“You don’t remember me?”
She gazed at him as one does at a pornographic image thrust unexpectedly before one’s eyes, not wanting to engage him, not wanting to enter the moral vacuity of his eyes, not wanting to look at the flare of his mouth and the wetness on his teeth and the yellowish discoloration in his skin that affected a suntan. “You were fishing out at the Abelard place,” she said.
“That’s right. My name is Vidor Perkins. I’m pleased to formally meet you. I’m one of the many unfortunates that is being he’ped by Robert Weingart and the St. Jude Project. I know a lot about coons. This one don’t look sick. If you ask me, he looks fat enough for roasting. Spoiled is what I’d call him. We’re not doing animals a favor when we spoil them.” He reached inside the window with the rolled newspaper and tapped it up and down between Tripod’s ears. “Bet he’s a twenty-pounder.”
“You get away from my animal or I’m going to slap you cross-eyed.”
“I’m just trying to be kindly. When critters are sick, and I mean real sick, like you’re telling me about this one, you got to put them down. Cheapest and best way to do it is with a burlap bag and some rocks.”
She reached in her purse for her cell phone.
“Calling your daddy? He burned up my gold watch, my cell phone, my sunglasses, and my cigarettes. Know why he did that? He was protecting that lesbian he works for. He thought she was gonna lose it and try to hit me upside the head. I admire a man like that.”
Alafair’s hand trembled as she punched in 911 on her phone.
“You’re a excitable thing, aren’t you?” he said. He wiped two fingers along her jaw and stuck them in his mouth, licking them from the knuckle to the nail as he removed them. “You doin’ anything tonight?”
TEN MINUTES LATER she was at my office, carrying Tripod with her, his head sticking out the top of the box. She told me everything that had just happened by the fruit stand. “I want to get a concealed-weapons permit,” she said.
“It’s not a bad idea,” I said.
“I stopped by the restroom and washed my face. My skin feels like a snail crawled across it. Are you going to have him picked up?”
She waited for my answer. I realized I was gazing at her without seeing her. “It’s what he wants,” I said. “It’s obvious Robert Weingart sicced him on you, but I think Weingart’s motive has less to do with you than me.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because they’re both con-wise. They have an agenda. It’s about the St. Jude Project or the deaths of the girls in Jeff Davis Parish or the Canadian girl we found buried on the Delahoussaye property. It also involves the Abelards and, I think, Layton Blanchet. The connections are all there, but I can’t get a net over them.”
I saw Helen through the glass window in my door. She pointed at me and mouthed the words “My office,” then walked away.
“How dangerous is this guy Perkins?” Alafair asked.
“He has no moral bottom. He’s probably killed people. He and Weingart both jack-rolled Social Security recipients. He was a suspect in an apartment-house fire that killed a child.”
Her eyes filmed. “You’re telling me I’ve been a fool?”
“No, I’m saying you’re like most good people, Alafair. Our greatest virtue, our trust of our fellow man, is our greatest weakness.”
Tripod had started to climb out of his box. She picked him up and straightened his blanket and forced him to lie down again.
“I think he’s feeling better,” I said.
“How do I get the gun permit?”
I took an application form out of my desk drawer. Many years ago I had started keeping the forms there for one reason and for one reason only: I had finally stopped pretending to people who had been stalked, terrorized by mail and over the phone, sexually degraded, assaulted with a deadly weapon, tortured, and gang-raped. No, that’s badly stated. I had stopped lying about how our system works. Perpetrators of horrific crimes are often released on bond without either the victims or the witnesses being notified. Witnesses and victims are told they need only to testify in a truthful manner and the person who has made their lives a misery will be put away forever. In law enforcement, bromides of that kind are distributed with the blandness of someone offering an aspirin as a curative for pancreatic cancer. Visit a battered women’s shelter and come to your own conclusions about how successfully our system works. Or chat up a judge who releases child molesters to a counseling program and lectures a rape victim on her provocative way of dressing.
These aren’t hyperbolic examples. They’re as common as someone spitting out his bubble gum on a sidewalk.
“You’re not going to bring Perkins in?” Alafair said.
“I’m not sure. While you fill this out, I need to talk to Helen.”
“About bringing in Perkins?”
“So far we haven’t found any handles on these guys, Alf.”
When I entered Helen’s office and saw her face, I knew we were not going to be talking about Alafair’s encounter with Vidor Perkins. A gold pen, inside a small Ziploc bag, was sitting on top of Helen’s desk blotter. “Recognize that?” she asked.
“Not offhand.”
“Look at it closely.”
I picked up the Ziploc bag and, with two fingers, held it up against the light from the window.
“Can you read the inscription?” she said.
“It says ‘Love to Clete from Alicia.’”
“Who’s Alicia?” she asked.
“Alicia Rosecrans, an FBI agent Clete was involved with in Montana.”
“Involved with?”
“They were an item for a while. What’s the big deal about the pen?”
“A pool cleaner found it at the bottom of Herman Stanga’s swimming pool this morning.”
“What’s the pool cleaner doing at the house of a dead man?”
“Stanga had paid three months in advance for the service. Why is the first thing out of your mouth a question about the maintenance man rather than how the pen got in Stanga’s swimming pool?”
“Maybe Clete went to see him.”
“I talked with Clete two days after Stanga was murdered. He said he had been by Stanga’s house but had never been on the property. You look a little uncomfortable.”
“Clete wouldn’t shoot somebody in cold blood.”
“By his own admission, he was in a blackout the night Stanga died. He doesn’t know what he did. How is it that you do? Tell me how you acquired this great omniscience, Dave.”
“Don’t buy into this crap, Helen.”
“You get your damn head on straight. This pen puts Clete at the scene of a homicide. He denies ever having been there, but he admits he had a blackout the night of the crime. What if a perp said that to you?”
I tried to speak, but she interrupted me. “You’ve spent years attending meetings. Why do people usually have alcoholic blackouts?” she said.
“They’re caused by a chemical assault on the brain.”
“Try again.”
“Sometimes drunks can’t deal with what they’ve done.”
“Good. We got that out of the way. Now get out of here and do some serious casework and stop fronting points for Clete. I’m really tired of it.”
“Has the pen been to the lab?”
“Yeah, it has.”
I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. “Whose prints are on it?” I said.
“Nobody’s.”
“That’s funny, isn’t it? Clete’s pen doesn’t have Clete’s prints on it? Maybe he was wearing latex when he put it in his pocket.” I could see her chest rising and falling, her irritation reaching critical mass, but I didn’t care. I went
