Murder in the Rue Ursulines by Greg Herren Page B

died, feel about having their beloved son’s memory tarnished and trashed on the national news?
    He’d been kidnapped by an obsessed stalker, someone who’d struck him a terrible blow to the skull in order to take him from his apartment. Maybe with prompt and immediate medical attention, he would have had a chance. Instead, he’d been handcuffed to a bed, not fed or given anything to drink, and he’d begun the slow and agonizing process of dying. By the time we found him, he’d lapsed into the coma from which he’d never wake. After a few days, his family made the agonizing decision to turn off the machines that breathed for him, and he’d died. For the next year, I’d thought of my life as being clearly divided by that terrible day at Touro Hospital— before and after. In my misery and grief, I’d tried to move forward with my life.
    But I felt guilty about Paul’s death; guilty because while I was looking for him I’d allowed myself to get distracted away from my primary objective—finding him—because of other things that were going on, side trails I’d followed that eventually proved to have nothing to do with him. I kept thinking, If only I were a better detective, I could have found him sooner, I could have found him when there was still a chance for him to make a recovery and he would still be with me. Instead, he’d died, and that guilt haunted me.
    But maybe none of that would come up.
    Maybe it wouldn’t come to that.
    Maybe, like my therapist said, I was just imagining the worst again.
     But I was in a bad spot, and the best way out was to solve the case.
    But how? I wouldn’t be able to interview witnesses, get access to evidence, or even conduct any semblance of a normal investigation. The police wouldn’t want me interfering in their investigation.
    As for the fame, truth be told, it was a nice fantasy. When I was young, I used to fantasize about being rich. I always, when I was a kid, thought the reason our lives were so miserable was because we were poor, because we lived in a trailer park, because we didn’t get to wear nice clothes and have nice things like so many of the other kids in Cotttonwood Wells. Daphne, Rory and I weren’t the only poor kids in town—but it seemed to me like we were. Other kids didn’t have mothers who wore faded old sweats and reeked of gin or vodka at the Kroger. Other kids didn’t have clothes that didn’t quite fit right, didn’t wear their clothes till they wore through in places, and didn’t have to eat bologna sandwiches for lunch every day.
    When I started playing football and became someone more than the big kid from the trailer park, when I started getting invited to the parties the rich kids threw, I never felt like I belonged there, no matter how badly I wanted to. I wanted to be rich and famous and come back to Cottonwood Wells and make all those rich kids who made me feel like trailer trash grovel before my wealth and power. But as I got older, I was more concerned with getting out of Cottonwood Wells then avenging myself on the rich kids
    . At LSU, I had a taste of fame as a three year letterman on a damned good football team. Other students recognized me when I walked to class, and in restaurants and bars, so did the more rabid football fans. But I knew damned well that if I wasn’t on the football team, Beta Kappa would have never given me a bid to join their fraternity.  I was never comfortable with the status I had as a football player..
    So forget the fantasy. I didn’t want to be famous. I didn’t even care about being rich any more. All I cared about was being comfortable, not having to worry about paying my bills—and I’d already achieved that.
    But if Glynis Parrish’s killer was never brought to justice, my credibility would be gone forever. I would be known as ‘that guy who blew the case because he couldn’t make a positive identification of Freddy Bliss—who paid him money.’ I’d be even more notorious than Mark