I did make a call to a former CIA agent I knew from the program. His name was Walter Scanlon. For forty years he pickled his brain and liver with a fifth of vodka every night while he moved like a threadworm through the underside of the New American Empire. Now he chain-smoked and attended the “Work the Steps or Die, Motherfucker” meeting in New Orleans, sitting silently in the back with a face that looked as old as papyrus and eyes that were the color of raw oysters. Few had any idea of the deeds stored in the basement of his soul.
“Yeah, Chester Wimple,” he said. “He goes by Smiley or something.”
“Was he ever one of yours?” I asked.
“We didn’t use guys like that.”
“But you’ve run across him? You know about him?”
“We thought he took out one of our informants in Mexico City. A child molester. No big loss. You didn’t talk to the FBI?”
“They don’t know much more than we do.”
“Let me ring a couple of people.”
He called back that evening. “When’s the last time you had contact with this guy?” he said.
“I thought I might have seen him earlier today.”
“Better visit your optometrist. Chester Wimple was blown all over a café with a fifty-cal in Venezuela eight months ago.”
“Must be a mistake.”
“The guys I got this from use DNA.”
“I appreciate your time,” I said, my mouth dry. “How you doing with the program?”
“I haven’t slept since the fall of Saigon,” he replied. “Thanks for bringing it up.”
At seven-thirty the next morning Helen Soileau was at my door.
“What’s the haps?” I said through the screen.
“Need to get you on the clock,” she said. “I killed the IA beef. How about it, Pops?”
I pushed the screen open. “Come in.” I let her walk ahead of me into the kitchen. I took the Silex carafe and two cups off the counter and sat down at the breakfast table. “Why the change of heart?”
“I was wrong,” she replied.
“I held back information I should have reported.”
“And done Texas’s dirty work for them. I probably wouldn’t have dimed Tillinger either.” She took my badge out of her coat pocket and set it on the table. It was gold and inset with blue letters.
“Something hit the fan?” I said.
“I need every swinging dick on the line.”
“You know how to say it, Helen.”
“In or out?”
I palmed my badge but didn’t put it into my pocket. “I had a visitor in the early a.m. yesterday. Chester Wimple, alias Smiley.”
“He was just passing through on his way to killing someone?”
“He was standing under the trees in the backyard. He left in a pirogue.”
“I don’t want to listen to this,” she said.
“It gets worse. I called a friend who was CIA for forty years. He says Smiley was shredded into dog food by a fifty-caliber eight months ago.”
“I don’t know which story is worse, yours or your friend’s.”
“Take it any way you want. I told Smiley he was unwelcome. I unloaded my weapon in front of him. I watched him paddle his pirogue down to the drawbridge. The CIA isn’t made up of stupid people.”
I saw the heat go out of her face.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay, what?”
“Maybe it explains something.”
“Explains what?”
“We’ve got another homicide.”
“Who is it?”
“You and Clete did what you could. There are people you can’t help, Dave.”
“Cut the doodah, Helen. Who are we talking about?”
She tapped the table with her knuckles and lifted her gaze to mine. Her eyes were damp. “Fuck me.”
Helen’s hard-core persona was often cosmetic and disguised the humanity that defined her. That said, the scene inside Hilary Bienville’s trailer was the kind no cop wants to see. It was the kind that forces you to re-create the suffering and fear of the victim; it also installs itself in your memory and becomes the catalyst for your first hit of Jack that night and the images you’ll drag like a chain the rest of your days.
Hilary had been savagely beaten, her blood slung all over the walls and furniture. The blows were of such force that her face was hardly recognizable, and I don’t mean in terms of personal identification. Her skull and facial construction no longer looked human. I went back outside. Bailey Ribbons was knocking on doors. Sean McClain had been the first at the scene. He was staring at the drawbridge and the immaculate white antebellum home couched among the live oaks on the far side of the bayou. His mouth was small and gray, his skin pale. There was blood on his trousers and the rims of his shoes. He saw me look at it.
“It looked like somebody kicked over a bucket of paint,” he said. “I found her baby and took it to the grandmother’s.”
“You got the 911?” I said.
“The neighbor said he heard somebody busting up the trailer about five a.m. He thought it was a john. The baby kept crying, so he called it in at six-fifteen.”
“He didn’t see a vehicle leave?”
“He says he heard one but didn’t see it.”
“You believe him?”
“Probably not.”
“Let’s have a talk with him.”
The 911 caller wore flip-flops and shapeless pants and a strap undershirt with holes in it. His jowls were spiked with whiskers, his race undeterminable, his eyes pools of suspicion. “I done tole you already. I didn’t see nothing and I don’t know nothing. She was always having johns in her place. I don’t get mixed up in dat.”
“You weren’t curious enough to glance out the window?”
“For what? You t’ink I don’t know what kind of dump this is?”
Hard argument to contest.
Sean and I went back inside Hilary Bienville’s trailer. Two plainclothes detectives from Jeanerette were there. The forensic team was already at work. Bailey followed us inside. The broken glass and kitchenware, the splintered furniture, and the dents in the walls were the marks of a killer whose rage was so great it was always on the edge of bursting through his skin; he was the kind of man who had a jitter in his eyes. The paramedics were waiting for Helen to tell them to remove the remains. I looked down at what used to be Hilary Bienville’s face. Her killer had stuck a sequined star on her forehead, like you’d mount atop a Christmas tree.
“The Suit of Pentacles,” Bailey said.
“What was that?” Helen said.
“It’s our guy,” Bailey said. “Pentacles, or diamonds, represents prosperity and personal esteem. Or making things grow or increase in value.”
“A hooker making things grow in value?” Helen said. She looked at me for reinforcement. I shook my head neutrally.
“Our guy is enraged because she didn’t meet the standard,” Bailey said. “At least that’s my guess.”
It was hot and quiet in the trailer, as though we were all caught inside a photograph none of us wanted to be in. In moments like these, you know Treblinka and Nanking and Hiroshima are not abstractions.
“How about it, Sheriff?” one of the paramedics said.
“Take her out,” Helen said.
I went back outside. Most of the children who lived in the trailer park had left on the school bus. No adults came out of their trailers. A few looked through the windows. Cormac Watts, the coroner, was standing by his car, his foot on the bumper. He watched me walk toward him, his face empty.
“Glad to see you back,” he said.