I pushed open the screen. “I don’t hear any sirens.”
He brushed past me. “That’s not funny. Hi, Alafair.”
“Hi, yourself, big guy,” she replied.
“About to take off for the set?”
“Not for a while,” she said.
Clete’s eyes were wandering all over the kitchen. Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon were eating out of their bowls on top of a newspaper, their muddy tracks strung behind them. “I was just passing by,” he said.
I grinned at him. “Tell me what you did.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“That’s why your BP is about two hundred or so,” I said.
“Can I be honest here?” he said, glancing at Alafair.
“Get the marbles out of your mouth, will you, Clete?” I said.
“It’s what I didn’t do. Wimple was in my cottage last night. He was not only in it last night, he waited for me under the bed all afternoon.”
For some reason Snuggs stopped eating and looked up at him.
“He hooked you up or something?” I said.
“How’d you know?”
“Because it’s the kind of stuff Smiley does. Did you call it in?”
“I let him slide.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I gave him my word.”
“I don’t believe this,” I said.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“Until you get a shiv between your shoulder blades.”
“Wimple finds people we can’t get close to,” he said. “There’s nothing about the Mob he doesn’t know. He’s like a worm inside a corpse.”
Alafair put down the toast she was eating. “Thanks, Clete.”
“Can I have a cup of coffee?” he said. “I got the shakes. Wimple creeped me out. It’s like talking to a giant slug.”
“You know I have to report this to Helen.”
“Do anything you want. What’s better, getting to the bottom of Lucinda Arceneaux’s death or putting a guy in a cage who’s got a triple-A battery for a brain?”
“Helen might have you picked up, Clete.”
“For what, not getting myself killed? Wimple said there’s Jersey and Russian money going to a movie company hereabouts. He said the money gets laundered in Malta.”
“Malta as in Maltese cross?” I said.
“Yeah, the kind that’s been showing up on dead people.”
“How does a piece of stamped metal or a tattoo on a dead person connect with money laundering?” I asked.
“Let me turn it around on you. If the Maltese cross isn’t a signal about money, then what does it represent? Some guy’s fascination with the prizes in a box of Cracker Jack?”
I picked up Snuggs and cuddled him in my arm. I wiped his feet with a paper towel.
“Did you hear me, Dave?” Clete said.
“Yeah, I did. I’ve got no answers. But if Smiley caps somebody else—maybe Sean McClain—you’ll never forgive yourself.”
He looked like I’d punched him in the stomach.
• • •
HELEN WAS FURIOUS when I told her of Clete’s contact with Smiley.
“What was he supposed to do?” I said. “Run outside and catch one in the face?”
“Clete didn’t call it in.”
“What good would that have done? Smiley has never been in custody anywhere. Plus, I think the department discounts anything Clete says.”
Her fists were knotted on her desk pad. I thought I had her.
“Hugo Tillinger died at seven-thirty this morning,” she said.
I felt my heart drop.
“Iberia General called a half hour ago,” she said. “You know what this means for Sean McClain?”
• • •
I WENT BACK TO my office and dipped into my file cabinet and laid out all my notes and manila folders and photographs and medical reports and printouts from the state police and FBI on the series of homicides that had begun with the death of Lucinda Arceneaux. I was convinced the killer was insane, obsessed, imperious, and wired in to a frame of reference no one else would comprehend. But others were involved, if only tangentially. Corrupt or sadistic personnel in the department were players, and members of the Aryan Brotherhood, and the Mob, and film people who weren’t bothered by blood money, and Russian or Saudi wheeler-dealers, and possibly a bank that laundered money in Malta.
Maybe such an aggregate of causality seems improbable for a series of crimes in a disappearing wetlands area on the southern rim of our country. But the truth always lies in the microcosm. Wars of enormous importance and consequence are usually fought in places no one cares about. The faces of the players change, but not the issue. You go to the center of the vortex and soon discover you have already been there. It’s a matter of seeing the details.
In this instance the key had to be in the tarot. Lucinda Arceneaux was the crucified Christ. The walking cane through the heart of Joe Molinari represented the Suit of Wands; the net in which he was suspended suggested the Hanged Man. The sequined star pasted on the forehead of Hilary Bienville was the Suit of Pentacles. The chalice the killer had fitted into the dead hand of Bella Delahoussaye was symbolic of the Suit of Cups.
What was not in the photographs?
Answer: The Suit of Swords. But what if there were bodies out there we hadn’t found? I couldn’t think my way through the material I was looking at.
The term “conspiracy theory” has become a term of contempt, I suspect because many of the electorate cannot accept that sometimes more evil exists at the top of society than at the bottom. One by one I looked at the photographs of the victims. It was a somber moment. That the photographs had been taken at all seemed heartless, an invasion of the victim’s suffering and despair and vulnerability. They were the kind of photographs that defense lawyers never want a jury to see. The image that hurt me most was of Bella Delahoussaye.
I wanted to believe Bella spat in her tormentor’s face. I wanted to believe she humiliated him for the worm he was. But I knew Bella was better than that. She probably treated him with pity, which drove him into an even greater rage.
I closed her folder and propped my elbows on my desk blotter and lowered my forehead on my hands and asked my Higher Power to go back in time and be with Bella in her last minutes. Then I felt a level of anger that was so great and violent and dangerous in its intensity that it caused half of my face to go dead. I hoped no one passing in the hallway looked through my window.
Chapter Thirty-One
SATURDAY MORNING WAS perfect. The sunrise was striped with pink and purple clouds, the live oaks a deep green after the rain, the bayou high above the banks, the lily pads and elephant ears rolling with the current. It was a study in the mercurial nature of light and shadow and the way they form and re-create the external world second by second with no more guidance than a puff of wind. I believed it was akin to the obsession of Desmond Cormier with John Ford’s films and the Manichean dualism of light and darkness. I believed I was looking into the center of the Great Mystery right there in my backyard.
But my lighthearted mood did not last long. Later, as I was raking leaves in the front yard, I saw Antoine Butterworth’s Subaru coming up East Main, past the library and city hall and the grotto devoted to Jesus’ mother. I turned my back to the street, gathering up an armload of leaves to stuff in a barrel, hoping that Butterworth would drive on by.
I heard his wheels turn into my driveway and bounce with the dip. The top of his Subaru was down. He cut his engine and got out, dressed in pleated white slacks and a golf shirt and sandals, with a pale blue silk bandana tied around his neck, the way a rogue Errol Flynn might wear it. He held a manila envelope in one hand.
“Normally, I’d take this to your supervisor,” he said. “But since she’s not in on Saturday, I thought you wouldn’t mind my dropping by. What a snug little place you have here.”
“What is it, Butterworth?”
“Actually, I was made pr
ivy to this material by Lou Wexler, busy little shit that he is.”
“You’re not a Brit. Why do you try to talk like one?”
“You don’t think Lou is a little shit? Oh, I forgot, he’s dating your daughter.”
“She’s not dating him, bub.”
“That would be news to Lou.”
I began raking again, the tines biting into the dirt.
“He did some checking on your partner, Detective Ribbons,” Butterworth said. “Want to hear the results?”
My hands were tingling. I raked harder, a bead of sweat running down my nose.
“Not curious at all?” he said. “My, my.”
I stopped, the rake propped in my hand. “Say it.”
“Bailey was a bad little girl and was playing with matches.”
I held my eyes on his. How could either Wexler or Butterworth know about the arson deaths of the three rapists on an Indian reservation in western Montana? According to Bailey, she had never told anyone what she had done except me and the Indian woman with whom she lived.
“Cat got your tongue?” he said.
“I’m off the clock now,” I said. “I’m also on my own property.”
“Meaning?”
“You might be having your next meal through a glass straw.”
“I’ll leave this private investigator’s report for you to read at your leisure. Ta-ta.”
“Why would Wexler be interested in the background of Detective Ribbons?”
“It’s not Wexler. Outside of posing in front of a mirror, his chief interest in life is lessons in classical Latin, if you get my drift. Put it this way—he loves to shoot films in Thailand. Desmond told him to check out your partner.”
“Why her?”
“You and she are hurting Des financially. That said, by extension, you’re hurting Lou and me.”
“Get off my property.”
“Not interested in the tykes who got burned in a schoolhouse fire?”
Then I realized he wasn’t talking about the death of the rapists. My stomach felt sick, my face sweaty and cold in the wind. “Where’d this happen?”
“In Holy Cross, in the Lower Ninth Ward. None of the children died. But a certain little girl was in a lot of trouble for a while. The welfare worker said she was ‘disturbed.’ Broken home, alcoholic mother, poverty, all that Little Match Girl routine, no pun intended.”
I went back to raking, my hands dry and stiff on the rake handle, my eyes out of focus.
“No clever remarks?” he said.
“I think you’re full of it.”
“Just going to let it roll off your back?”
I didn’t look up. “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?”
“Let’s see. Three things, actually. I took a couple of AK rounds that probably had feces on them. One of my wives gave me the clap. And spending time in this place.”
I took the manila envelope from his hands, walked him to his vehicle, and slammed him into the seat hard enough to jar his teeth. Then I tore his envelope into pieces and sprinkled them on his head.
“Keep being the great example you are,” I said. “We know you can do it.”
Then I got into my truck, drove around his Subaru—scraping the fender with my bumper—and headed up Loreauville Road to Bailey’s cottage, my heart the size and density of a cantaloupe.
• • •
SHE WASN’T HOME. I got on my cell phone and called Frank Rizzo, an old friend and former arson investigator who had served five years as a superintendent with the New Orleans Fire Department. “Bailey Ribbons?” he said. “Yeah, that clangs bells. You say a schoolhouse in Holy Cross?”
“Yeah, in the Lower Ninth.”
“Can you give me a date?”
“No.” I hated to tell him I had torn up the document that contained the information we needed.
“I’ll get on it. You need it right away? It’s the weekend.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
Two hours later, he called back. “It was twenty-one years ago, after school. Some Girl Scouts were holding a meeting there. One of them said she had learned how to make a fire with flint and kindling. But she couldn’t get the fire started. The other girls lost interest and went outside. A few minutes later, the curtains were burning.”
“Who was doing the demonstration with the flint and kindling?”
“Bailey Ribbons. She was thirteen.”
“So it was an accident?” I said.
“This is where it gets sticky. She denied starting the fire. There was a hot plate in the room. She claimed one of the other girls had left it on and a coat had fallen off a wall hook on top of the coil. Except there were match heads in the kindling. It was obvious she wanted to impress the other girls and had set up the demonstration before she got there.”
“What was the conclusion on the report?”
“Maybe the coat did fall on the hot plate. A social worker and the school counselor said the girl had problems. The mother was a drunk, the father gone. The mother and daughter lived on food stamps and church charity. We gave the girl a lecture and dropped it. It was a judgment call, the kind you want to forget.”
I could hear a sound in my ears like wind blowing in a seashell. “Why did you want to forget it?”
“When you train as an arson investigator, you try to learn what goes on in the head of a firebug. It’s about power and control. That little girl had every warning sign on her. Has this woman done something I should know about?”
I felt my throat tighten. “Her jacket is clean. A guy was trying to spread some dirt on her.”
“You doing a background check for the department?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Glad to hear everything worked out.”
“Yeah,” I said meaninglessly.
“It can go the other way sometimes.”
“Pardon?”
“You know, you err on the side of compassion. Then ten years down the line, you find out the person you let go fried a bunch of people.”
After I hung up, my knees were so weak I had to sit down.
• • •
THAT EVENING A squall blew through the parish, knocking down branches on power lines and flooding the storm sewers and gutters on East Main. I had no idea where Bailey was. I wondered if I had been played, or if I was dealing with a sociopath or a pyromaniac. But that’s the nature of gossip and lies or half-truths or incomplete information. Suspicion begins with a fine crack and grows into a chasm. I fed Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon in the kitchen and tried to take comfort in their company.
“How are you guys doing?” I said.
I got a tail swish from Mon Tee Coon.
“Let me make a confession to you,” I said. “I think the world would be a better place if we turned it over to you and the rest of us got off the planet.”
They continued eating, noncommittal. I heard Alafair pull into the drive and get out and run through the puddles into the house. She got a towel out of the bathroom and came into the kitchen, wiping her face. “All the traffic lights are knocked out. What a mess.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“Playing handball at Red Lerille’s with Lou.”
“Earlier today Antoine Butterworth was here with some dirt on Bailey Ribbons.”
“Dave, I don’t want to hear any more about Antoine. He’s weird. What else is new? End of subject.”
“This isn’t about Butterworth. He says he got his information from Lou Wexler.”
“No, this isn’t adding up. What would Lou know about Bailey Ribbons? Why would he have any interest in her?”
“Evidently, Wexler hired a PI as part of his scut work for Desmond Cormier.”
“Lou does not do scut work. He’s a producer and a writer. He’s bankrupted himself out of his loyalty to Desmond. You may not know this, but when Des finishes the picture, he may well have produced one of the greatest films ever made. And the only way he can finish it is to beg, borr
ow, and steal every nickel he can. Maybe you don’t agree with that, but give him and Lou some credit.”
I took the towel from her hand and wiped her hair with it. “You want me to fix you something to eat?”
“No.” Her eyes remained on mine. “This isn’t about Antoine or Lou, is it?”
“No.”
“What did the PI dig up on Bailey?”
“She may have accidentally started a fire in a schoolhouse when she was thirteen.”
“That’s it?”
“She’d put some matchheads inside some kindling she wanted to light with a flint.”
Alafair went to the icebox and took a pitcher of tea from the tray, her eyes neutral and impossible to read. She had graduated with honors from Reed and had finished Stanford Law at the top of her class. She had an IQ that only two people in a million have.
“What’s the rest of it?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Don’t play games with me, Dave.”
“I’m not sure who Bailey is.”
“She’s got a history? Something to do with fire?”
“I’d better not say any more.”
She set the pitcher of tea on the table and turned toward me. “Oh, Dave, what have you gotten yourself into?”
• • •
ONE HOUR LATER, the sky had grown darker, the rain heavier, blowing in sheets on the bayou. The phone rang on the kitchen counter. I looked at the caller ID before I picked up. “Is that you, Sean?”
“Remember when we went fishing and you said you’d have my back?” he said.
“Sure.” The truth was, I didn’t remember. But that didn’t matter. “What’s up, podna?”
“I’m a little snaky today and probably not seeing things right. Some of Hugo Tillinger’s church friends was taking his body back to Texas, so I went over to the funeral home and hung around. I wasn’t in uniform.”
Wrong move, I thought. But I didn’t say it.
“One guy asked if I was a relative or friend. I told him I was just paying my respects. I guess you could call that lying.”
The New Iberia Blues Page 32