The Dollmaker

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Climbing back in bed, Claire reached for the remote to the TV. Turning down the volume, she surfed until she finally found a cable news channel. She watched images from a car bombing in the Middle East and a mud slide in Southern California, but her attention was caught by the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen.

An Amber alert was in effect for a seven-year-old Alabama girl who’d been missing for nearly a week. The FBI and local authorities were still combing a wooded area near her home, but so far no trace of the child or her abductor had turned up. No eyewitnesses had come forward; no one had seen anything. It was as if the little girl had gotten off the school bus one afternoon and disappeared into thin air.

Claire watched the scroll until the broadcast finally switched to a video feed from Linden, Alabama. They ran footage of the search, an interview with the local sheriff and a tearful plea from the mother for her daughter’s safe return.

“That poor woman.”

Claire hadn’t realized that her mother was awake, but when she turned her head, she saw the sheen of her eyes in the light from the television screen. Some of Lucille’s hair had come loose from the bun, and the strands coiled around her face like tiny gold wires.

“I hope they catch that son of a bitch,” she said in a fierce whisper. “I’d like to get ahold of him myself.”

“I know, Mama.”

“It’s an abomination, men preying on little girls like that. They ought to fry every last one of them.”

Claire switched off the TV. She couldn’t watch anymore, and she didn’t feel like talking. The room fell silent, but her mind raced with images that had plagued her for years. Ruby was dead. In her heart, Claire knew that to be true. But what torment had the child suffered before she drew her last breath?

Claire squeezed her eyes closed, trying to shut off those terrible questions, but it was no use. Another mother’s agony, coming on the heels of seeing that doll, had reawakened her worst fears.

When Ruby first went missing, Claire had made the same plea to her daughter’s abductor. Before the camera started rolling, she’d agonized over what to say, worried herself sick that she might not be able to make it through the broadcast without breaking down. Dave had wanted to go on camera in her place, but the reporter who conducted the interview encouraged Claire to make the appeal because it would have a more visceral impact coming from the mother. So she’d gone on air and begged for her daughter’s safe return, pleaded with the kidnapper to spare Ruby’s life. And it hadn’t made any difference.

For weeks afterward, Claire worried that she’d come across badly or unsympathetic, and that’s why whoever had Ruby didn’t respond. Both Dave and the FBI agent assigned to the case told her that such an appeal was a long shot, anyway. It wasn’t her fault. But Claire had wondered for ages if she should have said or done something differently. Sometimes she still wondered.

After the interview, she’d been so emotionally drained, she’d walked away from the reporter and collapsed in Dave’s arms. He’d held her for a long time, as if he’d never let her go. He was so strong back then, a rock in times of crisis, but that was before the guilt had eaten him alive. That was before the alcohol had destroyed the man Claire had fallen in love with.

In the weeks and months following Ruby’s disappearance, he’d become someone Claire barely recognized. A drunken stranger who’d shoved his gun in her face one night and demanded to know what she’d done with their daughter.

Claire could picture him the way he was at that moment, with hate and despair twisting his once familiar features. She would never get that image out of her head. That he’d suspected her even for a moment, even under the influence of alcohol, was something she hadn’t been able to live with. She’d packed her bags and walked out the next day.

Drawing the covers over her shoulders, Claire slid down in bed and closed her eyes. The room was quiet, the air was cool and the pain medication she’d finally had to succumb to had started to numb the ache in her joints.

She’d always told herself it was the not knowing that still tore her up all these years later. If Ruby had died of a terrible disease or in some tragic accident, Claire would have been racked with grief. Her life would never have been the same, but eventually she might have been able to move on. If she could have buried Ruby…if she could have known in her heart that her child was at peace, maybe she could have drawn some comfort from her faith.

The not knowing was the worst.

Or so she’d always thought.

But on this dark, drenched night, as Claire huddled under the covers, dread settled like a shroud over her hospital bed. She’d never considered herself clairvoyant or even particularly intuitive, but she could feel the tug of something that might have been a premonition. A presage that warned of an evil she could hardly imagine.

And suddenly she realized how wrong she’d been. The not knowing wasn’t the worst. Her ignorance had kept her sane all these years.

She dreamed about Ruby that night, the same nightmare that always came back in times of stress.

In her dream she was standing at her grandmother’s kitchen sink shelling crawfish. She and Dave and Ruby lived in the tiny apartment over the garage, but Claire had come over that day to use her grandmother’s stove because the one in the apartment was too unreliable and she wanted to make Dave’s favorite meal for dinner.

The vision was so real that Claire could feel the crusty shells of the crawfish beneath her fingers as she watched out the window for Ruby. She’d gotten a new bicycle for her seventh birthday and was riding up and down the sidewalk in front of the house. Claire called through the open window for her to come inside, but Ruby ignored her. Each time she rode up the street, she took longer and longer to get back.

Putting away the crawfish, Claire washed her hands at the sink and then went outside to call her in. The late afternoon shadows from the oak and pecan trees slowly crept toward the street.

She could see the gleam of Ruby’s red helmet off in the distance and she started running after her. Somehow she knew that she had to reach her daughter before Ruby got to the end of the street. Something terrible waited for her there. If Claire didn’t get to her first, she would be lost forever.

Claire screamed her daughter’s name, but Ruby just kept on pedaling. Claire could barely see her now. She was only a dot in the distance. But she was still on her bike. Claire could reach her in time. She tried to run faster, but her legs were suddenly so heavy she could barely lift them.

And then the dream shifted. She saw herself at the end of a narrow alley, the kind in the Quarter that led back to sun-dappled courtyards. She smelled roses and damp moss, and somewhere nearby water splashed against stone. Someone brushed up against her back, but when she glanced over her shoulder, no one was there.

A door appeared in front of her and she heard Ruby sobbing inside the room. Slowly, Claire reached for the knob. When she drew back the door, a shaft of sunlight spilled into the darkened space. A little girl sat at a small table, her head buried in her arms. Claire called out her daughter’s name and the child lifted her head. But it wasn’t Ruby. It was the little girl from the news.

Claire started toward her, but Alex’s voice said from behind her, “She’s dead, Claire. Leave her be.”

She turned to search for him in the narrow alley, but he was hidden in the shadows. And when he stepped into the light, she saw that it was Dave. His lips moved, but he made no sound at all. When he realized that she didn’t understand him, he lifted a hand and pointed behind her. Claire turned slowly back to the door. The little girl was gone, and in her place was the golden-haired doll from the shop window.

Clare glanced over her shoulder at Dave. He reached out to her now, as if to stop her, but she shook her head and walked through the door. She glided across the room and picked up the doll. The porcelain felt warm and soft in her arms, like human flesh, but when the doll slipped from her grasp and hit the stone floor, the fragile face shattered into a million pieces.

Eight

Dave took the Sea Ray out at dawn the next morning to test the overhauled Chevy engines for his uncle. The boat had been in dry dock for over two weeks, a financially disastrous situation during peak season, but Marsilius had used the opportunity to update some of the equipment.

The old thirty-foot sports cruiser now offered a television, stereo, microwave and a fully stocked refrigerator, along with the two-burner stove, full head and stand-up shower. The cabin area could comfortably accommodate four guests for overnight trips out to the steel reefs where the bright vapor lights from the oil rigs beamed down to the water’s surface, attracting schools of bait fish that in turn lured in the yellowfin, mackerel and amberjack.

Marsilius had night fishing down to a science, but Dave had been trying for years to get him to invest in a smaller boat for the anglers who liked to fish the marshes and oyster beds in the basin. His uncle was set in his ways, though, and wasn’t looking to expand his business. He had Dave to relieve him when his knee acted up, and Jinx Bingham’s boy to run the bait and tackle. No sense fixing what wasn’t broke, he always said.

Throttling back the engines, Dave glided through a glimmering channel and dropped anchor in the bay to watch the sunrise. Mist hovered over the marshes and islets, and clung like wet silk to the treetops.

Pouring a cup of coffee from his thermos, he sat down to enjoy the solitude. He couldn’t help but think about the past this morning, or the case that Angelette Lapierre had dropped in his lap. She’d faxed a copy of the file to his office, and he’d sifted through the reports and made a few calls before going down to New Orleans late last night. But he needed more time to study the case before he made a decision about taking it on. He didn’t want to give the grieving family false hope until he figured out Angelette’s angle. She’d used the similarity to the Savaria case to draw him in, but Dave couldn’t figure out why she’d bother. She said Nina Losier’s parents were looking to hire a private detective, and she’d told them about him, but that alone set off an alarm for Dave. He and Angelette hadn’t exactly parted on good terms. Aside from the fact that she’d tried to kill him when he broke things off with her, he didn’t trust her and never had. Maybe at one time her edge had been a big part of her appeal, but now Dave knew only too well the cost of getting mixed up with Angelette Lapierre. And that was one mistake he wasn’t looking to repeat.

But a young woman had been brutally murdered and her parents wanted justice. That was a hard situation to walk away from, especially for Dave, and he had a feeling that was exactly what Angelette was banking on.

As the boat rocked gently in the current, Dave tipped back his head, propped up his feet and tried to let the peaceful setting lull him. Sunrise in the Gulf was always spectacular, a fiery palette of crimson and gold splashed across a deep lavender canvas. As the mist slowly burned away in the early morning heat, the landscape turned a deep, earthy green. Violet clumps of iris jutted through a thick carpet of algae and duckweed, and purple water lilies opened in the green-gold light that filtered down through the cypress trees.

Off to his right, a flock of snowy egrets took flight from the swamp grass, and a second later, Dave saw the familiar snout and unblinking stare of a gator glide past his boat. The vista was at once beautiful and menacing, a shadowy world of dark water and thick curtains of Spanish moss.

Dave had been born and raised in New Orleans, but he loved the Cajun Coast, with its teeming bayous and maze of channels where an outsider could get lost for days. Even when he’d still lived in the city, he had come down every chance he had to help Marsilius with the charters. After he and Claire were married, she would come with him, and when he was finished working for the day, they’d take the boat back out to watch the sunset. Sometimes he would rest on deck while she cooked dinner in the galley, but most of the time he would sit below and watch her.

Her face had mesmerized him. Even the menial tasks she’d performed dozens of times drew a fierce scowl of concentration to her brow, and Dave always wondered what went through her head then. He’d call out her name to make her glance up, so that he could see her quick smile. She had a shy, intimate way of looking at him that made him want to drop whatever he was doing and take her in his arms, no matter where they were.

Sometimes they would stay out on the water until well after dark, and make love on the boat. Afterward Claire would sit between his legs, his arms wound around her as they watched the stars shimmer through the treetops.

When Ruby got older they’d brought her along a few times, but she didn’t take to the water. Too many bugs to suit her, and she didn’t like getting her hair all tangled on the breeze.

“You’re a little city girl,” Dave would tease her.

To which Ruby would proudly respond, “I’m just like my maw-maw.”

Claire had always been a little befuddled by how Ruby emulated her grandmother, and Charlotte had been downright horrified. But Dave got a kick out of it. Lucille was earthy and she looked like a hot mess most of the time, but she had a good heart. And she was the only one in the family who still gave him the time of day.

He stirred restlessly. The reminiscing had shattered his fragile peace. Loneliness started to creep up on him, and deep inside, he felt the familiar tug of a dangerous thirst. Maybe he’d been hiding out in the swamps and bayous of St. Mary Parish for a little too long. His trips to New Orleans—two days ago and again last night—had reminded him of a life he’d been trying for years to convince himself he didn’t miss.

Finishing off the coffee, he started the engines and headed back in. Marsilius’s place on the bayou was an old weathered building covered in license plates and sheet metal that glinted in the early-morning sunshine. The ramshackle bait and tackle shop also sold sandwiches and snacks, and as Dave tied off at the private dock, he spotted Latrell Bingham dumping bags of ice into the washtubs Marsilius used to chill soft drinks and beer. The kid looked up, grinned and waved to Dave, then went back to his work.

Dave lived just down the road in an old two-story bungalow with screened-in porches and trellises of climbing roses. It wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but the place suited him fine. Except for at night, and then he missed the noises of the city. The scream of a siren heading across Canal Street toward the hospital, or the music and drunken laughter spilling from the bars and strip clubs on Bourbon Street. But what he missed most of all was the hum of alcohol as it coursed through his bloodstream, numbing the pain and guilt, giving him a split second of peace before the rage took over.

The bayou gave him too much time to think. Sitting out on his porch after dark, with the moon glinting off the water and the croak of bullfrogs and crickets echoing up from the swamp, Dave would start to remember the way Ruby’s eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, and how she’d cling to his neck when he galloped her off to bed. The way Claire would look up at him when he returned, and quietly put away her book.

He remembered everything, and yet at times, it seemed to Dave that he had a hard time calling up their faces and the sound of their voices. The old demons would start to prod him then. Alcohol had always given him a moment of clarity along with the peace. If he stopped at one drink or even two, he would be able to remember them properly. The problem was, he’d never known when to quit. A couple of whiskeys would turn into a two-day bender that left him shaky and sick and wondering why he didn’t just hole up somewhere and die.

He didn’t want to go back to those days, no matter how lonely the nights were out here. New Orleans was temptation. New Orleans was Claire and Ruby and a life Dave was never going to get back.

Stepping up on the porch, he fished his house key from a flowerpot and let himself in. The shades were drawn and the house was still dim and cool. He’d converted the small living space off the entrance into his office, and the only other rooms on the bottom floor were an eat-in kitchen and a half bath out back. His current setup didn’t allow for entertaining, but that didn’t matter much to Dave because he rarely had company. And whenever someone did stop by—usually Marsilius or one of the neighbors—they always sat out on the porch, where they could catch a breeze off the water.

Rolling up the old-fashioned shades to allow in some light, Dave walked into the kitchen to put on another pot of coffee before heading upstairs to shower. By the time he came back down, the sweet smell of chicory filled the house. He dug through the coat closet off his office until he located the box of files he wanted, and then carried it out to the porch. Settling down in a padded rocker, he lifted the lid from the box and removed one of the folders.

Before he left the department, he’d made copies of the Savaria case files, and thumbing through the reports and statements now was like sifting through a pile of bad memories. So many things had gone wrong in Dave’s life that he didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the loss of his livelihood. But he’d loved being a cop. It was the only thing he’d ever wanted to do. If someone had told him that he’d end his career by destroying evidence in a homicide investigation, he would have called that person a liar. But he’d done that and worse. His daughter, his wife, his job—all gone in the blink of an eye because of one bad decision. One weak moment that had changed the course of his entire life.

The day Ruby had gone missing, he’d let Angelette talk him into drinks after their watch, and the next thing he knew, they were checking into a seedy motel off the old Airline Highway. The tension had been building between them for months, and a part of him had known it was only a matter of time before he succumbed.

What he’d wanted from Angelette didn’t have anything to do with the way he felt about Claire, but she wouldn’t believe that. No woman would. Dave had still loved Claire then as much as he ever did. Maybe even more. But Angelette was like a poison in his bloodstream, and he only knew one way to get her out of his system.

Afterward, he’d left her fuming at the motel while he drove home to his wife and kid. And he liked to think that if things had turned out differently, he would never have put himself in that situation again. But he couldn’t be sure. Back then he’d been reckless with the things he cared about the most.

Claire’s call had come as he’d peeled out of the parking lot, and all he could think on his frantic drive home—and for days, months, years afterward—was that his daughter had been kidnapped while he’d been holed up in some motel room with another woman.