by Blake Banner
“She was younger than you?”
“Considerably.” He walked over to the fireplace and dropped into one of the large armchairs. “I’m fifty-nine. She was forty, and looked five years younger.”
“She used to go to jazz clubs on her own.”
“I know, I know what you’re thinking, and don’t imagine you are the first person to say it to me—especially in a community like this. But I trusted her implicitly, and if there had been anything going on, believe me, in this town, I would have heard about it.” He shrugged. “But long before I heard about it, she would have told me. We had that kind of relationship.” He smiled, then laughed. “I knew when I married a beautiful woman twenty years younger than me that sooner or later, she would feel tempted by a younger man. That was something I just had to accept. As it turned out, that never happened. We were in love. It’s that simple.”
I leaned on the back of the chair opposite him, looking down into his face. “It’s that simple for you, and maybe it was that simple for her. But if some guy was in love with her, maybe it wasn’t that simple for him.”
He nodded. “That’s what Jackson said. He believes that Hays fell in love with her, that she turned him down, and he killed her.”
“Maybe his theory is right, but his suspect is wrong.” I looked at my watch. “I need to get back. Listen, does James live on the property?”
“Not exactly. James has a cottage on the grounds, at the back of the house. Sally, the maid you saw earlier, lives in town.”
“He didn’t hear anything?”
He shook his head. “No, he’s somewhat less than a quarter of a mile away.”
He promised me again that he would talk to Detective Jackson about cooperating with me. Then he called James and had him drive me back to the Soniat. On the way, I asked him, “You didn’t hear anything that night, James, nothing odd or out of the ordinary?”
He looked real upset. “I sure as hell wish I had, Cap’n. But that house is made of solid stone. Whatever goes on in there, stays in there. Only thing I heard that night was a pig squealing like it was being murdered—if you’ll forgive the term.”
“A pig?”
“Yeah, a pig, screamin’ like hell.”
“What time was that?”
“Oh, that would have been about eleven o’clock. Before any of this stuff went down. Besides, it was out by the corrals, where they keep the livestock.”
I thought about it. “What time did you go home?”
“Mrs. Carmichael went out ’bout six, and Mr. Carmichael said he was gonna eat out, so he sent us home just before eight.”
Outside the hotel, he opened the door for me and I climbed out. I paused, looking up at the sky.
“A pig?”
“It was a pig, Cap’n, screamin’ like crazy. Didn’t last long, just a few minutes. But I’m pretty sure it ain’t nothin’ important.”
He smiled and I nodded.
I watched him drive away, back toward Dauphine Avenue, and wondered about Sarah. The sky was still black, and the temperature felt like it was climbing.
Six
I went up to my room and stood under the shower for five minutes. Louisiana is never what you’d call cold, if you come from New England. But the close humidity and the climbing temperatures in Burgundy right then were what you’d expect from the equator, in summer.
I changed my clothes, had some lunch, and drove to the police station. The winds had dropped and there was an eerie, claustrophobic stillness in the air.
Detective Jackson was expecting me. The desk sergeant told me to go right ahead.
His door was open and he looked up as I stepped in. He leaned back in his chair and sighed.
“You’re determined to make my life a misery, Walker.”
“I’m determined to make sure Hays doesn’t go down for a murder he didn’t commit.”
“Yeah, yeah, yadda yadda. Siddown.” He pointed to the chair opposite him and I sat. He picked up a file. It wasn’t very thick, and he tossed it across the desk to me. “I don’t know how you did it, Walker, but you sold the old man on your story.”
I opened the file and started leafing through it. I spoke as I scanned the pages.
“If Hays had done this job, you would have a double homicide on your hands, and no suspect. It’s that simple.”
I paused, reading. The revolver had been recovered in the woods at the back of the house. I laughed quietly.
“What’s funny?”
I looked up and held his eye. “Tell me something, the slugs you recovered from the mattress and the slugs you pulled from the wall in the drawing room, were they from the same weapon?”
“Yeah, ballistics showed they were a match.”
“So here’s something I’m having trouble with, Jackson.”
“That’s Detective Jackson to you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yadda yadda. Here’s our killer. He gets into the house, he climbs the stairs, gets into her room where she is sleeping, back pretty early from the jazz club, and, in the dark, he puts four beautifully grouped rounds into her belly. At this point, he is cool enough and composed enough to have a steady hand and make four perfect shots. Now he goes downstairs, into the drawing room and is, presumably, about to make his escape through the French doors. But Carmichael gets home and disturbs him. And now, with the light on, facing an as-yet unarmed man at twenty feet, he shoots high and wide, twice. That sound to you like a special ops veteran with ten years of experience and over two dozen kills to his name?”
He sighed and spread his hands. “What can I say?”
“You can tell me why he was cool upstairs and shaking like a virgin in a whorehouse downstairs. You can tell me why, instead of wearing gloves, he left his prints all over the crime scene and the weapon, and you can tell me why he thoughtfully left that weapon for you to find in the woods, instead of continuing for ten minutes and pitching it into the bayou.”
He didn’t say anything so I kept leafing through the file. I spoke as I turned the pages.
“You know, if Hays had wanted to, he could have walked into a six-figure job with MI5, MI6, the CIA—or the Mob for that matter—as a professional assassin.” I looked up at him. “There are only about six hundred of us at any one time. We are not the best, Jackson. We are selected from the best. Am I beginning to get through to you?”
I paused. I had seen something that caught my eye. He noticed it and frowned.
“What?”
“Sarah Carmichael had a sister?”
“Yeah. Simone, Simone D’Arcy. She’d been visiting with her that evening.”
“I thought she’d gone to a jazz club?”
He shrugged and made a face. “So she told her husband she was going to a club. Maybe she planned to go with her sister. They used to go out a lot together. They were both into jazz. But instead it looks like they stayed in, talking. Then Sarah went home early. She must have been home by eleven or eleven thirty. Her sister says she left just before eleven. It ain’t that far.”
“Nobody saw her arrive?”
“Nope.”I read on, talking half to myself. “And her sister didn’t go with her, she drove herself.”
“Uh-huh. She left her sister and went home alone in her own car.”
I looked up. “Where does Simone live?”
“About two miles from here. South on 61, just before you come into Hardwood. You gonna see a turn on your right, before the gas station. You follow that to the end, you’ll come to a set of gates. That’s Simone’s house.”
“She’s got money, too, huh?”
“They all got money. Old money.”
I nodded and kept leafing. “So the general consensus on Sarah Carmichael is that she was an angel. An angel who frequented jazz clubs without her older husband. You going to tell me the truth or stick to the party line?”
“I don’t know if you’re a cynic, a wiseass, or both, Walker. I know I don’t like you and I know you’re here to cause trouble to protect your Limey fr
iend. Fact is Sarah Carmichael was a wonderful person, she was faithful to her husband, and if there was some gossip at one time because she used to go out without him, it passed, because she never crossed the line. She was a good woman, and after Katrina, she did a lot, and spent a lot of her own money, to rebuild communities and the environment around here. So in future, keep your wiseass comments to yourself.”
I studied his face a moment. He looked sincere. I dropped the file on his desk.
“Noted.” I stood. “Thanks for your help, Jackson. I’ll try to stay out of your hair.” I stopped at the door and turned back to face him. “By the way, I don’t like you either.” I pointed at the badge he had hung from his belt. “And that badge, you don’t deserve to wear it. You’re either bent or incompetent. I don’t know which yet. But either way, you’re going down.”
The desk sergeant was still watching the weather. Havana was being torn to shreds, but Sarah was not moving, neither south nor north.
I stepped out into the clammy afternoon and climbed into the Zombie. I hit the ignition and the two big engines came silently to life. I slipped out of the lot and, unlike the hurricane, I headed south. The roads were empty under the leaden sky and I hit a hundred, letting the air batter my face through the open windows. Outside Hardwood, I turned right and cruised through the woods until I came to the two tall, cast iron gates. They were open and I slipped silently between them.
The house was Creole, and though you could see it had once been magnificent, now there were subtle signs that the cash just wasn’t there to maintain it. The gardens that surrounded it were running to seed, the lawns were overgrown, and the paint on the white walls and the veranda was beginning to peel in small patches here and there.
She was sitting at the top of the steps that led from the front lawn to the porch, watching me approach. She was wearing white jeans and a white shirt with the cuffs turned up, and she was smoking a cigarette. The brilliant white of her clothes made a stark contrast with the darkness of her skin.
I pulled up and climbed out into the sultry air. She half smiled and half frowned at me as I walked toward her. A trail of smoke rose from her lips. To say she was beautiful would be only half the story. She was graceful, effortlessly elegant in her movements and gestures, and there was an indefinable quality of depth to her smallest expression. She was extraordinary.
“How did you free-wheel down a flat drive, mister?”
“I was drawn by the power of destiny. I’m looking for Simone D’Arcy.”
“You found her. It must have been your destiny.”
“You’re Sarah Carmichael’s sister?”
“You sound surprised.”
I nodded. “You’re black and she was white. You don’t see that often.”
“She was my stepsister. Now you know who I am, how about you tell me who you are?”
It was said without hostility, without challenge, more as an invitation. For a moment, I had to avert my gaze.
“My name is Lacklan Walker. I was Bartholomew Hays’ superior officer when we were in the army together.”
She didn’t so much narrow her eyes, as half close her lids and raise her chin slightly. “You mean you’re his friend.”
“Yeah, I’m his friend.”
“You feel guilty about that?”
I was surprised by the question. “No…” But I said it without conviction and wondered if I was lying.
She heard that in my voice and smiled. “Your body language says otherwise, Lacklan. Why are you here?”
Again, what could have been hostile came across more as an invitation.
“I’d like to ask you some questions about your sister.” I hesitated. “Hays is accused of killing her, but I know he didn’t do it.”
She seemed to study me for a moment, biting her lip. “Do you know that, think it, or feel it?”
I gave a small sigh. “I don’t want to play word games, Ms. D’Arcy…”
“Neither do I, Lacklan. I would like to know whether what you have is knowledge, a suspicion, or a hunch.”
“It’s knowledge. I know Bat Hays didn’t kill her. Can we talk?”
She spread her hands and there was amusement in her eyes, bordering on mischief. “It’s what we’re doing.” She stood. Her body wasn’t perfect. Perfect was banal compared to what her body was. Maybe her breasts were a bit too large, maybe her hips and her ass were a bit too curvaceous. Maybe her legs were too long; but when you put it all together, it was insane.
“You want a beer, Lacklan?”
“Yeah. I could use a beer. Thanks.”
I followed her onto the veranda where there was a white, wooden table against the wall with two white chairs facing out, to the garden. A small, brass bell stood on the table beside a glass ashtray. She rang it as she sat.
I rested my ass on the railing and pulled a cigarette from my pack. While I was lighting it, the door opened and a woman in her fifties stepped out. She had blond hair turning to gray, tied in a knot at the back of her head.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Two beers, Inga. Nice and cold, my love.”
Inga left without saying anything and Simone watched me watching her while she held her lower lip with very white teeth.
“I’m trying to figure out what made Sarah tick.”
“Really?” She looked amused, but not in a flattering way. “That’s pretty vague. She wasn’t a clock. Can you be more precise?”
“I don’t know. Everybody is telling me she was an angel, that she and Charles adored each other…” I shrugged with one shoulder. “But her behavior, as far as I can make out, doesn’t tie in with that.”
She sucked on her cigarette and squinted through the smoke. “You want me to tell you she had a dark secret, and that was what got her killed?”
“I don’t want you to tell me that, Simone. But so far it’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”
The door opened again and Inga came out with two frosted glasses of beer on a tray. She set them on the table and left. Simone picked up a glass and sipped.
“It seems insane, frosted glasses in November, but this heat is almost oppressive. It’s tropical.” She gazed out at the restless trees. “That made her tick. Not so much climate change, but the effect it was having on Louisiana, on the local environment.”
I raised an eyebrow. I couldn’t keep the irony from my voice. “Is that what she was doing in the jazz clubs on her own, campaigning for the environment?”
She sighed and again dropped her lids over her huge eyes. “Cheap, Lacklan, and I suspect not worthy of you.”
“How do you know what’s worthy of me?”
“You’re here, aren’t you? You’re in your friend’s corner, talking to the sister of the victim, fighting his cause. That’s the kind of man you are, isn’t it? Loyal, committed, true…”
“We were talking about Sarah.”
She puffed her cheeks and blew. I picked up my beer and pulled off half.
“What can I tell you, Lacklan? She was a good person, like you. She cared. She cared about people, about communities of people. She cared about suffering and unhappiness. She was not only a good person, but a beautiful person. And she cared about Charles.” She crushed out her cigarette, streaming smoke from her nose. “But people aren’t just one thing. You know your Shakespeare? Othello was a good, honorable, decent man. But jealousy is triggered in his soul by Iago’s wicked manipulations, and Desdemona’s simple naivety. So, which one is Othello? The good, honorable man, or the crazed, jealous monster?”
“I don’t know.”
She spread her hands. “He is a woven fabric, made of both threads.”
“Is that what Sarah was, a woven fabric?”
“It’s what we all are.”
“So what was she doing in the jazz clubs while her husband was at home, or dining in restaurants?”
“Listening to jazz.”
“Did she have an affair with Bat Hays?”
“Not that
I’m aware of, Lacklan.”
“Was she having an affair with anybody?”
She shrugged. “Same answer. I was not my sister’s keeper.”
“You’re stonewalling me.”
She closed her eyes, smiled, and sighed again. “Look, Lacklan, I understand you want to help your friend. But if doing that means dragging Sarah’s name and reputation through the gutter, I am not going to help you do that. We all have our loyalties.”
I looked down into my beer. For the second time in just a few minutes, she’d made me feel ashamed, for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom.
“That’s not what I intended to do.”
“But it’s what you would have done, if I’d let you?”
I looked into her eyes.
She held my gaze, like she was reading a text inside my head. “That’s what you do, Lacklan, isn’t? You see something that needs to be done, and you storm in, guns blazing, leaving death and destruction in your wake, and tell yourself it’s what you had to do to get the job done.”
“How could you know that?”
“Isn’t Bat Hays the same? Isn’t that what all men like you do?”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions, Simone, based on very little.” I took a drag and we were both silent for a moment. I looked at the burning ember on the tip of my cigarette and wondered how much truth there was in what she’d said. I thought probably it was all true. “Hays’ life is over if I can’t help him. He doesn’t deserve what they will do to him. I don’t want to put a slur on Sarah’s memory. I don’t want to hurt you, or anybody. I just want to know the truth.”
She gave a small laugh that was almost bitter. It was the closest thing I had seen in her to an ugly emotion. “You want to know the truth without hurting anybody. Good luck with that.”
She stood and came close beside me, looking out at the garden, and up at the heavy, motionless ceiling of cloud.
“Synchronicity,” she said.
“What is?”
“It’s a Jungian concept. Not an easy one.” She glanced at me, like she was wondering if I would get the concept. “Sarah, she is threatening to destroy us all: Sarah the storm, and Sarah, my sister. There can be no causal link between the two, yet there is a connection in meaning.” She gestured up at the sky. “Both Sarahs have unleashed a destructive force, one from the sky…” She paused and seemed to examine my face, with little darting movements of her eyes. “The other from the earth.”