Chapter 15 #2
He raises a brow in surprise. Wren always looks at fact and logic for her answers.
She rarely picks a fruit from an untested branch, and she requires at least three peer-reviewed papers to make most decisions.
He asked her to help him choose a laptop last year, and she did the best damn imitation of a Consumer Reports magazine he had ever seen.
So following a hunch? It’s concerning, but it’s also intriguing, coming from her.
“Try to sell it to me here, Muller. I just want to make sure we don’t let this asshole slip through some legal loophole.
We need a tight case against him every step of the way.
” He feels himself falling over the edge of hope, and a familiar anxiety creeps its way in.
Letting Jeremy Rose slip through his fingers is something he will never get past, like a wound that won’t heal and keeps ripping open each time it’s about to scab over.
Richard was murdered because Rose was free to do it.
Leroux will take that guilt to his grave, but he can’t reinfect Wren with it.
“What evidence do we have?” he asks, keeping his tone as measured as he can.
She closes her eyes and waves her hands in front of her like she does when her mind is going faster than her words can keep up with.
“No, okay, listen. Philip spent time with Jeremy. Recently. We know this from what went down in Salem. What if Philip somehow got Jeremy’s blood?
Jeremy was sleeping in his house! Trudeau is now MIA in Massachusetts, having completely slipped into oblivion.
Convenient, when two young women went missing and one’s been found murdered.
What if Philip is here in New Orleans and he planted the blood at the scene?
The religious undertones, the victim’s profile …
It’s all leading back to him, and as crazy as it sounds, maybe he pulled it off.
He’s evaded it all up until this point.”
“That might sound crazy to someone unfamiliar with these men, but honestly, after Price filled us in about Trudeau and his history, it doesn’t feel out of the realm of possibility.” One thing Leroux has learned to do is listen to the birds instead of closing the windows.
“And he’s missing! Come on, where is he?” Wren asks, energized.
There is hope in her excitement, a palpable note of confirmation bias, because Leroux led her there himself.
He brought forth the idea that Philip may have been at the scene or may be the one responsible for Richard’s death, and now she’s on a crash course of grief and vengeance that could lead her astray if she isn’t careful—if he isn’t careful.
He can see now that she wants Philip to be the one who did it.
She doesn’t want to believe Jeremy was able to take the single most important thing from her; she doesn’t want him to have that power.
From what Leroux’s seen, Jeremy is desperate to maintain the upper hand.
He knows he doesn’t have Richard’s death to hold over her, but he keeps trying to avoid admitting it because the possibility is powerful enough.
But even if they can get Jeremy to confess that he wasn’t the lone killer, what would it do for them?
The word of a monster doesn’t hold without evidence to back it up.
“This is all interesting, but I have to concentrate on finding Beth Landry,” Leroux says, trying to stay productive. He and Wren are thinking the same thing, but with Beth’s life hanging in the balance, they have to triage.
“I hate feeling so helpless,” she says quietly, slumping backward into her seat. With everything Wren’s been going through lately, her bursts of confidence have been short.
“Anything interesting come from the autopsy?” he asks, choosing to steer the conversation into a lane where she will feel completely competent.
She sighs, wringing her hands. When she looks up, he can see a hint of that spark. “We’re still cataloging the body parts, although it looks like they were dead much longer than Melissa. He may have even robbed graves for them, because there’s evidence of embalming.”
“A grave robber? What the fuck?” he asks, genuine shock painting his tone.
She catches herself chewing at her own lip. “Believe it or not, there was a case like this in Virginia a few years back. A guy was stealing body parts from graves and leaving them around to scare people.”
“Nothing should surprise me anymore, but damn, it still does.” He sighs.
Wren nods. “I left a voicemail down in Quantico for Dr. Scarpetta to see if she has any insights from that case that could help us here.”
He shakes his head. “This guy isn’t some deranged hide-and-seek enthusiast.”
Wren sighs. “I think you’re right, but if there are straws, I am prepared to grasp at them.”
“Are the body parts just to throw a curveball? To make us chase a dead end maybe?” he asks almost to himself.
Wren nods. “It seems like they were used as props. A lead-up to the main attraction, if you will.” She takes a deep breath before continuing.
“However, Melissa was incapacitated with what appeared to be a hammer or a heavy flashlight blow to her skull, one that was done suddenly and was probably unplanned. It appears the ligature strangulation is what killed her—although, based on the petechial hemorrhaging around her orbital sockets, it was likely prolonged and torturous.”
“Got any good news in there?” he asks.
She thinks for a moment. “Her eyes were removed postmortem.”
He sighs, standing up. “Guess not.”
When Leroux arrives home late that evening, he tosses his keys onto the counter.
They clatter across the fake marble and careen into a set of tin canisters that his husband, Andrew, insists are the key to keeping ingredients fresh.
Leroux doesn’t know if he buys it, but he also doesn’t know why chefs have to sift flour, so he just lets Andrew have that one.
Besides, the canisters look nice enough, and they double as a pretty ace hiding spot for his cigarettes when he finds himself wanting to avoid a lecture about the whole lung cancer thing.
Now his head hurts. It feels like two big hands are squeezing him like a sponge, making the world seem way too loud and lights far too bright. This kind of headache pisses him off, because there is no amount of water or aspirin that will help it, and that just seems like bullshit to him.