City of the Dead Read online

  “Jackson Square,” she said. “I’ll meet you in Jackson Square.”

  “No, Chastity. The weather…”

  “Jackson Square, Max. I’ll be there at three.”

  After she’d had enough time to get some more questions answered.

  “Chastity, your father. You should know—”

  Chastity held on to her composure by her fingertips. “You can tell me at three, Max. At Jackson Square.”

  He fought, but finally gave in. “Three o’clock, then.”

  For a moment after she hung up, Chastity just stood there, staring out the front window.

  “You lied to him,” James said from the kitchen doorway.

  Chastity shrugged. “I need to get some answers without him looking over my shoulder. I need to know exactly why he wants his wife home.”

  “You think she ran away from him?”

  Chastity sucked in a breath, thinking of Saint Jude. “I think maybe she did. I do know that I don’t trust Max’s motives. He just brought up my father again, right when I disagreed with him. He seems really good at that, ya know? It makes me wonder. If he’s using my father to control me, what’s he been using with Faith?”

  Which was when it dawned on her that she’d just blown Max off too quickly. “Oh, God.” She shuddered. “My father. I just figured Max was yanking my chain again, distracting me from asking any questions. But what if he’s bringing him? What if that’s what he was telling me?”

  “Questions?” James asked. “What questions?”

  She shrugged. “Questions about what he wants to tell me. He implied that I’m not going to like it.”

  “Call him back and find out if your father’s coming.”

  Chastity looked at her cell phone. “No.” Whether Max had meant it or not, it had worked. Her brain was tumbling around like a rock in a whirlpool. She’d even broken out in a sweat. “No. I can’t.”

  There was a silence behind her. A small shuffling, as if James were uncomfortable.

  “Why are you so afraid of water?”

  Chastity didn’t turn. She kept her eyes on the sky, much as she figured James had done all those years in his tiny cell. She stood that way for a very long few minutes.

  She’d spent ten years running away from that particular question. She’d wasted a fortune in drugs and therapy, and a lifetime of ritual. Lapping water and laughter. The feeling of suffocation. The world disappearing through the film of water.

  Her stomach was churning again, and she didn’t think she was going to be able to stand any more.

  But she did. She faced the window and wrapped her hands together, as if holding on, and she told James the truth.

  “My father had a big Jacuzzi installed in the master suite at our house. It was…his playground. He called himself Poseidon.” For a moment she stood there, her throat closed up, her hands clenched, the smell of bleach so strong in her memory. “I think the real reason he liked it so much was because if one of us objected, all he had to do was hold our heads underwater until we obeyed.” She lifted her face, as if the sun out beyond those flat clouds could find her. She dreamed of drowning almost every night of her life. “My mother scrubbed that tub with bleach every day.”

  She smelled it now. That bleach and the lavender sachets her mother had put in the underwear drawers.

  “You’re right,” James said after another long moment. “We need to get you out of here before the hurricane comes.”

  Chastity nodded and turned. “Let’s go see if we can track down Eddie Dupre,” she said, finishing the coffee in her mug. “We only have till three o’clock, and then we have an appointment at Jackson Square.”

  Fifteen minutes later they pulled up to that little shotgun house on Royal and found the police pulling Eddie off the front porch. And for one very dark moment, Chastity prayed it was all over. That for some inexplicable reason Eddie had really murdered those three women. That his arrest would close all the books and she could go home without ever having to show up at Jackson Square at all.

  “Wait!” she yelled to Sergeant Gaudet as he hustled a handcuffed Eddie to his unmarked unit.

  “He doesn’t know where she is,” the sergeant told her across the crowd. He nodded to the perimeter cop anyway, and the guy let Chastity and James through.

  “Please, Mr. Dupre,” Chastity begged as she rounded the unmarked to stop before him. “Don’t you know anything?”

  There were tearstains on Eddie’s face, and his clothes were disheveled. He glared at her. “I know that I saved her babies, and she yelled at me.”

  Okay, Chastity thought. This wasn’t going to be as quick as she’d hoped. “You’re Faith’s friend—”

  “Was,” he corrected her, looking as if he was going to cry again. “She was going to turn me in. She was going to tell them what I did was wrong!”

  Chastity had no idea whether she had the time to ask what that was, but the sergeant, with that impish delight in his eyes, filled her in himself. “Seems Eddie can’t bear to destroy any of his embryos. Or anybody else’s, either.”

  “Babies,” Eddie objected. “They’re babies.”

  Gaudet nodded patiently. “He managed to sneak embryos out of most of the fertility clinics in town and keep them under his kitchen sink. Whole house is rigged to support those things. I’m just amazed nobody noticed. Meth labs are less complicated.”

  “They were going to be murdered!” Eddie protested. “I had to do something!”

  Gaudet gave him a nod. “He even got somebody to donate from your friends at New Life.”

  Eddie scowled. “They have no scruples. Three-fourths of what I collected from that place was nonviable waste matter. Can you imagine what they’ve been storing as viable embryos for those poor dupes who go there? And charging them for it? They should be sued.”

  Chastity blinked a few times. “But then, why were you so mad at Lloyd Burgard? He just wanted the same thing.”

  “Because he didn’t know what he was doing. He could have killed hundreds of infants by damaging the storage containers.”

  Chastity took a quick look over to where the haz-mat guys stood considering those shiny metal canisters. “Boy, are you gonna have a legal toffee-pull on your hands.”

  “Tell me,” the sergeant said.

  “If he was that angry at Faith…”

  Gaudet shook his ugly head. “Sorry. His alibi is solid for both murders. And he was the one who called in the nun.”

  “Was it really Willow Tolliver?” Eddie asked. “I thought she went back to Mobile.”

  “Biloxi,” Chastity said instinctively. “Even if you didn’t talk to Faith recently, Eddie, didn’t you hear anything? About where she’d gone? Or why?”

  “No. Nothing. I figured she left because she’d just had enough. All you have to do is look at that ostentatious wedding ring she never took off except to have the stones changed to understand. You know it’s fake as a three-dollar bill, now, don’t you?”

  “I know.”

  “Then you know that he gambles. Good. I never did like him. Faith had so many chances to be a mother herself, and he wouldn’t let her.”

  Chastity froze. “You mean Max? Max exchanged the stones in her ring to do what? Cover gambling debts?”

  Eddie huffed. “You think she did it? Not likely. Not when he had her mama over in that Holy Ghost place, all snug and everything. Not when he held it over her head like the sword of Damocles. She wouldn’t ever risk doing anything that would jeopardize her mama. Because he would have put that old woman in a pisshole faster than you can blink, if he got mad.”

  He was taking her breath away. He was giving her reasons that Faith would have run away. “Was she afraid of Max? Eddie, was she afraid of him?”

  “Like you care. You’re the one who broke her heart the last time. Don’t think I’m letting you do it again.”

  And with a lift of his head, Eddie Dupre stopped talking, except to exhort the haz-mat guys to be careful. Sergeant Gaudet seemed
to hear the same thing Chastity had, though, and nodded to her.

  “It’s easy enough to check out. I’ll be in touch.”

  Chastity stood there a second, terrified suddenly to take the next step. But Eddie had been her last chance. And Eddie wouldn’t have had privileges at Charity to allow him to walk blithely into a locked ward and, just maybe, murder an inconvenient witness.

  “Have you heard any more about Lloyd Burgard’s death?” she asked Sergeant Gaudet.

  Gaudet raised an eyebrow. “No. I’ve been doing fertility clinics. The people at New Life were the ones who turned on ole Eddie here. Seems they don’t want any more problems than are comin’ to them. I think they might be closing up shop.”

  Chastity nodded. “Does Eddie have an alibi for Lloyd?”

  Gaudet considered her for a long moment. “I’ll certainly find out.”

  Chastity didn’t move. “Lloyd was in a locked ward,” she said, not really wanting to say it. Not wanting to take this step, even in her own head. “You might want to double-check who had access to him. Who might not have seemed out of place on the ward.”

  Gaudet squinted at her. “You goin’ somewhere with this?”

  She shook her head, too afraid suddenly to say it out loud. “Lloyd was on suicide watch. Somebody should have noticed if anybody stopped by to see him. But they might not notice medical people so much.” She sucked in a breath to try and ease the sudden constriction in her chest. “I think my brother-in-law still has privileges at Charity. You might want to see if any other doctors involved in this case do, too.”

  Gaudet stopped a minute to watch her. He nodded again, and then stuffed Eddie into the cruiser. Chastity and James walked back to the cab.

  “You think Max killed Lloyd Burgard?” James demanded.

  Chastity didn’t face him. “I think we shouldn’t overlook any possibility.”

  “You sure you aren’t just paying Max back for being controlling?”

  “I’m trying to think of all likelihoods, fireman. I haven’t been doing that very well until now. Are you taking his side?”

  “I’m playing devil’s advocate. What makes you suddenly so suspicious?”

  “He sold Faith’s emerald,” Chastity said as she slid into the front seat. “Max sold her emerald to gamble.”

  James started the engine and waited. “Last I heard, it’s not a felony.”

  Chastity shook her head, impatient. “He knew all along that that stone had been switched, and yet he put on such a show when we told him. Accused the police of doing it.”

  “Closer to a felony, admitted. Still, understandable. Tough to be the perfect husband when you’re caught in that big a lie. It doesn’t mean it has anything to do with her disappearance.” He considered that a minute. “Although it might be another reason for her to go.”

  Chastity sat there for a few minutes listening to the shudder of the air-conditioning and thinking back on that afternoon when Detective Gilchrist had sat down on Faith’s good couch. Of how gray Max had grown at the sight of that ring.

  A person can fake surprised. Ashen is a lot harder to pull off. Max’s surprise had been all too real, and if he’d been the one to put Willow in the bayou, he shouldn’t have been surprised.

  At least the police were helping out now. At least Chastity didn’t need to face her monsters quite alone. Sergeant Gaudet was no long-timer just waiting out his pension. He was really interested. If she wanted, she might just be able to retire to Kareena’s house and wait for him to answer all the questions himself.

  For him to find Faith.

  Chastity sighed. She was already here. She might as well get some of the answers she knew she was going to need.

  She reached over and fastened her seat belt. “I think it’s time we stop by the Holy Cross Resthouse. See what they have to say about Faith and Max and my mother.”

  If Chastity had simply seen the nursing home, she never would have questioned the impressions she’d gotten of the last days of her mother’s life. It was a showy place, with landscaped gardens and a lobby that looked like a hotel. Chastity could even have overlooked the faint odor of urine and decay in the air. This was, after all, where people came to die.

  But Chastity took that extra step, and Max lost his merit badge. Chastity tracked down the nurse’s aide who had cared for Mary Rose Byrnes in the last years of her life.

  “Her daughter Faith?” the little woman asked, her tired brown eyes surprised. “No, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know how to get hold of her. We didn’t see her much, even when her mother was here. And she was with us for three years.”

  Chastity stood there stone-faced, wondering if she should have anticipated this. “What do you mean?” she asked anyway. “My sister devoted her life to my mother for the last six months of my mother’s life.”

  The aide was tiny, round, and slow-moving. She wasn’t confused, however. “She might have wanted to, ma’am. He wouldn’t let her.”

  “He?”

  “Her husband. He only let her come when he drove her, and that wasn’t often. Especially toward the end. She didn’t have a car of her own. No cash for a cab. No way to bring her mother those little things that make dyin’ easier. It troubled her somethin’ mighty.”

  Chastity had known fear. She’d known guilt and frustration and pain. She couldn’t ever remember battling the kind of anger that was building in her chest. Against Max. Against herself. “You’re sure?” she asked anyway.

  “Yes, ma’am. He didn’t like your mother much, I’m afraid.” The aide looked behind her, as if afraid Max would show up. “But then, he didn’t seem to like your sister much, either.”

  “I should have come here first,” Chastity snarled as she climbed into the front seat of James’s cab.

  She had no problem with libido this time. She was still so incandescent with rage that she didn’t have time for pheromones. James started the cab. “Possibly.”

  “No. Definitely. Damn him.”

  “Max?”

  “Of course, Max. He knew how much trouble I’d have coming here. He knew I’d stay away as long as I could. He counted on it. I think I need to talk to Sergeant Gaudet again.”

  “Because Max wouldn’t let his wife see her mother?”

  “Because everything Max has said to me has been a lie. Because it’s a pattern that I should have recognized about eight conversations ago. Come on, fireman, you know what an abusive relationship looks like. Faith had no car. No ability to go anywhere without him taking her. No contact with friends except for one lunch a week, which he took her to and picked her up from, which supported the myth of the perfect, upscale family. I wonder now if she really has a checkbook or a PDA or anything that would help her maintain her independence.”

  “You know this kind of thing better than I do.”

  It took Chastity a second to answer, because suddenly she wanted to cry, and that wouldn’t do. “Yes,” she said. “I do. It’s my job, damn it. I can smell an abusive spouse faster than three-day-old fish.” She took a couple of breaths, blinked away the tears. “Except when it’s my own brother-in-law.”

  “Just from what that aide said? Maybe he wasn’t nice to her. Maybe she was lying.”

  “Maybe she was. But I don’t think so.” Another breath, to steady herself, as images tumbled again. “He uses abusive language, James. All the time. My family. My house. My wife. He only calls her Faith when he’s paying attention. Otherwise, he calls her by his possessive. He uses the language of abuse and control. And damn it, he’s been doing the same thing to me.” She wrapped her hands tightly around her purse, around the treasure that seemed wasted all of a sudden. “And I let him.”

  “You seem more upset by that than anything.”

  “I forgive many things, fireman. I do not forgive someone who preys on another person’s weakness to control them.”

  “I wouldn’t call you weak, nurse.”

  “You’ve never been in my head, fireman.”

  He nodded.
“Touché. Where to now?”

  Chastity didn’t know. She had such a feeling, suddenly, that she’d been deliberately led down this path, and that there was only one outcome. She was terrified she’d been played like a puppet and hadn’t even known it until it was too late.

  God, she hated the feeling of inevitability. She hated knowing that no matter what she did or how hard she fought, the end would be the same.

  And she, of all people, should have seen it coming.

  Finally Chastity stirred, looked out to see that the sky had lowered a bit more. The storms were coming. “Let’s go to Kareena’s. Maybe my sister called.”

  “You expecting somebody?” James asked a few minutes later as they pulled to a stop.

  Chastity looked up to find that they had reached Kareena’s. There was a woman up on the porch, pacing like an expectant father.

  “Gosh, no,” Chastity said. “You?”

  The woman caught sight of them and sprinted down the steps.

  “Are you Chastity Byrnes?” she demanded before Chastity could even make it out of the cab. “Of course you are. You look just like Faith.”

  “When things finally start happening, they start happening very fast, don’t they, James?” Chastity asked as she opened the car door.

  “Certainly seems that way.”

  Chastity climbed out of the cab to face her fourth or fifth surprise of the day. A woman of medium height and build who looked precise and pretty and brunette in her uninspired, tidy attire. Probably forty, definitely not one of the pearls-and-charity crowd. More academic.

  “Yes, I’m Chastity Byrnes. How can I—”

  “You sicced the police on us!” she spat, jabbing a finger in the direction of Chastity’s chest. “The police. I’ve been working for months with New Life to have a baby, and I just found out they’re closed! Because of you!”

  “And you are?” Chastity asked, going quite still. She certainly didn’t want to scare this woman off.

  “Dr. Winnifred Hayes-Adams. Fred. Your sister is supposed to be supplying me with a baby right about now—twins—but that’s not going to happen as long as you keep screwing things up, is it? Is it worth it? Is he paying you enough to ruin all our lives?”