Youghans was a solidly built redbone man in his early forties with a wide brush mustache and thinning hair, thick gold chains at neck and wrist, and a face full of dull sensuality, upon which now bloomed a scowl of frustrated rage. He sat up on the edge of his bed, his loins covered by a scant drape of blue chenille.
After showing their badges and telling him to get dressed, they left the room, and while they waited, they looked around, so that anything in plain sight that might suggest a violation of the law might fall under their eye. They even nudged a few objects into plain sight for that purpose.
“Take a look at this, Cletis.” It had been in plain sight, leaning against a pile of magazines devoted to either sex or autos that sat on one of the side tables in the living room. Barlow pursed his lips, but said nothing. Paz stripped an evidence bag from a roll in his jacket pocket and put the thing in it. He was smiling.
They got the girl’s name before she slammed out. Youghans shuffled into the kitchen some minutes later, dressed in greasy Bermudas and a red tank top. He grabbed and popped the tallboy can of malt liquor, drank half of it, belched, and said, “You boys picked a hell of a time to crash in here. Little bitch was polishing my pole, man, tight as a three-dollar shoe, mmm-mm! Shit, I was two minutes from getting my nut …” He rubbed his crotch mournfully. “This is about Deandra, right? Yeah, I heard she got killed. Fucking building she was in, I told her to move out of there, but she was the stubbornist bitch alive, ‘bout that and every other goddamn thing else.”
“When was the last time you saw her, sir?” asked Barlow.
Youghans scratched his head. “What is this, Monday? Must’ve been Saturday night.”
“She was okay when you left her, was she?”
“Sure, running her mouth like always. I’ll tell you, because you’re probably gonna hear it in the ‘hood, we did have us some words, shouting and all.”
“What did you fight about?” Paz asked.
“Oh, this hoodoo shit she was into. Hey, I got no problem with mother Africa dah-dah-de-dah, I got my kente cloth and all that, stuff on the walls, okay, but she had this mojo man coming round …” He finished his can in three great swallows. “Okay, first thing, right away, I don’t appreciate that, I mean him coming round. I mean, am I the man or ain’t I? Two, that nigger messing with her head, you know what I mean? Can’t eat this, can’t drink that, quit smoking, take this herb, that herb. Even told her when she could fuck. Shit! So I told her, you know, girl, get real! I told her I didn’t want her to see him no more and she threw a shit fit. She said he was this great man, dah-de-dah-dah. Because he give her a number that hit and she bought the fuckin’ store out. Like I didn’t never give her nothing. She said he was going to make her baby this big deal, used a lot of bullshit African words … I lost it, you know? Dumb-ass bitch!”
“You smack her around any?” Paz asked.
“Yeah, I popped her a couple, just before I bugged out of there. Nothing heavy, and I tossed some of her hoodoo crap out the goddamn window.”
A look between the two cops. Paz said, “Oh, yeah? Like what?”
“Some fucking statue, a little basket full of weeds and shit. Some kind of chain, with, like, big nuts strung along it. Tell the truth I was drunk. I wanted a little piece of ass and no horseshit about the great Wandingo …”
“That his name, this guy?” asked Barlow.
“Nah, it’s something else, em, something. Mepetene, something like that. Tell you the truth I didn’t pay none of that no attention.”
“You ever see him?”
“I had he would’ve needed a new face. But, no. And I tried, man. She told me he was gonna come one night, oh, couple weeks back, and I hung around outside her crib, maybe five, six hours, but the nigger didn’t show. Then, a couple days later, she tells me, oh, he was there. What, the motherfucker flew in the window? Only two stairs leading up to that crib and I was watching both of them. Telling lies like that, trying to impress me, fucker can go through walls. I tell you, man, I’m sorry the little bitch dead, but, you know, you fuck with the bull, you get the horns.”
“Sir, are you trying to tell us you think this hoodoo man killed Miss Wallace?” Barlow asked.
“Well, shit! Who the fuck else want to do something like that?”
“Like what, Mr. Youghans?” asked Paz gently.
“Oh, you know, slice her up like they done.”
“How did you know that, sir?” More gently still.
“Shit, her brother called me up and told me. Cursed me out, too, the lame little motherfucker. Blame me for it. Me? Shit!”
“So where were you between, say, eleven Saturday night and two Sunday morning?” asked Barlow.
In bed, was the answer, unusually as it turned out, alone but for the crotch magazines, and so they all went downtown, with Paz’s heart singing tra-la-la, because this was going to be a grounder after all.
When he had Youghans in the little room, with Barlow looking on silently, Paz did the usual act, kicking chairs. You piece of shit, Youghans, you were drunk. You were pissed off. You had a fight. You admitted that. And then it went too far?you stuck her, and then you got scared, and you started thinking. You cut her up. You made it look weird, like some loony did it. And you made it all up, didn’t you, the hoodoo man. And what about this?
Paz stuck it in front of Youghans’s face, the thing he had found in the apartment. A framed picture of Youghans and an unpregnant Deandra Wallace in happier days, the glass covered with little brown spatters.
“You took this out of there after you killed her. You didn’t want anyone to think about you, did you? That’s blood, Youghans. Her blood. That you put there when you cut her open. You bastard!” He leaped across the table at Youghans and grabbed a handful of shirt, shook the man and screamed into his face. Then he allowed Barlow to pull him off, as per script, and toss him out of the interview room, with appalled commentary.
Paz got a cup of coffee and strolled back to where a one-way window gave on the room, hooked a chair with his foot, and sat down to watch Barlow work. Barlow was the best good cop in the business, and seemed particularly effective with black and Hispanic suspects. They seemed grateful that a fellow who looked and sounded like the Grand Kleagle was as calm and considerate as a social worker on quaaludes. Paz watched the action, without flipping the switch to bring sound across the thick glass. It was more restful that way and he got to concentrate on the body language. He couldn’t see Barlow’s face, only the hunch of his back as he leaned over the table. He could see Youghans’s face, though, as it went through a series of transformations. Anger first, the brows knotted, the mouth gaping to shout, then confusion, the eyes wide and staring, the mouth slack, and then the collapse?tears, a rictus of sorrow, sobbing, and the hands brought up in shame, the head drooping. Paz looked at his watch. A little under forty minutes, not a bad time, even for Barlow.
Paz got a pad and pen from his desk and went to the interview room. Barlow met him at the door.
Paz said, “He looks ready to write.”
“Let’s leave him be for a while, Jimmy.”
“Don’t you want to get the confession while he’s in the mood?”
“No confession. You know he didn’t do that girl.”
“What! For Christ’s sake, Cletis … sorry. Then what the … what were you doing in there all this time?”
“I was helping a soul to Jesus. A man can’t live the way that man’s been living without its eating away at him. He really cared for that girl, you know. I just helped him to see that and see that what he was doing, the fornicating, the drinking, well, that was just a way of trying to forget what-all’d happened to her, and that maybe part of it was his fault, taking advantage of her, pulling her away from the church so she was bait for that devil.”
“Jesus Christ! What’re you talking about? He had the damn picture with her blood on it.”