Swallowing hard, rubbing her head, Marisol said, “I don’t think what I’m looking for has anything to do with any of that.”
“It all has to do with everything. The desolation you wandered around in out there, it’s the center. But the entropy travels further than you can see and consumes all our constructs. None of the systems that frame and hold and explain this world are any sturdier than the levees. We’re in dangerous and unsound and evil times.”
The short-haired one said, “But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a cold beer.”
She laughed and drank and snorted and Marisol feared she would choke. The heavy one stood and left the room. Marisol blinked.
“I’d really like to use your phone.”
She called Geoff Waltz, her damn client, who had gotten her into this disturbing, terrifying fiasco of a case.
Chapter 21
Bobby and Tasha walked arm-in-arm down the gangway over the muddy Red River and into a faux paddlewheel steam boat. A simulacrum—the diesel powered ship sailed seldom and only as a formality. The lights of Shreveport and Bossier City embraced them like a minor heaven.
Inside, the bells and flashes of a million slot machines at once disoriented them and grounded them in this strange world lacking in dimensions of time and of direction. The vast interior of the floating casino bulged with a mass of tacit souls focused on their games—old black women in long dresses, lake people in last century’s polyester, Vietnamese catfish farmers, retirees brought in by the bus load from Dallas.
Bobby and Tasha had come to this place to get away from the town they both felt too big for, that Bobby saw as a quicksand place from which he might never escape; that Tasha saw as a temporary stopover on her way to glory in Austin and then Washington.
Bobby led her to a quarter slot with a classic fruit and sevens motif. “I usually drop a twenty in one of these babies and then hit the blackjack tables.”
He slid the bill into the machine and the LED display tallied up four hundred credits with cheerful dings, as if it were a friendly shop keep ringing up coupons.
“You pull first.”
Tasha did not pull the lever but instead pushed a button that spun the wheel with the same effect. Bobby said, “I don’t know why, but I think the old fashioned lever’s more honest.
“I don’t think it’s very honest either way. Or at least not random.”
They took turns spinning the wheel and were at one point seven dollars ahead but the overall trend was downward and within a few minutes the display was in the single digits and then it was down to two. Bobby said, “We each get one.” He pulled the lever and won nothing and Tasha pushed the button for the last credit. When the wheels stopped and the win line came up mismatched and worthless and the display read zero, Tasha looked crestfallen but Bobby put his arm around her and said, “It’s okay.”
They settled in at a five dollar blackjack table beside an obese man with red cheeks and a cowboy hat. Tasha stood behind Bobby seated there and put her arm around his shoulders as if posing for a vacation brochure. A young white woman with a pimple on her chin dealt the cards and looked bored. Bobby stayed even and then inched ahead. A tiny waitress in a burlesque get-up came by and gave Bobby a free beer. Tasha drank white wine and clapped and squealed every time Bobby won a hand. Then he grew tired of counting cards and started to lose so he quit.
They ravished the seafood buffet like it was some decadent feast set out solely for them. Sated, they walked with their arms around each others’ waists into the concert venue where they watched and cheered a geriatric Nashville star enjoying his third run of fame in six decades and whose fan base consisted of equal parts young hipsters and elderly country folk. But there were no hipsters there that night.
•
Riding along the two-lane blacktop over the Texas border and back to town, Tasha lolled her head against the passenger window of Bobby’s sporty Japanese pickup, watching the Milky Way through the pines.
They arrived just past midnight, and Tasha directed Bobby to her little house on the edge of town, near a bayou that long ago had carried steamboats all the way to the river and on down to New Orleans.
“This is the place.”
It lay in a little community apart from the rest of the town, an area Bobby had seen his whole life but never much noticed. “You own this place?”
“Yes—I figured, houses are so cheap here, I may as well buy. I’ll probably keep it as a rental when I move on.”
Bobby nodded and followed her up the stone path and past a three-foot iron fence with its gate hanging crooked on rusty hinges. They mounted the cypress porch, and she led him inside to a wide living area with plaster walls painted yellow and more cypress as the floor boards. Gesturing to a series of colorful abstract paintings on the wall above a blue sofa, he said, “Those are cool.”
“They’re Romare Bearden prints.” Then she stood before him in that ancient room and said: “Now, deputy. How about a drink? I’ve got wine.” She touched his nose and grinned. “And a bottle of peppermint schnapps leftover from New Years.”
“Wine, wine, it does me fine.” He sang low as he peered about the room with his hands in his pockets.
After she poured, she led him through time-worn rooms in various states of renovation to a broad screen porch furnished with rustic pieces made from native trees and water plants. In the faint glow of the light of the house, Bobby could make out the gentle slope of the yard down to the bayou—the cypress trees and Spanish moss, the still water as black as oil.
Something flashed large and green in the yard beyond the eaves. And then another and then another. Bobby did not sit down but stared out the screen. “What are those things?”
Tasha joined him, standing near the edge of the porch. “Those are our phosphorescent dragonflies. Amazing, aren’t they?”
“They’re like lightening bugs, but …”
“Twenty times as big? And radioactive green instead of yellow?” Tasha laughed. “I know—they’re something.”
“I’ve always known that there’s weird animals on the lake, but I’ve lived around here my whole life and never seen anything like that.”
“Yeah, it does seem like there are more strange insects, at least. And larger ones. Maybe it’s the milder winters. I don’t know.”
Bobby made a soft grunting noise of acquiescence and backed himself into a rough-hewn chair. Tasha lit the tall beeswax candles scattered around the porch and their orange glow encapsulated them so that the night was a presence known and sensed but not threatening.
“Thanks for tonight,” she said. “I don’t get out much.”
“Me neither.”
They did not turn on any music and they did not talk much there on the porch as they drank their wine, and after a while Bobby rose as if to leave. Standing before him, Tasha tilted her head and looked up at him without words, parting her lips to reveal the slight gap between her front teeth, and he could smell her honey sweetness. After they kissed, she took his hand and led him to her room, where they undressed each other in the moonlight. Bobby admired her smooth caramel skin as she brushed her fingers along his wounded arm—just a simple gauze bandage wrapping it now, the shallow flesh wound already healing—and she moaned a little when he took a nipple in his mouth, but when she lay back and he found his way inside her, she stiffened and moved beneath him with only the slightest rhythm, and then she pursed her lips and squinted her eyes and let out only the faintest squeak to let him know she had finished. He came right away after that and rolled off her onto his back and they turned their heads toward each other and traded little smiles.
“It’s been a while,” she said.
“Same here.”
They lay in silence and Bobby thought about the route he would take home. But when he pictured his bland little apartment by the interstate, he found himself not quite ready to leave.
He said, “Ol’ Seastrunk thinks there might be more to the Bordelon case than just the Tatum twi
ns.”
“Where’d he get that idea?” She sounded too drowsy for the suggestion to perturb her. “The DNA came back a match. They did it, slam dunk.”
“But how will you know which one—”
“Like I’ve said, we’re working on that.”
“Okay. But they might not have acted alone. They could have been working with somebody. Or for somebody …” He saw her eyes open wide and glow in the moonlight.
“And, what—stage it to look like a hate crime?”
“Something like that. This Dallas lawyer, Waltz, called up the sheriff. Told him we should dig deeper. That Dalia may have been killed because of some research she was doing for him down on the lake, at the old Texronco refinery.”
Now Tasha sat up. Covering her breasts with the sheet, she looked down at Bobby. “Does he have any evidence of this?”
“The sheriff pressed him on that. Waltz doesn’t have anything he’s willing to give us yet, but he’s digging into it on his own. He has a private investigator—we met them both last week. The sheriff told him he couldn’t reopen the investigation without some hard evidence, that it’s in the DA’s hands—frankly it’s just too political. Waltz said he understood and would let us know anything he finds out.” He considered. “Seastrunk’s kind of taken a shine to this Waltz fella.”
“Great.” She leaned back.
“So he does want me to interview the twins one more time on Monday—just act like we’re tying up a loose end or two, you know? See if I can glean anything. I guess you’ll want to be there?”
“Of course I’ll want to be there.” She sighed. “Hargrave’s not going to like this. Not to mention Robert Duchamp.”
“Well,” Bobby said, sitting up and preparing to get dressed. “None of us work for the Speaker.”
“In my shop, we all work for the Speaker.”
•
Wayne sobbed throughout the interview. Duane sat smirking with arms crossed over his chest. They wore matching orange jumpsuits, but Wayne’s shaved head and Duane’s lanky hair set them apart. Their lawyer sat between them.
The public defender could have objected to this interview but did not. Rumpled, probably hung over, working only for the meager fee the county provided, he seemed disinterested in his clients’ defense.
Bobby let Tasha begin. Though she had told him she did not want to start negotiating with the Tatum twins until after she had performed some legal maneuvering in front of the judge, a discussion of the DNA evidence now would offer a fine pretext to allow Bobby to see if the twins would reveal anything giving credence to Geoff Waltz’s suspicions.
“We have the DNA results. It matches your clients’. Do y’all care to offer an explanation before we get to the jury?”
The lawyer glanced over at Duane, who said: “I don’t know nothing about how that stuff got there.”
Then he moved his gaze to Wayne, who shook his head and said, “Me neither.”
“Well, one or both of you raped and killed that girl. The other’s an accessory at least. Duane, who’s who?”
“I don’t know nothing about it.”
“Wayne?”
He sobbed louder now. “Me neither.”
“The only difference is, the accessory will get life in prison, the killer will get death.” Tasha looked at the distraught twin. “Wayne, are you willing to let your brother claim he was the accessory? That means you would die.”
Wayne’s sobs had turned to full cries—almost like his wailing on the night Bobby had brought him in. He shook his head back and forth over and over and mumbled no, no, no, no, no. Tasha had warned Bobby that neither twin was liable to say anything, even in light of the DNA evidence, as long as they were in the same room together, with the same counsel representing them.
Duane said, “Shut up, Wayne.”
The lawyer said, “Ms. Carter, we could keep going like this all day—”
“Of course, all this is assuming the jury doesn’t decide y’all were both there that night. Maybe you both raped her. Nailed her to that tree. Seems like a job for two—”
“At least two,” Bobby said.
“It’s a reasonable conclusion for the jury to reach—”
“No No No No No—”
“Shut up, Wayne.”
“—and then y’all would both be put to death, and all this hemming and hawing—”
“Ms. Carter, I think this interview is over.”
“—wouldn’t have done either one of you a lick of good.”
“NO NO NO—”
Duane leapt from his seat and around his lawyer as fast as his shackled legs would allow and leaned down and his lips almost touched his brother’s ear as Wayne rocked back and forth in time with his cries. “I SAID SHUT UP DON’T BE A FUCKING MORON!”
“NO NO NO JIMMY LEE IT WAS JIMMY LEE’S IDEA!”
The lawyer rose and pushed the brothers apart and glared down at Tasha and Bobby. “I said, this interview’s over.”
But it was enough, Bobby thought.
•
Bobby’s fall from the nation’s good graces came as suddenly as his rise to hero-of-the-week.
After a day figuring out who “Jimmy Lee” might be, his mind spinning with the possibility of a grand conspiracy, Bobby tried to make his way to the sheriff’s office. But the cable news people had continued their occupation of the town, along with a handful of print reporters. When they saw his uniform, they pounced. The glare of the sun blinding him, Bobby squinted at the cameras and the microphones. They all shouted questions at once. He felt disoriented. Then, without thought, he shouted an answer back.
“We don’t even know this was a hate crime, really. And if it was, It probably wasn’t safe for a girl like that to be out on the lake by herself in the first place.”
Silence from the scrum. Maybe a faint gasp or two. Bobby heard a crow overhead, and felt his face redden.
Then a question from a handsome woman representing a national magazine: “Deputy, can you elaborate?”
That broke the ice. The questions came on again like automatic rifle fire. Sinister now. Accusatory.
“How could Dalia Bordelon’s murder not have been a hate crime?”
“And are you implying that the victim brought the crime on herself?”
The reporters multiplied and spread around and crowded Bobby like carnivorous fish. The sun hurt his eyes, and he was hungry. He could see his cruiser just fifty yards away in the annex parking lot.
“I’m implying no such thing,” he said. He heard himself begin to sputter but could not stop. “There’s a lot going on down at the lake. Polluted refinery. A murder down in New Orleans that might be linked to this one.”
Camera equipment and microphones lurched for his face like insectoid robots. Their child-like handlers from the cable shows shouted questions now in a cacophonous roar.
One voice penetrated: “Are you saying you’re sympathetic to the suspects’ defense?”
“I’m not sympathetic to anything.”
“Not even to Dalia Bordelon?”
They piled on: You’re saying race might not have been the motivating factor? Will the Tatum brothers be prosecuted for a hate crime? What did you mean by “a girl like that”—are you referring to the victim’s race? Do you believe Dalia Bordelon had it coming?
He shoved the toothy blow-dried plasticine man-child who shouted the last—right in his ear and close enough that Bobby’s empty stomach lurched at the smell of his mentholated breath—and made it to his car.
•
With a rising unease, lurching toward anger, Sheriff Seastrunk watched the little television set in his office.
The anchor sat in a distant studio: “Deputy Bobby Henderson, credited with breaking the case in the gruesome lynching of Dalia Bordelon, now seems to be siding with the killers’ defense team—yes, they killed her, but were they acting alone and of their own accord? And was race really the motivating factor? At least one civil rights leader thinks the investigato
rs’ own motives should be questioned.”
The scene flashed to a close-up of Reverend Carter: “Certainly and sadly, at the very least, the sheriff’s deputy is complicit in the evil by denying it. This is consistent with a heinous plan to deny full justice to Ms. Bordelon by removing the added legal sanctions provided by the hate crimes statute. We must see a full investigation of the Sheriff’s Department.”
“Complicit in evil? It certainly seemed so to our own correspondent on the scene.” The camera cut back to Bobby shoving the celebrity newsman followed by a cut to the assaulted newsman himself: “He seemed so full of hate and rage; I feared for my safety. Back to you, Jill.”
The sheriff muted the television. He had summoned his deputy. He stared out his window until he heard him arrive.
“Sheriff, I—”
Seastrunk swung around in his chair. “Dammit, boy. What did I tell you? What did I tell you?”
“To be careful. I know it. But man, sir, they ganged up on me.”
“You really opened up a shit storm here, son.”
“I know it.”
Outside, a group of protestors had left the courthouse lawn to picket in front of the sheriff’s office. They demanded Bobby’s ouster. They demanded racial justice. They carried signs portraying Seastrunk as a closet Klansman. They chanted slogans to the television cameras to encapsulate the sheriff and his deputy as beings the nation could recognize and revile.
“You know you’re off the case, Bobby.”
“Now come on, Sheriff. I brought in the Tatum twins in the first place. If there’s really more to this, I deserve to be the one—”
“You don’t deserve a rag to take to the outhouse. And that’s all there is to it.”
Bobby breathed and rubbed his face. “Sheriff, sir, you and I sat in here and talked to that Dallas lawyer, Waltz, on the phone just the other day. You remember as well as I do. He said somebody’s killed Dalia Bordelon’s boss—that Eileen Kim, who we interviewed barely a week ago right here in this office. And Kim told him that Dalia feared for her life because of something she uncovered through her research at the lake—something related to that old refinery.”
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