The Gates of Evangeline (10 page)

Oh God, last night. Now I'm thinking about him naked again.
I can feel a blush coming, so I abruptly change the subject. “What did your grandparents do at Evangeline? Is landscaping a family thing?”

“Kinda. Daddy Jack was a caretaker and Nanny was . . . well, a nanny. She took care a the twins and Andre when they were little, and years later, Gabriel.”

The nanny. My God. His family was in deep with this. “Madeleine Lauchlin,” I murmur. One of the witnesses on my wish list, and she's dead.

“Everyone called her Maddie, but yeah.” He peers at me. “You know a lot about Gabriel.”

This is my cue to spill my guts about the book, but I can't do it. He's too close to Hettie. “I used to write for
Cold Crimes
magazine,” I say. It's not a lie, anyway.

He wrinkles his brow. “And then suddenly you started writing about plantations?”

“Even weirder. I started working at a women's magazine.
Sophisticate.
For rich women who need the latest scoop on collagen injections or, I don't know, the dangers of wearing high heels in icy weather.”

Noah busts out laughing.

“It isn't funny. I worked there for twelve years. It was soul-killing.” I've never admitted this before.

He tries to take a sip of coffee, still laughing, and chokes. “My wife reads that magazine,” he says when he's finished coughing. “Ex-wife, I mean.”

That throws me. I'm about to completely reevaluate my ideas on Noah, his lifestyle, and the women he goes for, when I remember something. The voice mail I got last night.

“Oh no, I have to be somewhere . . .” Detective Minot invited me to stop by this morning to chat about the case, and I completely forgot. “Any chance you could drop me off at the police station?”

Noah squints at me. “Something I should know about you?” He's only half-kidding.

I can't tell him the real purpose of my visit, so I stare at my lap, face flushing as I deliver the first stupid lie that comes to me. “Just, you know, trying to fix a parking ticket.”

He chuckles. “I'll take you over, but I wouldn't hold your breath on that.”

“Yeah, well. You never know. I can be pretty persuasive.”

His eyes flicker over me, and he smiles slightly. “I bet you can.”

T
hough seated in Chicory, the sheriff's department serves all the towns in Bonnefoi Parish, and it's not as podunk as I'd imagined. Like the surrounding municipal buildings, it's an ugly brick structure with unexpectedly grand white columns. The sprawling grounds boast oak trees that must be at least a couple hundred years old, and in the background, a dark ribbon of bayou weaves by.

I climb out of Noah's truck, my brain shifting to Gabriel mode. “Thanks for the ride. And breakfast.”

“Let me give you my cell number,” he says. “I'll pick you up.”

I try to protest, but Noah assures me he's got nothing better to do. I program his number into my phone, well aware that chauffeuring me around town is dangerously boyfriendlike behavior.

Once inside, I'm surprised by how clean and well-lit the building is. I follow signs to the Bureau of Investigations, where a receptionist tries to calm two very distraught women. I study a community board while I wait, reading a flyer for a women's handgun safety class and marveling at news of a Bonnefoi Parish sheriff's department mobile app that boasts instant access to the parish sex offender registry. I'm imagining the kind of resident who might avail herself of these two resources when a middle-aged officer comes up behind me.

“You lookin' for someone, ma'am?” He smiles at me from under a rather large mustache.

“I'm here to see Detective Minot.”

“You gotta be the journalist, right? I'm Officer Kinney. Heard you might be droppin' by.” He places his hand on the small of my back, a gesture I find overly friendly. “Remy's in a meetin', should be just a minute.” Officer Kinney steers me through the reception area and past a few cubicles. In one, three men wearing button-down shirts and badges stand around having a discussion and drinking coffee. In another, a woman fills out a report on her computer. For a Sunday, the place is dishearteningly busy.

We stop at a tidy desk fringed with yellow Post-it notes. The reminders, I see, are both personal and professional:
Pick up Rx
and
Toussaint Testimony, Thurs 10 a.m
. On the computer, a photograph of a little red-haired girl bounces around as the screen saver. Detective Minot's daughter, I guess, or maybe granddaughter. She looks about five or six.

“You want somethin' while you wait, ma'am?” Officer Kinney asks.

“No thanks.” I sit down, expecting him to leave, but he lingers.

“So you writin' a book?” It's a good-natured question; not suspicious, just curious.

“Hopefully.” I go into journalist mode. The guy clearly wants to chat. “Do you know much about the Deveau case?”

He chuckles, running a finger across his mustache. “I know that case ain't gonna get solved.”

“Why do you say that?”

“No evidence.” He shrugs. “Been thirty years. I don't see things goin' anywhere unless someone walks in one day an' confesses. Or if a body turns up, I guess that'd be a start.”

“Why did they reopen the case if it's so hopeless?”

He rolls his eyes. “Those Deveau sisters started makin' a fuss some months back, after they found out Old Missus had cancer. Said she gone die without peace a mind and it's time to start runnin' DNA tests. Like somebody got DNA just settin' around a drawer someplace.” He shakes his head. “The FBI and state police, they got better things to do than chase their own tails, I promise you. So they sent the case our way.”

“What about the ransom note? Wouldn't that have DNA?” It's been bugging me.

“At this point you prob'ly got DNA from thirty people on that note. Won't prove a thing. And there's no sayin' for sure it was the kidnapper even wrote that.”

“But the case was still reopened?”

“Politics,” he says. “Those folks own this town. I bet halfa Chicory's worked for that family at some time or other.” He looks about to say more when a tall, lean man approaches.

“Look at you, Kinney. Running off at the mouth again.” The man gives us a crooked smile.

Officer Kinney straightens up. “We were just waitin' for you, Remy.”

He's not wearing a badge, so it takes me a second to realize this is Detective Minot. He doesn't look like the stereotype of a cop I had in my head. Pale eyes, shaggy salt-and-pepper hair, and a complexion that's been beat up by the sun. Forties? Fiftyish? I'm not sure. His face is drawn and tired, and he's too thin.

“Glad to meet you, ma'am.” He nods at me. “Al, I can take it from here.” Officer Kinney drifts away, disappointed. Detective Minot settles down at his desk and regards me dubiously. “Miss Cates, is it? So tell me, is this book
your
idea?”

Great,
I think.
Even the guy with the criminal justice degree can see this is a stupid move.

“The publisher approached me,” I say. “I'm fully aware this project has some limitations.”

“So you're in it for the paycheck.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, you got some sense, then.” He turns to his computer and checks his inbox. “Ask me whatever you like, but understand this case is colder than a cast-iron commode on the shady side of an iceberg.”

I smile. “I guess that's my first question. On a case this old, how can you make headway?”

He deletes a few e-mails. “All I can do is follow up with good, old-fashioned police work, ma'am.” I get the sense he's fielded this before, maybe from Sydney or Brigitte. “Chat with the original investigators. Go back to the files, review statements, see if there's anything we might've missed. Reinterview witnesses, see if anybody's story has changed. Cross-reference names of all the folks who worked at Evangeline to see if any have a criminal record now.”

“Has anything turned up?”

“Well, sure. A few DUIs, tax evasion, possession and sale of a controlled dangerous substance. But nothing in particular that raises a red flag.”

“What would raise a red flag?”

Minot looks up from the computer and ticks things off on his fingers. “Anything illegal involving a minor. Extortion, what with the ransom note. Larceny, breaking and entering. Violent behavior.”

Across the hall from us, a trim detective leads a sluggish boy in baggy pants into a conference room. I wonder if the boy is a witness, perp, or victim. It bothers me that I can't tell, that a predator can look no different from its prey.

“Have you reinterviewed many people?” I ask Detective Minot, hoping he might throw a few names and addresses my way.

“Many of the key players in the Deveau case have passed away,” he replies. “Gabriel's father, Neville, had a heart attack last year. Maddie Lauchlin, the nanny, has been gone a good fifteen years, and her husband, Jack, the caretaker, passed not so long ago. There was a housekeeper named Della who died, too. And tracking down the ones still living can be a real pain in the rear.”

I wish he'd stop fooling around on his damn computer. I know I'm not exactly a priority, but following some basic rules of conversational etiquette would be nice. “Can I ask your opinion on something, Detective Minot?”

“Can't guarantee an answer.”

“Do you think Gabriel's dead?”

He picks up a pen, studies it a moment, then looks at me long and hard. “You do my job awhile, Miss Cates, and you don't think highly of your fellow man. What else could've happened to him? Not quite three years old. Nobody takes a kid that young with anything good in mind.”

“No, I guess not.” I think of the dream I had, Gabriel's words:
He hurt me. You gotta tell on him.
If only I could confirm that I'm on the right track.

“Was there any indication that Gabriel was being abused?”

He shakes his head. “Nobody reported anything. He'd never been to a hospital. According to statements made by the Deveau help, he never had more cuts and bruises than your average toddler.”

“What about sexual abuse?”

“Again, nothing reported. But without a body, no one could examine him.”

“Okay, but his
behavior
could indicate a problem. How did people describe him? Was he withdrawn? Fearful? Did he have any sleep disturbances?”

Detective Minot scribbles something on a Post-it. I can't tell if it's related to our discussion or a reminder to pick up milk. “Folks said he was a handful. Very attached to his mother and his nanny.”

“Did he have contact with anyone else on the estate?”

“The whole staff knew him, of course. Neville was there some, but he was in New Orleans during the week and he traveled a lot. Andre and the twins, when they were home from boarding school. And whatever other visitors the family had.” He makes another note. I'm starting to suspect it's a grocery list.

“So not a lot of people had unsupervised access to him.”

“From the reports, no, not during the day. At night and during his nap times, hard to tell.”

I shudder. If I'd encountered this case a year ago, I'd probably never have let Keegan sleep alone again. “How long have you been a cop?”

“Twenty-four years.”

“You get a lot of homicides in the parish?”

“Some. Drug-related or domestic violence, mostly.”

I butter him up a little. “With all your experience, you must have good instincts. What does your gut tell you about the Deveau case?” I'm hoping his “gut instinct” will be based on information that hasn't been made public, and I want to see if it jibes with my visions of Gabriel.

Detective Minot looks at me and for the first time there's a spark of something. “I've got no doubt you've done your research, that you're familiar with the details of this case.”

“I know what's been released,” I say cautiously.

“You're a smart lady, I can tell that.”

“Thanks.” Suddenly he's buttering
me
up. What's he after?

“Let's have an honest conversation about this, off the record. Put on your detective cap and tell me what
you
see in this case.” I have his full attention now. He's testing me, getting a feel for how I think.

I have a vague feeling that Detective Minot is much smarter than I've been giving him credit for. “Um. Well, Gabriel's abductor was in the house. He knew where to go. He picked a night when Gabriel's parents were gone. And the family dog didn't make a fuss when he entered the room. So I'd say the abductor wasn't a stranger.” This is a run-of-the-mill analysis you could read on hundreds of websites, but it's all I've got.

“You say ‘he.' You think the abductor is male?” Detective Minot leans back in his chair.

I think my answer has disappointed him. “Yeah, I do.”

“Why's that?”

“Just . . . a hunch.”

“You got kids?” he asks, as if that would explain my inability to consider a woman a suspect.

The question hangs in the air for a few ugly seconds before I respond.

“Not anymore.”

Something flickers in his gaze. He doesn't pursue it, but I can feel him softening, perhaps thinking of the red-haired girl on his computer as he wonders about my loss. “All right,” he says, “you think it was a man. What else?”

“Well, two possibilities.” I take a deep breath. “One, somebody had been watching that kid a long time, learning about the family routines, the locked door at night. Somebody who people, and the dog, trusted. He took Gabriel, maybe with an accomplice from the inside, hoping to get ransom money. He left the note in Neville and Hettie's bedroom. But something went wrong and whether accidentally or intentionally, Gabriel ended up dead.”

“Or? What's your second possibility?” His face betrays no emotion.

“The ransom note was bullshit, left to throw off police. Gabriel's abductor was someone he knew who . . . hurt him. The guy had probably been doing it for a while, but Gabriel was getting old enough to talk. Maybe the guy got scared. So he killed Gabriel to hide what he'd been doing.”

Detective Minot doesn't comment on my theories. Instead, he folds his arms behind his head. “You're staying at Evangeline, aren't you?”

I nod, wondering how he knows. Some of Evangeline's employees live in town. They must talk.

“You met the family yet?”

“I met Andre and the twins last night. And I've met Hettie a couple times, briefly.”

“What do you think of her?”

What is he getting at?

“She was . . . polite. She had more snap-crackle-pop than you'd expect from somebody who's dying.”

“What kind of mother do you take her for?” His tone remains casual, but I'm taken aback.

“Excuse me?”

“Devoted? Distant? Overprotective? What's your read?”

I think about her giving Noah the money to start his business, all her motherly affection projected onto someone else's kid because hers was gone. And then I think about her giving away the entire estate without informing her daughters. “I don't know,” I admit. “She's a tough read.”

Detective Minot leans toward me, his blue eyes suddenly intense. “You've been a mother, Miss Cates. Let me ask you. If someone took your child, would you ever stop searching for who?”

I say nothing. Of course I wouldn't. No one took my child, and I'm
still
searching for who. Still unable to believe that something was wrong with Keegan's brain, that no one was at fault. I want to know where this is going. “Have you talked to Hettie?”

“Oh, I talked to her.” Someone at the front of the building seems to be yelling at the receptionist, but Detective Minot is now completely focused on me. “After we reopened the case, I went to see Hettie Deveau. Usually families like to know you're still working for them, and I thought I'd interview her again, seeing as she was sick and likely to decline. You know what she said?”