“Maybe. I can’t remember what I told her when we met. She was fifteen. How many fifteen-year-old girls are thinking about anything an adult says?”
“Who do you think she’s working for?”
“Somebody with a lot of money. The word is she gets a minimum of twenty grand a hit. She’s a pro and leaves no witnesses and no money trail. She has no bad habits and stays under the radar.”
“No witnesses?” I repeated.
“You heard me.”
“Did she see you?”
“After she left, she came back and looked at the alleyway where I was standing,” he said. “Maybe she thought she saw something. Maybe she was just wondering if she picked up all her brass. She was whistling ‘The San Antonio Rose.’ I’m not making this up. Stop looking at me like that.”
Helen Soileau could be a stern administrator. She also had a way of forgetting her own lapses in professional behavior (straying arbitrarily into various romantic relationships, whipping her baton across the mouth of a dope dealer who was chugalugging a bottle of chocolate milk after he insulted her), but no one could say she was unfair or afraid to take responsibility when she was wrong.
On Wednesday morning I had a doctor’s appointment and didn’t arrive at work until ten A.M. I was going through my mail when Helen buzzed my extension. “I just got off the phone with Tee Jolie Melton’s grandfather,” she said. “He tried to get ahold of you first, then he called me.”
“What’s the deal?”
“He says there’s a witness to Blue Melton’s abduction. He says St. Martin Parish won’t do anything about it.”
“We’re out of our jurisdiction,” I said.
“Not anymore. If the witness’s account is accurate, we just became players. It’s not something I wanted, but that’s the way it is, bwana. I suspect you couldn’t be happier. Check out a cruiser, and I’ll meet you out front.”
We drove up the two-lane state road to the home of Avery DeBlanc in St. Martinville, up the bayou from the drawbridge and the old cemetery, one that was filled with white crypts. He was waiting for us in a rocking chair on his gallery, both of his walking canes propped across his thighs. He stood up when we approached him, lifting his crippled back as straight as he could. “T’ank y’all for coming,” he said.
I introduced Helen, then helped him sit down. “Can you tell us again what this little boy told you, Mr. DeBlanc?” I said.
“Ain’t much to it. The boy lives yonder, down where them pecan trees is at. He said he looked out the window. He said it was night, and a white boat come up the bayou and parked at my li’l dock, and two men got out and went to my house. He said the boat had a fish wit’ a long nose painted on the bow. He said the men went into my house and came back out wit’ Blue. He said he could see all t’ree of them in the porch light. They had a big green bottle and some tall glasses, and they was all drinking out of the glasses and laughing.”
“When did this happen?” Helen interrupted.
“The boy ain’t sure. Maybe a mont’ ago. Maybe more. He’s only eleven. He said Blue was walking wit’ the men toward the bayou, and then she wasn’t laughing no more. The two men took her by the arms, and she started fighting wit’ them. He said they took her down to the dock, and he t’inks one of them hit her. He said he couldn’t see good when they was on the dock. The only light come from the nightclub across the bayou. He t’inks the man hit Blue in the face and put her on the boat. He said she cried out once, then didn’t make no more sounds.”
“The boy didn’t try to tell anybody or call 911?”
“He was home alone. That li’l boy don’t do nothing wit’out permission,” Mr. DeBlanc said.
“Where did the boat go? In which direction?” Helen asked.
“Sout’, back toward New Iberia.”
“Why is the boy telling you this only now?” I asked.
“He said his momma tole him it ain’t his bidness. He said his momma tole him my granddaughters ain’t no good. They’re on dope and they hang out wit’ bad men. But it bothered him real bad ’cause he liked Blue, so he tole me about it.”
“And you told this to the deputy sheriff?” I said.
“I went to his office. He wrote it down on his li’l pad. He said he’d check it out. But he ain’t come to see me or returned my phone calls, and the boy said ain’t nobody talked to him, either.”
Helen and I walked down to the dock. The planks were weathered gray, the wood pilings hung with rubber tires. The bayou was high and dark from the rain, the surface wrinkling like old skin each time the wind gusted. I tried to squat down and examine the wood, but a burst of pain, like a nest of tree roots, spread through my chest. For a moment the bayou and the live oaks on the opposite bank and the whitewashed crypts in the cemetery went in and out of focus.
“I got it, Dave,” Helen said.
“Give me a minute. I’m fine.”
“I know. But easy does it, right?”
“No, I’m going to do it,” I said. I eased down on one knee, swallowing my pain, touching the dock with the tips of my fingers. “See? Nothing to it.”
“There’s no telling how many times it’s rained on those planks,” she said.
“Yeah, but the kid didn’t make up that story.”
“Maybe not. Anyway, let’s have a talk with the deputy or whoever this guy is who can’t get off his ass.”
“Look at this.” I took my pocketknife from my slacks and opened the blade. The tops of the planks in the dock were washed clean and uniformly gray and free of any residue, but between two planks, I could see several dark streaks, as though someone had spilled ketchup. I cut a splinter loose and wrapped it in my handkerchief.
“You think it’s blood?” Helen said.
“We’ll see,” I replied.
We drove to the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Annex, next to the white-columned courthouse past which twenty thousand Union troops had marched in pursuit of Colonel Mouton’s malnourished Confederate troops in their unending retreat from Shiloh, all the way to the Red River parishes of central Louisiana.
The plainclothes sheriff’s deputy was Etienne Pollard. He wore a beige suit and a yellow tie and blue shirt, and he looked tan and angular and in charge of the environment around his desk. By his nameplate was a Disney World souvenir cup full of pens with multicolored feathers. While we explained our reason for being there, he never blinked or seemed disturbed by thoughts of any kind. Finally, he leaned back in his swivel chair and gazed at the traffic passing on the square and the tourists entering the old French church on the bayou. His forehead knitted. “What do you want me to do about it?” he asked.
He used the word “it,” not “abduction,” not “assault,” not “homicide.” Blue Melton’s fate had become “it.”
“We have the impression you haven’t interviewed the boy who saw Blue Melton abducted,” I replied.
“The old man called y’all?” he said, grinning at one corner of his mouth.
“You mean Mr. DeBlanc?” I said.
“That’s what I just said.”
“Yes, Mr. DeBlanc did. He’s a little frustrated,” I said.
Pollard pinched his eyes. “Here’s the deal on that. Blue Melton was a runaway. She was suspended from school twice, once for smoking dope in the restroom. She and her sister had a reputation for loose behavior. The old man wants to think otherwise. If it’ll make everybody feel better, I’ll look into this boy’s story about somebody dragging the girl onto a boat.”
“You’ll look into it?” Helen said. “In a homicide investigation, you’ll look into an eyewitness account of an assault on the victim and her possible abduction?”
“Homicide?” Pollard said.
“What did you think we were talking about?” Helen said.
“What homicide?”
“Blue Melton floated ashore in St. Mary Parish inside a block of ice,” Helen said.
“When?”
“Four days ago.”
