“The son-of-a-bitch Good Samaritan,” Charbou muttered with a glance at Amaia.
Dupree continued. “He has one son and a daughter named Michelle who plays the violin. He used it to set up the Andrews living room as a replica of the music room in Madison. Salazar was right about that. That was his first murder in this series. Must have acted on impulse, without planning, and took an enormous risk. The news of another child put him back in exactly the same situation he’d faced in Madison, and his world collapsed. In his deranged mind, the murders were justified by the Andrews boy’s bad behavior. The kid was giving his parents a hard time and went on a rampage in Davis’s tropical garden.”
“What a fucker!” Charbou exclaimed.
“Davis hired specialists to clean up the crime scene to make sure everything was under control. You can imagine his reaction when young Joseph talked about calling the police back in. And I’ll bet his daughter complained when she couldn’t find her violin.”
“He broke into the house and grabbed it before the forensics team came back for it,” Johnson said.
“He must have been out of his mind to use his own daughter’s violin,” Bull commented. “Why didn’t he remove the violin earlier?”
“It was an oversight. He didn’t think it through, and he was upset when he realized that with another child on the way, his story was repeating itself. His past was catching up with him. He murdered the family next door, people he knew. Giving into that impulse was a huge mistake. That’s how murderers give themselves away; without thinking, they choose victims in their proximity.
“His wife is scheduled for induced labor in Austin two days from now. Salazar and I believe he’ll get out of NOLA as soon as he can. He intends to return and kill them all.”
“We’ve finished here,” Johnson said. “We have to get back right away.”
Dupree stared out across the bayou for a moment. “Charbou, you and Salazar go back to New Orleans with Johnson, try to locate Lenx and follow him back to Texas, right to his front door if you have to. You’re going to stop him and arrest him. Detective Bull and I are staying here. We still have work to do.”
Amaia had been watching Bull stare at the deck the whole time. He and Dupree were obviously up to something.
Johnson looked first at Amaia and then at Bull. “With all due respect, boss, Salazar’s a temporary hire, and Charbou’s not even FBI.” He turned to Bill. “No offense meant.”
“None taken. Truth is truth.”
“Salazar is as capable an agent as you’ve ever worked with. As for Charbou, well . . .” Dupree winked at Bill. “He’s from NOLA. He’ll save your asses in a city he knows better than anyone.”
Johnson had more to say, but Dupree cut him off. “I won’t be much help. Yesterday I was half-dead, and getting to Le Grand and back has done me in. I’m afraid the traiteur needs to work on me some more. Bull will stay here to help me with the Samedi case. We have six dead kidnapped girls in that lodge and four dead men, three of them shot through the guts. We’ll take Jacob’s sisters back to the city once it’s safe to do so. No way am I going to just leave them here, and New Orleans can’t take them in yet. And the traiteur wants to do a ceremony for Médora, something he calls the farewell to the flesh. It will allow her to die in peace so her soul can start its journey. Bull and I should stay. After all, we know the family, and we bear some of the blame for her death because we failed to rescue her back then.”
“What happened to her is terrible,” Charbou said. “But it wasn’t your fault, and there’s nothing you can do for her now.”
“Dying’s not easy,” Dupree said, staring Charbou down. “And it’s even harder for someone like Médora. She spent almost her whole life believing she was already dead. Frank Carlino and Jerome Lirette were a really long time dying after whatever those people did to them, even though Lirette was decapitated and my friend had his heart torn out.”
“You really think some people linger after dying?”
“What I’m saying is that some find it hard to leave, especially those who are convinced that somebody’s conjuring them back or keeping them from going. Dying is hard. It’s like being born; you can do it by yourself, but it’s better when you have help, when somebody’s waiting for you on both sides.” His face was stern. “Bull and I are staying. The rest of you, get your things together and hit the road. Any questions?”
71
TRUTH AND JUSTICE
The swamp
Bull and Dupree stood on the pontoon walkway, watching the navy’s Zodiac and its passengers disappear into the distance.
Once the boat’s wake had dissipated, Bull took a cell phone from his pocket and handed it to Dupree. “I took out the SIM card and put it in my own phone. Voilà!” He turned it on, and the screen populated with a swarm of icons.
“Good.”
“Okay, but now what? Samedi—either the man or the organization—knew Len. They’re going to be expecting to hear his voice when they call. And they will call. As soon as something doesn’t sound right, they’ll hang up. We don’t have the equipment to triangulate their location. Considering the state of things, I doubt we’d find any police force in the state able to do it.”
“I’m not intending to track the call.”
Bull waited to hear more.
“When they call, Dominic will tell them what happened.”
“But . . .”
“Samedi didn’t know Dominic, Dominic didn’t know Samedi. Len was the link between them. Len blew his top when Pitt let the girls drown, and he gunned him down. Len told Samedi they’d lost their ‘catch’ and he’d killed Pitt for his negligence. I think he got permission to recruit another helper, someone they’d never met. And, lucky for us, everyone who knew the new man is dead.”
“Dominic . . .”
“My cover story is that Pitt’s brother, Vince, was furious and confronted Len. Put two trigger-happy guys together, everything goes to shit, and both of them end up dead. And now I—that is, Dominic, the only survivor—am answering Len’s phone, because I knew they’d call. I’m a reliable guy, very efficient. I finished the cleanup all by myself, and Le Grand’s back in order, thanks to me. And I’m waiting for their instructions.”
“Not a bad story, but they won’t buy it just like that.”
“True, and that’s why tomorrow we’re going back to Le Grand. We’ll take photos to submit with my report, and then we’ll do what Dominic is going to claim he did, in case they decide to visit or send somebody to check it out.”
“Okay,” Bull admitted, still not convinced. “But what will that get us? They’re not going to spill the beans about their gang to the first person who picks up the phone.”
“Of course they won’t. I’ve thought about Samedi a lot over the years, and I know we won’t be able to understand them without getting up close and personal. We can’t do that unless we join—or unless we seem to join—their structure. We need Samedi to believe we belong to Samedi. You heard Dominic: they have people in the police. Maybe really senior people. There’s no other way to explain how they’ve managed to keep active but out of sight all these years.” He exhaled sharply. “It has to be done this way, because neither you nor I will ever get the authorization to go undercover.”