I was in the midst of pulling the stuffing out of his couch. I straightened up and got rid of a crick in my back. “I’ve got news for you, Des. Some of us stayed here and fought the good fight while others left and joined the snobs who think their shit doesn’t stink.”
His left eye shrank into a pool of vitriol, one so intense that I wondered if I knew the real Desmond Cormier.
We went downstairs under the house where he parked his vehicles. He stayed right behind us, his hands knotting and unknotting. There was a huge pile of junk in one corner. It started at the floor and climbed to the ceiling and looked water-stained and moldy at the base.
“What’s that?” I said.
“The detritus of Hurricane Rita when my house was flooded. The trash my guests leave behind.”
Three more deputies in uniform pulled in. “Just in time,” I said to them. “Get your latex on, fellows.”
“You enjoying this, Dave?” Desmond said.
“No, I’m not. I always thought you represented everything that’s good in us. I thought you were a great artist and director, one for the ages.”
He looked like someone had struck a kitchen match on his stomach lining. Behind him, Sean McClain pulled a black gym bag from the pile and shook out a towel, a Ziploc bag with a bar of soap in it, a sweatshirt, a spray can of men’s deodorant, a pair of Levi’s, and a flowery blouse. Then he shook the bag again. A tennis shoe fell out.
“Better take a look at this, Dave,” Sean said.
“What do you have?”
Sean hooked his finger inside the shoe and lifted it from the pile. The shoe was lime green with blue stripes. “Size seven. Just like the one we found in the surf.”
I looked at Desmond. “What do you have to say?”
“I don’t know whose bag that is, and I never saw that shoe. Lucinda Arceneaux wore one like it?”
“Sell your doodah to somebody else,” I said.
“Am I under arrest?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t plan any trips.”
“So you’re finished here?” he said.
Bailey stepped close to him, her eyes burning into his face. “Do yourself a favor. Stop acting like a twit and own up. You’re an embarrassment.”
His face twitched at the insult. I didn’t know Des was still that vulnerable.
“Let’s get back to work,” I said. “Lay everything out on the lawn.”
• • •
THAT AFTERNOON, LUCINDA Arceneaux’s father identified the flowery blouse as his daughter’s. He was unsure about the Levi’s, but the size matched the clothes still hanging in her closet. There was no doubt the tennis shoe was hers. At four that afternoon I told Helen about everything I had.
“Okay, I’ll talk to the DA’s office in the morning,” she said.
“Why not get an arrest warrant today? Don’t give Desmond a chance to blow Dodge.”
“We’ll see what the prosecutor says. I don’t think the clothes and shoe will be enough. The gym bag could belong to Butterworth.”
“Butterworth is not our guy. Or at least not our primary guy.”
“Why?”
“He wears his vices too openly. He’s a showboat.”
“Why your certainty about Desmond Cormier?”
“The killer is an iconoclast.”
“A what?”
“A breaker of images and totems. But our guy is also infatuated with them.”
“Sorry, that sounds like the kind of stuff Bailey comes up with.”
“What does it take?” I asked. “Desmond has been playing us from the day we pulled Lucinda Arceneaux out of the water.”
“But playing us about what? Most of his denial has to do with the source of his money. That doesn’t make him a killer. Besides, Lucinda Arceneaux was his half sister, for God’s sake.”
“The issues are one and the same. The homicide is connected to money.”
“We don’t know that,” she said.
“Speak for yourself.”
“Cool out, Pops. We’re going to nail him, but right now I’m not sure for what.”
“Great choice of a verb.”
“I love you, bwana, but sometimes I think I committed an unpardonable sin in a former life, and you were put here to give me a second chance.”
“What if Desmond is our guy and he does it again?”
“I have a hard time thinking of him as a serial killer.”
“Our guy is not a serial killer. There’s a method to his madness.”
She didn’t answer; she obviously had given up the argument.
“What if he’s protecting the murderer and the murderer kills someone else?” I said. “Maybe another young woman like Lucinda Arceneaux?”
“You just made sure I won’t sleep tonight,” she replied.
• • •
THE NEXT DAY, we went to work on the origins of the bag. It had come from an online vendor in California that had gone out of business five years ago. There were latents on the deodorant can, but they weren’t in the system. Bailey came into my office. “I just got a call from Butterworth.”
“He called you? You didn’t call him first?”
“He said he wants to come in.”
“With an attorney?”
“No. He said he wants to clear the air.”
In any investigation a cop looks for what we call “the weak sister.” I believed we had just found ours. “Call him back. Tell him we’ll meet him in City Park at noon.”
“Not here?”
“We want him to feel comfortable, as though he’s among friends.”
“Sounds a little deceitful.”
“These guys invented deceit.”
“Okay,” she said. “Want to get together this evening?”
“Sure.”
“Because that’s not the impression I’ve been having.”
“You shouldn’t think that way, Bailey.”
“You don’t think less of me because of what I told you about my past?”
“No,” I replied, trying to keep my face empty.
“See you at six?”
“Looking forward to it,” I said.
After she was gone, I could feel my heart racing, but I didn’t know why.
• • •
WE MET BUTTERWORTH with a box of fried chicken and crawfish at one of the picnic shelters in the park. He parked his Subaru under an oak and got out. He wore white slacks and a lavender long-sleeve silk shirt that twisted with light on his spare frame; his tan was even deeper than when I had seen him last. He put a Nicorette on his tongue.
“Sit down,” I said. “Have some of Louisiana’s best fried food. It has enough cholesterol to clog a sewer drain.”
“Very good of you. Thank you.”
“What did you want to tell us, Mr. Butterworth?” Bailey said.
“Of a concern or two I have. Our enterprise—or rather, the film culture—is a diverse one. Our common denominator is a desire for money and power and celebrity. I suspect you have determined that by now.”
“The same could apply to many groups of people,” Bailey said.
“Our production company is independent of the studios, which stay alive only through the computerized adaptation of comic books. In other words, we find production money in unlikely sources.”
His faux accent and manner were already starting to wear. “We’re conscious of that, Mr. Butterworth,” I said. “What’s the point, sir?”
“We take money from Hong Kong, Russians, Saudis, and some people in New Jersey.”
“And you launder money for some of them?” Bailey said.
I tried to give her a cautionary look.
“Use any term for it you wish,” Butterworth said. He fished in his shirt pocket as though looking for a cigarette. “I want you to understand my position. I don’t kill people. I saw enough of that in Africa.”
“You make and sell war games for teenagers,” Bailey said.
&nbs
p; “I can’t deny that,” he said. “I also buy Treasury bonds, and if you haven’t noticed, the United States government is the biggest weapons manufacturer in the world.”
“Come on, Mr. Butterworth,” I said. “Let’s get to it.”
“A number of people from the Mafia have shown up in our lives. Why is that? They want an immediate return on their money. Second, a nasty little worm of a man with a ridiculous name evidently roasted a couple of their lads.”
“Smiley Wimple?” I said.
“Yes, that naughty boy.”
“You called him a worm of a man,” I said. “You’ve seen him?”
“He was on the bloody set, eating an Eskimo Pie.”
“How’d you know the guy was Wimple?” I said.
“I’ve seen him before. He was killing people here three years ago. He seems to have a fondness for the area.”
I didn’t know if I believed him or not, and frankly, I didn’t care. Butterworth had a circuitous way of spreading confusion without offering any information of value.
“Here’s what I think, Mr. Butterworth,” I said. “You plan to give us nothing. In the meantime you’re strapping on a parachute so you can bail out of the plane before it crashes.”
“Desmond’s film will be one of the greatest ever put on the American screen,” he said. “I’ve led a rather worthless life, but I take great satisfaction in the knowledge that I had something to do with a creation of that magnitude. Des has only a short run ahead of him. I hope he can finish his film.”
“Say again?” I replied.
“He’s on the spike. Don’t ask me what goes into his veins, because I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s a cocktail from hell.”
Our table was spangled with sunshine, the moss waving overhead, the wind cool off Bayou Teche. The petals of the camellia bushes were scattered on the grass like drops of blood. As a cop, you hear everything that human beings are capable of doing. That doesn’t mean you get used to it. Evil has a smell like copper coins on a hot stove, like offal burning on a winter day, like a gangrenous-soaked bandage at a battalion aid station in a tropical country. It violates your glands and your senses. Its odor stays in your dreams, and you never fail to recognize it in your waking day. I swore I smelled it on Butterworth’s skin.
“No comment?” Butterworth said.
“You’re diming your friend and doing it without shame,” I said. “It’s a bit embarrassing to witness.”
He looked at Bailey. “He’s obsessed with you.”
“Who is?” she said.
“Desmond,” Butterworth said. “Be careful. A great artist is just this side of mad. If you doubt me, thumb through the bios of those who torment themselves for months trying to paint a starry night or the likeness of God. Desmond uses chemicals not to escape reality but to find it. How insane can one man be?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
I PICKED UP BAILEY at six o’clock. Or tried to pick her up. She came to the front door in a gingham dress. I was wearing a suede sport coat and freshly pressed slacks and a light blue shirt and a plum-colored necktie. “Ready?”
“Where are we going?” she said, as though surprised.
“Dinner and a movie.”
“I already fixed something.”
“Then a film?”
“Whatever you like. Are you turning into a monk?”
“If so, I’m not aware of it.”
“Come in, Dave. We need to talk.”
I didn’t want to come in or to talk. If someone had pointed a gun at me and asked me to state my honest feelings about Bailey, I wouldn’t have known what to say. My obsession with her was probably as great as Desmond’s. Maybe I was trying to reclaim my youth; maybe I wanted to be her protector. It was hard for me to separate her from the image of Cathy Downs standing by the road while Henry Fonda tells her that one day he may return to Tombstone, although he knows full well that his business with the Clantons is not over and he will never be back.
Yes, it was hard for me to separate Bailey from Clementine Carter, until I thought about the three men Bailey had set on fire.
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. She had set the dining room table and lit a candelabra in the center. “You’re looking at me that way again. It makes me very uncomfortable,” she said.
“That’s a pretty dress. You look beautiful in it. You’re beautiful in anything, Bailey.”
“I wish I hadn’t told you about what I did in Montana. You think I should resign my job?”
“For what purpose?”
“Maybe I should report myself to the authorities in Montana.”
I could feel my heart thudding, my stomach churning. “This is the reality. The case was closed years ago. In the eyes of the law, three meth dealers blew themselves up. Probably all three had records as dealers and predators. Their deaths were marked off as good riddance. If you reopen the case, you will be involved with the courts for two or three years and then probably be given probation. Everybody involved with the case will secretly wish you stayed in Louisiana. In the meantime you will be financially destitute and ruined professionally. What good would come out of it?”
“I’d sleep again,” she said.
I had tried. But I couldn’t even convince myself. And I had not addressed the arson investigation at the school in Holy Cross, even though I had discussed it with Clete, for which I felt another layer of guilt.
“Desmond hired a PI to dig up dirt on you,” I said. “Or rather, he got Lou Wexler to hire the PI who dug up your past.”
“Pardon?”
“You were part of an arson investigation when you were thirteen. The fire was at a Girl Scout meeting in Holy Cross.”
“Yes, it was an accident.”
“I talked to a retired fire department superintendent,” I said. “He believed they cut you some slack because of the problems in your home.”
“You’re saying I’m a firebug?”
“No,” I said. But the word stuck in my throat.
“So what am I?”
“Someone who had a hard young life. Like a lot of us.”
“What do we do now? Make love? Eat dinner? Pretend nothing has happened?”
“I’m not sure.”
She went to the dining room table and pinched out the candles one at a time. “There. Good night, sweet prince. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
I stared at her dumbly. She avoided my eyes. I think she was on the edge of crying. I went outside and got into my truck and drove home in the last of the sunset. I don’t think I ever felt more alone.
• • •
THAT SAME EVENING, Alafair and Clete went to Red Lerille’s Health and Racquet Club in Lafayette. Alafair played tennis with a friend under the lights in the outdoor courts, then joined Clete inside, where he was slowly curling and lowering a hundred-pound barbell, his upper arms swelling into muskmelons. Then she realized Lou Wexler was in the free-weight room also, forty feet away, dead-lifting three hundred pounds, his back and thighs knotted as tight as iron. He released the bar, bouncing the plates on the platform.
“Hey, you,” he said.
“Hey,” she replied. “I thought you had to go back to Los Angeles to work out something with the union.”
“Got it done on the phone,” he said. “Des wants to keep me close by. He seems to go from one mess to the next.”
“I’d rather not talk about Des.”
“Right-o. I saw the big fellow over there, what’s-his-name, Purcel. You’re here with him?”
“Y’all haven’t met formally?” she said.
“No, just a nod or two. I saw him at Monument Valley, I think. When he visited the set. No need to bother him.”
“You two would hit it off.”
“You know me, Alafair, I’m a bit private.”
She gestured for Clete to come over anyway. “This is Lou Wexler, Clete. He’s a producer and writer on our film.”
“Glad to know you,” Clete said, extend
ing his hand.
“Likewise,” Wexler said. He didn’t take Clete’s hand. His attention had shifted to a man in a black-and-white jumpsuit wearing yellow workout gloves who had just walked in and begun pumping twenty-pound dumbbells. The man in the jumpsuit stiff-armed the dumbbells straight out in front of him, twisting them rapidly back and forth, the veins in his neck cording. His head was shaped like a lightbulb, with several strands of hair combed across the crown.
Alafair followed Wexler’s line of sight to the man in the jumpsuit. “Who’s that?”
“One of the happy little fellows who was indicted in the Iberia Parish prison scandal.”
“That’s Tee Boy Ladrine,” Clete said. “He was a guard at the jail. He was found not guilty.”
“How could anybody work there and not know what was going on?” Wexler said.
“I know what you mean,” Clete said. “He was tight with Frenchie Lautrec, the guy who hanged himself. But Tee Boy rents his brain by the week. On a good day he can tie his shoes without a diagram.”
“What does intelligence have to do with pretending he didn’t know a man was suffocated in there?” Wexler said.
“You don’t have to tell me, noble mon.”
“Noble what?”
“I was saying jail sucks,” Clete said. “I’ve been in a number of them, and not as a visitor.”
“Tell me, Mr. Purcel, would you stand by while some poor fellow has the air crushed out of his lungs?” Wexler asked.
“Probably not.”
“That’s the only point I was making. A decent fellow acts decently. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to let a bugger in a jumpsuit come into a fine club like this.”
Clete’s gaze focused on nothing. “I’d better grab a shower and one of those health drinks.”
Alafair put her hand on Clete’s upper arm. It felt as hard as a fire hydrant. “We’ll have a drink together. Right, Lou?”
“Of course. Let me hit the shower, too. What a fine evening. Shouldn’t get fired up over a cretin who probably never heard a shot fired in anger.”
They walked toward the locker rooms, and Alafair thought Wexler’s absorption with the former jail guard was over. Then Wexler veered off course as though he had tripped. He collided solidly into Ladrine, knocking him into the mirror above the dumbbell racks.
The New Iberia Blues Page 34