The Whispering Room

“Did they come into contact with one another?”

“Almost certainly they did. And you can imagine the impact such a meeting would have had on someone as fragile as Rebecca Lemay. She’d had no contact with her mother or sister for years, and it’s my belief that seeing Mary Alice unleashed a flood of suppressed memories—her father’s abuse and her complicity in at least one of her brother’s deaths. Those memories would have devastated her. Perhaps the only way she could justify what she’d done was by convincing herself that she, too, had been carrying out God’s will. And if she’d been recruited as one of His soldiers, then her mission wasn’t yet over. It would be her spiritual duty to finish what her mother had started.”

“Meaning?”

“The only way to destroy the evil embedded in the Lemay family DNA would be to destroy all the male progeny.”

“But her mother had already done that by killing the father and sons,” Evangeline pointed out.

“Not completely. A few weeks after Rebecca left Pinehurst, Carl Lemay was found murdered in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of Texarkana, where he’d relocated after being released from prison.”

Evangeline rubbed the sudden tingles at the back of her neck. “You think Rebecca was responsible?”

“Yes, I do. And I think she was responsible for two other murders, as well. Remember I told you that Charles Lemay’s sister, Leona, moved to New Orleans? She married a man named Robert Courtland and they had two sons, Paul and David.”

Evangeline stared at her in speechless shock.

Lena inclined her head slightly. “Now you see where all this has been leading. David and Paul Courtland are the direct descendants of Earl Lemay. They are the first cousins of the little boys who died more than thirty years ago at Mary Alice’s hand. Paul and David were, so far as I can determine, the last male members of the Lemay family.”

“If all that’s true—” which was a very big if in Evangeline’s book “—Rebecca Lemay’s mission would be over, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, except for one thing.”

“And that is?”

“Carl Lemay was stabbed to death in his bed,” Lena said. “But the use of snakes with Paul and David Courtland—”

“Wait a minute,” Evangeline said with a frown. “How did you know about the snakes? It wasn’t in the paper.”

Lena shrugged as if how she’d obtained the information was of no consequence. Evangeline remembered what Lapierre had said about the woman. She was well-connected in the NOPD.

“I think Rebecca is now working with an accomplice,” she said. “The Courtland brothers weren’t just killed. There was an element of torture involved. I think Rebecca Lemay has hooked up with someone who has his own calling.”

Evangeline thought of the blond woman who had supposedly been following Paul Courtland just before he died.

“Do you know what Rebecca looks like?”

“I have a picture of the girls before they were separated, but I have no idea what they look like now.” Lena bent forward and pulled a photograph from the pages of a book lying on the coffee table. She handed the picture to Evangeline.

The shot might have come from the pages of a Southern magazine, Evangeline thought. In the background, cypress trees dripped with Spanish moss, and in the foreground, two breathtaking little blond girls in white dresses clung to one another’s hands as they smiled for the camera.

“They look exactly the same,” Evangeline said. “How do you know which is which?”

“If you look closely, you’ll see the one on the right is a smidgen taller than the other one. I believe that’s Ruth.”

For the longest time, Evangeline couldn’t tear her gaze from those angelic faces. It was hard to imagine that one of them would grow up to be a cold-blooded killer, no matter her motivation.

“Do you have any idea of Rebecca Lemay’s whereabouts?”

“It’s possible she’s gone back to where she grew up in Lafourche Parish. The nearest town is Torrence. I’ve been in contact with the sheriff’s department down there. The old Lemay house has been abandoned for years, but a few days ago, a fisherman spotted someone in one of the upstairs windows. They actually thought it was Mary Alice, but of course, that’s impossible. I think they may have seen Rebecca.”

“Did anyone from the sheriff’s department check it out?”

“I haven’t been able to verify that. People in that area are still a little touchy about what happened. I doubt anyone’s all that anxious to go out there to that old house. Too many ghosts.”

When Evangeline handed her the photograph, Lena took a moment to carefully tuck it back into the book.

“I would very much like to speak with Rebecca Lemay,” she said. “I would go down there and check that sighting out for myself, but as Captain Lapierre probably explained, I don’t leave my house much these days. I’m afraid I wouldn’t get very far. That’s where you come in.”