Page 65 of Dominion’s Collar

"Natalie." Vivienne catches my wrist. The contact is brief, careful. Years in this community taught her to ask before reaching. "Claire trusted the wrong person. Make sure you're not doing the same thing."

I hold her gaze. "Which wrong person are we talking about?"

Vivienne releases my wrist. She looks away, gathers her purse and the cardigan draped over the back of her chair, and leaves without another word.

I leave the café with the shape of Claire's last weeks rearranged around me. She wasn't just a victim. She was an investigator who ran out of time.

I sit in the car for a long time before I start the engine.

Theo Vautrin lives in a Craftsman bungalow in Gentilly, renovated once since Hurricane Katrina and due for another round.

I find him through the same public records search that would've been available to Claire if she'd gotten this far. He left the lifestyle when Elysium closed and hasn't looked back, at least not that I could find.

He answers the door in a Saints t-shirt and basketball shorts. His expression when I explain who I am tells me everything his words won't. He's been expecting this knock for years.

"I'm not talking about Elysium," he says.

"I'm not asking about Elysium. I'm asking about what you were doing there."

The distinction lands. His jaw tightens. He glances behind him into the house, then steps onto the porch and pulls the door mostly shut.

"Who sent you?"

"Nobody sent me. I'm a journalist."

"True crime," he says flatly. "I know who you are. I looked you up after I heard someone was asking around."

"Then you know I'm thorough."

"I know you're persistent." He crosses his arms. The posture is defensive, not threatening. "What do you want?"

"You ran security at Elysium. You knew the schedules. You knew who was in which room on which night. You had access to areas most members couldn't reach." I watch him while I lay it out. "That access puts you on a very short list of people who could've known certain things at certain times."

"I didn't hurt anyone."

"I'm not saying you did. I'm saying your access makes you a question mark, and question marks get answered one way or another. You can answer it now, or I can answer it with whatever I can find."

The threat isn't elegant, but Theo doesn't need elegant. He needs to know that keeping quiet costs more than talking.

He looks at the street. A car passes. A dog barks two houses over. The late light sits golden and heavy on the shotgun houses across the way.

"I was having an affair," he says. "With a married member. Kids, a mortgage, a husband who thought she went to book club on Tuesday nights."

He scrubs a hand over his face. "When Elysium closed, I could've come forward about what I saw. The things that felt wrong. But coming forward meant my name in an investigation, and my name in an investigation meant her name in the records, and she'd already ended it by then. She went back to her life. I let her."

"What things felt wrong?"

"The number of women who left without notice. Just walked out the door and never came back. The number of times I walked a floor check and found a room occupied that wasn't on the booking schedule." He shakes his head. "I wrote it up. Every time, I wrote it up. The reports went to the safety committee. Nothing happened."

"Who was on the safety committee?"

"Rotating membership. Volunteer positions." He pauses. "Gaudet was the constant. He'd been on it longer than anyone."

I let the pause do its work. Theo looks at me, and the guilt in his face is real but it's the wrong shape. A predator's guilt looks different.

His is the guilt of a man who saw smoke and didn't pull the alarm. Pulling it would've meant explaining why he was in the building when he shouldn’t have been.

"I didn't know what was happening," he says. "I still don't. Not really. I just know it wasn't nothing, and I didn't do enough."