“I’ve been on vacation. We were in Florida. I just got back Monday,” Pollard said.
“Today is Wednesday,” Helen said.
Pollard took one of the pens from his souvenir cup and twirled it with his thumb and index finger, studying the colored feathers. His skin was as unlined as wet clay turned on a potter’s wheel. The grin returned to the corner of his mouth. I tried to ignore the vacuous glint in his eye.
“We found what appears to be blood on the DeBlanc dock,” I said.
Pollard glanced out his office door into the corridor, as though looking for someone hiding just outside the doorway. “She was in a block of ice?” he said. “That’s what y’all are saying? In this kind of weather?”
“That’s correct,” I said.
“You had me going. The sheriff put y’all up to this, didn’t he?” he said. He shook his head, an idiot’s grin painted on his mouth, waiting for us to acknowledge our charade.
We interviewed the eleven-year-old who had seen Blue Melton forced onto a boat that had an emblem of a fish painted on the bow. He said the fish looked like it was smiling, but he could add little to what he had already told the grandfather. His time reference was not dependable, and it was obvious he was afraid and wanted to tell us whatever he thought would please us. People wonder how justice is so often denied to those who need and deserve it most. It’s not a mystery. The reason we watch contrived television dramas about law enforcement is that often the real story is so depressing, nobody would believe it.
When we got back to New Iberia, I went to the office of our local newspaper, The Daily Iberian. The previous month the drawbridge at Burke Street had been stuck three nights in a row, jamming up barge and boat traffic north and south of the bridge. Each night a staff photographer had taken many photographs from the bridge, although the paper had run only a few of them. He sat down with me and showed me all his pictures on a computer screen. The photographer was an overweight, good-natured man who wheezed when he bent forward to explain the images. “The moon was up, so I had some nice lighting,” he said. “The small boats could get under the bridge without any problem, but some of them got behind the barges and had to wait longer than they planned. You see the boat you’re looking for?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” I said.
He cleared the screen and brought up another set of photos, then another. “How about these?” he said.
“Behind the tugboat. Can you blow up that image?” I said.
“Sure,” he replied. “It’s funny you noticed that particular boat. The guy driving it was impatient and got out of line and worked his way past a barge full of shale that had been waiting two hours.”
The boat was sleek and white and constructed of fiberglass, with a deep-V hull and a flared bow and outriggers for saltwater trolling. I suspected it was a Chris-Craft, but I couldn’t be sure. “Can you sharpen the bow?” I asked.
“Probably not a whole lot, but let’s see,” the photographer replied.
He was right. The image was partially obscured by another boat, but I could make out the shape of a fish, thick through the middle, cartoonish in its dimensions. It seemed to have a snout. Maybe a marlin or a bottlenose dolphin? The image was like one I had seen somewhere, as though in a dream. I tried to remember, without success.
“You have any other photos?” I asked.
“No, that’s it, Dave,” the photographer said.
“Did you see a girl on board?”
“I’m sorry, I just wasn’t paying that much attention. Maybe there were two guys in the cabin. The only reason I remember them is because they were pretty rude about pushing their way ahead of the other boats.”
“Do you remember what they looked like?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“How about the painting of the fish on the bow? You remember any details about it?”
“Yeah, it was like the paintings you see in photographs of World War Two bomber planes, like Bugs Bunny or Yosemite Sam.”
I thanked him for his time and went back to my office. It was past noon, and officially I was off the clock. I checked my mail and returned a couple of phone calls and thumbed through my in-basket. For the first time in years, there seemed to be no pressing matters on my desk. So why was I standing in the middle of my office rather than walking out the front door and down the street to my house, where I would fix ham-and-onion sandwiches and eat with Alafair?
There was only one answer to my question: Clete Purcel had told me he’d seen his out-of-wedlock daughter cap Bix Golightly. I wanted to go into Helen Soileau’s office and tell her that. Or call Dana Magelli at the NOPD. What was wrong with making a clean breast of it?
Answer: Clete Purcel would be in the cook pot; he had not seen his daughter since she was fifteen, and his identification of her as Golightly’s killer was problematic; last, the NOPD and the Orleans Parish district attorney were in the process of investigating and prosecuting New Orleans cops who had shot and killed innocent people during Katrina, in one instance trying to hide their guilt by burning the victim’s body. Other than exploiting the opportunity to ruin Clete’s career, how much time would the DA be willing to invest in finding the killer of men like Bix Golightly and Waylon Grimes?
My conscience wouldn’t let go of me. I went down to Helen’s office, perhaps secretly hoping she wouldn’t be there and the issue would be set in abeyance and would somehow resolve itself. When she saw me through the glass, she waved me inside. “Did you have any luck at The Daily Iberian?”
“I was going to write you a memo in the morning. The photographer has a shot of a white fiberglass boat that has a fish painted on the bow. I suspect the guys on board are the ones who abducted Blue Melton.”
“Can you see them in the photo?”
“Not at all.”
“You wanted this case, Dave. The boat’s presence at the bridge gives us jurisdiction. What are you down about?”
I repeated everything Clete had told me about his daughter, about her status as a killer, about the fact that the woman Bix had called Caruso before he died was, in Clete’s opinion, his errant daughter, Gretchen. Helen sat motionlessly in the chair while I spoke, her chest rising and falling, unblinking, her hands resting on her desk blotter. When I finished, there was complete silence in the room. I cleared my throat and waited. No more than ten seconds passed, but each of those seconds was like an hour. Her gaze locked on mine. “I’m not interested in thirdhand information about a street killing in New Orleans,” she said. I started to speak, but she cut me off. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“My office is not a confessional, and I’m not a personal counselor. Do you copy that?”
“I do.”
“You tell Clete Purcel he’s not going to drag his problems into my parish.”
“Maybe you should do that.”
“What if I twist your head off and spit in it instead?”
“I’m going to ask that you not speak to me like that.”
She stood up from her desk, her face tight, her breasts as hard-looking as cantaloupes against her shirt. “I was your partner for seven years. Now I’m your supervisor. I’ll speak to you in any fashion I think is appropriate. Don’t push me too far, Dave.”
“I told you the truth. You didn’t want to hear it. I’m done.”
“I can’t begin to tell you how angry you make me,” she said.
Maybe I had handled it wrong. Maybe I had been self-serving in dumping my problems of conscience on Helen’s rug. Or maybe it was she who was out of line. Regardless, it wasn’t the best day of my life.
Clete Purcel was determined to find the shooter Bix Golightly had called Caruso just before he ate three rounds fired directly into his face. But if Caruso was the pro Clete thought she was, she would avoid the mistakes and geographical settings common to the army of miscreants and dysfunctional individuals who constitute the criminal subculture of the United States. Few perpetrators are arrested during the commission of their crimes. They get pulled over for DWI, an expired license tag, or throwing litter on the street. They get busted in barroom beefs,
