After the Night (39 page)

"Faith, damn it, pick up the phone! If you think I’m going to let you ignore me – " He hung up without finishing the threat.

In between calls from Gray, she placed one to New Orleans, but Detective Ambrose wasn’t available. She left a message for him, and waited for him to return her call.

It was late afternoon before he did so. She snatched up the receiver as soon as she heard the detective’s voice. "This is Faith Hardy, Detective. Have you found Mr. Pleasant yet?"

"Nothing, Mrs. Hardy. I’m sorry. His car hasn’t been found, either." His voice gentled. "Frankly, it doesn’t look good. He doesn’t fit the profile of someone who would disappear voluntarily; he had nothing to run from, and nothing to run to. He could have lost control of his car, had a heart attack, gone to sleep… If the car left the road and went into a bayou or river…" He let the sentence trail off,
but Faith didn’t need it spelled out. He thought a fisherman would eventually find Mr. Pleasant.

"Will you let me know?" she whispered, blinking back tears.

"Yes, ma’am, just as soon as I hear anything."

He wouldn’t hear anything, though. Faith replaced the receiver in its cradle. Guy Rouillard had been murdered. It wasn’t just a theory now; her mother had witnessed it. Mr. Pleasant had been asking pointed questions about Guy’s disappearance. Would the murderer just have sat tight, figuring there was no evidence to be found, or would the fact that Mr. Pleasant was an investigator make him nervous? Nervous enough to commit another murder, perhaps?

That sweet little man was dead, and it was her fault.

No sooner had the thought registered than she rejected it. No, it wasn’t her fault, it was the fault of the murderer. She wasn’t willing to absolve him of one iota of blame.

Finding proof of Guy’s murder would be extremely difficult, after twelve years. Mr. Pleasant had been missing less than two weeks. It would be smarter to concentrate on finding Mr. Pleasant. The evidence wouldn’t be destroyed by time.

If she had killed someone, where would she hide the body? In Guy’s case, the most likely answer was the lake. At the time of the murder, the boat had been right there. What would have been easier than to take him out to the deepest part of the lake, weight his body, and push him overboard? Such a convenient means had been lacking in Mr. Pleasant’s case. For one thing, he probably hadn’t been at the lake, and for another, there was no boat. So where would the killer try to dispose of the body?

Someplace where he wasn’t likely to be seen. There were plenty of woods around for a hasty burial. Every so often, hunters would stumble across a body that had lain hidden for months, even years. But the killer had already successfully concealed one murder, so wouldn’t he be likely to use the same method to dispose of a second body? If she thought so, and she did, then the Rouillard private lake was the place to search.

She couldn’t do it by herself. She was willing to tackle
almost any job, but she had sense enough to know when she needed help. The lake would need to be dragged. That required boats, people, equipment. The sheriff could order it done, but she would have to convince him there was cause, and that the lake was the place to look. She couldn’t do that without telling what she knew about Guy.

And she couldn’t tell what she knew about Guy without first telling Gray. She couldn’t let him find out from someone else, couldn’t let his family be dragged into this mess without warning. Despite the hurt that still compressed her chest, despite the fact that she was too ashamed of herself to face him, she would somehow have to bring herself to tell him his father had been murdered, and she didn’t know if she could do it.

Right on cue, the telephone rang. Faith closed her eyes.

"Goddamn it, Faith!" The muted fury in his voice came through loud and clear. "If you don’t pick up the phone and tell me you’re all right, I’m calling Mike McFane to come out there – "

She grabbed the receiver. "I’m all right!" she yelled, and slammed it back down. The
persistence
of the man!

The phone rang again, after just enough time for him to have redialed the number. "All right," he said when the machine answered, his voice under control now, though the anger still seethed in every word. "I shouldn’t have said what I did. I was an asshole, and I’m sorry."

"I’m sorry you’re an asshole, too," Faith muttered at the phone.

"You can kick my ass or slap my face tomorrow, whichever you want," he continued. "But don’t think you’re going to avoid me forever, because I’m not about to let it happen."

The line clicked as he hung up, and she sent up a hopeful prayer that he would stop calling now.

The phone rang again. She groaned. The machine picked up.

"I didn’t wear a rubber last night," he calmly informed her.

"I noticed," she said sarcastically.

"I’d bet my ass you aren’t using any kind of birth control, either," he said. "Think about it." The line clicked off again.

"You
fiend!"
Faith shrieked, her face turning red with rage. Think about it! How was she supposed to think about anything else, now that he’d so kindly brought the matter to her attention?

She stomped around the house, angry at both Gray and herself. They had no excuse; they weren’t irresponsible teenagers, operating on hormones instead of brains – but that was exactly how they had acted. How could they have been so careless? She should have thought of the possibility of pregnancy before, but she had been so upset and miserable that consequences hadn’t occurred to her.

Well, they were occurring now, with a vengeance. As if she didn’t already have enough to worry about!

She was so panicked that it was half an hour before she thought to consult the calendar and count days. When she did, she sagged with relief. Her period was due to start in a week, and she had always been very regular. Nothing was certain, but the odds were on her side.

The next morning there was another note. Faith had been careful to keep her car locked since the first one, so this one was secured under the windshield wiper. She noticed it when she glanced out the window, and went out to investigate. When she saw what it was, she didn’t touch it. She didn’t want to know what it said. It had evidently been there all night, because the paper was wet with dew, the ink smeared.

She hadn’t heard anything last night, even though she had slept restlessly once again. At least it was just a note, rather than another mutilated animal.

She was still in her pajamas, having just finished breakfast. Leaving the note where it was, she returned to the house. Within fifteen minutes she had dressed, put on her makeup, brushed her hair, and was on the way out the door.

She unlocked the car door and dropped her purse into the seat. Being careful not to tear the soggy paper, she lifted the windshield wiper and retrieved the note, holding one corner between thumb and forefinger. Then she got in the car and drove straight to the courthouse.

She parked in front of the square and, holding the note exactly the way she had before, marched up the three long, shallow steps. There was an information desk stationed just inside the doors, and she paused to ask a blue-haired little woman exactly where the sheriffs office was located.

"Just down this hall, dear, and to the left." The little woman pointed to her own left, and Faith obediently turned.

The smell of the courthouse was surprisingly pleasant, settling her jangled nerves a bit. It was composed of paper and ink, cleaning compounds, the ever-changing mix of people, and the cool gray scent of the marble floors and halls. The courthouse had been built fifty or sixty years before, when buildings had individual character. It had, of course, been "updated" several times over the years, with fluorescent lights replacing the original incandescent ones, so the clerks could have headaches to go along with the cheaper lighting costs. Window air-conditioning units were attached like barnacles to the building, growing randomly from office windows. In some places, though, particularly the hallways, ceiling fans still whirled lazily through the workday, keeping the air moving and fresh.

She reached the end of the hallway and turned left, to find another hallway stretching before her. Five doors down she came to an open set of double doors, with
sher depar
stenciled on the left half and
iff’s tment
on the right, so that they made whole words only if the doors were closed. Inside was a long room with a high counter running the length of it; behind the counter were several desks, the dispatch radio, and two offices, one of which was slightly bigger than the other. The biggest office had Sheriff McFane’s name on the door, which was half-open, but Faith couldn’t see into the office from where she was standing. Photographs of past sheriffs hung on the wall, the extent of the parish’s efforts at decoration. It wasn’t a cheerful effect.

A middle-aged woman in a brown deputy’s uniform looked up as Faith approached the counter. "What can I do for you?"

"I want to speak with Sheriff McFane, please."

The deputy peered over her reading glasses at Faith, obviously recognizing her from her visit the day before yesterday. All she said, though, was, "What’s your name?"

"Faith Hardy."

"Let me see."

She went into Sheriff McFane’s office with only a perfunctory knock, and Faith heard the murmur of voices. The deputy came out, said, "Come through there," and indicated a half door at the end of the counter. She hit a buzzer located under the counter, and the door clicked open.

Sheriff McFane came to the door of his office to greet her. "Good morning, Mrs. Hardy. How’re you doin’ today?"

For answer, Faith held up the note. "I got another one."

The good humor faded from his face, and he was instantly serious. "I don’t like this at all," he murmured, plucking an evidence envelope from a desk and holding it open for Faith to drop in the note. She released it with the air of one disposing of smelly trash. "What does it say?"

"I haven’t read it. It was under my windshield wiper this morning when I got up. I’ve only touched one corner, so I wouldn’t smear any fingerprints, assuming any are left. The paper’s wet," she explained.

"Dew. That means it had been on your windshield for several hours. Actually, we have several good prints already, from the other note and the box. The problem is, we won’t be able to find a match unless the note writer has been fingerprinted before." He ushered her into his office and dumped the note out onto his desk blotter.

"Since you haven’t read it yet, let’s see what it says." He opened the lap drawer of his desk and pawed through the contents, finally coming up with eyebrow tweezers. Using the tweezers and the tip of a pen, he carefully unfolded the damp paper. Faith angled her head to read the block letters:

YOU’RE NOT WANTED HERE LEAVE BEFORE YOU GET HURT

"Same person," Sheriff McFane said. "No punctuation."

"A deliberate signature?"

"Maybe, but could be it’s just a departure from his usual style, sort of camouflage." He frowned at her. "Mrs. Hardy
 
– Faith – Gray and I both told you the other day, living out there all by yourself could be dangerous."

"I’m not going to move," she said, repeating a sentence she must have said twenty times when she had been here to fill out the report on the dead cat.

"Then how about getting yourself a dog? It doesn’t have to be a guard dog, just one that will set up a racket if it hears anything outside."

Surprised, she stared at him. A dog. She’d never had a pet of any kind, so that option simply hadn’t occurred to her. "Why, I think I will. Thank you, Sheriff. That’s a good idea."

"Good. Get one as soon as possible. Stop by the pound and pick out a young, healthy one. A half-grown youngster would be good, still young enough to take to you real quick, but old enough that it can bark, not just make puppy yaps." He looked down at the note on his desk. "About all I can do right now is have my deputies drive by your house a couple of times each shift. We just don’t have much to go on."

"And a few notes and a dead cat aren’t exactly the crime of the century."

He gave her a quick grin, full of Huckleberry Finn charm. "Can’t even get ‘im for cruelty to animals. If it makes you feel any better, the cat wasn’t tortured. It was a road kill. Somebody just scooped it up, is all. It makes
me
feel a little better about the danger of the situation. A real psycho would have enjoyed killing a cat."

It did make her feel better. The memory of that mangled little corpse had made her feel sick every time it came to mind. The cat was still just as dead, but at least if it had been hit by a car, it had probably died instantly. She couldn’t bear to think that it had suffered.

She left the sheriffs department and retraced her path. Halfway down the long corridor, she saw a tall, powerfully built man with long, dark hair stop to speak to the little blue-haired lady.

Faith’s heart almost stopped. Without missing a step she whipped around to go back toward the sheriffs department, panicked at the thought of facing him again after the
rawness of their last meeting. It was a purely instinctive reaction; her mind knew she needed to talk to him, but her body fled.

She heard the low rumble of his voice, recognizable anywhere, and speeded her steps. As she reached the end of the hallway and turned the corner, she glanced back and saw him striding rapidly toward her, his long legs shrinking the distance between them at an alarming rate. His dark eyes were locked on her.