“He’s got an alibi, Dave. He was at Harrah’s hotel in New Orleans or in the casino all night,” the sheriff said.
“Say that last part again?”
“He’s a gambler. He was either at the tables or in his room. We checked the time-in and time-out at the parking garage. His car never left the premises.”
“Who told you he was at the tables?”
“Kermit.”
“Kermit was in the casino with him? All night?”
“No, Kermit says he went to bed and Weingart went to the casino. But a blackjack dealer remembers him.”
“Weingart could have been at the Abelard house in an hour and a half.”
“I don’t think he’s a likely candidate. I think you’re too personally involved in this. Maybe it’s time to butt out.”
“Drop by the office, and I’ll show you a video that will stay with you awhile.”
“Video of what?” he said.
I eased the receiver back down in the cradle. I was at a dead end again. The deaths of Timothy Abelard and Emiliano Jimenez had changed nothing. But one pattern of behavior in the players had changed. Emma Poche, while drunk, had warned me over the telephone that I and anyone with me was in danger. She had also put Robert Weingart to his knees with a baton when he tried to work his seductive routine on Tee Jolie Melton. And only a few days ago, Emma had brought Clete a tray of sandwiches and attempted to apologize to him, although her confession avoided the admission that not only had she participated in the murder of Herman Stanga, but she had planted Clete’s pen at the crime scene.
I looked at my watch. It was 4:56 P.M. When I was on the dirty boogie, what was I always thinking about when the clock inched toward five? It came in frosted mugs and tumblers of ice and bottles that were smoke-colored or dark green or reddish-black or glowing with an amber warmth. A softly lit, air-conditioned bar with tropical sunsets painted on the walls was not an oasis in the desert. It was a Renaissance cathedral, a retreat for wayward souls whose secular communion waited for them in the first glass they could raise to their lips.
It wasn’t hard to find Emma. She had changed into street clothes and was drinking in the same lounge where Clete had met her during his surveillance of Carolyn Blanchet, outside St. Martinville. I sat down next to her at the bar and ordered a Dr Pepper in a glass of ice with a lime slice.
“I always thought that stuff tasted like iodine,” she said.
“It does,” I said. “You give up on meetings altogether?”
“Stop drinking today, gone tomorrow.”
“You know why drunks go to meetings?” I asked.
“Let me guess. Because they drink?”
“Because they feel guilty.”
“What a breakthrough, Dave.” She was drinking Wild Turkey on the rocks, cupping her hand all the way around the tumbler when she drank from it. Her cheeks looked filled with blood, the fuzz on them glowing against the light.
“Do you know why they feel guilty?”
“I’ll take another big leap here. Because they went through severe toilet training?”
“No, because they still have their humanity. The greater the pain, the greater the indication that they’re basically decent people.”
“Put it on a postcard and send it to the penguins, will you? I mean it, Streak. Let a girl come up for oxygen.”
“I have three still photos here. A guy in the department made them from a video that belonged to Herman Stanga. Take a look.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I think you should.”
“You don’t have to tell me about Herman Stanga.”
“This isn’t about Herman Stanga. It’s about the two girls in the video.”
“I’m off the clock. Bring them by the department.”
“No, this is between you and me. No histrionics. No throwing coffee in my face. Look at the pictures, Emma.”
“No.”
I spread the printouts on the bar right by her glass. “I need to know where that place is. Look at it.”
“No.”
“You stopped Robert Weingart from harming the girl named Tee Jolie. Your conscience is eating your lunch, Emma. You have to help me on this. It’s not up for discussion.”
Her eyes dropped to the first photo. She drank from her tumbler, the ice rattling against the glass, the whiskey clotting in her throat. “I don’t know what that is. I’ve never seen that before.”
“What do you mean by that? What is that? The terror in their faces? The collars on their throats? The ooze coming out of the wall?”
“Whatever that place is. Whatever is going on there. I don’t know what any of that is.”
“Yes, you do. You warned me that I was in danger. You were right. A Mississippi gunbull by the name of Jimmy Darl Thigpin tried to clip me. He was hired by somebody you know. The same person or persons who murdered these girls.”
She was shaking her head. “You’re all wrong. I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Tell me where the girls were held.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why you’re showing me this. I don’t know that place. The rocks in the walls look like pineapples. I think that photo is a fake. Why are you doing this to me?”
“Is everything all right here?” the bartender asked.
“Sheriff’s detective,” I said, reaching for my badge holder.
“What?” he said.
“Get out of here,” I said.
Emma was holding her tumbler in both hands now, staring down into the whiskey as though reading words in the ice melt. “You said this gunbull tried to clip you. If that’s true, where is he?”
“Put it this way: A guy who’s been abusing convicts for forty years doesn’t want to go inside. A guy like that cuts any deal he can. At anybody’s expense.”
“You’ve got a cooperative witness?”
“What do you think I’m saying to you, Emma? Wake up. You want to do these people’s time? Haven’t you been hurt enough? They made their money off the backs of the blacks and poor whites. They repair their own lives by destroying the lives of others. How bad do you have to get hurt before you get the message?”
She stared down at the photos. Then she covered them with her forearm, staring rigidly in the mirror. “I did what I was told. I didn’t know anything about this. But no matter how it plays out, I’m the one who loses.”
“No, these girls lost. You still have your life. You still have choices. These girls didn’t have any.”
Her eyes looked feverish, her lower lip sagging. “Fuck you, Dave.” She finished her drink and raised her glass toward the bartender. “Hit me again. And a beer back.”
CHAPTER
24
DEATH COMES IN many forms. But it always comes. And for that reason, “inevitability” may be the worst word in the English language.
These were not thoughts I wanted to brood upon as I sat beside the bayou that evening, the water swollen above the roots of the cypress trees, the sun little more than a cinder among the rain clouds in the west. Spring had come and gone and been replaced by the heavy and languid ennui of the Louisiana summer, a season that, at the end of day, clings to your skin like a sour vapor.
I heard Molly unfold a wood chair and sit beside me. “I fixed some ice cream and pecan pie,” she said.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said.
“Don’t let this case pull you down, Dave.”
“It’s not. I don’t think it will be solved. I think that’s just the way it is.”
She didn’t argue. Like me, Molly had ceased to contend with the world. It wasn’t a matter of acceptance. It was a matter of disengagement. The two were quite different. “Where’s Alf?” I said.
“Why do you still call her that?”
“Because that’s the way I’ll always see her. A father never sees the woman. He always sees the little girl.”
Molly looked at her watch. “She left a message on the machine. She got stuck i
n the traffic coming back from Lafayette.”
“How long ago did she leave the message?”
“About twenty minutes.”
I folded up our two chairs and walked with Molly up the slope to the back porch. The ground under the trees had fallen into deep shade, the sun golden on the canopy. Tripod and Snuggs were sitting on top of Tripod’s hutch, watching us. “Can you guys handle some ice cream?” I asked.
They both seemed to think that was a good idea. I got the ice cream out of the freezer and put a scoop in each of their bowls and placed their bowls on top of the hutch and went inside the kitchen again. I noticed the red light on the message machine was still flashing. I pushed the play button.
“It’s me again,” Alafair’s voice said. “I’m in Broussard. I ran into somebody I need to talk with. I’ll be along in a little bit. Just put my dinner in the refrigerator. I’m sorry.”
I looked at Molly. “Ran into who?” I said.
She shrugged.
I dialed Alafair’s cell phone, but it went instantly to voice mail.
“It could be anyone. Don’t jump to conclusions,” Molly said.
“When Alf avoids mentioning the name of a person to me, it’s because she knows I think that person is toxic.”
Molly started to speak but instead drew in her breath and held it and looked at my face, trying to hide the conclusions she herself was already coming to.
ALAFAIR HAD SEEN the black Saab in front of her on the two-lane highway that wound through mossy oaks in the little sugarcane town of Broussard. The highway was called Old Spanish Trail and was usually empty, and for that reason she had swung off the four-lane and driven through Broussard in hopes of avoiding the rush-hour traffic. Up ahead, by the four corners, the Saab had pulled in to a filling station, and the driver had gotten out and was filling his tank. He seemed to be gazing idly back down the road, his face clean-shaven, his jeans and sport shirt freshly pressed, the tragedy that had befallen his grandfather somehow locked temporarily in a box. Then he saw her and smiled in the boyish way she had always associated with him until he had brought Robert Weingart into their lives.
He stuck the nozzle of the gas hose back in the pump and waved her down. She looked at her watch. She could be home in under twenty minutes. Should she pass him by and pretend she had not seen him on the same day he had buried his grandfather? She had not attended the funeral service. Actually, she had hoped she would never see Kermit again. But how do you ignore someone who was once the center of your life, someone who encouraged your art and read your prose line by line and took as much pleasure in its creation and success as you did?
Without making a deliberate choice, she felt her foot come off the accelerator and step on the brake pedal, felt her hands turn the car in to the station, saw Kermit’s face looming larger and larger through the windshield. He walked to her window, the summer light trapped in the sky above his head, his dockworker’s physique backdropped by blooming myrtle bushes and oaks hung with Spanish moss. She started to speak, but he raised his hand. “You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “I know you liked and respected my grandfather. He always held you in the same regard.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t attend the funeral,” she replied.
“He’d understand. So do I.”
“Are you doing all right?” she said.
“I’m not staying in the house right now. It’s still a crime scene. I want to have it cleaned and painted. I want to start things all over. Not just at the house but in my life.”
The gas pump behind him was a dull red, solid-looking, part of the evening, part of Americana in some way. But something about it bothered her.
“Can you have a drink with me?” he said.
“I’m late for supper. I was shopping in Lafayette and got caught in the afternoon rush.”
“I really need to explain some things,” he said.
“Where’s—” she began.
“Robert is not here. That’s what I need to talk to you about. I need to clear my conscience, Alafair.”
There was a bar across the street, one with neon beer signs in the windows and a termite-eaten colonnade and a squat roof that looked like a frowning man. Her gaze returned to the gas pump and the digital indicators that showed the number of gallons. “If I drink anything, I won’t eat supper.”
“There’s a sno’ball stand on the next block. Pull in to the lot. It’ll only take five minutes.”
“Let me call home,” she said.
“Sure,” he said. He walked out of earshot, showing deference for her privacy, showing her once again the gentleman he’d been raised to be.
After she had called and left the second message of the afternoon on the machine, she restarted her engine and drove down the block to the corner, where she turned in to a gravel lot behind the sno’ball stand. The board flap on the serving window had been lowered and latched; the stand was closed. Kermit pulled his Saab up next to her car. But something was bothering her, a detail that caught in the eye the way a lash catches under the eyelid. Back at the filling station, she had been talking, or Kermit had, and she hadn’t been able to concentrate. What was the detail that didn’t fit inside the summer evening, the gold light high in the sky, the dull red solidity of the gas pump, the smell of dust and distant rain?
Kermit got out of the Saab and walked to her window. He carried a brown paper bag in his hand. It was folded neatly across the top, in the way a workingman might fold down the top of his lunch sack before heading out for his job.
“You bought less than two gallons of gas,” she said.
“Right,” he said.
“Why would you stop just to buy two gallons of gas?”
“I needed to use the restroom, so I thought I should buy something,” he replied, his expression bemused.
“Why not just buy some mints? That’s what most people would do.”
“Actually, that’s what I did.” His eyes seemed to flatten, as though he were reviewing what he had just said. “When I was inside. I bought some mints.”
“Could I have one?” she asked.
“A mint?” He touched his shirt pocket. “They must be on the seat. We need to talk. Slide over.”
He opened the driver’s door and turned off the engine and pulled the keys from the ignition. In the rearview mirror, she saw a white Mustang come from the side street and angle across the lot and jar to a stop on the opposite side of her vehicle, dust rising off the wheels, drifting in an acrid cloud through her windows. There was no one else on the street. The wind had dropped, and the leaves on the oak trees looked like the brushstrokes in an expressionist painting—glowing unnaturally, smudged, unreal, trying to disguise in the cheapest fashion the painful realities of death.
The driver of the white Mustang wore shades and a yellow felt hat, the kind a hiker might wear on the banks of Lake Louise. He was eating a hamburger with one hand. A second man, someone she didn’t recognize, sat in the passenger seat. There were three deep lines in the man’s forehead that reminded her of knotted string. The driver got out of his vehicle, glancing over his shoulder and down the sidewalks. When he sat down heavily next to her, she thought she could see the crumpled lines around his jaw and ears where a plastic surgeon’s knife had created the mask that had become the face of Robert Weingart.
Kermit Abelard shook a pair of steel handcuffs from the paper bag he had been holding, just as Weingart thrust a hypodermic needle into her thigh. In seconds, she saw the light go out of the sky and the trees dissolve into smoke. Then she heard Weingart whisper close to her cheek, his breath heavy with mustard and onions, “Welcome to hell, Alafair.”
AT SUNSET, FROM the front of his cottage at the motor court, Clete Purcel witnessed a change in the weather that was audible, a sucking of air that drew the leaves off the ground and out of the trees and sent them soaring into the sky, flickering like hundreds of yellow and green butterflies above the bayou. Then a curtain of rain marched across the wetlands, dissolving
the western horizon into plumes of gray and blue smoke that resembled emissions from an ironworks.
The barometer and temperature dropped precipitously. Clete went inside the cottage and heard lightning pop on the water. A half hour later, through his front window, he saw headlights in the rain, then heard a door slam and feet running, followed by a loud banging on his door. When he opened it, Emma Poche was staring up into his face, an Australian flop hat wilted on her head, the leather cord swinging under her chin like the bail on an inverted bucket, her breath smelling of beer. Over her shoulder, he could see the backseat of her car piled to the windows with her possessions.
“Let me in,” she said.
“What for?”
“You have to ask?”
“Yeah, I don’t have a clue.”
Her eyes searched the room and came back on his. “I set you up.”
“On the Stanga deal?”
“I fucked you in your bed, then I fucked you behind your back.”
“You put my gold pen in Stanga’s pool?”
She shrugged and raised her face to his. “You got a drink?”
“No.”
She stepped around him, forcing him to either close the door behind her or push her back outside. “Can I look in your refrigerator? You must have a beer.”
“You clipped Stanga?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you did?”
“Is the world the less for it?”
“You clipped him for Carolyn Blanchet?”
“Don’t get me started about Carolyn.”
“We’re not talking about your love affairs, Emma. The two of you capped her poor dumb bastard of a husband.”
“It didn’t have anything to do with you. That’s the only reason I’m here. I really did a number on you, Clete. It’s the worst thing I ever did in my life.”
“Now you’re blowing town? See you around Crime Stoppers and all that sort of jazz?”
“No, I’m gonna hang around so I can do Carolyn’s time in Gonzales. I always wanted to be an ex-cop in a prison population full of bull dykes. You gonna give me a beer?”
“I think there’s one behind the mayonnaise.”