? Have you been hiding things from Gabe, too?”
“What we did was for his own good.”
“Oh, for God's sake, how on earth can you say that? We're talking about how his parents and sister died.”
Rene sat down on the stool beside her. He took her hand and pressed it between both of his. “You need to listen now, just stop with all these questions, and listen to what we say. It was a real ugly thing, what happened to Gabe and his family. It wasn't long after they took you out of their home and put you with a different foster family. Gabe was just a boy, and injured so severely that he didn't remember what happened. One of God's tender mercies to him. So we protected him. Let him grow up without the memory. That's why we hushed things up.”
“When was it? How old was he?”
“He had just turned twelve. Like I said, it didn't happen long after they took you away.”
“But what about later? When he was a grown man?”
“It didn't matter. It's better that he doesn't know. Truth is, Annie, back then, when it happened, he got hurt, hurt real bad.” Claire stared at him, waiting, and the expression in his eyes suddenly turned into naked pain. “That man, that monster that took Gabe? He beat him somethin' terrible, the bastard. When Gabe woke up after we found him half dead in the swamp, he didn't remember the things that were done to him, and we didn't want him to. He was just a kid. It would've messed up his mind even more than it already was over losing everybody in his family. So we told him it was a car crash. We told him that all the injuries he had incurred were from the accident, from being ejected from the car onto broken glass, and what not, and he believed us. He couldn't remember anything. Why wouldn't he believe us?”
There was no arguing with the sincerity on his face. Clyde was wiping his eyes on a dish towel. Weeping. Claire felt her anger begin to ebb, couldn't help it, but she still wasn't sold on their story. “Okay, I can understand that you wanted to protect him. And maybe I won't tell him, either. But I want to know the truth, every single detail, right now. I need to know for my own case. It's important that I know everything.”
Clyde's voice got all thick and raspy, and his cheeks were wet with tears. Claire had never seen him sad before, couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been laughing and joking around. She didn't like him this way. “Don't make us do it,
chère
. I cannot t'ink of it without just gettin' sick inside my belly. I don't want him to know. I don't want you to know. You don't wanna know.”
Rene took over as Clyde's throat thickened and his voice died away. “Gabe was beaten, very badly, worse than I ever saw anyone able to live through, and then he was dumped in the swamp and left for dead. When they found him, he was unconscious and stayed that way for days. When he woke up, he didn't remember much about it. The doctor said it was a brain injury or maybe he'd locked up the trauma someplace deep inside because his mind couldn't handle what was done to him.”
Claire tried to digest that. The same thing had happened to herâat least, the coma and inability to remember thingsâbut it had only lasted for a short time. Unfortunately, she had recalled the bad things, and remembered them anew in frequent awful nightmares. Would Gabe really want to go through the same thing? Did she want him to?
Clyde said, “It happened so long ago. It was the worst t'ing in my life. I had to live with it all dis time. I didn't want Gabe to know. It was terrible.”
“Tell me exactly what happened to him.”
Rene took over again. “They were on a family picnic out on the bayou. Sophie and Gabe were with them. It was during Mardi Gras week. Gabe was twelve and Sophie was ten. The killer attacked them there. A hunter found Kristen and Bobby lying together on a blanket, Bobby shot in the head and Kristen shot both in the head and in the chest. The children were gone, not a trace. They found their fishing poles about thirty yards upstream.”
“Nobody heard or saw anything?”
“No. We think the killer might've been hiding in the bushes, watching them. He probably got the kids when they moved away from their parents to fish, subdued them somehow, and then went back and shot Bobby and Kristen. That's all we could ever figure, and it haunts me to this day that I couldn't find the guy who did that to them.” After that speech, Rene looked absolutely stricken himself.
“Anything else? Other evidence found, anything at all?”
“We found some red feathers, like those on some of the Mardi Gras masks but never could trace them to any source. Every shop in New Orleans sells feathered masks. He could've gotten it anywhere.”
“Was there an investigation?”
“Yeah, but I petitioned the court to seal it. I've still got the murder file, if you want to take a look. There wasn't much to go on. It's got the crime scene photos, stuff like that.”
“I do want to look at it.”
“I've got it in a safe at my house. Come by, take a look. Maybe it'll help you understand why we lied to Gabe.”
“I will, but right now, I'm going to go back home and talk to Gabe. If he wants to know about this, I'm going to tell him, and you all will just have to deal with it.”
They all looked upset about that possibility, but Claire and Black left them there to worry about the consequences of their lies and distortions. Gabe had a right to know what had happened to him, and he was tough enough to take it. As they got back into the Range Rover, she turned to Black.