Just Fall (7 page)

Ellie’s half smile slid wider. Her pink tongue darted out and licked her lips. “Sure.”

Detective Lucien Broussard knows he is offering useless platitudes even as the words leave his mouth. He hates himself for it, but Yvette, mother of poor missing five-year-old Olivier Cassiel, desperately needs some kind of comfort. Her eyes are red and raw; her crumpled face has aged decades in just a few days. She sits hunched in Lucien’s office guest chair, coiled in on herself as if cowering from blows.

Yvette’s boyfriend, Rudy, with impotent, frustrated rage seething just below the surface of his perspiring skin, stands next to her, awkwardly dandling their squirming two-year-old daughter.

Then it erupts. Rudy drops the toddler into Yvette’s lap. And his hands curl into fists.

“This is your fault!” he yells at her. “Olivier was with you! You are the mother!”

Rudy smashes his fist into the wall, shattering the plaster. Yvette flinches. The baby girl howls, agitation morphing into panic.

Lucien understands Yvette’s defensive posture with a fresh, sad clarity. He rises and forcefully grabs Rudy by one arm.

“Cut that shit out, or I’ll arrest you for destruction of public property. This kind of outburst helps nobody. Yvette and your daughter need you, Rudy.”

Rudy raises his free arm high and rears back to crash his fist down into Lucien’s skull. Yvette gasps.

Lucien catches Rudy’s forearm on its downward swing. “That’s enough!”

Rudy darts a glance at Lucien, then slumps and nods, the fight gone from his body. Lucien releases him. Rudy brings his hands together and brushes the plaster dust from his sore knuckles.

Lucien does his best. He does well. He counsels patience and mutual support, the power of maintaining faith and grace, and, more important, he demonstrates those qualities as he outlines the steps he and his men are taking to locate Olivier. He offers the little girl a shortbread cookie from the secret stash in his desk drawer.

At last, the couple leaves, holding hands, the toddler cradled on her mother’s shoulder and contentedly sucking the last damp, crumbled bits of cookie from her sticky fingers.

That’s when the call comes in about a dead man at the Grande Sucre Hotel.

Fifteen minutes later, Lucien walks into the chaos that has overtaken the resort, never mind its prime “sell” was tropical peace. The hysterical hotel maid who had found the body, the anxious hotel manager freaked about the bottom line, the curious hotel guests who hover and whisper and gossip, all shred this image of serenity. Not to mention a very dead man with a knife in his belly and a mutilated mouth.

Lucien’s captain, Pierre Bonnaire, has made it clear this is the force’s top priority. Given the importance of the tourist trade to St. Lucia, a murder at a resort hotel is the island’s worst nightmare. Agathe has also called seven times (and Lucien has not yet answered her calls).

Lucien rubs his temples wearily as he reads the hotel manager’s name tag:
Desmond Hippolyte.
Lucien knows that how things begin is often how they go. He speaks diplomatically but forcefully. “Desmond, you will have to ask all guests to gather in the ballroom. Employees too.”

The hotel manager is apoplectic. “You know we are talking about hundreds of people! We are at ninety-two percent of capacity…I can’t detain…Some of the guests aren’t even in the hotel! They could be anywhere on the island!”

“Those not here will go to the ballroom upon their return to the hotel. I also need a complete list of guests, as well as employees, as soon as possible.”

The hotel manager begs Lucien to speak to his fearful guests, many of whom are frantically trying to find other accommodations on the island. Rumors are rampant! Detective Broussard must tell the guests they are safe! This request Lucien denies. He can’t assure any of the guests of their safety; he has no idea what he is dealing with yet.

Desmond Hippolyte’s arms flap in the air. He blinks rapidly. Doesn’t budge.

Lucien’s tone turns sharp. “Surely you can see that an efficient investigation and a speedy arrest will be the most beneficial to the hotel in the long run, yes? Your first priority is getting me any information you have about the woman the room was registered to.”

Hippolyte blinks again. Finally he chokes out, “What shall I tell the guests?”

“As little as possible. Tell them there has been a death in the hotel; you don’t need to specify a murder. Certainly don’t tell them about the mutilation. And if they ask about it, if they’ve heard rumors, deny them. Is that clear?”

Hippolyte nods.

“Tell them that the hotel has pledged its cooperation with the police and that you hope to be able to release them soon. Then I suggest you provide food and lots of it, gratis.”

A small glimmer of an idea forms in the manager’s eyes. “And cocktails!” he says decisively.

Lucien sighs. “No. Not cocktails. We will need any potential witnesses clearheaded. Look, I understand what is at stake here; believe me, I do. It will be best for everyone if we handle this properly. Now get to it.”

Hippolyte scurries off.

Lucien dispatches a team of officers to the ballroom to take initial statements. He himself will interview the maid who discovered the corpse, but first he needs to examine the crime scene.

In the doorway of the room in question, Lucien affixes booties to his feet and snaps on latex gloves. The dead man looks like he is asleep, except for the congealed blood circling the knife wound and the grotesque absence of his lower lip. Nothing in the man’s clothes (a pair of loose-fitting linen pants, a thick cotton T-shirt, sandals, and a hat, found heaped on the floor) contains a clue about who he was.

Lucien takes note of the empty bottle of wine. The small scorch mark on the night table also catches his attention, although there is no way of knowing when it had been made. Hippolyte has told him the room had been registered to an American woman. The woman had checked in two days prior. She had paid cash, in advance, for her room, but had put a credit card down for incidentals. Hippolyte is pulling the imprint of the card for Lucien.

The body had been discovered shortly after noon. The maid, having been informed that the woman was supposed to check out that morning, had waited to clean the room. But when checkout time had come and gone and the
“Ne Pas Déranger”
sign still hung on the door, she had knocked and entered.

Lucien looks closer at the murdered man’s face. The lower lip has been cleanly sliced away; it gives the corpse an oddly ribald grimace. The man is deeply tanned; Lucien’s guess is that he was not a casual tourist. Maybe an expat living on the island, maybe a member of the international community of yacht owners who frequent St. Lucia’s ports.

He consults with the techs. No good fingerprints as of yet. A few smudges, but that’s it. Given the amount of traffic a hotel room has as a matter of course, this means someone has been careful to eradicate them.

Lucien’s phone buzzes. He glances at it. Agathe again. He sighs, knowing that if he doesn’t answer, he is only going to create more trouble for himself. He steps through the billowing curtains and out onto the room’s balcony to take the call. For a moment before hitting the “talk” button he contemplates the beautiful natural vista of sand and ocean and sky.

“Hello?”

She is in full throttle the instant she hears his voice. An invective-laced assault pours out at him. He is insensitive, he is cold, he doesn’t love her—he pulls the phone away from his ear. He does love her, of course he does, but some days he can understand why people have the urge to kill.

The first time Rob killed someone, he was sixteen years old. Of course his name wasn’t Rob then, but the name of that sixteen-year-old boy is as deeply buried as the man he killed.

But let’s start earlier. Rob was raised by a single mother until she remarried; Rob was eight then and accustomed to the rhythm of their lives together as a pair. The big house in Devon, Pennsylvania, with the apple trees; the Sunday visits to his formal and stiff grandparents; the school uniforms and rigorously scheduled activities. Horseback riding, of course (his mother rode), tennis lessons, piano.

Rob never knew his “real” father, his “birth” father, the sperm donor—call him what you please. The man wasn’t spoken about much either, at least in Rob’s presence. There were the occasional weepy mutterings he overheard when his mother’s best friend came over and the two women poured multiple vodka tonics. The muted but angry conversations between his mother and grandfather. And that endless three weeks the summer he was six, when he was left at his grandparents’ estate, feeling like an ungainly interloper: too loud, too fast, too messy, too much. His mother came back red-eyed but resolute. His grandfather seemed pleased, somehow, as if he had “won.” Won what, Rob wasn’t sure.

But then there was a new man in his mother’s life. A big, jovial presence, full of bonhomie and gin. The newcomer was talked about constantly and openly. Welcomed into the extended circle of family and friends. A lavish wedding was planned and executed. Rob was the ring bearer and included in the vows. Rob and his mother moved from the big house with the apple trees to an even larger house closer to the city. Rob didn’t mind his stepfather, really, at least not at first.

Rob was nine when he saw his stepfather hit his mother for the first time. He froze, unable to process what he was seeing, even as her head slammed into the kitchen wall and blood erupted from her nose and mouth.

It was the sound even more than the blood. The
whomp
of her soft skin, hard bone, and pliable cartilage smacking into the tiled wall, a sickening tearing crack that he would never forget. She had been running, his mom. Running to get away from the man she believed loved her, but who revealed himself as a monster. She was nearly out of the room too, had a good long lead, but the bastard caught up with her in three furious strides, seized her hair, and shoved her face into the tile. Rob, drawn from his bedroom by the commotion, stopped in his tracks and his sleepy eyes popped wide with terror. His mom saw him, and laid a gentle hand on her husband’s arm, turning him slightly so he could also see Rob was observing them.

“Go back to bed, baby.”

Rob stared at the smear of blood on the rectangular tiles, garish against their cool mint green. Rob’s fingers worried the edge of his penguin T-shirt.

“That’s right, kid. Go back to bed. This is just about your mom and me. Just a little fight. All grown-ups fight.”

Still Rob hesitated, but his mother shot him a weak smile, and pressed the sleeve of her silken shirt into her face to absorb the blood. Then she gave a little laugh.

“It looks worse than it is. Don’t worry, baby.” She gave her husband an imploring look and upon his nod, walked over to Rob, laid a hand on his shoulder, and guided him back toward his bedroom. She tucked him into bed, grabbed a handful of tissues from his night table, and replaced her sleeve with the wad of paper. She turned on his solar system projector, dusting the room with whirling stars and planets, then sat down on the edge of his bed and stroked the hair away from his forehead.

“It’s okay, honey. He’s right. All grown-ups fight. We just got a little carried away.”

He tried to protest, tried to ask questions. This made no sense to him and he was frightened. But she just hushed him, tucked his down comforter up around his neck, told him to go to sleep, and promised that this was the first time this had happened, it was all a terrible mistake, and it would never happen again.

But of course it did. Over and over again.

The violence was a constant, lurking specter in their otherwise privileged lives. But she didn’t leave him. She didn’t even fight back. There were tears and apologies and ice packs. Emergency room trips cosseted by improbable lies about falls and accidents. And then vacations and jewelry and new cars.

After each brutal storm passed, the routine was the same. His stepfather buried his face in his mother’s lap and pleaded for forgiveness. She stroked his hair and crooned, “It’s all right, baby, it’s all right,” the same sweet song she had murmured to Rob when he was little and had had a nightmare or a hard fall in the playground. And then the bastard would carry her off to their bedroom, shooting a wink and smirk at the cowering boy. Then the sounds, the grunts and moans that clawed their way into the otherwise silent mansion as Rob struggled to make sense of it all.