peers out. Before I can get a closer look, the curtain drops back into place.
“Who is it?” calls a muffled female voice.
“Police,” says Sean, all authority. “Please open the door, ma’am. I’ve got identification.”
After a few moments, the doorknob clicks, and the door opens to the length of a chain latch. Sean flips open his wallet and holds his badge up to the crack in the door.
“Detective Sergeant Sean Regan, ma’am. NOPD Homicide. Are you Evangeline Pitre?”
“Maybe.”
“I was a friend of your father’s.”
“I don’t remember you. What do you want?”
“You are Evangeline Pitre?”
“Yes. What’s this about?”
“Your father’s murder.”
There’s a pause. “I already talked to some detectives. The FBI, too.”
“I’m aware of that, ma’am. But we take the death of a fellow officer very seriously. We need to speak to you again.”
“Well…”
The door closes, but after a brief rattle, it opens again, revealing the face from the photograph I studied under the vanity light during the drive over. Evangeline Pitre looks older than she did in the photo. And though her name is Cajun, she looks like a blend of Cajun and mountain blood. Dark hair and eyes mated with pale skin, and thin to the point of emaciation. Her lank hair hangs as if it hasn’t been washed in days, and there’s a purple suck mark on her neck.
“Sorry,” she says. “I’ve been paranoid ever since it happened. How can I help you?”
“Could we come inside?” Sean asks.
“Is it going to take that long?”
“It could. You do realize we’re dealing with a serial killer here?”
“That’s what the papers say.” Pitre looks doubtfully behind her, as though unwilling for us to see the squalor in which she lives. “Do you really need to come in?”
“We’d prefer it. You know how nosy neighbors can be.”
A quick flash of hatred in the eyes. Evangeline Pitre doesn’t get along with her neighbors. “Okay,” she says finally. “Come on in.”
She backs up, giving us room to enter.
The front door opens into a den. I’ve seen a lot of houses like this one in New Orleans. A door at the back of the den opens directly into the kitchen. Through it I can see glass doors that will open from the kitchen to a square cement patio outside. To my right is a hallway that leads to a couple of bedrooms-three at most-and a bathroom at the end of the hall.
The den is furnished with a flower-print sofa/love-seat combination that looks like it was bought at a thrift store. The sofa stands against the wall opposite the front door, with a rectangular coffee table in front of it. The love seat faces the left wall, where an old television shows the Home Shopping Network. A La-Z-Boy recliner faces the TV, and an old bureau of some kind stands against the wall behind me. Cigarette smoke hangs lazily in the air. I trace it to a cigarette burning in an ashtray on the floor beside the La-Z-Boy.
Evangeline Pitre has not once turned her back to us. She backed slowly into the den, then folded her arms and continued moving backward to the sofa, navigating around the coffee table without even looking down. She either grew up in this house or has lived here a long time.
“Seat?” she offers.
“Thanks,” says Sean.
He turns the La-Z-Boy around so that it faces the sofa and sits. I perch on the love seat with my purse in my lap, barely able to restrain my curiosity. Evangeline Pitre bends her knees and alights on the edge of the sofa like a bird, as though she might take flight at any moment.
“Ms. Pitre,” Sean begins, “we’d like to-”
“Angie,” she cuts in. “Call me Angie.”
Sean gives her his charming smile, but the official tone remains in his voice. “All right, Angie. My colleague is a forensic expert we sometimes consult on cases like this. She wants to ask you some questions about…”
His words blend into a meaningless monotone in my ears. He’s following the script we worked out during the drive over, but now that I’m here, I think it’s a waste of time. We don’t need complex psychological tactics to get this woman to open up to us.
“Angie,” I say in a familiar voice, “Detective Regan isn’t telling you the whole truth.”
Sean stares openmouthed at me.
“I am a forensic expert, but I’m not here to talk to you about forensics. I’m here to tell you what we know about these murders.”
Pitre looks to Sean as though for help. She liked his officious fiction better than the frank tone of my truth. But Sean says nothing.
I set my purse on the floor, thinking for an instant of the revolver inside, then intertwine my fingers over my knees and give Pitre my most confiding smile. “Angie, have you ever seen me before?”
She shakes her head.
“I was a close friend of Dr. Nathan Malik.”
Something has changed in her face. What? A tightening of the jaw? A new rigidity in the neck? Whatever caused the change, it’s so profound that I feel as though a second set of eyes has opened behind the ones I can see. Eyes glinting with a primitive awareness whose only objective is survival. I’ve never met Evangeline Pitre in my life, but I know her.
She is me. I have that second set of eyes, too. The ones that watch in the quivering darkness, waiting for
“What is it?” Angie asks. “You’re looking at me funny.”
“Angie, my name is Catherine Ferry. Do you know that name?”
She blinks once, slowly, like a cat feigning boredom to a passing mouse. “No.”
“I think you do.”
She swallows.
“I know your father was a bad man, Angie. Other people thought he was good, but I know what he really was.”
Her eyes have taken on a dull glaze.
“I know he touched you, Angie. I know he came to your bed in the dark. He probably hurt other children, too. That’s why he had to die, isn’t it?”
For the briefest instant, her eyes dart toward the back hall. Is she looking for escape? Or for help?
Sean stands quickly. “Do you mind if I take a look around the house?”
I expect Angie to bound to her feet in protest, but instead she settles back against the flowered fabric of the couch. “Sure,” she says. “Whatever.”
Sean moves into the hallway, drawing his gun from beneath his jacket as he goes. To keep the girl from panicking, I engage her in conversation.
“Were you one of the original members of Group X, Angie?”
A faint smile touches her lips.
“You’re afraid to trust me, but you don’t have to be. I know about Dr. Malik’s movie. He wanted to give me the tapes for safekeeping, but I couldn’t take them. The FBI was after me then. They’re still after me now.”
“Why would they be after you?”
“They think I’m involved with the murders. I don’t mind that. They don’t have any real evidence. I also killed a man about four hours ago. He was trying to rape me, and I killed him.”
The hidden eyes probe me for deception, but they find none. “I don’t get it,” she says. “You’re with a cop.”
“Sean’s not a regular cop. He’s my boyfriend. I was molested, just like you, Angie. I know how it feels to go through that. And I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help.”
Her eyes narrow in suspicion. I can only imagine what has been done to this girl by people who promised to
