The Stranger You Seek

15





The Midtown house near Tenth Avenue didn’t look like a battered women’s shelter. I had driven or walked past it a million times over the years. It was ten minutes from my loft at the Georgian, but there was nothing to distinguish it from the other sprawling old Victorians that dotted Atlanta’s neighborhoods.

I’d packed for my Denver trip, then spent what was left of the morning looking for William LaBrecque. I went by the home he had once shared with his Russian wife, Darya, in Candler Park. A neighbor said it had been empty for a couple of days, that Darya and the boy left as soon as they found out LaBrecque had been released on bail. She knew he’d come back for her, said the neighbor, he always came back. I tracked down his parents and quickly discovered that Billy boy came by his rudeness and anger honestly. I hadn’t really expected them to help me haul their son off to jail, but I wasn’t prepared for them to be so utterly vile. They did share some thoughts on their daughter-in-law, and when I sifted through all the expletives, it was the words whore and slut that surfaced again and again, apparently favorites of theirs. It crossed my mind that LaBrecque probably called Darya these things while he beat her. I did learn that LaBrecque met his wife in Germany while hospitalized on an American military base during his last year of service. A hero, his parents called him. Right. He had found Darya on the Internet, one of those cyber-bride websites. She went to Germany for the meeting; they fell in love and came to the United States together seven years ago. I knew a few things his parents had omitted. The police had responded to three domestic violence calls at the LaBrecque home in the last year and a half. They had once arrested Darya even though she was bleeding and bruised, because LaBrecque met them at the door and told them she’d started the fight in a jealous rage and he’d simply defended himself. Gender does not guarantee the cops will be on your side. Child protective services had sent a social worker to the hospital once after a doctor reported suspicious bruising and broken bones on the boy. Darya finally filed a restraining order, which had done absolutely nothing to protect her.

There wasn’t a lot in LaBrecque’s folder to point me in the right direction. His parents gave me nothing. He didn’t have friends, but I figured his wife would know where he’d hide, so I started calling and leaving messages at women’s shelters all over the metro Atlanta area. No one at them volunteered any information, of course. Women’s shelters do everything within their power to protect the anonymity of their residents. But when my cell rang and the number showed up as restricted, my gut told me it was Darya.

I walked up the empty driveway toward the rambling white Victorian with the lacy peach-colored shutters. A motorized iron gate was closed and locked and I assumed staff cars and resident vehicles were parked behind the house and out of sight. I saw sections of a privacy fence surrounding the backyard, nicely painted to match the house. A security camera, barely noticeable in the upper-right corner of the enormous front porch, watched me while a tiny light under the camera lens blinked green. Traffic on the Midtown street, one of the city’s busy one-ways, was sparse this time of day. At rush hour all lanes would be crawling bumper-to-bumper.

“I’m Keye Street,” I told the woman standing behind the screen. “Darya called me.”

“Hey,” she said, and with just one word, I heard Louisiana in her accent. She pushed open the door for me. “I’m Adele. I work with CADV.”

“What’s CADV?” I asked as she ushered me inside. She was thirty, perhaps, lanky with spiky hair and bright blue-green eyes. An elaborate stained-glass tattoo ran down one bare arm. In the background, I heard women’s voices, children, a television.

“Coalition Against Domestic Violence,” Adele answered. “I’m one of the social workers on rotation here. Another brick in the wall,” she added, smiling.

She led me down the foyer past a bedroom that had been turned into an office. I saw two desks, a woman at one talking into a headset. “We have a twenty-four-hour crisis line in there,” Adele explained. “We all take turns. It’s brutal.” I looked again and noticed three security monitors, with views of the front porch, back porch, and driveway.

We turned a corner and stepped into the main living area, where several kids played on the floor and a row of women on a couch barely looked up from The Jerry Springer Show. The furniture was used Salvation Army, mismatched, long out of date. A couple of folding card tables added to the mix.

“Donated funds don’t care about decorating,” Adele said. We walked past several bedrooms with lines of single beds and cots, and through the kitchen, where two women played cards. Adele pointed to the door. “Darya’s on the back porch.”

She might have been pretty before LaBrecque went to work on her with his fists, but it was hard to tell now. Darya was smoking a cigarette, her face so bruised and misshapen that her lips wouldn’t close completely around the filter. There was a little sucking sound of air when she took a drag. My stomach did a flip-flop.

I sat down next to her on a porch swing. A dark-haired boy about seven worked resolutely on a toy car, taking it apart and reassembling it at a bright green and red child’s table. “Thank you for calling me back.”

“I want you to find him.” I detected her Russian accent even through the slur from a swollen jaw and lips. Her bruises were ugly and hard to look at. I looked instead into her eyes. She’d been shown enough disrespect. “I think I know where he will be. There is a lake near Lawrenceville in the Gwinnett County. There is a cabin there. It is private and owned by his friend who is wealthy and travels. Billy stays there sometimes. He likes to fish.”

The boy lifted his head to me for the first time when I stood to leave. “Are you going to keep my daddy from finding us?”

His fearful dark eyes set off an ache in me. “Is that what you want?” I asked gently.

His attention turned quickly back to the toy car. I thought I’d lost him, that he was too timid to answer. Perhaps he wasn’t accustomed to being asked what he wanted. But then he found his small voice. “Yes,” he answered simply.

“Well, then, don’t you worry, kiddo. You and your mom are safe here, okay?”

I waited, but it didn’t seem he had anything more to say. Darya ran her fingers through his hair, then bent to kiss the top of his head. I left feeling like a hole had been blown in me.





It was just after lunch when I pulled onto the dirt drive on Webb Gin House Road in Gwinnett County. We have a saying in Atlanta: Stay inside the perimeter where it’s safe. Not from muggings and murder and robbery, of course. That we have up the wazoo in the city. We mean Jesus freaks and guys named Bubba who only change their overalls once a week. Interstate 285, the perimeter highway, makes a big circle around the city and gives us a false sense of protection. We stay in. They stay out. That’s the way we all like it. Most of us who are non-white, non-blond, and non-Baptist would rather stomp through a shit blizzard in snowshoes than spend time Outside the Perimeter (OTP), yet here I was looking for a guy named Billy who’d already called me a Chink.

The sky had gone gray and a steady drizzle had begun. Steam rose up off the lake as I drove toward the cabin. My wounded windshield had started to fog up. The midday heat was unreal. I reached under the seat for my Glock and put it in my lap. LaBrecque wasn’t going to have a chance to do to me what he’d done to his wife. I thought about Darya’s world-weary eyes peering out behind that contused black-and-blue mask, and the anger felt like a hot iron in my throat.

I wasn’t happy with the driveway. It was three quarters of a mile at least and rose and dipped in a way that gave me glimpses of the cabin and could have easily given someone inside the same view of me, but the rain was starting to come down hard, as it often does when a cold front meets the tropical systems that hang over us in summer. I hoped it would hamper visibility and cover the sound of gravel crackling under my tires. Another hill, another bend, and I could see the cabin getting close. I decided to stop there and take the last couple hundred yards on foot. I pulled over to the side of the narrow dirt lane and wiped my windshield clear with a napkin from Krystal. Between swipes of the windshield wipers, I could see the cabin roof was tin. I stuck the Glock 10 in the back of my pants and pulled on a gray, waist-length hooded rain jacket that helped me melt into the scenery on days like this but still allowed me mobility. The wind was beginning to act up as I started down the muddy road. Rain pelted my jacket. Lightning slashed over the lake for one stunning millisecond, and I did what I’ve done since I was a kid. I began to count. One, two, two and a half, and then came the boom. A tactic my mother used when I was little to take the fear out of thunder. I’ve counted my way through many southern storms.

Deep ruts gouged the saturated red clay earth. Someone had driven here recently. Perhaps LaBrecque had come and already gone. LaBrecque drove a dark blue Dakota pickup truck, I knew from the file, but there was no way to tell now what size tire had left these marks, the ruts softened by rain and indistinct.

I walked down a hill and around a curve and got my first good look at the cabin, brick red and larger than I’d anticipated, one of those vacation homes the rich call cabins or cottages that really just look like houses to the rest of us. I saw no lights in the windows even though the day had turned dark with thunderclouds. LaBrecque’s blue pickup was parked near the front lawn, streaming with rain. A hill with stone steps cut into it sloped down to the lake. Anyone who fishes in the warm months knows it is best done early morning, late night, or after the rain comes and cools things down. Two rowboats had been pulled up to shore and flipped over near a wooden dock. I imagined LaBrecque inside getting his gear ready, a few cans of cheap beer and a hat with hooks and lures.

As I neared the cabin and started down the pebble sidewalk, I saw it. Shit. The front door was cracked open a few inches. My pulse quickened. I moved in a half crouch toward the side of the house for cover, releasing the trigger safety on my gun as I did so. It was stifling under the gray jacket. Rain dripped off my hood in front of my face and blurred my vision. I waited. Nothing. No movement, just the rush of wind and rain battering the roof and bouncing off me. Could this day get any shittier? I was about to find out.

I moved to the front door and pressed my back against the outside wall, used my foot to gently inch the cabin door open, waited a few seconds, then stuck my head round and peered inside. Cold fireplace on the right, a sofa, a recliner. A picture window looking out onto the lake provided the only light. A food bar on the left, a kitchen, lots of cowboy art on the walls. No Billy LaBrecque.

Normally I would have called out, let someone know bond enforcement was in the house, but my gut was telling me something was off. I eased my way through the kitchen into a large open space, Glock double-clutched cop-style. A staircase was railed off in the center of the room and there were four doors right and left of it, all closed. I decided to cover the obvious opening first, the stairs, which—unlike the planked cabin floor upstairs—were carpeted. They led down into an enormous game room paneled with rustic bleached wood, an impressively stocked bar, a pool table, a TV, and an antique pinball machine. No LaBrecque.

Moving slowly back up the stairs, I paused at the top. The main room was exactly as I’d left it—empty and dim except for the natural gray of the day bleeding through the big window.

I went for the door on the left first, stood to the side, tried the knob, found no resistance, pushed it open quietly, and stepped around fast, Glock steady. I was sweating. The rain jacket was clinging to my skin; my heart was pounding in my temples. My body, in all its genetic wisdom, had the nerve cells rapid-firing. Fight or flight? I wasn’t sure yet.

I checked the closet, the bathroom. Empty. I peeled off the jacket and left it, then twice more I went through this excruciating process, freezing each time the floorboard creaked under me or a door hinge complained.

When I opened the last door, I saw LaBrecque right in front of me, and it felt like I’d been smacked with a two-by-four. His face was turned away, but I instantly recognized his build, the thick neck, his heavily muscled arms. But this wasn’t the threatening bully I’d seen at the church, the man who had brutalized his wife and child and grabbed my wrist with an infuriating sense of entitlement. This William LaBrecque had had everything stripped from him. Naked, he lay on the floor, his legs pulled open, his buttocks and thighs bloodied, spattered with vicious bruises and stab wounds.

Wishbone had been here before me.

I stepped in and spun quickly, heart trip-hammering, Glock ready to open up on anyone behind the door. No one there. I checked the closet and bath, then came back to LaBrecque, touched his neck with two fingers, held his wrist for a moment. No heartbeat, but his skin was still warm. I thought about this. He was a big guy, the cabin was hot, so even naked and with no blood pumping through him, his body would stay warm awhile. I thought again about the ruts I’d seen in the road.

I stooped to see his face. I was careful to disturb as little evidence as possible while remaining alert to any sound, shadow, movement in the cabin. Sometimes I think there’s a block of ice inside me, perhaps in the heart of every investigator, something ghoulish and coldly voyeuristic.

LaBrecque had been beaten viciously with some kind of weapon. His face was battered and bloodied, unrecognizable. A fist couldn’t have done this kind of damage. I studied the spatter in the room. Cast-off on the walls and ceiling and floors, medium-velocity spatter all over, the result of blunt trauma, an intense external force. It was consistent with the pool that had formed under his head.

I used two fingers to lift his chin off the floor. There it was. Blunt-force trauma, a cave-in just above the temple that must have fractured his skull. Why the rage? I thought about Darya. Was that the connection? Had the other victims been abusers of some kind? Only one other victim, the first that we knew about, the student at West Florida State University, had had a lot of facial bruising. What was it about LaBrecque and the first victim that had enraged the killer so?

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and pressed Rauser’s numbers, then noticed a bloody rolling pin on the floor a few feet away. Another connection to that first killing in Florida. When he’d killed Anne Chambers fifteen years ago, the killer had used something at the scene as a weapon. Perhaps it was just for efficiency. A rolling pin here, a lamp there. Not like you can carry those things around in your pocket. I got to my feet. There was something else that intrigued me about this scene. It was contained. It seemed to have begun and ended here in this one room. The rest of the cabin was free of spatter, undisturbed, furniture in place. Had the killer found LaBrecque asleep here in the bedroom, drunk in the middle of the day, let go the controlling blow before he could come to? Or had it been another seduction like Brooks? LaBrecque didn’t seem the type, but what was the type, really?

Rauser was on his way. He was calling Gwinnett County Homicide. I stayed there memorizing the crime scene as long as I could. When I heard the sirens, I took a shallow breath, stuck my Glock in my waistband and my hands behind my head. Then I headed out to greet the Gwinnett County cops, who didn’t know me from Ted Bundy.