The Whispering Room

Sonny Betts. As slimy and vicious as they came and that was saying a lot for New Orleans.

Betts was one of the new breed of drug thugs that had flocked back to the city after Katrina. More ambitious and more brutal than their predecessors, guys like Betts no longer hid in the shadows to conduct their nefarious business practices because the city’s corrupt legal system and lawlessness allowed them to operate with brazen impunity in broad daylight.

“The feds put a lot of resources into building a case against Betts, and then Mr. Big-Shot-Attorney here goes and gets him off without even a slap on the wrist,” Mitchell said. “I think it’s fair to say they were more than a little pissed.”

“No kidding.”

He nodded toward the victim. “You think Betts had a hand in this?”

Evangeline shrugged. “Seems a poor way to thank a guy for keeping your ass out of a federal pen, but I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Tony Vincent walked up just then and Mitchell clapped him on the back. “Anthony! How goes the morgue business these days?”

He grinned. “Clients ain’t complaining.”

His gaze drifted to Evangeline, and she pretended she didn’t notice the lingering glance he gave her. She didn’t like the way he’d started looking at her lately. He was an attractive guy and he had a lot going for him, but she wasn’t ready to date. Not even close.

She couldn’t imagine herself going out to a movie or to dinner with anyone but Johnny. She couldn’t imagine another man’s lips on her mouth, another man’s hands on her body. She got lonely at times, sure, but never enough to betray the memory of her husband.

Which was not a very realistic or even sane way to spend the rest of her life, she freely acknowledged. But it was how she chose to live it at the moment.

Tony was still watching her. “Y’all ready to get this show on the road?”

Evangeline tried to ignore him, but, damn, the man really was something to look at. Almost too handsome in her book. She didn’t go for the pretty boy types.

Never in a million years would Johnny have been considered a pretty boy. Or even conventionally handsome. Not with his broken nose and crooked smile. But right up until the day he died, his boy-next-door looks had made Evangeline’s heart pound.

“What have you got so far?” she asked crisply, snapping on a pair of latex gloves.

“Advanced putrefaction and seventeen-millimeter maggots. This guy’s been here for a while.”

She wrinkled her nose. “We can tell that from the smell. Can you be a little more specific?”

“Best guess, four to five days, but in this humidity…” Tony shrugged. “We’ll know more when we get him on the slab.”

“Cause of death?”

His eyes twinkled. “Oh, you’re going to love this.”

Yeah, I just bet I will.

They moved in unison to the body and squatted. With his gloved hands, Tony turned the corpse’s head so they could see the right side of his face, which was severely swollen and discolored.

Extracting a pen from his pocket, he pointed to a spot near the jawline.

“What are we looking at?” Mitchell asked curiously.

“Puncture wounds. Skin necrosis is pretty severe so you have to look hard to spot them. See here?”

“What made them?” Forgetting about her previous wariness around Tony, Evangeline moved in closer to get a better look.

He gave her a sidelong glance when her shoulder brushed against his. “Would you believe, fangs?”

“What?”

He laughed at her reaction. “No need to sharpen the wooden stakes just yet. I don’t think we’re dealing with a vampire. See this dried crusty stuff on his skin? I’m pretty sure that’s venom, probably mixed in with a little pus.”

A thrill of foreboding raced up Evangeline’s spine. She had a bad feeling she knew what was coming next. And for her, dealing with the undead would have been infinitely preferable.

“Holy shit.” Mitchell stared at the body in awe. “You saying this guy died from a snakebite?”

“Bites,” Tony clarified. “They’re all over him.”

“Jesus.”

A wave of nausea rolled through Evangeline’s stomach, and her skin started to crawl. She didn’t like snakes. At all. It was an inconvenient aversion for someone who had lived in Louisiana all her life. Serpents in the South were almost as plentiful as mosquitoes.

Evangeline was pretty sure her almost pathological loathing could be traced back to a specific incident in her childhood, while she’d been visiting her grandmother in the country. They’d been fishing from the bank of a bayou, and Evangeline had been so intent on the bobble of her little cork floater among the lily pads, she hadn’t noticed the huge cottonmouth that had crawled out from underneath the rotting log she’d perched on.

“Evie, honey, don’t you move a muscle. You hear me?” her grandmother had said in a hushed tone.

Evangeline had started to ask why, but then she froze when she saw the look on her grandmother’s face. She glanced down to find a thick, ropey body coiling around her ankle.

She’d seen snakes before, plenty of them. Her brother used to catch garter snakes in the yard and keep them in a cage in his bedroom.

But a cottonmouth was a far cry from a harmless garter snake.

The power of those sinewy muscles as they bunched around her leg both terrified and repulsed her. As she watched in horrified fascination, the snake lifted its black, leathery head and, tongue flicking, stared back at her.

For what seemed an eternity, Evangeline had sat there motionless, barely breathing. Finally, just as her grandmother arrived with a garden hoe, the snake unwound itself from her leg and glided to the water where it swam, head up, into a patch of cypress stumps.

But for the rest of the day, Evangeline couldn’t get the image of that serpent out of her head. She imagined it crawling back up out of the swamp and following her home.

Even safely inside her grandmother’s house, she saw that thick, patterned body everywhere—draped over a chair, coiled in a doorway, slithering underneath the covers of her bed. The hallucinations had gone on for weeks.

She shuddered now as she stared down at the dead man.

“I found bites on both ankles,” Tony said. “And two on his right hand. When we get him stripped, we may find even more. This guy was a veritable snake magnet.”

“Boy howdy.” Mitchell’s tone was grim, but Evangeline could detect an undercurrent of excitement in his voice. This was something different from their normal caseload of stabbings and shootings.

She wished she could share his enthusiasm, but snakes? It could have been anything other than reptiles and she would have been fine. A disembowelment, no problem. Mutilation, all in a day’s work. But not snakes. No way.

Mitchell shifted his weight, balancing himself on the balls of his feet. “Poor bastard must have died in agony.”

“No doubt,” Tony agreed. “Probably suffered heart failure.”

“No chance this was an accident?”

Tony shook his head. “Not likely. Do you know how rare it is for someone to die of a snakebite in this country? There’re only about a hundred and fifty cases a year.”

“Only?” Evangeline tried to suppress another shudder. “That sounds like a lot to me.”

Tony turned to her. “Relatively speaking, it’s not. Most hospitals and clinics stock antivenom, although I read somewhere that the supply is running low because the company that made it isn’t producing it anymore. I guess there isn’t enough profit in it.”

“He probably lost consciousness within a few seconds and the snake kept striking,” Mitchell said. “If it was a moccasin, those bastards are vicious. Some people will try to tell you their aggression is a myth, but don’t you believe it. I’ve got stories that would curl your hair.”

“I’ve always heard a bite from a cottonmouth feels like a hammer strike,” Tony said. “But I don’t think one snake could have done this much damage to a grown man. Not even a pit viper. Even after the first couple of bites, he should have still been able to get away.”

Unless he was restrained.

Gingerly, Evangeline lifted the cuff of the victim’s shirt with a probe and peered at his right wrist. There was so much swelling and the skin was so discolored, she couldn’t tell if he had ligature marks or not.

She moved to the left wrist, where she noticed faint bruising just below the edge of the Rolex.

“Could have been caused by the watch band when his arm puffed up,” Mitchell said over her shoulder.

“Maybe,” Evangeline said doubtfully. “But like Tony said, a grown man should have been able to get away, even after the first couple of bites. There must have been a reason why he couldn’t. And how the hell did he end up in here?”

“I wish I could help you out,” Tony said with a teasing smile. “But my job is just to bag ’em and tag ’em.”

“And we’ll need some time before you do that,” Evangeline said.

“Sure thing. Just holler when you’re finished.” His eyes glinted with amusement as he added, “Have fun, Ghoul Girl.”

Evangeline didn’t bother getting irritated. What would be the point? Instead, she turned back to the dead man.

The swelling and discoloration around the wounds was a good indication that he hadn’t died quickly. The venom had had time to spread, and what the poison had done to the body was ghastly.

“Looks like something from a horror movie,” Mitchell muttered.

“Yeah. Or a nightmare.”

Evangeline couldn’t help wondering who the dead man had left behind. A wife? Kids?

She knew something about the anguish and loneliness that faced his loved ones in the coming weeks and months.

For the longest time, she’d tried her damnedest not to let the victims and their families get inside her head, but no matter what she did, no matter how thick she built her defenses, they still found a way in.

They whispered to her in her dreams, screamed at her in her nightmares. And when their silent pleas tugged her from sleep, she obligingly rose in the middle of the night to go over and over the minutiae of their case files, hoping, always hoping, she would find something previously missed. She’d found that the young ones were especially tenacious.

This victim was no child, but what had been done to him was obscene and Evangeline knew it would haunt her.

It already did.

“What do you think?” she asked Mitchell.

“I think we’ve got ourselves an interesting case here.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

Mitchell glanced over his shoulder, then lowered his voice. “Jesus, Evie. What the hell are we dealing with? Some kind of voodoo shit?”

“I don’t know. Could be, I guess.” But in spite of how the media tried to play up sensational cases, ritual murder was rare, even in New Orleans.

Evangeline moved to the victim’s feet and examined the soles of his expensive shoes. “Take a look at this, Mitchell.”

He came up beside her. “What’d you find?”

“The bottoms of his shoes are caked with mud, but I don’t see any muddy footprints in here, do you?”

“Which means he didn’t walk in here under his own steam.”

“No big surprise there.” Evangeline glanced around. “Whoever dumped him probably figured it’d be a while before he was found.”

“Question is, was the poor bastard alive or dead when they left him?”

“There should be evidence of lividity somewhere on the body.”

A movement in the corner of the room gave Evangeline a start, and it took all her willpower not to retreat from that filthy, ramshackle house as fast as she could. For all she knew, the serpents that had attacked the victim were still slithering around somewhere in the piles of rubble.

Great. Just great.

Coming face-to-face with a pit viper was all she needed to make her day complete.

All right, get a grip. It’s not a snake. Probably just a rat. Or a big old cockroach.

But Evangeline had a sudden mental image of the victim, hands and feet bound, a gag in his mouth to stifle his screams as sinewy bodies crawled all over him, up his pant legs and down the collar of his shirt.

She imagined his agony as the razor-sharp fangs sank into his soft flesh and the poison spread through his bloodstream, making him weak and sick and maybe even blinding and paralyzing him.

She stood so abruptly, a wave of dizziness washed over her and she put out a hand to steady herself.

Mitchell rose and looked at her in surprise. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just don’t like snakes.”

“Who the hell does?”

“No, I mean…I’ve got a real phobia about them,” she admitted reluctantly.

A slow grin spread across Mitchell’s face. “Well, I’ll be damned. Detective Theroux has a weakness after all. Who would’ve thunk it?”

Evangeline’s answering smile was forced. “Okay, so now you know my secret. Snakes are my kryptonite. No need to let that get around, is there?”

Mitchell kept right on smiling. He was definitely enjoying himself. “Oh, hell no. We wouldn’t want anyone thinking you’re human, now would we?”

“I’m serious, Mitchell. It’s like you said earlier. It’s different for a man. Different set of rules. But for someone like me…you know I’d never hear the end of it.”

Plus, it wouldn’t be above some of the guys to plant rubber snakes in her desk. Or even real ones, for that matter. She could just imagine the kick they’d get out of her reaction. Some of the more juvenile cops lived for that kind of crap.

“Now don’t you worry, Evie girl. I’ve got your back on this one,” Mitchell said, but he was still grinning from ear to ear and she had a bad feeling it was only a matter of time before word got out.

“So why don’t I trust you?”

“Beats me.” His amusement faded and his expression turned serious. “Hey, no joke, you don’t look so hot.”

She swatted a mosquito from her face. “I just need a little air. What do you say we get out of here and go knock on some doors?”

Three

As they stepped out on the porch, the humidity almost took Evangeline’s breath away. There wasn’t a lick of breeze, and the palm fronds and banana trees in the side yard stood motionless in the heat.

Her striped cotton blouse clung to her back as she stood in the warm shade of the porch, and her clammy black pants felt as if they weighed a ton. She thought of the shower she’d have when she got home. Cold at first, then hot enough to scrub away the dark, smelly nightmare inside that house.

Her gaze lit on an unmarked gray sedan parked across the street. Two men in dark suits and dark glasses leaned against the front fender as they watched the house.

Evangeline poked Mitchell’s arm, her nod toward the newcomers almost imperceptible.

He followed her gaze and she felt him tense. “Feds.” His voice dripped scorn, the same oozing tone he might have used to designate a boil or a blister.

Evangeline swore under her breath. “What are they doing here? This is a homicide investigation.”

NOPD rarely crossed paths with federal law enforcement because typically the big boys went after a different kind of prey. Plus, even though they tried to deny it, certain agents from a certain bureau had a nasty habit of looking down their noses at the locals, and their altruistic superiority bred a fair amount of antagonism among the rank and file.

“Not too hard to figure why they’re gracing us with their presence,” Mitchell said. “The victim is Sonny Betts’s attorney. Looks to me like the Fibbies are still trying to nail his rusty hide.”

Evangeline made a face. “I don’t give a damn what they’re trying to do. Our jurisdiction, our case. They try to muscle their way in, I say we go wompwomp on their smug asses.”

“Mighty big words for such a little girl,” Mitchell teased.

But Evangeline barely heard him. Her gaze was still on the men across the street. They were both tall with broad shoulders, polished loafers and closely clipped dark hair. She might have found their similar appearance comical if she hadn’t been so annoyed by their presence.

One of them suddenly took off his sunglasses and his gaze locked with hers. He said something to the man at his side, but his gaze never left Evangeline and she decided real fast that she would sooner pass out dead from heat stroke than break eye contact. No way would she let that arrogant so-and-so think he’d intimidated her.

His suit coat was unbuttoned and the whiteness of his shirt was almost blinding in the bright sunlight. Evangeline guessed him at six-one or-two, maybe one hundred seventy pounds. A little taller than Johnny and probably at least ten years older.

As he continued to stare at her, she was tempted to walk across the street and suggest a little come-to-Jesus meeting with him.

Instead, she folded her arms and stared back at him.

If he took her openly hostile demeanor as a challenge, so be it.

Special Agent Declan Nash had recognized her straightaway when she came out of the house.

Detective Evangeline Theroux looked much the way she did in the candid shot he had in his office. The blond hair and the pretty face—those things he’d expected, along with the wide blue eyes, which, even from across the street, he could tell were intense.

What he found surprising was her size.

From his vantage, she looked tiny. So slight, in fact, he wondered if a strong puff of wind might give her a problem. He knew from her file that she was five feet four inches tall and weighed one hundred and twenty pounds, though he thought the latter was an exaggeration because she looked much smaller to him.

But in spite of her petite frame, there was an air of toughness about her—in the way she carried herself and in the way she interacted with her fellow cops.

And in the way she challenged him, Nash admitted. She exuded confidence and he admired that about her.

In fact, as he’d studied her file, he’d come to the conclusion that, under other circumstances, Detective Theroux was someone he would very much like to know.

Nash respected people who did their jobs well, and Theroux had one of the highest arrest records in the department. Her evaluations were stellar, her commendations glowing. From all accounts, she was a strong asset to the New Orleans Police Department.

But of her personal life, Nash knew very little, only that she was Johnny Theroux’s widow.

And that was all he needed to know.

That was why he was here, after all.

Beside him his partner, Tom Draiden, made a wisecrack, but Nash ignored him. He didn’t want to lose concentration or break eye contact because he suspected if he looked away first, Detective Theroux would view it as some sort of triumph on her end and a sign of weakness on his.

Considering her hostile stance, she seemed to labor under the misconception that she was in a position of power, and Nash didn’t think fostering that impression would be advantageous to either of them.

“That her?” Tom asked.

“Yeah.”

“Damn, that is one fine-ass Sarah Jane.”

“Very professional observation,” Nash said dryly.

“Well, yeah, but you might have at least warned me about the eye candy.”

“I guess I didn’t notice.”

“What the hell? Check her out, man.”

“Seems to me you’re doing enough checking for the both of us,” Nash said.

Tom smirked. “No harm in that, is there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you should ask Laura.”

“You’re a real buzz kill, Nash. You know that?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“So what’s our strategy?” Tom drawled.

He’d been born and raised in Macon, Georgia, and despite a stint in the navy and bureau assignments in Denver and Salt Lake City, he’d never lost his drawl. He had a knack for dealing with people, and he wasn’t above pouring on the Southern charm when it suited his purposes. His laid-back charisma often came in handy when dealing with the local good ol’ boys.

Tom’s approach to their assignments was instinctive and organic while Nash tended to be more textbook and detail-oriented. He knew he could sometimes come off as arrogant and impatient, but he was neither.

What he was, was focused.

“Who owes us a favor at NOPD?”

Tom grinned. “You want me to make you a list?”

“A name or two will do.”

“I take it you’re down for a little arm-twisting,” Tom said. “You want we should do it the nice way?”

Nash slipped on his sunglasses, turned and opened the car door. “I don’t care. So long as it gets done.”

He glanced over his shoulder one last time at Evangeline Theroux. He almost hated to do this to her. The murder of a prominent attorney would get a lot of media attention and a high-profile investigation could be a real feather in a young detective’s cap.

But he had a job to do and the last thing Nash needed was Johnny Theroux’s widow anywhere near Sonny Betts.

Four

With its lush gardens and gleaming white columns, Pinehurst Manor might have been a slightly careworn cousin of the grand old dames situated along River Road, that fabled seventy-mile corridor of Southern plantation homes stretching on either side of the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

But to the discerning eye, it soon became apparent that the house was merely a poor replica of its far grander predecessors. Built in 1945 as a personal residence for Dr. Bernard DeWitt, a noted psychiatrist and philanthropist from Baton Rouge, the original home was later expanded and converted into a private sanatorium.

Under Dr. DeWitt’s stewardship, Pinehurst Manor became one of the most highly regarded psychiatric institutions in Louisiana. For over thirty years, the hospital treated patients from all over the state, suffering from all manner of mental disorders, but by the late eighties, the once pillared splendor of Pinehurst was but a distant memory.

Rocked by the twin scandals of misappropriation of funds and inappropriate behavior by some of the male orderlies, the hospital fell on hard times. By the end of the decade, only a handful of forgotten patients remained in treatment and those unfortunate few were eventually turned out when Pinehurst was forced to shut its doors for good.

The building remained boarded up for over a decade until the state bought the property and reopened it as a medium-security psychiatric facility, admitting only those patients who were not considered a serious threat to society.

But all that changed with Katrina.

Hospitals affected by the storm had to be evacuated quickly and even though every effort was made to relocate the more violent patients—those designated criminally insane—to maximum-security facilities in other parts of the state, the sheer number of beds lost to flooding forced low-to-medium-security hospitals like Pinehurst to take in the overflow.

One of the patients evacuated to Pinehurst was Mary Alice Lemay.

For over thirty years, Mary Alice had been incarcerated at a branch of the South Louisiana State Hospital in Plaquemines Parish, a dingy, gloomy facility with cinder-block walls, chipped tile flooring and hallways that reeked of urine.

In that building, the worst of the worst were housed and treated—the serial killers, rapists and child molesters who had been remanded to a state psychiatric hospital rather than being sent to prison.

Mary Alice had spent the first few years of her custody under a suicide watch and in virtual solitary confinement. During that time, she received not a single outside visitor. Friends and relatives were so shocked by what she’d done, they couldn’t bring themselves to meet her gaze in the courtroom, let alone visit her face-to-face in a mental institution—especially considering most thought she deserved the electric chair.

The weeks, months, years of her internment were passed alone and in complete silence until a new doctor assigned to her case decided one day that integration into the general population of the institution would be beneficial to her treatment.