Depth Perception (24 page)

"Where am I bleeding from?"

"Your nose, I think." Faye slid her arms beneath her shoulders. "Let's get you into a chair."

Nat's legs felt like paper, but she made it into the chair. "It's never happened like that before."

"You mean this isn't the first time?" Faye asked incredulously.

"Unfortunately, no." She leaned back in the chair. "Tell me what happened."

"You went down like a felled tree is what happened." Faye tossed a concerned look at her over her shoulder as she crossed to the counter and yanked a paper towel off the roll. "You went stiff as a board. Then you started writing, digging into the paper and tabletop with that pen. The next thing I know you're on the floor." Her hand was shaking when she wet the towel beneath the faucet. "Natty, I've never seen anything like it in my life. You scared the hell out of me!"

"You're not the only one I scared."

"Here." She shoved the paper towel at her. ''Tilt your head back."

Putting the paper towel to her nose, Nat reached for the legal pad and her blood went cold in her veins.

Going to kill hem. In big danger. Help him.

Jason Larue. Find him mommy. The bad man coming.
I’m scared!

She'd used two sheets of paper. The words were written haphazardly, in huge, messy letters. She'd pressed so hard the paper had tom, and she'd ground the tip of the pen into the wood surface of the table.

"Oh my God."

Nat looked up to see Faye staring down at the legal pad, her face the color of paste. "What on earth? Why did you write that?" She raised stricken eyes to Nat's. "What is this?"

Not sure how to answer without revealing something she did not want to reveal, Nat rose on unsteady legs and threw the bloody paper towel in the trash, relieved to find her nose was no longer bleeding.

"Nat? What's going on?"

Feeling steadier, Nat returned to the table and sat down. "You probably ought to sit down for this."

Faye eased Into a chair. "Honey, if there's some kind of residual damage from the coma, you should get yourself checked out. Have you had seizures like this before?"

"I have them all the time."

"Okay." Faye blew out a pent up breath, then looked hard at her, "How many times has this happened?"

"I've lost count, Maybe a couple of dozen times in the last six months."

"Does your doctor know you're having seizures? Does he know why? Are you on medication?"

"I saw four neurologists before leaving River Oaks. Two of them finally agreed that these ... petit mals, for lack of a better term, could be a result of psychogenic epilepsy."

"Would you mind repeating that in English for us laymen?"

Remembering how disheartened she'd felt upon hearing the official diagnosis, Nat frowned. "It used to be called hysterical epilepsy."

Faye gave her a sympathetic look. “They think it's all in your head, huh?"

"Don't get me wrong, Faye. It's a very real disease. But I don't have epilepsy. And what you just witnessed was not a seizure."

Faye choked out a laugh and put her hand to her bosom. "You just scared the living shit out of me and you're trying to tell me there's nothing wrong with you?"

"Not physically.”

''What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Nat took a fortifying breath. "Something happened to me when I was in the coma.”

"Something like what?"

"When I regained consciousness, I could ... do certain things I hadn't been able to do before. It's like there was a channel to my brain that had been opened. A sixth sense, so to speak."

"Sixth sense? Natty . . ."

"Have you ever heard of trance writing?"

"Automatic writing? Of course, I've heard of it."

"Faye, you know I've always been a skeptic about any kind of psychic phenomena."

"You laughed at me when I had my palm read that time in New Orleans."

Nat let out a shuddery breath. "Since the coma. I've been able to ... receive messages. I black out for a few seconds and when I come to, I've written something down."

Nat had only seen her friend truly surprised twice before. The first time was when she told her she'd given Ward Ratcliffe her virginity the night he'd been crowned homecoming king. The second was the night she'd called to tell her Ward and Kyle had been murdered. This was the third time.

Nat felt a moment of panic when Faye only continued to stare at her, her mouth open, her eyes round with shock. "Don't look at me like I'm crazy," she said. "Dammit, Faye, not you. If I can't convince you of what's happening here, I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of convincing anyone else."

"Just give me a minute to digest this, will you?"

But Nat could tell by the look on her face that Faye had a pretty good idea where this was going. Nat looked down at the childlike scrawl in front of her, picked up the paper with hands that were still shaking. Blinking back tears, she said, "It's him, Faye.”

For a moment, the only sound came from the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. The pizza sat in the center of the table, cold. After a moment, Faye reached across the table and grasped Nat's hands in both of hers. "You are way too grounded to be saying what I think you just said."

"It's Kyle," Nat said. "I don't know how or why, but it's him. I can feel him. It's like he's inside my head. I can even smell him sometimes."

"Oh, Natty ... "

"You don't believe me."

"I didn't say that."

"You don't have to. I see it in your face."

"For God's sake, Nat, you've been through a horrific ordeal. You've suffered severe emotional and physical trauma. You lost your family. You were in a coma for two years."

Reaching for the folder containing all the messages she'd received, Nat slid it across the table to Faye. "Open it."

Faye opened the folder. What little color that had returned to her cheeks drained as she paged through each sheet of paper. She raised her eyes to Nat's. "Do you realize the implications of what you're claiming?"

"Of course, I do. That's what makes this so damn impossible."

Both women jumped when an owl screeched seemingly right outside the window. Faye choked out a nervous laugh and reached for her wine. Nat got up from the table and went to the window and closed it.

Faye was still looking at the messages when Nat returned to the table and sat down. "What do you think Kyle is trying to tell you?"

"I think he's trying to help me solve his murder."

"Oh, Natty--"

Nat cut her off by saying the words that neither of them wanted to hear. “There's a killer living in Bellerose."

Faye looked a little sick. "My God."

"The man who murdered my husband and son is still out there. He's killed before. And he's going to kill again."

"Brandon Bastille," Faye said hollowly. "That's why you've been asking so many questions about his father."

"That child did not drown in that bayou alone."

"But the parish coroner ruled it an accidental drowning. The newspaper was all over that story. How on earth could the police and the coroner be wrong about something like that?"

"I don't know. They're human. They make mistakes."

"Honey, if you believe that's what happened, maybe you should involve the police. Tell Alcee Martin everything you just told me." She picked up the notes. "Show him these."

"What would I tell him, Faye? That I hear voices inside my head? That people from beyond the grave send me messages? That I'm communicating with my dead son? Come on. He was there the night I slit my wrists. He already thinks I'm unstable. If I tell him I'm talking to dead people, he'll think I'm a raving lunatic." She picked up the legal pad and turned it so Faye could see it.

Going to kill hem. In big danger. Help him.

Jason Larue. Find him mommy. The bad man coming.
I’m scared!

"Jason LaRue? Jean and Paulette's boy?" Faye raised her eyes to Nat's. "What does it mean?"

"The only way I can interpret this is as some kind of warning."

"You mean Jason LaRue is in danger?"

"How would you interpret it?"

For the first time, Faye looked more afraid than skeptical. "Nat, if there's another child on this killer's list and you know about it, you have to take it to the police."

There was a part of her that knew her friend was right. But Faye wasn't the one who'd spent seven hours being questioned for a crime she hadn't committed. She wasn't the one who'd been locked in a cell like an animal while her mind had slowly unraveled.

"I can't.” Rising. Nat strode to the living room and picked up her purse and keys.

Faye trailed her. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to warn the LaRues.”

"Honey. you don't even know who the killer is."

But Nat was already halfway to the door. "I've got to do something."

"You can't just walk into Jean and Paulette's home and tell them their son is about to be killed. Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds?"

"Of course I do! It sounds insane. But what else can I do? Keep my mouth shut and let it happen? Do I want a child's death on my conscience? Faye, of all the things that could happen, I think that's the one that would push me over the edge."

"Honey, I think we need to think this through."

''There's no time." Nat tried to go around her, but Faye countered and stayed solidly in her way. "Get out of my way, Faye, or I'll go right over you."

"Are you forgetting the history between you and Jean?"

"I haven't forgotten." Nat would never forget. Jean LaRue was a prosecutor with the St. Tammany Parish District Attorney's office. He was the man who'd taken the case to a grand jury and tried to get her indicted for the murders of her husband and son. She'd always suspected he'd done so under intense pressure from the Ratcliffe family--namely Elliott Ratcliffe--but he'd done a damn good job of helping to finish off what was left of her life.

"If you're not going to listen to reason, then I'm going with you." Whirling away, Faye snagged her bag from the sofa.

The last thing Nat wanted to do was confront Jean LaRue alone. But her conscience wouldn't let her involve Faye any more deeply. "I can't let you come with me."

“Why not?"

"Because if I get arrested, I'm going to need you to bail me out of jail."

Chapter 19

The LaRues lived on a quiet street on the nice side of Bellerose, just two blocks from the historic St. Tammany Parish Courthouse. Nestled among magnolias and live oaks, the stately colonial looked like the feature home in Southern Living magazine. Dormant azaleas formed a lush border around the front porch where white wicker furniture beckoned one to sit and drink sweet tea. The ruler-straight row of crepe myrtles that grew along the sidewalk still held their fuchsia blooms left over from summer. In the driveway a big Lincoln Navigator SUV was parked next to a sleek little Lexus.

Paulette and Jean LaRue were Bellerose's crème de la crème of the upper crust. As a prosecutor, Jean had earned a reputation for being tough on crime. Paulette had been a journalist and news anchor in New Orleans before marrying Jean and moving to Bellerose some fifteen years earlier. Last Nat had heard, she was beading up the Louisiana Philanthropic Association, a charity that raised funds to house the homeless in some of the state's most economically depressed areas. They had two children, Jason, six, and Sheralee, who was eight. A perfect marriage, a perfect home, two perfect children.

Four perfect lives about to be shattered.

Nat got out of the Mustang and took the stone path toward the house. Double gas lamps flickered on either side of intricately carved cypress doom. Through the sidelight, she could see that the lights were on inside. Not giving herself time to debate, she crossed to the doors and rang the bell.

A moment later the door swung open. Paulette LaRue was holding a cordless phone to her ear, smiling at something the person on the other end of the line had said. Wearing cream-colored slacks and a short-sleeved red sweater, she looked pretty and content. A woman without a care in the world. Nat knew firsthand just how quickly the illusion could be snatched away.

Paulette's smile fell the instant she recognized Nat. "I’ll call you back,” she said into the phone and set it on the console table. Her eyes cooled to just below freezing when they landed on Nat. "What do you want?"

During the short drive from her house, Nat had tried to come up with a way to approach the LaRues without alarming them unduly--or sounding like a lunatic. But for the life of her she hadn't been able to devise a plausible angle that would allow her to save face and still get her message across. The possibility that she had somehow misinterpreted the warning from Kyle never left her mind. Twice, she'd almost turned around and driven home and left things to Fate. Twice, she'd realized there was no way she could turn her back on these people, knowing what could happen if she did.

"Mrs. LaRue. Hi, I'm sorry to bother you so late."

"Just tell me what you want, or I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I don't think it's appropriate for you to be here, Ms. Jennings."

Nat had known she wouldn't be welcomed. The woman standing before her believed she was a monster capable of murdering her own child. Trying not to think about that, she took a fortifying breath. "I know this is going to sound strange, and I do not mean to alarm you, but . . . are your children home?"

"What?"

Nat tried to smile to reassure her, but didn't think she managed. "I was . . . just down the street and thought I saw your boy--Jason--talking to a stranger. There was an old car pulled up next to him. I thought the car looked kind of suspicious, so I thought I'd stop in and let you know, so you could check on him and make sure everything's all right."

Paulette's eyes flicked down the front of her, and Nat realized she'd noticed the blood on her T-shirt from the bloody nose she'd had earlier. Her eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about? You saw Jason? When?"