“I’m Pinky Streiber,” Pinky says. “And this is Alex Callahan.” Pinky extends his hand.
“Sorry, honey,” the woman says, holding her hands out, fingers splayed so we can see the fresh polish on them. “I’m not near dry yet. I’m Dora Garrity,” she adds, then turns toward me. “I seen you on TV,” she says, “right?” And then, the light really dawns. “Ohmygod, you the daddy of them two little tykes. Oh. My. Sweet. Jesus.”
“We think Byron Boudreaux might be the one took those boys,” Pinky says.
Dora’s hand flies up and covers her mouth, the perfect red nails like blood against snow. “Oh, Lord.” I’m familiar with the emotion that pinches her lips and seems to make her face shrink. It’s fear. “That boy,” she says, after lighting a cigarette, and exhaling a long stream of smoke. “That boy was born bad. Bad to the bone.”
“Do you know where he is? Where any of his family is?”
She shakes her head. “Sorry, sugar. I can’t help you there. I haven’t seen that boy since they took him away. His folks’re dead, of course. I didn’t even know he was out of the asylum. When did that happen?”
“Ninety-six.”
“Well, I’m right glad he didn’t come home.”
“What about the people who live there now? Are they related to Boudreaux?”
“No. Claude and Marie, they didn’t own the home. It’s a rental, you understand. So there’s been a whole string of folk in there.”
“I just had a thought,” Pinky says to me. “There ought to be records. Claude must have left some kind of estate. We can check on that. Remind me.”
“Way I heard it, everything went to Byron,” Dora says. “Which royally pissed off Claude’s brother, Lonnie. Not that there was much of anything left by the time Claude got buried and all. Course, Lonnie was in a real temper over Byron getting anything, but there wasn’t nothin’ for it. The way it came out, with the insanity plea and all, legally Byron didn’t actually commit no crime.”
“Lonnie live nearby?”
“Lonnie passed,” Dora says.
“What about friends?” I ask. “Did Byron have friends here?”
“That boy had no friends. No friends at all. Time he killed Claude, he was spending most of his time over in niggertown, hangin’ with some witch doctor.”
“Witch doctor?”
“What I heard.” She seems to bristle at my skepticism. “They got ’em, you know. Three hundred years here and they still ain’t left the jungle.”
I know I should keep my mouth shut, but it’s hard. “You know, that’s-”
Pinky interrupts: “You know this witch doctor? Know his name?”
Dora looks offended. “Nossir, I do not. How would I know something like that?”
“But you did know Byron?” I manage.
“Honey, he lived right next door. Your home is a trailer, you spend a lot of time outdoors. I been living here for more than thirty years. And believe it or not, that’s not even the record.” A smoker’s laugh, half cough. “Old Ralph Guidry been here even longer.”
“Can you tell us about Byron?”
“Like what kind of stuff you want to know?”
“Everything,” Pinky says. “Anything. We got no idea what might help us find him.”
“Well…” She lights another cigarette, a Misty menthol. “Lemme see now. Byron was one of two children. At least, he was for a while. When Byron was ten and his brother, Joe, was about four, Byron saw – some say he watched – the younger boy drown in the municipal pool. It’s gone now, but it wasn’t but a mile from here. Real popular with the kids.”
Pinky looks at me. “This is what Vicky was talking about. His brother drowned in front of him? That’s terrible. Did he try to save him?”
“Well, that’s the thing – why I’m telling you this story. Everyone agreed it was a tragedy, but some people wondered if it wasn’t something even worse. On account of it happened at night, when Byron and his kid brother snuck out of the house. Doesn’t seem like that’d be little Joe’s idea, does it? Anyway, they were marauding around the neighborhood. Byron had a bright idea and helped his little brother climb over the Cyclone fence around the pool, which was closed, of course. According to what Byron said, the two of them were horsing around when little Joe slipped and fell into the deep end. Since neither of the boys knew how to swim, that was it. Byron couldn’t save his brother.”
“They didn’t know how to swim?” Pinky says. “Then why’d they sneak into the pool?”
“Well, you know, that was a funny thing. Marie – that’s Byron’s mama – used to take those boys to the pool. I’d see ’em settin’ out with their towels and their float rings and all. But when Byron said he couldn’t swim, Marie – she didn’t say boo.” Dora shrugs.
“So people thought – they actually thought Byron drowned his brother?”
“They were suspicious. See, there was this aluminum pole with a net attached? – that they used to remove debris from the pool?”
I nod my encouragement.
“Well, when the police arrived, it was lying on the apron. Dry as a bone. Hadn’t been touched. Byron was bone dry, too, and there was no water around the side of the pool. Now, Marie had read those boys a story and put them to bed just about an hour or so before Byron runs screaming down the street and nine-one-one is called. Yet when the Fire and Rescue guys got to the pool, everything was bone dry.”
“Hunh.” I don’t see the point.
“Well, it stuck in this one paramedic’s mind, see, bothered him, just didn’t set right. Down here it takes a long time for water to evaporate. Mildew and mold’s a big problem. Question was, it didn’t look like Byron so much as went to the edge of the pool and stuck his hands in. Didn’t look like he tried to reach out whatsoever. Why didn’t he use the pole? It was right there. So it just didn’t set right.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s a big jump from that to think the kid murdered his brother. Maybe he just froze. It happens.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Dora says. “After all, the kid was only ten. And that’s what Byron told the police: He didn’t see any pole. He didn’t think of reaching in. Then he cried and cried until they left him alone.”
“You’d think at ten years old, you’d get the benefit of the doubt.”
“Oh, even by then, that kid kinda scared people. And it wasn’t just that. There was a witness, a waitress coming home from the Shrimp Shack. She walked past the pool that evening. She said she saw Byron sitting at the end of the diving board – you know, Indian style – looking down into the water. There wasn’t anyone else around that she could see – and there certainly wasn’t any ‘horseplay.’ The scene was as quiet as a photograph. So where was Little Joe?”
“Hmmm.”
“‘In the bathroom,’ is what Byron said. But that was a lie, ’cause the doors were locked. What we all thought was – that little boy’s down in the water and Byron’s just up there on the diving board looking down on him. Like to ’bout creep you out, you know? After that, Marie wouldn’t let anybody near him. Said how they’re cruel, Byron felt bad enough, he’s cryin’ his eyes out. It never did amount to nothing; nobody out and out accused him of anything. I know the death was ruled an accident.”
Dora delicately touches a finger to one of her gleaming nails. “Know what?” she says, rising to her feet with a soft grunt. “I got plenty more to tell you about Byron, but I b’lieve I’m dry.” She rotates her hands in the air. “Why don’t we go down the way ’n’ see Ralph? Together we’ll remember more. He knew the family real well. Worked with Claude – that’s Byron’s daddy. They were out on the rigs together. And they were fishing buddies, too.”
She asks us to wait and comes back out, five minutes later, hair still in curlers but the pedicure sandals replaced by a gleaming pair of New Balance running shoes.