Sean is staring at me again, trying to get my attention. He’s ready to make this official right now. But I’m not ready to call Kaiser yet. “So basically, you all agreed about what you were going to do?”
Angie nods slowly at me. She’s transferred her allegiance away from Sean.
“How many of you were there, Angie?”
“Six.”
“And now six men are dead.”
She nods again.
“So you’re finished?”
“Yep.” She gives me a little smile.
“Did all of you help commit the crimes?”
She doesn’t respond.
“‘My work is never done,’” I quote, recalling the letters boldly drawn in blood. “Who came up with that?”
She gives me a conspiratorial smile, then shakes her head. “I can’t tell on anybody else.”
“But your work is done. That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Yep. All done.”
Somehow, I knew this before I ever got here. That’s why I didn’t let Sean call in the task force. “Who killed Dr. Malik, Angie?”
Her smile vanishes, replaced by a profound fear. “I don’t know. Nobody knows what to do now.”
Is she lying? “This is very important, Angie. Who decided to make the crimes look like serial murders? Why didn’t you just kill the men with one shot and make their deaths look like muggings or something? Something simple?”
“That was cool, huh?”
Sean clears his throat loudly, but I don’t look at him. A strange light has come into Angie’s eyes.
“You want to see one?” she asks.
“One what?”
“You know. What we did.”
My pulse begins to race. “A murder, you mean?”
“We didn’t call it that. We called it a sentence. Carrying out a sentence.”
Now I glance at Sean. He looks like he’s about to have a stroke. “Do you have a videotape here, Angie?”
She points into the corner near the television, where a cardboard box stands under a small round table.
“
“Is that Dr Malik’s box?” I ask, feeling sweat in my palms. “The one with the stuff for the film in it?”
Angie nods, then goes to the box and pulls out a videotape. “This is one of the only ones on VHS. Most of them are on those little tapes. Those digital things. Mini-DVs or whatever.”
“Cat,” Sean whispers.
I feel a familiar buzzing in the back of my head. The tapes in that box could put my grandfather in jail for the rest of his life.
“Put it in the player, Angie. I want to see.”
Chapter 65
Like a child about to show me a tape of her ballet recital, Angie Pitre pushes the tape into the VCR and waits expectantly.
Sean motions for me to walk over to him, his face taut with anxiety. By any legal standard, it’s time to arrest Evangeline Pitre. But I’m not here as an agent of the law. I’m here to understand. Only then will I know what to do. It can only be my threat to tell Sean’s wife about our affair that’s keeping him from calling John Kaiser.
The TV screen goes blue. Then some numbers start turning quickly in the bottom left corner of the screen. I go to the box in the corner of the room and look down. Three rows of mini-DV tapes lie at the bottom of the box. The tapes are labeled with women’s names in red Magic Marker. One reads,
“Look,” says Sean.
A dark, jerky image has filled the TV screen: an exterior door. Someone is breathing rapidly, almost hyperventilating. A hand inside a clear plastic sleeve reaches out and inserts a key into the knob, turns it.
“What’s that plastic?” I whisper.
“A hazmat suit,” Angie says, her eyes locked on the screen. “Weird, huh?”
The door opens, and light floods into the lens.
The camera moves so quickly through the house that I feel like I’m watching an episode of
“Holy shit,” says Sean. “Holy
“Is that the Riviere house?” I ask in a stunned voice.
“Yeah,” says Angie.
The camera stops at an open bedroom door. A paunchy, gray-haired man wearing white boxer shorts looks over from his dresser. Andrus Riviere, retired pharmacist, age sixty-six. Whatever he sees in the door terrifies him.
“Turn around!” orders a muffled voice. It sounds female.
“They can’t hear you good in the suit,” Angie says. “But it keeps you from leaving hair and stuff in the house.”
“Cat?” says Sean. “Cat, we-”
Andrus Riviere turns his back to the camera and lifts his flabby arms into the air. “Take whatever you want,” he says in a shaky voice. “Money…you want money?”
A bright red flower blooms in the back of his undershirt.
“Shit!” cries Sean.
Riviere crumples to the floor like a spine-shot deer.
My heart pounds as the camera moves jerkily across the bedroom. For a moment I see only the ceiling. Then I see Riviere again. He’s lying on his back, his face almost bloodless from fear. He tries to move, screams in agony.
“What did you do to Carol?” asks the muffled voice.
“I can’t move my legs!” Riviere wails. “Oh,
“What?”
“Your daughter! Carol Lantana! Did you have sex with Carol when she was a little girl?”
Riviere’s eyes bulge until I fear they’ll burst from their sockets. For Andrus Riviere, the women in the hazmat suits are hell incarnate. “Carol?” he echoes. “No! No…
“Did you rape Carol?” insists the voice.
“No! That’s crazy! I never did anything like that.”
The camera backs off. Then a plastic-encased hand holds the barrel of a revolver to Riviere’s forehead. “Make peace with God. Admit what you did.”
The old pharmacist is blubbering, saliva running down his chin. “Carol? Is that you in there?”
Riviere shakes his head violently.
On the screen, a second figure wearing a hazmat kneels beside Riviere and opens the jaws of the skull I found in Dr. Malik’s lap at the motel. The hand presses the open mouth to Riviere’s chest and clamps the teeth down on pale flesh.
Riviere shrieks in pain.
