The Whispering Room. Amanda Stevens

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СКАЧАТЬ to her lips, mimicking her sister. “It’s still here.”

      “What is?”

      “The evil. Can’t you feel it?”

      Nella’s heart flailed like a trapped bird inside her chest as she stole a glance over her shoulder. Somewhere down that long hallway, a floorboard creaked.

      Had someone come up behind her? The other girl?

      For a moment, Nella could have sworn she saw something hovering at the top of the stairs. A giant shadow that was there one moment, gone the next.

      The child’s gaze was transfixed, as if she could see something that Nella could not.

      It was all Nella could do not to snatch the child up and run screaming from the house. Something terrible lurked in those shadowy rooms, in the beguiling depths of that little girl’s wide blue eyes.

      She bent and put her hands on the child’s arms. “Where are your brothers? You have to tell me so that I can help them.”

      The little girl’s gaze strayed to the room where the noose swung in a draft. “Mama carried them down to the swamp.”

      Oh, dear God. “Can you take me to them?”

      “I have to find my sissy first.”

      She reached for Nella’s hand. Her tiny fingers were warm, but the fear that slid down Nella’s spine was ice cold.

      Together they descended the steps, and Nella opened the door beneath the staircase.

      The other girl was gone, but the baby lay wriggling on the floor. Nella reached for the tiny body.

      I have to get them out of here. Lord, please help me save them….

      But when she glanced over her shoulder, the hallway behind her was empty.

      Ruth and Rebecca Lemay had vanished.

      Two

      Present day

      There is no odor in the world like that of rotting human flesh, Detective Evangeline Theroux thought as she climbed out of the car.

      The scent hung heavy on the hot, sticky air, an insidious perfume that stole her breath and turned her stomach. It was all she could do to stifle her gag reflex.

      A group of uniformed officers stood in the overgrown front yard of the deserted house and Evangeline could feel their eyes on her. It was like they could smell her weakness and were anticipating with relish a mortifying display.

      Jerks.

      As if she would ever give them the satisfaction.

      A female police detective wasn’t much of an anomaly these days, but there were those in the New Orleans PD who still clung to their good-ol’-boy mentality. Evangeline was accustomed to hostile scrutiny from some of her male colleagues, and she knew better than to give them any unnecessary ammunition.

      Turning away from those condescending glances, she swallowed hard, though she pretended to survey her surroundings—a ghost street in the Lower Ninth Ward. A no-man’s-land of abandoned vehicles and tumbledown houses that served as an enclave for the city’s crack merchants and the homeless.

      This was the section of New Orleans hit hardest by the floodwaters, and it was also the last neighborhood in the city to be rebuilt. Some referred to it as the “bad” side of the Industrial Canal because of the crime rate. Others called it Cutthroat City.

      Her late husband, Johnny, had once called it home.

      Evangeline mopped her brow as she waited for Mitchell Hebert to get out of the car. The swampy heat was not helping her queasy stomach. Earlier, clouds had drifted in from the gulf, bringing a cool breeze and a quick shower, but now the purplish banks had given way to a robin’s-egg-blue sky. At ten-thirty on a June morning, the temperature was already in the high nineties and the steam rising from the drying puddles felt like a sauna.

      “You smell that?” Mitchell asked as he climbed out of the car. “That’s dead-body smell.”

      “You think?”

      The older detective eyed her suspiciously. “You don’t look so hot this morning.”

      That was an understatement if she’d ever heard one. Evangeline had been up half the night with the baby, and she looked and felt like a hundred miles of bad road. But lack of sleep was the least of her problems. With the impending anniversary of Johnny’s death, she was finding it harder and harder to emerge from the dark cloud that had hovered over her since the funeral.

      A year ago, her life had been as close to perfect as she could imagine, and now it lay in ruins, the joy and sunlight replaced by a cold, gray loneliness. Happiness was a concept she barely remembered. Now she awakened each morning to the stark reality of a future without Johnny. Sometimes she felt so hopeless and lost, she had to pull the covers over her head and weep before somehow mustering the strength to swing her legs over the side of the bed and begin another day without him.

      But Evangeline’s lifestyle didn’t allow for a breakdown. She was a cop and a single mother. She had her and Johnny’s son to think about, plus all the responsibilities that her job entailed. Lives were on the line. She couldn’t afford the luxury of wallowing in despair, no matter how much she might wish to.

      Mitchell was still sizing her up. “You’re not gonna faint or something, are you?”

      She gave him a thin smile. “Have you ever known me to faint?”

      “And that, in a nutshell, is your problem, girl.”

      “I didn’t realize I had a problem.”

      “You don’t always have to work so damn hard to prove how tough you are.”

      Oh, yes, I do.

      But all she did was shrug.

      She knew that wasn’t the end of it, though. Mitchell had that fatherly look on his face, the one that signaled he was about to impart a necessary but unpleasant truth.

      He nodded toward the officers. “They’re not the enemy, you know.”

      “Sure feels that way sometimes.”

      “Maybe you just need to lighten up.”

      “If by lighten up you mean let a bunch of infantile ass-clowns humiliate me so they can feel good about themselves, then no thanks.”

      “You know something? It might actually help if you let them see you toss your cookies at a crime scene once in a while. Li’l ol’ thing like you. You make them look bad.”

      “That’s their problem. Besides, I don’t see you upchucking in the bushes to get brownie points.” Placing an icy can of Dr Pepper on the car’s fender, Evangeline tightened her blond ponytail. Her hair felt damp and lank even though she’d shampooed it in the shower that morning.

      “Different situation,” Mitchell said. СКАЧАТЬ