Blood Memory

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, Ann Hilgard. I reach down and pluck it from the box, then slip it into my pocket.

“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 Cops. A drug raid, maybe. But there’s something familiar about it. I’ve seen this house before. It’s one of the NOMURS crime scenes. The second one.

“Holy shit,” says Sean. “Holy shit. ”

“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-”

“Face the wall!” shouts the voice. “Put up your hands!”

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. “Moneyyou 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, God ”

“Say what you did to Carol!”

“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 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?”

“Admit what you did!” screams the voice. Definitely female.

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.

“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 rightall right! I couldn’t help itcouldn’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 knowdon’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 repentI 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 naïveté. 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, butGod, 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 flailing limbs.

I want to help Angie, but instead I sit down hard on the love seat.

“Oh, God,” somebody moans.

It’s me. The blood has run down my front and begun soaking my crotch. The gun explodes again, and somebody shrieks, but the women keep fighting.

I can see my purse on the floor, but I can’t bend to reach it.

Stacey Lorio is sitting on Angie’s chest now, screaming at her to stop fighting, but Angie keeps flailing like a crazed little girl. With a loud curse, Lorio turns the gun in her hand and smacks Angie across the face with its butt.

Angie Pitre stops fighting.

Stacey is climbing off her when Sean’s hand rises from the floor and grips her elbow. He must be only half-conscious, because Lorio laughs and shucks his grip as easily as the hand of a little boy. Walking with calm assurance, she lifts the other cushion off the couch and lays it over Sean’s face.

I look down at my purse, willing myself to bend at the waist.

Stacey presses the barrel of Sean’s gun over the cushion, right about where Sean’s forehead would be, and fires.

As I scream in rage, a tiny hole appears between Stacey’s breasts. It looks almost painted on, but within seconds she is sucking for air as though steel bands have been locked around her chest. Sean’s featherweight Smith amp; Wesson is shaking in my hand.

Stacey opens her mouth to speak, but a geyser of blood erupts from her throat.

Angie screams.

Stacey knees buckle, and she falls into a kneeling position beside Sean. She looks down at him, raises the gun over the cushion, then keeps raising it, trying to bring it to bear on me.

“Don’t,” I whisper, but the gun keeps rising.

I shoot her in the face, blowing a fine red mist into the air behind her.

As Stacey Lorio falls, all I can think of is the terrible irony that it was my grandfather who taught me how to shoot a handgun.

Then everything goes black.