“We can start checking the hospitals for gunshot admissions, but I doubt the wounded man sought conventional treatment if he’s working for the sophisticated operation you describe. You think these guys work for Timothy Abelard?”
“It’s a possibility. He was a big defense contractor. He’d have the connections.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I don’t want to believe it of Mr. Abelard,” I said.
“Am I developing a hearing defect?”
“I want to believe Mr. Abelard is an anachronism, a decayed vestige of the old oligarchy. All of them weren’t bad. Some of them probably did the best they could with what they had.”
“Hermann Goring loved his mother, too,” she said. “The guy you shot with your forty-five?”
“What about him?”
“You okay with it today?”
“He dealt the play. I identified myself and told him to throw his weapon away.”
“That’s the ticket,” she said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to take a couple of days off, would it?”
I didn’t even bother to answer. My eyes were lidless, staring into hers. She smiled to herself.
“Something funny?” I said.
“Why is it in any conversation with you I always know what you’re going to say and not say? Why do I even have conversations with you, Pops?”
It was a light moment, reminiscent of the days when she and I were investigative partners and both prone to err on the side of immediate retaliation in dealing with the army of miscreants who like to make life unpleasant for the rest of us. But I knew Helen’s cheerful expression was only a temporary respite from the morgue photos that were still in my file cabinet.
I got up from my chair and walked to her window. Helen’s potted petunias were overflowing in the vase, and down below I could see the trusty gardeners from the stockade trimming the grass around the grotto that was dedicated to Jesus’s mother. I propped my hands on the windowsill.
“Did you want to drink last night?” she asked.
“I thought about it.”
“You think you ought to find a meeting today?”
“I have drunk dreams every third night. They’re not dreams of desire. They’re nightmares.”
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
“Wanting to drink is not really wanting to drink. It’s like a desire to cup your hand over a candle flame and snuff it out.”
She stood next to me and touched my arm. I didn’t want to look at her. Two or three women lived inside Helen’s skin, and one of them was not only androgynous but had no erotic parameters. “Slow down, bwana. We’re going to avenge those girls. I give you my word.”
I kept my eyes straight ahead. I felt her fingers on top of my wrist, felt them run along the hairs on the back of my hand and rest on my knuckles. Then her fingers moved away from me, and in the silence I could hear her breathing.
“I think there are two sets of killers in this case, two sets of interests, and two sets of motivation,” I said.
She didn’t reply until I was forced to turn and look into her face. Her gaze was steady and curious, her head tilted slightly to one side, her mouth red, her cheeks somehow leaner than they were a few minutes earlier. “What do you base that on?” she asked.
I had to concentrate in order to answer. “I think our mistake is that we keep looking for a single motive that will fit only one or two individuals. That’s natural in a sex-related homicide. But we keep discovering information that doesn’t fit the profile. Now we’re dealing with guys who seem to be cleaners. Guys like this don’t get involved in sex crimes. What I’m saying is we need to turn the pyramid upside down.”
“Too abstract, Pops.”
“You said Hermann Goring loved his mother. That’s the point.”
“What point?”
“He probably did love his mother. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a sonofabitch. There’s nothing reasonable about human behavior. Did you see
“About William Randolph Hearst?”
“On his deathbed, he whispers the word ‘Rosebud.’ No one can figure out what it means. Rosebud was the name of the sled he played with in the snow when he was a little boy. All his life this man who created a war in order to sell newspapers was driven by memories of his lonely childhood.”
“That’s what you think we’re dealing with?”
“Maybe. But whatever it is, we’re looking right at it. We just don’t see it.”
“I’m going with you to Jeff Davis.”
“What for?”
“I don’t like the way they treated you,” she replied. I started to speak. She raised one finger. “Not a word.”
TWO HOURS LATER, in the Jefferson Davis Parish courthouse, I didn’t find any documents that were revelatory in themselves. However, I did find a pattern. During the previous three years, within an area of approximately five hundred acres, blocks and strips of land had been sold at nominal prices to seven buyers. Most of the acreage was fallow or partially underwater. It possessed neither great agricultural or mineral value. The buyers were located in Louisiana, Dallas, Oklahoma City, and Jackson, Mississippi. In the middle of the five hundred acres were the seven arpents apparently inherited by Bernadette, all fitting like narrow pieces of a pie along the bank of the river where I had almost been killed. Under old Napoleonic law, inherited land had to be divided evenly among all the children of the deceased. When access to a navigable waterway was involved, the key issue was equal access: Hence the strange pie-slice divisions along a riverbank.
The land around Bernadette’s arpents had been sold eighteen months ago. Bernadette’s land was still in her name, although I suspected the title had reverted to the grandmother.
I made a list of the seven buyers and underlined the name of the group that had purchased other land that was part of the Latiolais estate: Castaways, Ltd., in New Orleans.
A floating casino operation? It was possible. When it comes to twenty-four-hour casinos that serve free booze to lure the compulsive and the uneducated into their maw, the altruistic oversight provided by people from Vegas and Atlantic City, the state of Louisiana is always ready to rock.
Or maybe somebody had a marina in mind. But people who build marinas don’t have young girls killed because they happen to inherit a small amount of land on a mud-choked river in a part of the country known for its poverty and illiteracy.
It had to be a casino.
When Helen and I got back to New Iberia, I dialed the number of Castaways, Ltd. The man who answered sounded young and earnest, with a voice like that of a scrubbed-face Bible-college student tapping on your door. When I told him who I was, he seemed anxious to please.
“I was looking at some properties in Jeff Davis Parish,” I said. “I see that your company purchased some acreage down by the river. Can you tell me if y’all are planning to build a marina there?”
“Could be. I remember that deal. We build boat docks and waterfront resorts and such. But you might be talking to the wrong guy.”
“How’s that?”
“We got all kinds of initiatives going here, particularly since Katrina and Rita. Let me switch you over to Edward. He’s more up to speed on that Jeff Davis deal.”
“Who is Edward?”
“I’m fixing to put him on right now. Just hang on. Thanks for calling Castaways.”
Thirty seconds later, someone else picked up on the line. “This is Edward Falgout for the St. Jude Project. How can I help you?” the voice said.
I leaned forward in my chair, the phone pressed a little tighter against my ear. “The St. Jude Project?” I said.
“Yes, sir, what can I do for you today?”
