Blood Memory

“Jesus,” breathes Sean.

The figure is obviously using all its strength to drive the teeth together. Riviere screams again, and then the skull is withdrawn.

Riviere’s weeping now, and panting as if he can’t breathe.

“Bite him again!” shouts the voice.

“No! All right…all right! I couldn’t help it…couldn’t stop. You already know that, don’t you?” Riviere’s face contorts in pain. “I need a doctor! Please!”

“How old was Carol when you did it?”

Riviere closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I don’t know…don’t know.”

The gun barrel cracks the bridge of his nose.

“Three?” he wails. “Four? I don’t know!”

“Do you repent?”

The eyes bulge again, the fear in them absolute.

The muffled voice is relentless. “Do-you-re-pent?”

Riviere nods with sudden penitence, a desperate sinner seeing a way to redemption. “Yes! I repent…I do. I know it was wrong. I need help! Please help me!”

“I’m here to help you.”

The hand presses the gun barrel flush against Andrus Riviere’s forehead and blows his brains out the back of his head.

I jerk in shock, unable to comprehend that I’m witnessing the actual events I tried to reconstruct from evidence at the crime scene. No reconstruction could ever capture the brutality of this execution. And I know, suddenly and beyond doubt, that my idea of forcing these women to stop but not giving their names to the FBI was a fantasy born of my own pain and naivete. It’s true that Andrus Riviere will never molest another child. But what guarantee do I have that the woman who pulled that trigger won’t decide tomorrow that someone less guilty than Riviere deserves a death sentence? Margaret Lavigne’s stepfather already became an innocent victim.

“Cat, it’s time to make some calls,” Sean says quietly.

He’s right.

“Cat? I have to-”

A muted thud cuts off Sean in midsentence.

When I turn, I see a naked woman with blonde hair holding a green plastic barbell in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. Half an hour ago, I was studying her picture on my kitchen table. She’s Stacey Lorio, age thirty- six, registered nurse and the daughter of Colonel Frank Moreland, our first victim. She’s knocked Sean unconscious with a single blow from a barbell. As I stare in shock, she kneels and yanks his Glock from his shoulder holster, then points it at my chest.

“I hid under the dirty clothes in the closet,” she says to Angie, panting from excitement. “For a minute, I thought he saw me.”

“Why did you hit him?” I ask, trying not to glance at my purse beside the love seat.

“Shut up!” Lorio snaps, straightening up. She’s not much taller than Angie Pitre, but her rawboned body is mostly muscle. She has stretch marks and sagging breasts, but beyond that, she looks as hard as a frozen ham.

“We didn’t come here to arrest anybody, Stacey.”

She laughs, then glances at Angie. “I know better than that, you rich cunt.”

Her face is bright red, her chest blotchy with scarlet marks. “Do you know me, Stacey?”

“What do you think? Your aunt was the bitch who screwed up my life.”

“What?”

“Yeah, she came along with her perfect teeth, her thousand-dollar shoes, and her Southern belle voice, and he didn’t know which way was up anymore.”

“Who?”

“Christ. Who do you think?”

Suddenly everything is clear. This woman was romantically involved with Nathan Malik until my aunt took him away from her. Why should I be surprised? Ann had been seduced by one of her shrinks before. And when I spoke to her on the telephone about paying Malik’s bail, she’d acted as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“You killed Dr. Malik,” I think aloud. “You’re the one who knocked me out in the motel.”

“He left me no choice,” she says. “He was going to give us up to the police.”

“Why would he do that?”

“To save himself from going to jail,” says Angie Pitre.

“Dr. Malik wasn’t in any danger of being convicted for murder.”

“You don’t know that,” says Lorio. “But all he really cared about was his personal crusade. His master plan. He wanted us to go to trial. He wanted the world to see what sexual abuse had driven us to do.”

“I don’t care who knows,” Angie says, suddenly upset. “We did what we had to do. God only knows how many kids we saved.”

Lorio looks at Angie like a protective older sister. “That’s right, Ang. But there’s no need for you to waste your life in jail. Not to make old Nathan famous. The world’s not going to understand what we did. And a lot of men would try to make sure we got the death penalty.”

“I think you’re wrong, Stacey,” I say in the most submissive voice I can muster. “I think a lot of people would understand.”

She laughs. “That’s easy to say. But I’m not spending my life in prison just to be the flavor of the week on Oprah. We accomplished what we set out to do. It’s over now.”

“Is it? What about me?” I look down at Sean, who hasn’t moved once. “What about him?”

“You two stuck your noses in where they didn’t belong. I can’t help that.”

“Are you going to kill me? I’m just like you, Stacey. I was molested, just like you.”

“You’re like me?” Her eyes are cold. “You’re nothing like me.”

“Are you that blind, Stacey? You think being raised with money can protect you from your own father? Or your grandfather?”

Angie Pitre is wringing her hands. “Stacey, this isn’t what we said, you know? Nobody else would go along with this.”

Lorio looks sharply at Angie. “Nobody else had the nerve to go through with any of it, did they? They sat back while we did their dirty work for them. They watched the people who hurt them beg for forgiveness on TV, but did they lift one fucking finger? Did they get their hands bloody?”

Angie shakes her head. “I know, I know, but still-”

“Still what?”

“She’s like us, Stacey!”

Lorio jerks the gun toward Sean. “And him? He’s a cop. A homicide detective! He wants to send you to the death house. You heard what he said. It’s time to make some calls. Do you want to ride the needle, Ang? Shit, you can’t even give blood without puking.”

“I know, but…God, I don’t know.”

Lorio’s lips tighten into a white line. “I know, baby. You just go in the kitchen while mama takes care of business.”

Stacey Lorio pulls a cushion off the sofa with her free hand, and I know then that I’m living the last moments of my life. I got away from Billy Neal. I won’t be so lucky again. My eyes go to my purse on the floor, but it might as well be a mile away. Lorio takes a step toward me, puts the gun behind the cushion, and fires.

Everything registers out of order. A horse kicks me in the belly. Tiny fragments of foam rubber fill the air. Wet red blood washes down my stomach, and a muffled boom sounds in my ears. Then a woman screams.

“What?” I ask, walking backward, trying to stay on my feet.

“Stacey, no!”

Lorio is following me with the cushion, the black barrel of Sean’s Glock protruding through the foam padding. She’s two feet away when Angie Pitre jumps on her back and yanks back both arms. They go down in a pile of