I told Molly where we were going, and we hitched the boat to the back of my pickup, put our rods and tackle boxes and an ice chest inside, and drove down through Jeanerette and Franklin to the Atchafalaya Basin. I didn’t particularly want to revisit the scene of Layton’s death. To me, he was not a sympathetic victim. He reminded me of too many people I had known, all of whom had become acolytes in a pantheon where the admission fee was the forfeiture of their souls or at least their self-respect. But unfortunately, like drunks driving at high speed through red lights, the Layton Blanchets of the world made choices for others before they self-destructed. Bernadette Latiolais and Fern Michot didn’t get to vote when their lives were arbitrarily taken from them, and I believed I owed both of them a debt.
We drove down the same levee where Layton had parked his pickup truck on the last day of his life. The water was high from the rain, lapping across the cypress knees, the strings of early hyacinths rolling in the waves. The sky was overcast, the wind steady out of the south, and in the distance I could see a flat bronze-colored bay starting to cap and moss straightening on a line of dead cypress trees. I pulled the truck to a stop and cut the engine. Leaves were blowing on the water where Layton’s houseboat was moored, and the yellow crime-scene tape strung through the gum and cypress trees had been broken by wild animals. The aluminum rowboat was lifting and falling with the waves, clanking against a cypress knee or a chunk of concrete. For some reason, maybe because of the grayness of the day, the entire scene made me think of a party’s aftermath, when the revelers return to their homes and leave others to clean up.
Clete stared through the windshield, screwing a cigarette into his mouth. “What’s she doing here?” he said.
“Good question,” I replied.
But if Emma Poche, dressed in her deputy’s uniform and rubber boots, took notice of us, she gave no sign of it. Her back was turned, a roll of fresh crime-scene tape hanging from her left hand. She slapped at an insect on her neck and wiped her palm on her clothes. Then she seemed to see us, smiling casually, not overly concerned by our presence. On the far end of the houseboat, I saw an outboard tied by its painter to the deck rail. Clete and I crossed the plank walkway and stepped onto the island. “Aren’t you out of your jurisdiction?” he said to Emma.
“The St. Martin and St. Mary parish line runs right through this bay. In fact, no one is sure exactly where it is,” she said.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“None of your business,” she said. But she was smiling with her eyes as she said it, looking at me as though the two of us shared a private joke. “We got a call that some kids were trying to get into the houseboat.”
“I guess some people got no respect,” Clete said.
“Why are you guys out here?” she asked.
“Entertaining the bass,” I said.
“At this exact spot. My, my,” she said.
“Yeah, what a coincidence,” I said.
“Are you questioning my jurisdictional authority, two guys who have no business here at all?” she said.
“No, we’re not, Emma,” I said. “Did you know Layton?”
“I saw him around. Listen, Dave, if you have a question about my being here, call the dispatcher and have her check the log. Because I don’t like y’all’s insinuation.”
“We just happened by,” I said, walking to the rowboat. “How many shell casings did the St. Mary guys find?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she replied.
“If Layton used a semiauto, and there was a second shell casing, that would present quite a puzzle, wouldn’t it?” I said.
“You’d have to ask somebody else that. Frankly, I don’t care. That’s why I’m in uniform and not a detective. I don’t like carrying caseloads and taking the job home every day. Also, I’m not that smart.”
I faced into the wind as though I had lost interest in the subject. “It’s pretty out here,” I said.
“Yeah, it is. Or it was,” she said.
“Was?” I said.
“Fuck off, Dave,” she said.
I smelled tobacco smoke. Clete had just lit his cigarette and was staring down at the rowboat, his gaze sweeping from the bow to the stern, lingering on the dried blood from Layton’s massive head wound. “You don’t mind if we just stand here for a little bit, do you?” he said to Emma.
“Do whatever you want. After I rewrap the scene, don’t cross the tape again,” she replied.
She walked into the shallows, among the flooded trees, and strung fresh tape through the trunks. Soon she was on the other side of the houseboat, out of earshot. Clete continued to puff on his cigarette, his attention still fixed reflectively on the rowboat. I pulled the cigarette gently from his fingers and flicked it into the wind and heard it hiss when it struck the water. His concentration was such that he didn’t seem to notice. “So Blanchet was lying on his back, looking skyward, his head in the stern?”
“Right,” I said.
“And the forty-five was in his right hand?”
“He had one finger in the trigger guard.”
“Which way was the wind blowing when y’all found him?”
“Just like today, straight out of the south.”
“Was the boat more or less in the same position, or did the paramedics move it?”
“It’s exactly in the same position.”
“How do you know?”
“The bow is right by that same piece of concrete,” I said.
“Look at the willow tree.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s still exit matter on the lower branches. But the branches are three feet behind the stern. It’s too far back.”
“I’m not following you, Clete.”
“Look, I’m speculating, but if he set the forty-five under his chin and pulled the trigger, the fluids and bone matter from the wound would have gone straight up into the tree’s overhang. But what if somebody is in the boat with Blanchet and wants to distract him? Somebody with the forty-five hidden under a raincoat. He tells Blanchet to look up at a comet, a constellation, an owl or a hawk flying across the moon. Then the shooter plants one under his chin, and Blanchet’s oatmeal flies into the tree.”
“I think you’re probably right, Clete, but I tried to sell that one to the sheriff, and it didn’t slide down the pipe.”
“Yeah, well, screw the sheriff. This is still St. Mary Parish, Louisiana’s answer to the thirteenth century.” Clete squatted down, steadying himself with one hand on the gunwale of the rowboat. “Think of it this way. If you’re correct in your hypothesis about the shooter putting the forty-five in Layton’s hand and letting off a second round, where would the shot have gone?”
I could see where he was taking his re-creation of the moments that had followed Layton Blanchet’s death. Clete was still the best investigative detective I had ever known. He had the ability to see the world through the eyes of every kind of person imaginable; he knew their thoughts before they had them. The same applied to the physical world. Where others saw only an opaque surface, Clete saw layers and layers of meaning beneath it.
“Okay, so Blanchet’s brains go flying into the willow tree, and he falls backward into the stern of the boat, about two hundred and twenty pounds of hard beef,” he said. “So what is our shooter going to do at this point? He’s probably still in the boat with Blanchet. He can put the forty-five in Blanchet’s hand and try to aim it away from him toward the levee. But he’s going to blow gunpowder residue on Blanchet’s clothes, plus deafen himself. Or he can climb out of the boat and stand in the shallows and point the forty-five toward the island, above the houseboat. The bullet should have carried across the bay and into the swamp. Hang on.”
Clete climbed into the rowboat. His weight caused it to rock violently back and forth, then he sat down on one of the seats, stabilizing the hull, and eased himself into the position Layton’s body had been in when we found it. Clete rested his head on the stern and let his right arm flop over th
e gunwale. He configured his thumb and index finger into the shape of a pistol and sighted as though aiming at a target. The tip of his finger pointed directly at the houseboat.
“Y’all didn’t find anything in there that looked like a bullet hole, did you?” he asked.
“I didn’t.” Then I thought about it. “Good Lord.”
“What?”
“In the galley there was a paper trash sack with pieces of a broken drinking glass inside it. But there were also some slivers of glass in one corner, under a window. I thought they were from the drinking glass and somebody had overlooked them when he was sweeping up.”
Clete climbed back out of the boat, the water soaking his tennis shoes and the bottoms of his khakis. “Let’s have a look,” he said.
But Emma Poche was not in a cooperative mood. “You guys aren’t going inside that boat,” she said. “Number one, I don’t have a key. Number two, you have to get permission from my boss or the St. Mary sheriff. Number three, I know how y’all think and operate, and I’m not gonna let either of you pick that lock.”
“Do you mind if we look around outside?” I asked.
“Why, for God’s sakes?” she said.
“I don’t know. When we arrived here, I got the feeling you were looking along the bank for something,” I said. “Maybe we’ll find it for you.”
“I just remembered why I don’t go to A.A. anymore,” she said.
“I’ll bite. Why’s that?”
“Because of the sexist male pricks I met there,” she replied.
“We’ll be out of your way in just a minute,” I said.
“Be my guest. Take all the time you want. Like five minutes. And ‘bite’ is the word,” she said. She stiffened an index finger and pointed it at me. Her cheeks were bright with color as she went back to work stringing tape in the trees, jerking it hard through the limbs.
“You’ll never win their hearts and minds,” Clete said to me.
“You wouldn’t pick a lock at a crime scene, would you?”
“Emma might be a little nuts, but she’s one cute, smart little package,” he replied.
“I can’t believe you.”
“Give the devil her due. Look at the ass on her.”
“I give up, Clete.”
He slapped me between the shoulder blades, his face full of play. Clete Purcel would never change. And if he did, I knew the world would be the less for it.
We stepped up on the houseboat and worked our way forward, examining the molding around the windows in the galley. A long chrome-plated bar that a person could use as a handhold was anchored along the roof of the cabin. At the approximate spot where I had seen glass slivers on the other side of the wall, I saw what looked like an empty screw hole in one of the metal fastenings on the bar. Except it was not a screw hole. I stuck my little finger inside and felt the rough edges of torn wood and a sharpness like splintered glass.
I removed my finger and put one hand on Clete’s shoulder and stepped up on the deck rail so I could see across the top of the cabin roof. Eighteen inches from the chrome-plated bar was an exit hole in the roof. The .45 round had punched through the hand bar’s fastening and clipped the top of the glass inset into the window, before surfacing obliquely from the treated plywood that constituted the ceiling to the galley.
“You were dead-on right,” I said.
“You found it?”
“We’ve got the entry and exit holes, but no slug.”
Clete pushed himself up on the deck rail so he could see. Emma Poche was watching us from out in the water. “You think this is going to make any difference with the sheriff in St. Mary?” he asked.
“Like you say, this is still a fiefdom,” I replied.
“What are y’all doing up there?” Emma called.
We both stared at her without replying. The sun had come out, and her hair and face and uniform were netted with light and shadow.
“Did you hear me?” she said.
“Why’d you bring crime-scene tape on a 911 possible break-in?” I said.
“Because it was already in my goddamn boat,” she replied.
I drummed my fingers on the cabin roof. “You ever carry a forty-five auto as a drop, Emma?” I asked.
She began to gather up the strips of crime-scene tape broken by deer or bear, and stuff them into her trouser pockets. “When I turn around again, you two cutie-pies had better be out of here,” she said.
“My flopper just started flipping around,” Clete said.
CHAPTER
15
MOLLY AND I attended four P.M. Mass in Loreauville that Saturday, with plans to go to dinner and a movie afterward in Lafayette. Alafair was at home by herself, working on her novel, when the phone rang. “Miss Alafair?” the voice said.
“Yes?” Alafair said.
“It’s Jewel, Mr. Timothy’s nurse.”
In her mind’s eye, Alafair saw the big, ubiquitous black woman in the starched white uniform who constantly attended Timothy Abelard in his home and took him everywhere he went. What was the rumor about her? That she was Abelard’s illegitimate daughter?
“Mr. Timothy axed if you’d come out to see him,” Jewel said.
“Then ask him to call me, Miss Jewel,” Alafair replied.
“He’s embarrassed.”
“Excuse me?”
“By the way you were treated by Mr. Robert. He knows all about it.”
“Miss Jewel, you’ve called me and done your job, so this isn’t a reflection upon you. But if Mr. Abelard wants to talk with me, he needs to call me personally. You tell him I said that, please.”
“Yes, ma’am. He said to tell you his son and Mr. Robert aren’t there right now.”
“I understand. Thanks for calling, Miss Jewel. Good-bye,” Alafair said. She replaced the receiver and went back to her room and began work on her manuscript again. Through the back window she could see the shadows growing in the trees, the afternoon sun ablaze like a bronze shield on the bayou. The phone rang in the kitchen once more. This time she checked the caller ID. It was blocked. “Hello,” she said, hoping it was not who she thought it was.
“Oh, hello, Miss Robicheaux. It’s Timothy Abelard. I hope I’m not bothering you,” the voice said.
“Miss Jewel gave me your message, Mr. Abelard. I appreciate your courtesy, but no apology is necessary regarding Kermit.”
“That’s very gracious of you. But I feel terrible about what’s occurred. I don’t know your father well, but I was quite an admirer of your grandfather, Big Aldous. He was an extraordinary individual, generous of spirit and always brave at heart. It saddens me that any member of my family or an associate of my family would offend his granddaughter in any fashion.”
Timothy Abelard’s voice and diction were as melodic and hypnotizing as branch water flowing over stone. The syllabic emphasis created an iambic cadence, like lines taken from an Elizabethan sonnet, and the r ’s were so soft they almost disappeared from the vowels and consonants surrounding them. If an earlier development of technology had allowed the recording of Robert E. Lee’s voice, Alafair suspected, it would sound like Timothy Abelard’s.
“How can I help you?” she found herself saying.
“Jewel is only a couple of blocks from you. Let her drive you to my home. My son and his friend Robert are away right now. We’ll have a cup of tea, and I promise Jewel will return you to New Iberia before dark.”
“I don’t know how that will serve any purpose, Mr. Abelard.”
“I’m elderly and bound to a wheelchair, and I don’t have many possessions I consider of value except the honorable name of my family. I feel, in this instance, it’s been sullied. I ask you to visit me for no more than a few minutes. I will have no peace until you do so.”
She thought about driving herself to the Abelard home, but her car was being serviced at the Texaco station down the street. “I’d be happy to come out,” she said.
Moments later, the nurse pulled a Lincoln Town Car into the
driveway, the oak leaves drifting out of the sunset onto the shiny black surface.
TIMOTHY ABELARD was on the lawn in his wheelchair when Alafair arrived on the island where his home seemed to rise out of its own elegant decay. He was dressed in a beige suit and an open-necked crimson shirt, one that had a metallic sheen to it, his black tie-shoes buffed to a dull luster. Since Alafair’s last visit there, a landscape architect had hung baskets of flowers from the upstairs veranda and lined the walks and pathways with potted palms and orchid trees and flaming hibiscus, as though trying to import the season to a place where it would not take hold of its own accord. Against the backdrop of stricken trees in the lagoon and the termite infestation of the house, the transported floral ambience on the property made Alafair think of flowers scattered on a grave in an isolated woods.
“I’m so glad you could come,” Mr. Abelard said, extending his hand.
Someone had already placed a beach umbrella in a metal stand on the lawn, and under it a chair for her to sit in. Timothy Abelard was sitting in the shade of the umbrella, a photo album open on his lap. When Alafair sat down, she found herself unconsciously pinching her knees together, her hands folded. Mr. Abelard smiled, his eyes examining her, one eye a bit smaller and brighter than the other. “I was just looking at some photos taken when I was a bit younger,” he said. “In Banff and at Lake Louise, in Alberta. Here, take a look.”
He turned the scrapbook around so she could see the photos in detail. In one, Abelard was standing on a great stone porch of some kind, perhaps on the back of a hotel. Behind him were banks of flowers that were so thick and variegated in color that they dazzled the eyes. In the distance were dark blue mountains razored against the sky, their snowcapped tops so high they disappeared into the clouds. In another photo, Abelard was eating on a terrace not far from a green lake surrounded by golden poppies. A glacier stood at the headwaters of the lake, and at the table where Abelard was dining sat a man with patent-leather-black hair. He was suntanned and wearing shades and a black shirt unbuttoned on his chest.
“That’s Robert Weingart,” she said.
Abelard turned the scrapbook back around on his lap. “No, you’re mistaken. That fellow is someone else.”