The Whispering Room

“No, not really. The criminal brain refers to the correlation between serious crime and brain abnormalities in the perpetrator. The cause of the anomalies can be any number of reasons—head trauma, chemical ingestion, birth defects. But the concept of the evil gene suggests that the propensity for violence—for evil, if you will—can be passed down genetically from family member to family member. Not only that, current studies indicate that behavior and life experiences can alter the biochemistry of certain genes and these changes can be encoded into our DNA and passed on to our children.”

“Are you saying that Paul Courtland’s killer was born with an evil gene? Is that where this conversation is going?” Evangeline asked with open skepticism.

“No, not at all. Just the opposite, in fact.”

“Then I’m afraid you’ve already lost me.”

“Just bear with me. You’ll soon understand.” Lena paused, as if to gather her thoughts. “The subject of my current book is a woman named Mary Alice Lemay. Have you ever heard of her?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“I’m not surprised. She’s been confined to a state psychiatric hospital for more than thirty years. Her name has long since faded from the public consciousness.”

“What did she do?”

“She killed her three small sons. Two were hanged, one was stabbed and drowned. The boys were five, three and eighteen months. When the authorities arrived at the house, they also found evidence that Mary Alice had recently given birth to her sixth child, although they never found the infant’s body.”

Evangeline suppressed a shudder. “You said her sixth child. What about the other two?”

“Both girls, ages six and eight at the time. They didn’t have so much as a scratch on them. In fact, there was some indication that the youngest daughter, Rebecca, may have helped with at least one of the slayings. But at six years old, she could hardly be held accountable for her actions, especially if she believed, as her mother apparently did, they were carrying out God’s will.”

“Is that what she claimed? It was God’s will that she murder her sons?”

“She said she killed her sons to save their souls from eternal damnation.”

“Did it work?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Her motive. Did the jury buy it?”

“She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a state psychiatric hospital rather than to death row, so yes, I suppose it worked.”

Evangeline knew it happened, mothers killing their own children, but it was something she would never be able to fathom. She certainly couldn’t lay claim to any mother-of-the-year awards, but she’d sooner take her own life than harm J.D.

“Mary Alice’s husband was a man named Charles Lemay,” Lena continued. “When he was just five years old, his father, Earl, was convicted of raping and murdering three young women in East Texas and burying their bodies on the family farm. He was sent to the Walls Unity in Huntsville and was executed some years later. Charles’s mother moved the family to Texarkana where she remarried and her three children took their stepfather’s last name.”

“I don’t blame them,” Evangeline murmured.

“So far as I’ve been able to determine—and I’ve been researching this case for nearly a year now—the family lived a fairly normal and middle-class life until the older boy, Carl, was arrested for the murder of a female classmate when he was seventeen. Her body was found buried in a vacant lot adjacent to the family’s backyard. The girl had been raped and beaten to death, just like his father’s victims.”

“The evil gene,” Evangeline murmured.

“Carl Lemay was also sent to Huntsville. He remained incarcerated for more than forty years before he was finally paroled as an old man.”

Lena bent forward and picked up her cup. But the coffee had cooled by this time, and she set it back down with a grimace.

“After the mother and stepfather died, Charles and his sister, Leona, moved to Louisiana. They both settled in New Orleans, but some years later, Charles got a job as a sales rep with a chemical company in Houma. Around that same time, he started using the name Lemay again. And this is when he met Mary Alice.”

“Did she know about his past?”

“Probably not at that time. But I think she must have found out about it later. I’m certain that was a factor in what she did to her sons.”

“So she married this Charles Lemay.”

Lena nodded. “Yes, against her family’s wishes, apparently. He was older. Very handsome and charming and by all accounts, it was love at first sight for Mary Alice. But right from the start, there were disturbing signs. Charles Lemay was cunning and manipulative, and Mary Alice’s family and friends were put off by his controlling nature. But she ignored their warnings and married him anyway.”

“They almost always do,” Evangeline said.