What She Doesn't Know (35 page)

“Let’s go to Connard,” she said. “We may not have proof, but we have a name. If he’s potentially squatting, that would give Connard reason to question him. If he could get a look at that computer, he’d realize this is all tied in together. A feather off that mask could prove one of them was in Boston.”

“We’ll tell him everything, even about the Gathering. If we can convince him that something is going on, maybe he’ll give us some help.”

She lifted up the picture of the girl, now damp from where she’d grasped it as they’d run. “Maybe he can figure out what was written here.”

He pulled around to Brian’s house. “I want to get a couple of things. Stay here and call Connard, tell him we’re coming in and we’ll wait until he can see us.”
 

“We have to convince him this is real. The best thing for everyone is to get these two into custody before the Gathering.”

They had been in his house. In his things. He stood in the closet where his box had been thrown back on the shelf. How had they found him? It didn’t matter. He had to get out of here. His fists clenched at the invasion of his privacy. First into Xanadu, then the warehouse, and now his house. Fury washed through him. He would kill them. Oh, yes, and he would enjoy it.

He threw his clothing into the trunk of his car, not caring about anything but the costume wrapped in plastic and the mask. Sira would need those tomorrow. Within minutes, he’d dismantled the components of his computer and placed them in the back seat. He wiped every surface clean of prints. If the police got involved, they could find out who had a lease on this place, but they wouldn’t find him. He would find someplace to stash the car, but he would return here. They would be back, he was sure of it. And he would be waiting.

CHAPTER 23

Detective Alex Connard looked at the notes he’d taken when Rita Brooks and Christopher LaPorte had come in to talk to him. Rita he could write off as being a little unbalanced, but Christopher was a different story. He hadn’t recently sustained an injury to his head, and he was a successful businessman back in Atlanta. He didn’t look like the kind of guy to be swayed by a woman, even one he obviously cared about.

He promised he would check into it, but they’d obviously thought he was dismissing them. They’d left in frustration. Maybe he had dismissed them, but their words stuck to him and he’d looked everything over again.

Detective John Porter stopped by his desk. “You heading out? We got a long day tomorrow.”

He considered telling Porter about the strange case of Brian LaPorte but nixed it. “Yeah, see you in the morning.”

He was ready to go home and pack in some sleep, but he couldn’t stop thinking about this. If the mask was in the house, he could verify whether a feather off of it matched the one found in the car that hit Rita. Even though she had given him a feather from the mask, he had to take it from the mask itself. No way could he get a search warrant, though, based on what they’d told him. There wasn’t enough. But there was enough to pique his interest. He pulled Brian’s file again.

It read much like it had before, but this time he wasn’t looking at it as an attempted suicide. The injuries from impact were in line with the fall. What did strike him as odd were the four small marks on his collarbone. Finger marks? And the tie tack. Why remove one tie tack and not the other?

He studied the back of the girl’s picture. Whatever was beneath the marks would probably reveal Sira’s real name. If she existed, he reminded himself. He did a background check on Edward and found something curious. He had legally changed his name several years back. Using his social security number, he pulled up his previous name.

“I’ll be damned.”

He took the picture down to a colleague in Forensics who verified what he suspected.
 

“I’ll be damned,” he said again. Christopher and Rita were on the right track—and the wrong track.

He looked at the address in the Garden District. He’d stop by on his way home to check things out. If the guy was illegally in residence, he’d have reason to look further. Some of the old homes were undergoing renovation, and he’d had problems before with homeless people holing up in a house waiting to be torn down.

He headed out.

From Brian LaPorte’s living room, Edward watched the back corner of his previous home. The new locks had only been a temporary setback. Now he sat in the warmth and peered through the broken branches that allowed him a view of his driveway.
 

It wasn’t long before his patience was rewarded. Headlights slashed across the trees before the car came to a halt.

“Let me handle this,” he said. “I’m the boy. You get tomorrow. Tonight is mine.”

Sira protested, but he ignored her as he stole through the back yard. The West African Exorcism dagger was warm in his hand from holding it all this time. He’d seen the name on the brass plate and knew he had to have it. It fit. He was the Exorciser.
 

He didn’t recognize the car in the driveway, but once he got inside, he did recognize the man knocking on the door. It was the detective who had investigated poor Rita’s near fatal accident in the hospital parking lot. So Rita and Christopher had apparently convinced him that something might be awry. All allies must be banished.

Twilight colored the sky deep blue. Edward toyed with the idea of answering the knock on the door, but his lease was packed away with his other papers. He knew where the detective would go once he came inside. The man was already walking around to the back of the house. Edward threw the breaker and slinked into the darkest shadows.

A flashlight’s beam slashed through the house. The man once again identified himself and called out to anyone who might be inside. He tried the door and found it unlocked. And he stepped inside.

Edward heard the useless flick of light switches. It wasn’t long before the detective was venturing down the hallway, still calling out his identity. He only took a few moments with the empty rooms. He took a little longer checking out the old mattress and nightstand. The beam of light trailed along the floor, creeping toward the closet. The door was half closed, necessitating that the detective push it open before he could look inside.

Sweat trickled down Edward’s armpits, and his mouth felt as though he’d licked the dusty floor. He couldn’t moisten his mouth enough to swallow, and the dry, gulping sound seemed explosively loud to his ears.
 

I should have done this. Look at you, sweating like a pig. Nervous sissy.

Sira’s voice taunted him, and he blinked furiously when sweat dripped into his eyes. He should have let her do this. She was good at it. Cool, calm. His muscles ached from holding the knife in front of him, at the ready.
She
wouldn’t be sweating.

I’m the boy. I can do this. I’m the boy,
he said back, but his words faltered.

He blinked again, grimacing at the sting of sweat and tears and the truth. He
was
a sissy. His body didn’t make enough testosterone to grow more than a few hairs on his chin. Even with the supplemental shots, when he could get them, he wasn’t man enough.
 

His eyes snapped open at the creak of the door. A hand on the wood, the beginning of the sweep of light that would reveal him cowering in the corner.

He lunged forward, feeling the knife sink into flesh, and he kept pushing harder and harder. A gun went off, startling him so much he let go of the knife’s handle. He hadn’t seen a gun. Why hadn’t he thought about a gun? He waited for pain but felt nothing. He hadn’t been hit.

The detective slumped to the floor, making guttural noises in the dark. The flashlight had skittered to the far corner, lighting only that part of the closet. The gun made a louder
thunk.

Finish it!
Sira’s voice commanded.

“I don’t want to see,” he whispered, his voice high and near tears.

Sissy boy! Finish it!

The man was struggling, his breath coming raspy. Maybe the knife had punctured his lung. How long would it take him to die? No, he had to make sure it was done. Sira would never let him live it down. She would never let him do anything again.

He didn’t want to hear those taunts again, never, ever again. He looked down at the man who was trying to reach his gun. Edward grasped the knife handle and pulled it out. Blood was everywhere, warm and sticky on his hand. This was why Sira did the killing. She liked blood, liked death.
 

“I’m a boy! I’m a boy! I’m a boy!”

With every sentence, he stabbed again and again, until he collapsed on the floor crying.

Get up, pansy.

He got up before she moved on to the nastier names. He had to clean this mess, had to get rid of the body. All the anger drained from him now that it was over. What had he done? He’d killed a cop. He’d fry for that.
 

He walked to the adjoining bathroom, Sira screaming at him to get the hell out of there. He didn’t see her looking back at him from the mirror this time. He saw Edward. Edward who had taken care of the intruder on his own. But he could feel her trying to take over. His mouth twitched; the muscles at his temple throbbed. He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed her back inside him.
 

“Not this time. I’m the boy.”

He returned to the closet. Instead of looking at the detective, he lifted his gaze to the two boxes he’d left on the upper shelf. They watched him, judged him.

Clean up this mess!
his mother’s voice echoed.
You’re an embarrassment to the whole family.

“Ya didn’t raise me to be a slob, did ya, Mama? Ya raised me to be a la-dy.” He sneered at the box. “You and Daddy only forgot that one detail ‘bout me being born with a pecker.”

Susan Sharp had been the third child in an average, middle-class family. Her mother, Pauline, ran a seamstress business from the house, sewing for uppity New Orleans women like Iris LaPorte. Bob was an auto mechanic with a short temper.
 

From an early age, Susan remembered multiple doctor’s visits when the place between her legs was poked and prodded. Then she was sent out of the room so the doctor could discuss her own privates with her parents. But they wouldn’t talk about them with her. There were the pills she had to take, pills that were never adequately explained.
 

Susan hated dresses and dolls; she wanted to climb trees and wrestle her brothers. The kids teased her, calling her a she-boy, yet the boys were surprised that she was as strong as they were when she punched them. She was reprimanded by teachers who told her to start acting like a young lady. She contemplated what girls were like: frilly, giggly, whiny, delicate. Acting like a girl was too much work.

When she got older, she asked why the doctor studied her down there. “Don’t show anyone your privates,” her mother said in answer. “Yours are a little different.”

How different? And why? The subject was taboo, as though she harbored a terrible secret between her legs.
 

She found out how different when she, Carla, and a boy played doctor in the fort in Susan’s back yard. First the girls “treated” the boy, poking and prodding his penis and testicles. Carla giggled incessantly. Susan felt a strange longing as she touched the squishy flesh and watched in wonder as it grew firm.
 

Carla was next. The boy touched her folds of skin and pried out the pink nub. Her skin was smooth, and the folds fit together perfectly.

“Your turn,” Carla said as she pulled on her clothes.

Susan shook her head.
 

“You examined us,” the boy said. “Now we get to look at you.”

She started to run, but they grabbed her. She was afraid to scream out. If someone rescued her, she’d have to admit what they were doing.
 

The boy pinned her down while Carla pulled down her pants.

“Oh, my gosh,” Carla said as she pried Susan’s legs apart. “Something happened to your pee pee.”

“Lemme see, lemme see!” the boy said.

Susan stopped fighting. It only hurt more, though nothing hurt as much as the horror on their faces.
 

“Your pee pee’s all ugly, like Frankenstein!”

Susan had gone against her mother’s wishes, and now everyone would know she was a freak. Now
she
knew she was a freak. Hadn’t she suspected it all along?

Susan was drunk the only time she’d tried to have sex, and it was only
because
she was drunk and overrun by the need to fit in. She had never been attracted to men but had squelched her occasional attraction to women. That had only added to her shame and confusion about her sexuality.
 

It was in the bathroom at the only party she’d ever been invited to, back in high school. Not the most romantic place, but a football player was interested in her. Wanted her. The bedrooms were already occupied.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” the boy said as he tried to jam his beautiful penis inside her. He’d looked at her and grimaced. “What the hell?”

“I had some … surgery.”

His eyes widened in horror. “A sex change operation. You
are
a boy.” He couldn’t pull on his pants fast enough.
 

The worst was what she’d heard him say to his buddies in the living room. “You lose!
It
had a penis, I’m sure of it.”

“Did you—”

“Hell, no.”

She covered her ears to the rest of it, wanting to kill herself. It wasn’t the first time, but she’d never felt it so strongly. She even checked the cabinet but didn’t think ten Tylenol would do it.

She crawled into the tub, ignoring the impatient knocking on the door she’d relocked. Only when the music died down did she leave the sanctuary of that awful place. He was gone by then, though a few of his friends were sprawled on the couch, the tug of cruel smiles on their faces.
 

She again asked her mother what was wrong with her. Pauline would only say, “You’re different. Leave it at that.”