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The Bayou Strangler's signature had been a white silk scarf around the throat of his victim. The bindings in this case would be close enough to generate a lot of gossip if word leaked out. Lack of semen could also be pointed out as a similarity. But in the Bayou Strangler cases the women had been violently brutalized and their bodies left exposed to the elements so that such evidence would most likely have broken down.
The primary difference between the Bayou Strangler cases and Je
A
God, what a mess, A
The ground around the back side of the trailer was nothing but weedy gravel for several feet, then the "estate" gave way to woods with a floor of soft rotted leaves. A
Where had the rapist parked his vehicle? Why had he chosen this place? Why had he chosen Je
Of course, A
The ambulance was driving out of the trailer park as she came around the end of the Nolan home. A woman with a toddler on one hip and cigarette in hand stood in the doorway of a trailer two down the row. At another trailer, a heavyset old guy in his underwear had pulled back a curtain to stare out.
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"I found this behind the trailer," she said, setting the bag on the vanity. "It looks like the kind of feather they use in masks and costumes. Maybe our bad guy was molting."
Stokes arched a brow. "Our? You got nothing to do with this, Broussard. And what the hell am I supposed to do with a feather?"
"Send it to the lab. Compare it to the mask left on Pam Bichon-"
"Renard did Bichon. That's got nothing to do with this. This is a copycat."
"Fine, then send it to the lab, get Je
"Maybe you don't know what the hell you're talking about, Broussard," he said, straightening from the tub. He folded the pubic hairs in a piece of paper and set it on the back of the toilet. "I told you before, I don't want you around. Get outta here. Go write some tickets. Practice for your new job as a meter maid. That's all you're go
"Is that a threat?"
He reached out with a forefinger and pressed it hard against the bruise on her cheek. His eyes looked as flat and cold as glass. "I don't make threats, sugar."
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"Better get your story straight about what happened with Renard last night," he said.
"I know exactly what happened."
Stokes shook his head. "You chicks just don't know shit about honor, do you?"
She pushed his hand away. "I know it doesn't involve committing a felony. I'll go talk to those neighbors now."
9
Nick stood in the pirogue, his gaze focused on a watery horizon, his mind concentrating completely on his slow, precise movements. Balance… grace… calm… breathe… harmonize mind, body, spirit… sense the water beneath the boat-fluid, yielding… become as the water…
Despite the cool of the day, sweat beaded on his forehead and soaked through his sleeveless gray sweatshirt. Biceps and triceps flexed and trembled as he moved. The strain came not from the Tai Chi form, but from within, from the battle to remain focused.
Move slowly… without force… without violence…
A scene from the night broke his concentration for a heartbeat. Renard… blood… force… violence… The sense of harmony he had been seeking pulled away from him and was gone. The pirogue jerked beneath his feet. He dropped to the seat of the boat and cradled his head in his hands.
He had built the boat himself from cypress and marine plywood, and painted it green and red like the old swampers had done years ago to identify themselves as serious fishermen and trappers. He had been glad to come back to the swamp. New Orleans was a discordant place. Looking back, he had always felt spiritually fractured there. This was where he had come from: the Atchafalaya-over a million acres of wilderness strung along the edges with a garland of small towns like Bayou Breaux and St. Martinville, and smaller towns like Jeanerette and Breaux Bridge, and places that seemed too small and inconsequential to have names, though they did.
He had passed his boyhood some miles removed from one of those places, on a house barge tethered to the bank of a nameless lake. He remembered his father as a swamper, fishing and trapping, before the oil boom hit and he took a job as a welder and moved the family to Lafayette. They had lived richer there, but not better. Armand Fourcade had confessed more than once he had left a part of his soul in the swamp. Only since coming back had Nick begun to realize what his father had meant. Here he could feel whole and centered. Sometimes.
This was not one of those times.
Reluctantly, he picked up his paddle and started the boat toward home. The sky was hanging low, dulling the color of the swamp, tinting everything a clingy gray: the fragile new lime green leaves of the tupelos that stood like sentinels in the water, the lacy greenery of the willows and hackberry trees that covered the islands, the few yellow-tops that had been tricked into opening by the warmth that had come too early in the season. This day was cool, but if the weather heated up again, the bright flowers would soon crowd the banks, and white-topped daisy fleabane and showy black-eyed Susans would grow down to the water's edge to blend in with the tangles of poison ivy and alligator weed and ratten vine.