Blood Memory

Jesse turns toward his aunt. She’s standing with her hands on her hips, arms akimbo, glaring at him as she might at a recalcitrant boy of seven.

“Jesse Ford Billups,” she says, “you gonna serve the man who beat you bloody all them years ago? Or you gonna help this girl do what’s right?”

He sighs heavily. “Shit, Aunt Pearlie. I don’t know what-”

“What you say?” The old woman shakes her finger in Jesse’s face. “You know better than to curse me, boy! If your mama was alive, she’d knock you nekkid. You get your narrow ass in gear. Now.”

Jesse Billups, combat veteran and foreman of DeSalle Island, nods in surrender. “What about that one?” he asks, jerking his thumb toward Billy Neal.

Pearlie turns up her nose. “Leave that trash for the buzzards. They got to eat, too.”

Chapter 63

“Tell me again about the teeth,” says Sean.

We’re sitting at the kitchen table of my house on Lake Pontchartrain, just as we’ve done so many times before. Spread out in a row on the table before us are eleven photographs. The women in the photos vary in age from nineteen to forty-six-the women we believe most likely to constitute Group X. We culled these from a group of thirty-seven women ranging in age from two to seventy-eight-all the female relatives of the victims of the NOMURS killer. We chose them while talking on the phone during my drive down from DeSalle Island. And lying in the middle of the row, with five women on either side of her, is the woman I believe killed the six victims.

“The teeth,” Sean prompts me. “Are you awake, Cat?”

I turn from the table to the dark blue square of my picture window. Night is falling fast. “We all have large numbers of bacteria in our mouths,” I murmur. The primary one is Streptococcus mutans, which produces the acid that causes cavities.”

Sean taps a yellow highlighter against the tabletop. “And the culture of the saliva from the bite marks on Quentin Baptiste had none of this bacteria?”

“Right. At twenty-four hours, no growth. Very unusual.”

“Could someone have made a mistake taking the saliva sample?”

“It wasn’t some flatfoot who swabbed those wounds, Sean. It was the FBI’s forensic expert. We have to assume he did his job right.”

“I don’t like assuming anything.”

I look back at Sean and try to keep my voice even. “Me, either. It was an assumption that kept me from figuring out who the killer was yesterday. When Kaiser first showed me that lab report, the strep thing was a flag. A couple of possibilities hit me-like someone on antibiotics-but I was totally distracted at the time. I’d just learned that my aunt had committed suicide, and I was trying to escape the FBI building. I knew the saliva might have come from someone without teeth, but the possibility of it being a baby…I just automatically ruled it out. I mean, we’re dealing with serial murders here. The image of a six-month-old just doesn’t go with that. I feel like an idiot now. I’ve just been so out of it for the past few days. Alcohol withdrawal, off my meds, Valium-” Pregnant, I add silently. “It took me seeing that drooling baby at the funeral home to put it together.”

“And this is what you came up with?” Sean says, tapping the photo at the center of the row. It shows a dark-haired girl of twenty-two. “Evangeline Pitre?”

“It’s her, Sean.” Evangeline Pitre is the daughter of Quentin Baptiste, the murdered homicide detective-victim number six. “That random meeting at the funeral home associated saliva and babies in my mind. After that it was simple elimination. I knew that none of the victims’ female relatives had sons younger than eighteen months old. But Kaiser had told me one of Baptiste’s daughters worked at a day-care center. The only question was whether that day care handled any male children under six months old, the age at which teeth erupt. I confirmed it by phone after I left the island, but I knew, Sean. I just knew.

“You can’t convince me that this girl committed all six murders on her own,” Sean says.

I study the photo, searching for signs of homicidal ability-as if such things were visible. Evangeline Pitre’s eyes are deep set and dark, contrasting sharply with her pasty skin. She has a certain prettiness, but also a guardedness in her face, like the look on a stray cat that expects a kick before a scrap of food.

“Her father was a homicide cop,” I point out. “There’s no telling what kind of skills and knowledge she might have.”

“And you think this girl is killing everyone’s abusers for them? Punishing them?”

“It might be just that simple. Or it might not. Pitre could be killing them without anyone else in the group knowing what she’s doing. But that’s not what my gut tells me.”

Sean makes a wry face. “My gut tells me that Nathan Malik developed the whole fucking plan. Pitre may have got the saliva to put into the bite marks. She might even have pulled the trigger, if she knows how to shoot. But where did she get the idea to use a human skull to make the marks? No, this chick didn’t come up with the crime signature we’ve been seeing. Hell, she didn’t even finish high school.”

“I agree, okay? But that doesn’t mean Malik was behind it. It could be any one of the other women in the group. One or all.”

“You’re forgetting Margaret Lavigne’s suicide note,” Sean reminds me. “‘May God forgive me. An innocent man is dead. Please tell Dr. Malik to stop it.’ Malik was controlling those women, Cat. Running them like robots, using their emotions to drive them.”

“He probably knew what was happening,” I concede. “That doesn’t mean he planned it or helped carry it out.”

Frustration tightens Sean’s face. “Why are you so hell-bent on defending him?”

“Because Malik was doing all he could to help women in severe pain. Women that nobody else knows how to save.”

Sean sighs. “We can debate this all night. What are we going to do?”

“I told you. I want to talk to Pitre.”

“You want to go see this woman alone and-”

“Not alone. With you.”

“Without backup.”

“You’re my backup.”

He groans in exasperation. “You want to go in without backup and talk to a woman you think viciously murdered six men?”

“That’s right. We won’t be in any danger. She’s only interested in killing child abusers, not cops.”

“Margaret Lavigne’s stepfather didn’t abuse anybody, but he’s just as dead as the other five victims.”

“That killing was obviously a mistake, caused by a false memory recalled by Margaret Lavigne.”

Sean nods like I’m making his point for him. “Yeah. And who killed Dr. Malik? Who set that skull on his lap? The Hair Club for Men?”

“I’m hoping Evangeline Pitre can tell us that.”

Sean doesn’t reply. He’s staring at me intently, but he no longer sees me.

“What is it?” I ask, knowing an idea has hit him. “What do you have?”

“Maybe nothing. Hang on.” He picks up his cell phone and punches in a number. He’s calling the Second District police station, where Quentin Baptiste worked as a homicide detective. He asks to speak to O’Neil DeNoux, a detective I’ve never heard of.

“Who’s that?” I whisper.

“Baptiste’s partner. Hello? O’Neil? Sean Regan. I need to know something about Quentin. Cop to cop…Yeah, I know I’m working with the task force. But this isn’t going to the Bureau, okay?…Did Quentin carry a throwdown gun?…Fuck, man, this is serious…. Yeah?…” Sean nods at me, his eyes wide. “What caliber?…Thanks, man. I owe you…. I know you won’t forget it.”