Depth Perception (3 page)

For a full minute she stood there. aware that her heart was beating too fast. Not wanting to shatter the equanimity she had struggled so hard to achieve, she left the photographs facedown and backed away from the table. Behind her were the stairs. Turning, she took the steps two at a time to the second level.

Four doors opened to the hall. She started down the hall at a determined clip, opening doors as she went In the bathroom, she strode across the tile floor and flung open the window. The house needed air and light and life. She could feel the memories pressing down on her as she crossed to the guest room and did the same. She tried hard to shut out the ghosts, but they were powerful and encroached on her like an invading army.

In her mind's eye she saw Kyle running down the hall, his bare feet slapping against the wood floor. His sweet voice echoing in the hall, "Mommy! Daddy's home!"

Nat paused at the door to the room she and Ward had once shared. The place where they'd talked and laughed and made it child together. Not giving herself time to think, she shoved open the door. Ghosts scurried out of sight, but she knew they were there. She could feel their presence as surely as she felt the hot slash of grief.

The room was vacant and sullen, the mattress bare. A layer of dust had collected atop the dresser and chest. From where she' stood, she could see into the bathroom. Same off-white tile. Same etched-glass shower door. Everything was the same, less the souls of the people who'd once made the house a home.

She left the master bedroom and crossed the hall to Kyle's room. She shoved open the door and for an instant saw the room as it had been three years ago. A twin bed draped with Spiderman sheets and piled high with stuffed animals. The antique desk that had once been Ward's. A toy box in the shape of a boat. The scent of cedar from the hamster cage...

The sudden pang of grief took her breath. Some days she still couldn't believe he was gone. Couldn't believe the merciful God she'd always known would be so cruel as to take him away from her. The child she'd loved more than her own life. But Nat knew it hadn't been the Lord who'd taken him from her. The thought gave her the strength 'she needed to blink back tears she was determined not to cry. No, she thought darkly, she hadn't come back here to cry. She'd done enough grieving in the last three years to last a lifetime. Nat had returned to Bellerose to find a killer.

Taking a steadying breath, she walked over to the window that looked out over the backyard. It was open a couple of inches, probably by the realtor in an attempt to circulate air. Nat could hear the crickets chirping, the incessant buzz of the cicadas, and the song of a lone mockingbird. Signs of life that she badly needed to hear at that moment.

Spreading the curtains, she knelt and opened the window the rest of the way. Her eyes went immediately to the screen. The police report indicated the screen had been cut. Sure enough, just above the latch. a neat four-inch slit had been cut into the screen. She studied the curved edges of the hole, realized it was just big enough for a hand to reach inside and unlatch the lock.

She ran her fingertip along the edge of the slit. "How did you cut the screen from the inside, you son of a bitch?" she whispered.

Straightening, she left the bedroom and went downstairs and out the front door. She unloaded her suitcase from the trunk, snagged her purse and briefcase off the seat, and lugged everything inside. She set the suitcase by the stairs, then carried her bag and briefcase to the dining room table. Pulling out the manila folder, she opened it and looked down at the notes written in a painfully familiar childlike scrawl.

Mommy.

Bad man came in ar house n hurted me an daddy.

kill Branden to.

gona hurt more kidz

Make him stop.

hell hurt you to

monster in the woods

bad man take ricky. kill again. hurry.

Nat studied the third note she'd received. It had taken quite a bit of research, but she'd finally figured out the note was referring to Brandon Bastille, a little boy who'd drowned two years earlier. His death had been ruled an accident by the parish coroner's office. But Nat knew it was no accident.

The problem was going to be proving it.

Chapter 3

The Bastille place sat on river bottomland at the north end of the bayou where the soil was as black and rich as Texas oil. Nat stopped the Mustang at the end of the lane and stared at the faded letters on the battered mailbox, trying hard to convince herself she was doing the right thing.

She'd spent the last six months planning every detail of her trip back to Bellerose. Thanks to the Internet and newspaper archives, researching Brandon Bastille's so-called accidental drowning had been relatively easy. Having grown up in Bellerose, Nat knew of Nick Bastille. She knew he'd grown up poor. Knew his father was a cotton farmer and they still spoke Cajun French. But she and Nick hadn't run in the same circles. He'd left Bellerose for New Orleans some eighteen years ago, and their paths had never crossed.

It had been front-page news when he'd been sent to Angola State Prison. It had also made the front page when he'd been released just two days ago. A phone call to the local police department had confirmed that he was returning to Bellerose. People had a right to know if there was going to be an ex-con in their midst, after all. And so Nat had timed her pilgrimage back to coincide with his.

God help us both,
she thought and turned the Mustang into the lane.

When she'd been safe in her room at the River Oaks Convalescent Home in Baton Rouge, approaching Nick Bastille had seemed like the most logical place to begin. Now that she was here, the nerves she'd been feeling all day had edged into a very bad case of uncertainty. It wasn't going to be easy convincing a man his son--a child whose death had been ruled accidental by the parish coroner--had been murdered.

A plume of white dust billowed as she sped toward the house. The place looked like the dozens of other farms in the area that had fallen upon hard times. The rail fence was badly in need of paint. The fields on either side of the lane were barren and riddled with milkweed and thistle and a hundred other weed varieties she couldn't name. A few scraggly stalks of last year's sugarcane quivered in the breeze.

The lane curved, and a moment later a two-story frame house loomed into view. It had once been white, but the paint had long since fallen victim to the elements. Nat spotted the Chevy pickup near the barn, and the reality of what she was about to do sent another jolt of uncertainty through her. Not giving herself time to rethink her decision to do this, she parked next to the truck and started toward the house. She'd rehearsed her lines a thousand times in the last weeks. She'd drilled them into her brain along with the knowledge that if she was going to get the job done she would have to keep her emotions out of it.

But as she took the crumbling steps and crossed to the door, all of her carefully rehearsed lines stuck in her throat like shards of glass. Her heart was beating hard and fast against her ribs as she rapped on the screen door with her knuckles. The urge to hightail it back to her car was powerful, but Nat had long since given up on the idea of running away.

She'd just rallied the nerve to knock a second time when the door swung open, and she found herself staring at Nick Bastille. Wearing nothing more than a pair of low-rise jeans and a snarl, he was the epitome of primal male beauty. His piercing gaze was a lot more hostile than friendly. Heavy brows rode low over eyes that were as dark and mysterious as the bayou at midnight. His cheekbones were high, the planes of his face sharply angled. His jaw sported a day's growth of black stubble. He looked as hard and chiseled as a man could be and not be carved from stone.

As if of their own accord, her eyes did a quick sweep down the front of him. He was well over six feet tall, but for the effect he was having on her he might as well been the size of a mountain. His bare chest revealed pectorals that were rounded with muscle and sprinkled generously with black hair. His abdomen was as hard and flat as a frozen pond in winter.  His arms were etched with the green-blue ink of intricate tattoos, reminding her that he was an ex-con, that she should be careful when dealing with him.

Still, something inside her stirred at the utter maleness of him. A rousing that was as unfamiliar as it was unwelcome. Nat had never been one to ogle men. She'd never been impressed by such topical things as physical attributes. But she wasn't so dead inside that she didn't acknowledge the fact that this man oozed sex appeal. That her body had noticed. And that a wave of heat was slowly making its way up her body and into her face.

That she was capable of feeling anything at all stunned her. Up until this moment, she'd thought that part of her was dead. Torn from her heart by grief and the loss of the only man she had ever loved.

"You lost, little girl?”

The smooth-as-whiskey drawl seemed incongruous with the rest of him, but Nat knew better than to be taken in by the refined voice. This man was about as refined as a pack of wild dogs. "Are you Nick Bastille?"

Folding his arms across his bare chest, he leaned against the jamb, looking amused. "You selling something?”

"No. I just ... need to speak to him."

"You mind if I ask what about?"

"It's ... a personal matter.”

His eyes raked down the front of her, and she felt every inch of his perusal as if he'd peeled away her clothes and touched her flesh with his fingertips.

"Personal, huh?" One side of his mouth quirked, but Nat couldn't tell if it was a smile or if he had a bad taste in his mouth. "Look,
chere,
if Mike sent you, this probably isn't a good time."

She didn't know anyone by the name of Mike and had no idea what he was talking about. "Nobody sent me."

His eyes did another slow, dangerous sweep of her, his expression telling her his initial surprise had given way to curiosity. ''I'm Nick Bastille. What's this about?"

''I'm Nat Jennings." She stuck out her hand, hoping he didn't notice her wet palm or recognize her name.

Never taking his eyes from hers, he accepted her hand. His palm was calloused and rough. Even though his grip was gentle, she sensed the power behind it. If he'd recognized her name, he gave no indication.

He released her hand and opened the door wider. Her heart pinged hard against her ribs when he stepped onto the porch. Nat wasn't exactly short at five feet five inches, but Nick Bastille towered over her, and she amended her initial estimation of his height. The man was at least six four.

“The house is hot as an oven," he said in a slow Cajun drawl. "Air conditioner's on the fritz. More comfortable out here on the porch." He strode to one of two columns, looked out over the barren field for a moment, then turned to face her.  "I've got to leave for work in a few minutes, so you might want to tell me what brought you all the way out here when I can see this is the last place you want to be.”

At some point her heart had begun to pound. All of her carefully rehearsed lines left her mind the instant his eyes met hers. Within their depths she saw the glint of amusement, but it was hard and unpleasant now and played on her nerves like the hot strike of a match on gunpowder.

"I want to talk to you about your son," she blurted.

His eyes went cold and brittle, like liquid steel plunged into ice water. "I don't have a son."

"I'm talking about Brandon."

"My boy died two years ago."

"I know." She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone talc dry. "I'm sorry. I know how difficult it is to lose a child.”

"Do you?"

She met his gaze in kind, angered even though she knew he probably didn't know what she'd gone through in the last three years. "Yes."

He didn't ask her to elaborate, didn't even look interested. He simply gazed at her with an expression that was so cold it brought gooseflesh to her arms.

"My son died, too," she said. "Three years ago. He was . . . murdered. In our home. My husband, Ward Ratcliffe, was killed, too."

"What does that have to do with me?"

Nat crossed to him on shaking legs, close enough for her to see the questions in his eyes, the hostility burning just beneath the surface, the underlying traces of pain a parent never recovered from. "I don't know how to tell you this, so I'm just going to say it. Brandon's death was not an accident, Mr. Bastille."

Shock registered in his eyes, and then his mouth pulled back into what she could only describe as a snarl. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"He didn't drown in that pond alone."

He came off the column like a puppet jerked to attention by an overzealous puppeteer. "What is this? Some kind of sick fucking joke?"

"N-no."

His lips peeled back to reveal straight white teeth that were clenched in fury. "What are you saying?"

Nat took a quick step back. "I'm sorry I have to tell you this, but your son was murdered."

"Murdered?" His laugh was a terrible sound, but the look in his eyes was worse. "Where do you get off telling me something like that?"

"I know this is difficult to hear—"

"Difficult is not the right word, you crazy bitch. Who the hell are you?"

"I don't blame you for being angry a-and confused. If you'll just let me ex—"

"Lady I'm a hell of a lot more than angry and confused. I'm fucking furious and an inch away from showing you exactly what a furious man can do. If you had a brain inside that pretty head of yours, you'd get in your car and get the hell out of my sight before I do something we're both going to regret."

The temptation to run was strong, but Nat resisted. She was shaking, but in a quiet place deep inside she knew there was nothing this man could do to her that could be any worse than what she had already endured. It was a twisted way to bolster her courage she knew, but it worked.