The Whispering Room

The Whispering Room
Amanda Stevens

Work is a welcome refuge for New Orleans homicide detective Evangeline Theroux.Feeling suffocated by her new baby, in whose eyes she sees only her dead husband, she throws herself into a high-profile murder case. Reclusive writer Lena Saunders offers Evangeline a provocative theory about the crime: it is the work of a lunatic vigilante.Lena spins the sordid story of Ruth and Rebecca Lemay, whose mother brutally murdered her male children in an insane effort to root out an "evil" gene. The girls survived and grew to adulthood–but one is carrying on her mother's grisly work. When the case takes a terrifyingly personal turn, Evangeline's whole life will depend on a crucial, impossible choice: the lesser of two evils.

Dear Reader,

You’ve seen the news reports from post-Katrina New Orleans. A police force in shambles. The breakdown of law and order. Citizens cowering in their homes after dark. The old and infirm preyed upon by roving bands of thugs.

For Detective Evangeline Theroux, it’s just another day in the Big Easy…until death becomes personal.

A body covered in snake bites is found in an abandoned house in the Lower Ninth Ward. A connection to a notorious child killer is eventually uncovered. Throw in a Pandora’s box of family secrets, murder and insanity, and you’ve only scratched the surface of Evangeline’s story.

Known as the Ghoul Girl because of the cold and emotionless way she approaches even the most gruesome crime scenes, Evangeline has worked hard to be accepted as an equal by her male colleagues. She’s aloof, analytical and tenacious—traits that are sometimes at war with her Southern upbringing.

On a personal level, she’s a grieving widow and a single mother, the sister of an ex-con and the daughter of a couple whose forty-year marriage is disintegrating. But more important, Evangeline Theroux is a fighter. A survivor. A woman who will not go quietly into the night.

And for me, the writer, she is a character who refuses to say goodbye.

Welcome to her world.

Amanda Stevens

Amanda Stevens

The Whispering Room

For Pat and Lefty

And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

—Mark 16:17, 18

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

One

July, 1976