“You can copy it. This is our collar.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
At 10:17 on Monday morning, Helen came down to my office. “I just got off the phone with the authorities in Texas. Guess what?”
“They’re no longer in a hurry to get Tillinger back,” I said.
“How’d you know?”
“His medical care could run into millions.”
She pulled up a chair. “Go over everything again.”
I did as she said. Helen was a good cop, in my experience second only to Clete Purcel, and not someone you took over the hurdles. But I didn’t want Sean McClain hurt worse than he already was.
“You left a bar and went to Delahoussaye’s house because you had a feeling?” she said.
“That’s correct.”
“You know how that will sound to others?”
“That’s their problem.”
“Sean McClain had been drinking at the club?”
“He wasn’t impaired.”
“How about you?”
“I picked up a cup I shouldn’t have,” I said.
Her jaw tightened.
“Here’s the long and short of the shooting,” I said. “Tillinger pointed his weapon at us. Sean told him to drop it over and over.”
“Tillinger pointed his gun at you or in your direction?”
“That’s too fine a distinction,” I said.
“I think you’re holding back on me.”
She was right. Tillinger probably had thought I was in his corner. He was probably going to lower the weapon and place it on the asphalt. There may have even been a smile on his face. Then Sean had started firing. Maybe if he had waited two seconds more, the Luger would have been on the asphalt and Tillinger would have had his hands in the air.
“I wish I hadn’t taken Sean with me,” I said. “If it’s on anybody, it’s on me.”
“It’s an imperfect world, bwana. But we’re stuck with it.”
“Anything else?”
“St. Martin Parish thinks this is open and shut,” she said.
“Based on what?”
“Tillinger was at the scene with a gun in his hand. That might be a clue.”
“Were there prints on the chalice?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did Tillinger have gloves on his person?”
“Jody Dubisson says he’s still looking,” she said.
“This is a crock and you know it,” I said.
“Simple people like straight lines.”
“I think Tillinger was carrying the Luger to protect Bella, not to take her life.”
“How would Tillinger know the killer was headed to her place?”
“Maybe Tillinger was following him. He probably would have made a good cop. Helen, Tillinger is a human being. The guy we’re dealing with doesn’t have a category.”
My notebook was open on the desk blotter. She looked at the copy I had made of Tillinger’s attempt to identify the killer. “What do you make of that?”
“I think the Aryan Brotherhood is a player,” I said. “Maybe there’s a link between them and our jail scandal. Maybe ‘UNC’ means ‘University of North Carolina’ or ‘uncle.’ Maybe ‘PRO’ means ‘producer.’ You can go into meltdown thinking about all this.”
“Let’s go back to our jail scandal,” she said. “What’s the link between it and the murder of Lucinda Arceneaux?”
I shook my head, my eyes neutral.
“Don’t give me that,” she said. “I know you, Dave.”
“I don’t have any answers,” I said. “I wish I did.”
She waited a long time before she spoke again. “Any word from Iberia General?”
“The neurologist said the inside of Tillinger’s head is egg batter.”
She looked at the pad again. “I’d like to kick Sean McClain in the butt.”
“He’s a good kid.”
“But he messed up royally.” She paused. I knew she wanted to say more, all of it bad.
“I messed up, too,” I said.
She scratched her forearm, her face empty. Then she got up and stood behind my chair. I never knew what Helen would do when she was behind me. Sometimes her silence scared me. As I’ve said, several people lived inside her, some dangerous, some adventurous, some erotic and almost predatory. People talk about coming out of the closet. Helen had a warehouse the size of a city block to come out of. She gripped my shoulders, sinking her fingers into the tendons. I could smell the freshness in her clothes, almost feel the heat in her body.
“There are two people in this world who know every thought you have, Pops,” she said. “One of them is Clete Purcel. Guess who the other is?”
“No idea,” I replied.
“What’s Bailey think?”
“Our guy is a trophy killer in reverse. Or maybe he has boxes of panties and bras and wallets. He’ll keep doing it until we burn his kite.”
She drew a fingernail across my neck. “Go out on your own and I’ll have your head in a basket.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” I said.
I wasn’t doing well with Bella’s death. I went to a noon meeting, owned up to an accidental slip — although I wasn’t sure it was entirely accidental and said so — and dropped by St. Edward’s Church, and I still wasn’t doing well. I went back to the department and talked with Bailey, who was getting nowhere on the forensics with the St. Martin authorities, primarily because there weren’t any; then I called Clete Purcel and told him everything and arranged to meet him in Red Lerille’s Health and Racquet Club at five-thirty p.m.
When I walked into the gym, Clete was hitting the heavy bag, whamming it on the chain with sky-blue bag gloves, wearing baggy knee-length red Everlasts and a sleeveless gray LSU jersey soggy with sweat. He smelled like an elephant in rut.
“Big mon,” he said, steadying the bag.
“You got something for me?” I said.
“A kid named Spider Dupree. He did a three-bit in Soledad. The AB made him give back his ink. They did a few other things to him, too. Let me hit the shower.”
“Think you need it?”
“I shower if I need it or not.”
Twenty minutes later, I met him at the juice bar. His hair was neatly combed, his face glowing and youthful, his slacks and shirt pressed. For just a moment, in the soft pastel lighting, he looked like the cop I walked a beat with in the Quarter, when both of us were sure we would never die. We ordered two fruit drinks, a sprig of mint stuck in the shaved ice.
I looked around. “Where’s your man?”
“We’re meeting him at a biker joint at seven.” Clete wiped at a nostril with one knuckle. “Dave, I got to have some assurances on this.”
“On what?”
“What you’re thinking about. It’s like you got a bee buzzing behind your eyes. You’re on lock and load, noble mon.”
“I don’t know where you get these ideas,” I said.
“If you haven’t noticed, every emotion you have is on your face.”
“Will you stop it?”
He looked around. No one was within earshot. “Here’s the real problem. The guy who killed Bella doesn’t need motivation. He does it for kicks. You knew his kind in Nam. They weren’t abused as children. Their mothers didn’t strap them on the pot. They came out of the womb perverse and meaner than a bucket of goat piss on a radiator.”
“So?” I said.
“So you start thinking up crazy things about Arabs and Russian oligarchs and corrupt politicians. These political cocksuckers — and Louisiana and Jersey and Florida are full of them — they don’t waste their time killing people. They’re too busy robbing the rest of us blind. Face it. We’ve got that killer in Kansas on our hands, what’s-his-name, BTK. You can’t outthink him because there’s nothing there to outthink. The guy loves power and pain and watching the light die in his victim’s eyes.”