“Put your piece away.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s an emergency kit behind my front seat. Get the reflectors and the flashlight and flares and light up the street. The first-aid kit is under the seat. I’m going inside.”
“Dave, I didn’t want to. You know that, right? He’s gonna make it, isn’t he?”
“Listen to me. He dealt it. It was a righteous shoot,” I said. “I saw him raise the gun. You identified yourself and told him to drop his weapon. He refused the command. Your life was in danger. Say that last part back to me.”
“My life was in danger?”
“Say it again.”
“My life was in danger.”
“End of story. You copy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get a bandage on his throat.”
I got out my cell and called in the ambulance request and the shots-fired as I walked around to Bella’s back door. I draped a handkerchief over my hand and, with my thumb and one finger, turned the knob. The door was unlocked. Gas was hissing from the burners and oven. I clicked on my penlight. Bella’s acoustic guitar was on the floor, the sound box stomped into kindling, the neck broken in half, the bridge and strings a rat’s nest. A candle in a red votive was flickering in an open cupboard. I pinched out the candle, turned off the gas, and broke out the windows with a skillet.
I walked into the living room and picked up the lamp on the table by the couch and held it above my head, sending the shadows back into the walls. Bella was sitting on the far end of the couch, her hands in her lap, her wrists fastened with ligatures, each of her eyes X-ed with tape. Her head rested on her shoulder as though she had dozed off on a streetcar in New Orleans at the end of the day. Except this was not New Orleans and she was not on a streetcar and her neck had been broken and a long-stemmed brass chalice with a rose in it had been fitted into her hands.
I called Bailey on my cell phone. “Need you in St. Martinville, two blocks south of the square. Bella Delahoussaye has been murdered. Sean McClain put at least four rounds in Hugo Tillinger.”
“How did this happen? I mean, about Sean.”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
“Tillinger is the perp?” she said.
“I don’t know. The gas was on. A candle was burning ten feet away.”
“You think he did burn his family to death and was doing a repeat?”
“That’s why I need you up here.”
“You okay?”
“The killer put her in ligatures, taped her eyes so she looks like a cartoon character, and broke her neck.”
Bailey arrived twenty minutes later. The medics were loading Tillinger in the back of their unit. Bailey came up the steps, wearing khakis and half-topped boots and a kerchief tied on her head, her badge hanging from a cord around her neck. The St. Martin detectives had already been through the cottage. The coroner was out of town. Bailey pulled on her latex and squatted down so she could look directly into Bella’s face. She stood up and lifted the hair off the back of Bella’s neck.
“No contusions or bruising except for one abrasion on the left side, like a necklace or chain was torn off it,” she said. “I think whoever killed her hooked one arm around her head and snapped the vertebrae. He either has military training or has done it before.”
“The last time I saw her, she was wearing a Maltese cross,” I said.
“Like Hilary Bienville?”
“Yes.”
“Who killed her, if it wasn’t Tillinger? There was no one else around, correct?”
“No one we saw.”
“So why was he here?”
I shook my head.
“What happened with Sean?” she said.
“Later.”
Two St. Martin detectives in suits were standing in the doorway. One was smoking a cigarette. At my request, they had waited to remove the body.
“Say, if you guys have a Ziploc, I’ll bag the chalice and the rose for you guys,” Bailey said.
The detective who was smoking flipped his cigarette into the yard. “There on the front seat of the cruiser. Knock yourself out.”
“Thanks. Oh, flag your cigarette butts, will you?” she said. “I’d hate for the guys at the lab to get your DNA mixed up with a homicidal maniac’s. You guys didn’t use the toilet, did you?”
They stared at her as they would a space creature. I put a Ziploc in her hand. She removed the chalice and the rose from Bella’s fingers and slipped it inside.
“He made her the Queen of Cups,” she said. “Hilary Bienville didn’t meet the standard, so he substituted this poor lady for his sacrificial offering.”
“What does the rose mean?” I said.
“A Freudian would probably say it’s sexual. But nobody listens to Freud anymore. What’s in the rest of the house?”
“He destroyed her guitar in the kitchen.”
“Any sign of forced entry?”
“No.”
“So he probably knew her. He taped her eyes because he’s a coward. He used X’s to degrade her. He bears animus toward the arts or music or creativity. He left the gas on and a candle burning so the house would blow up.”
“What are you saying?”
“I think this has Tillinger’s stamp on it,” she said.
“Because Tillinger tore heavy-metal posters off his daughter’s wall?”
“Because the state of Texas believes he burned up his family.”
“Earlier today Clete and I saw a guy with a rifle in a boat. He was looking at us through a telescopic sight.”
Her eyes roved over my face. “Want me to take it from here?”
“You think I’m imagining things?”
She put her arm in mine. “Walk with me.”
We went into the kitchen together. The wind was blowing through the windows I had broken, the linoleum shiny with glass. “How well did you know the woman?”
“Well enough.”
“You won’t hurt my feelings.”
“She was an artwork, a Creole Venus rising from the sea with a guitar hanging around her neck.”
“I smelled alcohol on Sean.”
“He’s a one-beer kid. It wasn’t a factor.”
“I also smell it on you.”
“I picked up a drink by mistake.”
She ran her hand down my arm and wrist and squeezed my hand and pressed her forehead against my shoulder. “If Tillinger didn’t do this, we’ll find the guy who did and gut him from his liver to his lights and hang him on a fence post. I promise you.”
The ambulance drove away with Tillinger. The plainclothes who’d flipped his cigarette in the yard was Jody Dubisson. He wore sideburns and had hair that looked like a black plastic wig, and chewed gum constantly and probably had something wrong with his wiring, but he wasn’t a bad guy. “The perp was trying to tell me something. I put my notebook and a felt-tip in his hand.”
“We don’t know he’s the perp,” I said.
“Yeah, Spider-Man probably did it. Want to take a look?”
I opened the cover of the notebook. Tillinger had scrawled “AB” and “PRO” and “UNC” and “JAIL” on the first page.
“Mean anything to you?” Dubisson said.
“ ‘AB’ could stand for Aryan Brotherhood. The rest of it could mean anything.”
He handed me two sticks of gum. “One for you and one for the kid.” He raised his eyes to mine. “Get me?”
“Alcohol wasn’t a factor in the shooting.”
“Did I say it was? You look like shit.”
“It’s part of my mystique.”
“Your what?” he asked.
“Did you know Bella?”
“Saw her a couple of times on the street. She was a juju woman or something?”
I looked at the sky. It was roiling with black clouds. “I like to think she’s with the stars.”
“You’re a funny guy, Robicheaux.”
I put my finger on the first page of his notebook. “Can I have that?”