“What are you looking for, Dave?”
“Tillinger has his own frame of reference. He thinks he’s more intelligent and insightful than other people. He may be a religious fanatic, but he also wants to be onstage. That kind of guy always keeps a diary or a collection of drawings or notes about the world. He’s like all megalomaniacs; he wants to scratch his name on history.”
“Maybe we should talk to the Cameron sheriff.”
“We’ll be fooling around here for two days,” I said.
I rolled up the mattress and felt along the edges. Then I saw a slit in the side and a rectangular lump under the case. I worked my hand deep inside, but the object had slid to the center. I pulled my arm free and opened my pocketknife and ripped open the case and tore it loose from the stuffing. A notebook with thick cardboard covers lay among the stuffing.
I clicked the light switch, but the power was off. I had the feeling the owner had hit the circuit breaker to make our job harder. I went to the window and opened the notebook and held it to the light. The handwriting was cramped, like Tillinger’s mind, a place that I suspected was filled with images generated by biblical accounts of genocide and divine wrath. The first page read: “The Story of Hugo Jefferson Tillinger and His Search for Justice and the Killer of Lucinda Arceneaux.” The narrative was rambling, much of it dedicated to his trial and conviction and removal to death row. There appeared to be water stains on the page that contained his account of the house fire and the death of his family. I think the emotion was real. Then the narrative took a turn, with several entries written in red ballpoint rather than blue.
Here’s the first:
Found the jackpot in the old records of Charity Hospital in Lafayette. Desmond Cormier was brought there when he was one day out of the womb. The man who brought him was named Ennis Patout. Patout wouldn’t admit to being the father. He said the mother was Corina Cormier and came from the Chitimacha Indian Reservation. She left the baby in the back of a semi in Opelousas and went wherever her kind go.
The second entry in red:
The Cormier grandparents ran a little store but have been dead many years. Looks like Desmond dumped his folks and went to Hollywood. Wonder if he knew Charlie Manson’s crowd. Wonder if he ever kept his joystick in his pants. The whole place is deserving of a firestorm, if you ask me.
These words were written by the same man who wanted a Hollywood documentary made about his life.
He had made notations about Antoine Butterworth and Lou Wexler and several actors I had not met, as well as Joe Molinari, the victim hanged in a shrimp net; he also mentioned the names of the dirty cops, Frenchie Lautrec and Axel Devereaux. But there was no question about the person at the center of his investigation: The emphasis was on Desmond Cormier. I had no idea why. Maybe Tillinger was simply a celebriphile. Or a potential assassin. Desmond was everything Tillinger was not. There was another consideration I couldn’t ignore: Tillinger had known Lucinda Arceneaux well, and the rest of us had not known her at all.
The notebook ended with these words, again in red ballpoint:
There’s an Ennis Patout in Opelousas. Maybe this is the father of Desmond Cormier. Or maybe he’s the son of the father. I think time is running out for me. I think the men from Huntsville are going to find me and take me back and fill my veins with poison and drive the light from my eyes. I’ve got news for them. If they want to take me alive, they’d better bring a lunch. “The day is coming, burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff and the day that is coming will set them ablaze.” Malachi 4:1.
I closed the book. The western sun was blue and red and strung with clouds that looked like industrial smoke as it descended into the Gulf.
“Are you too tired to go to Opelousas?” I said.
“What’s in Opelousas?”
“The past.”
“Let’s go,” Bailey said.
I could see the fatigue in her face, a deadness in her eyes. Neither of us had mentioned my leaving her house yesterday after she had probably spent half the day preparing for my arrival.
“We’ve done enough for today,” I said. “I’ll buy you dinner.”
“I’d better go home.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Let’s keep it professional from here on out,” she said. “Is that okay?”
I felt a crack spread across my heart.
“No problem,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The next morning I found Ennis Patout’s name in the Opelousas phone directory. I checked out a cruiser, and Bailey and I drove to St. Landry Parish. The morning was clear and cool, the grass in the neutral ground mowed and sparkling with dew. As we neared Opelousas, I looked across the seat at her and said, “A good night’s sleep is the cure for lots of things, isn’t it?”
She smiled and didn’t reply.
I turned off at the exit and drove to an old two-story soot-stained stucco building on the two-lane to Baton Rouge. It had been a car dealership during the Depression and was now a wrecker service and repair shop for diesel trucks. The gas pumps in front were out of order and rusted. I had called Patout before we left New Iberia; when I’d identified myself, he’d hung up. A black man in a filthy white jumpsuit was working on an engine in the shop.
“Is Mr. Patout here?” I said.
“Upstairs. What you want?”
I opened my badge holder. “I called earlier. Ask him to come down.”
“He ain’t gonna like it.”
“Why’s that?”
“Mr. Ennis don’t need a reason.” He went up a wooden staircase inside the shop and came back down. “He’ll be down in a minute. He’s got to take his heart medicine.”
A moment later, a towering man emerged from the doorway that led to the stairs. He had the same wide-set pale blue eyes as Desmond, and the same long upper lip and the same muscularity, but that was where the similarity ended. His face made me think of a broken pumpkin. The eyes were out of alignment, the blank stare like a slap. There was a repressed ferocity in his stance. His hands were grimed and hung at his sides. His jumpsuit was dirtier than the black man’s. From five feet away he had an odor like a barrel of old shrimp.
“I’m Detective Robicheaux,” I said. “This is Detective Ribbons. I called you from New Iberia.”
He didn’t look at Bailey. “I know who you are.” Even though he had a French name, he had a deep-throated Mississippi or North Louisiana accent.
“We’re looking for an escaped convict named Hugo Tillinger,” I said. “We have reason to believe he might try to contact you.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He’s heard of you,” Bailey said. “Your name and city of residence were in his notebook.”
“Tillinger, you say?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “He was convicted of burning his family to death.”
“What’s he want with me?”
There are many ruses police can use legally in interrogating a witness or suspect, and one of the most effective is to indicate you posses knowledge that in reality you don’t. “I think he wants to talk to you about your son, Desmond Cormier.”
“Who says I got a son?”
“It’s a matter of record,” I said. “You took the baby to Charity Hospital in Lafayette many years ago. You probably saved his life. You never see Desmond? He’s a famous man.”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” he said. “This is about her, ain’t it? She’s back telling lies.”
“Could be,” I said, with no clue about the reference. “Why not give us your perception of the situation and put it to rest?”