Body Of Evidence

MIRA

Late on a purple-sky afternoon.

On a day like this one, Emma Lachance almost remembered why she used to think Pointe Judah was the only place she would ever want to call home.

The sun wasn't quite down yet, but frogs already set up a gruff ruckus, and night-scented blooms began to waft musky sweetness on humid air.

She ran hard, harder than she needed to. Anger and hurt could drive you like that, send you pounding over the treacherous, partly finished sidewalks and gravel streets of The Willows, an abandoned retirement development. Concentrating on not turning an ankle helped keep her focused on the anger.

Emma needed to be angry.

Emma had a husband to divorce. "You're stupid. And you're getting fat. I'm going to run for governor, remember? I intend to win. You'd better make sure you don't embarrass me, so get hold of yourself," Orville had told her less than an hour earlier, right before he left for another "important" evening appointment, which she could expect to keep him out most of the night.

Orville Lachance, mayor of Pointe Judah, Arcadia Parish, Louisiana, wanted — no, expected — his wife to take whatever insults he threw at her in private and keep smiling her adoration on him in public. She had stopped trying to talk to him when he arrived home in the early hours to slide into bed as if he was being thoughtful by not waking her.

Emma didn't sleep much anymore — something to do with the enemy beside her.

He frightened her, a deep, sickening fear. From the first time he'd let her see him in a violent rage, Emma knew her husband could be a dangerous man. With every smashing blow to a television or pile of dishes, the hate in his face suggested he would much rather beat her. In the coming weeks she must proceed carefully, gather evidence against him without making him suspicious. The mayor who would be governor would not quietly allow a scandal to interfere with his ambitions.

Squinting into the setting sun, Emma took the next right, downhill, and slowed to a jog. Her cheeks flushed, and the light, burning white from pale concrete turned the way ahead into a blinding landscape of shifting colors. Dark glasses were useless.

An engine, running rough, approached from behind, and an ancient Cadillac sailed slowly past. Emma doubted it had any shocks left at all. The white car continued on, weaving slightly, and since she could barely see the heads of the couple up front she figured them to be older. Probably wandered in for a look, thinking the retirement community was up and running.

Whoever came up with the idea and the money to start this development had not done their homework. The closest place to go, Pointe Judah, was a small bayou town that looked the same today as it had when Emma had been growing up. Getting from here to a city with a major downtown or an airport took too long for people with time on their hands and families to visit.

For a few moments she jogged in place, hopped from one foot to the other, shaded her eyes with a hand. Creepers snaked from overgrown lots onto the sidewalk. She ran the route at least once a week, because other people didn't go there.

A ways ahead a blue Honey Bucket stood in the road. The portable latrine hadn't been there before, so maybe they were going to start building again. With vines crawling up their frames and patches of purple, orange and white bougainvillea thrusting through open roof timbers, shells of houses in various stages of construction looked like greenhouses turned inside out.

Another runner approached her, taking the incline with an easy, loping stride. A man. A big, powerful man. Emma could tell that but nothing more, and she hesitated in the act of starting off in his direction. If she turned abruptly and dashed back the way she'd come, he would think she was running away from him.

She would be.

Regardless of which way she went, he could catch her if he wanted to.

Emma carried on, her pulse ringing in her ears and her lungs barely expanding. She responded to the man's "Hello" with one of her own. She didn't look at him when they passed one another.

Could Orville have found out she'd come here? Had he guessed her plans to leave him and decided she should die at some crazy stranger's hands rather than cause the mayor any inconvenience?

Now there was a paranoid thought.

The woman Finn Duhon had just passed could be Emma Balou, but it was a long shot. The Emma Balou he remembered from high school, the brainy, shy girl who never noticed how much time he spent looking at her, had been tall like the woman runner, and honey blond. That was where most of the obvious similarities ended, leaving him with only a feeling to go on. He guessed Emma Balou, who had been thin in that notyet-grown way, could have matured into the shapely runner.

He shouldn't look back, but he was only a human; in fact, he was really human. Finn turned and ran backward, grateful the sun had sunk lower. In a white tank top and shorts, the woman kept going. There surely was something familiar about her. She had obviously overcome any curiosity she had about him — probably because he hadn't interested her in the first place.

The woman tried to look back at him without breaking stride.

Finn stood still and felt more pleased than he should. Evidently he'd had some effect on her after all.

The lack of female company in his life showed. Time was when he hadn't been standoffish around women, or suspicious of their motives for being interested in him. There were good reasons for the change in him.

Emma stopped running. She turned slowly and stared uphill. He'd stopped, too, and shaded his eyes to stare down on her. He walked slowly back toward her. The impulse to run away, shrieking, passed blessedly quickly. The man had stopped because he thought he knew her, just as she thought she knew him.

Walking this time, she retraced her steps until they stood a few yards apart. She took off her glasses, found the handkerchief she carried in a back pocket and wiped her face thoroughly. Then she rubbed the long bangs that hung wet around her eyes and down the sides of her face.

"Hey," he said. "Emma Balou, is that you?" He swiped a forearm across his brow and ran his fingers through short black hair.

The only people who wouldn't know she was Mrs. La-chance would be people who no longer lived in town, people who had moved away before she married Orville twelve years earlier.

The stranger's grin couldn't be missed, a big, white smile in a tanned face. They drew closer, and her hand went to her mouth. "Finn Duhon? Well, I'll be...Finn Duhon, it is you? I thought you were still in the marines."

"Army. Not anymore," he said and now she could see that his eyes were just as sharply hazel as they ever had been.A good-looking boy had grown into an arresting man. More than that, really. In his face she saw the look of a man who had seen too much for too long. His body testified to hard physical training.

"You were in Special Ops? I think that's what they call it." He nodded. "Yep, that's it. What's been goin'on with you?" A gust of hot breeze caught the door of the Honey Bucket. It rattled and creaked.

With her hands on her hips, she bent slightly and looked at her well-worn running shoes. "Not a whole lot. I went to Tulane but decided not to stay on after my second year. I've got a shop at the old Oakdale Mansion. It's called Poke Around." She...