I walked to the crypt and squatted and placed the flowers in a vase by the name plate. I stood up, my back creaking. “I lost another wife to men who killed her rather than me. Her name was Annie. For the rest of my life, I have to find justice for Molly and Annie. I’ve killed several men as a result. I’m glad I did, and I think the world is a better place for it. In the nocturnal hours, I sometimes want to kill more men. That’s how I feel tonight. But in the morning I won’t feel that way.”
“Ain’t you figured it out yet? I’m in the life. I’m the kind of people you hate.”
“No, you’re not. You’re an artist.”
“You learn the blues at the crossroads, darlin’. There ain’t no going back once you been there.”
“Don’t let anyone sell you that crap, Bella. Who’s Hilary Bienville’s pimp?”
“The pimp is a middleman. Hilary don’t have no middleman, just a piece of trash wit’ a badge looking out for her.”
“Axel Devereaux?”
“Wasn’t me said it,” she replied. “Take me home, please. I don’t sing the blues, I live them. Ain’t shooting you a line, darlin’.”
We arrived at her small house in St. Martinville just as a thundershower blew through town and clattered like hail on my truck. I put a raincoat over our heads and ran with her to the door, then said good night and drove back to New Iberia.
Chapter Ten
I slept late on Saturday morning and woke to birdsong and sunshine in the trees. Alafair was gone and had not left a note. Snuggs was sitting on the back steps, his white coat smudged with mud, a cut like a three-inch piece of red string threaded through his fur. I wiped him off with paper towels and dressed his wound and took him inside and fed him on the floor. The cut was jagged, as if he’d hooked himself going over a chain-link fence.
“You okay, old fella?” I said, stroking his head.
I went outside and looked for Mon Tee Coon. There was no sign of him. I called Clete and told him of my conversation with Bella Delahoussaye the previous night and my worries about my animals.
“Axel Devereaux is shaking down local hookers?” he said.
“On one level or another. Maybe they’re just hauling his ashes.”
“You think he hurt your coon?”
“He probably killed Sean McClain’s pets.”
“Everyone thinks that?”
“That’s right.”
“And he’d do the same to yours when he’d be the first guy people would suspect?”
“He’s a sociopath and a sadist,” I said. “He can’t change what he is. If he’s not cruel to an animal, he’ll be cruel to a person.”
“How about if I break his wheels?”
“That’s out.”
“You called me, Dave.”
“Sorry I did.”
“What the hell is the matter with you?” he said.
“I’m like you. I want to do it the old-time way. But we can’t.”
“Speak for yourself,” he said. He hung up.
I called him back. “I apologize.”
“Quit tormenting yourself, big mon. We handle the action. They deal the play, we scramble their eggs.”
Wish it worked that way, I thought. But I didn’t try to argue.
On Monday my office phone rang at 8:06 a.m.
“Detective Robicheaux speaking,” I said.
“I tried to get you all weekend,” a man’s voice said. “Nobody would give me your number.”
“That’s because it’s unlisted,” I said. “Who is this?”
“Never mind who I am. You’re the guy working the Travis Lebeau homicide, right?”
“I’m one of them.”
“You figure the AB did it?”
“You need to tell me who you are, partner.”
“No, you need to listen. Maybe the AB caught up to Travis, maybe not. Or maybe some of your own people did it.”
I punched in Helen’s number on my cell phone and placed the phone on my desk so she could overhear my conversation with the man as soon as she picked up. “Am I talking to Mr. Tillinger?” I asked.
“Call me Hugo. You know my history, right? The fire, the trial, me busting out of that hospital?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I didn’t kill either my daughter or my wife. I wouldn’t harm a woman or a child under any circumstance.”
“Why’d you come here?”
“To find Miss Lucinda. To ask her for money so I didn’t have to steal it, then get as much gone from here as I can.”
“Who killed her?”
“That’s why I called. I aim to get those who done it.”
“We don’t have any leads,” I said. “Maybe I can establish a back channel with you.”
“Yeah, in a heartbeat. Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“A guy who’s con-wise, a fellow who perhaps went down on a bad beef.”
There was a brief silence. “Did Miss Lucinda suffer?”
“She wasn’t tortured or violated, if that’s what you mean.”
“But she suffered?”
“She was injected with heroin. Maybe she just went to sleep.”
“But she suffered just the same, didn’t she?”
“You know the answer to that,” I said.
“Who’s the last person she saw?”
“We ask the questions,” I said.
“It’s done a lot of good, hasn’t it.”
“She was supposed to get on a flight from Lafayette to Los Angeles. She never boarded the plane.” Again the line went silent. “Did she talk to you about movie people?” I asked.
“She just said they’d he’p me.”
“Which people in particular?”
“She didn’t say. There was one local name she gave me, though. A bad cop. He runs whores and such.”
“What does the dirty cop have to do with getting you off death row?”
“Nothing. Miss Lucinda said she wanted to put him out of business because he preyed on black women. You recording this?”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think y’all cain’t find your asses with both hands.”
“It’s been good talking to you.”
“I’m fixing to make a statement, the kind a guy will remember, get my drift?”
“No, I don’t. I think talking to you is a waste of time.”
I hung up and waited. Five minutes later, he called back. “She left the airport with somebody she knew and trusted, somebody who was more important to her than the catering people or the boyfriend waiting to pick up her in Hollywood,” he said. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“You’re an intelligent man.”
“I’m a dead man walking, and we both know it,” he said. “You know what the upside of that is?”
“You’ve got nothing to lose.”
“See? You’re a smart son of a buck yourself.”
An escapee from death row who didn’t use coarse language? This case was getting muddier by the day.
At daybreak on Tuesday, Lou Wexler arrived in his Lamborghini to take Alafair to the private jet that would deliver them to Monument Valley, Arizona, in time for a late lunch. She gave me a card with the name and number and email address of the hotel where she would be staying. I asked her to step aside for a moment.
“What is it?” she said.
“I have to ask you something of a personal nature. I don’t want to offend you.”
She searched my face. “Don’t say it, Dave.”
“I have to.”
“Please don’t do this.”
“Do you have a single room?”
“You have no right to ask me that.”
“I don’t care. I’m your father. I don’t trust any of these guys.”
“That’s obvious. Goodbye. I’ll call you when we get there. Dave, you really know how to do it.”
As they backed out in the street, Wexler lifted his hat in a salute. I squinted one eye and cocked my thumb and aimed my index finger at him.