their faces? The collars on their throats? The ooze coming out of the wall?”
“Whatever that place is. Whatever is going on there. I don’t know what any of that is.”
“Yes, you do. You warned me that I was in danger. You were right. A Mississippi gunbull by the name of Jimmy Darl Thigpin tried to clip me. He was hired by somebody you know. The same person or persons who murdered these girls.”
She was shaking her head. “You’re all wrong. I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Tell me where the girls were held.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why you’re showing me this. I don’t know that place. The rocks in the walls look like pineapples. I think that photo is a fake. Why are you doing this to me?”
“Is everything all right here?” the bartender asked.
“Sheriff’s detective,” I said, reaching for my badge holder.
“What?” he said.
“Get out of here,” I said.
Emma was holding her tumbler in both hands now, staring down into the whiskey as though reading words in the ice melt. “You said this gunbull tried to clip you. If that’s true, where is he?”
“Put it this way: A guy who’s been abusing convicts for forty years doesn’t want to go inside. A guy like that cuts any deal he can. At anybody’s expense.”
“You’ve got a cooperative witness?”
“What do you think I’m saying to you, Emma? Wake up. You want to do these people’s time? Haven’t you been hurt enough? They made their money off the backs of the blacks and poor whites. They repair their own lives by destroying the lives of others. How bad do you have to get hurt before you get the message?”
She stared down at the photos. Then she covered them with her forearm, staring rigidly in the mirror. “I did what I was told. I didn’t know anything about this. But no matter how it plays out, I’m the one who loses.”
“No, these girls lost. You still have your life. You still have choices. These girls didn’t have any.”
Her eyes looked feverish, her lower lip sagging. “Fuck you, Dave.” She finished her drink and raised her glass toward the bartender. “Hit me again. And a beer back.”
CHAPTER 24
DEATH COMES IN many forms. But it always comes. And for that reason, “inevitability” may be the worst word in the English language.
These were not thoughts I wanted to brood upon as I sat beside the bayou that evening, the water swollen above the roots of the cypress trees, the sun little more than a cinder among the rain clouds in the west. Spring had come and gone and been replaced by the heavy and languid ennui of the Louisiana summer, a season that, at the end of day, clings to your skin like a sour vapor.
I heard Molly unfold a wood chair and sit beside me. “I fixed some ice cream and pecan pie,” she said.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said.
“Don’t let this case pull you down, Dave.”
“It’s not. I don’t think it will be solved. I think that’s just the way it is.”
She didn’t argue. Like me, Molly had ceased to contend with the world. It wasn’t a matter of acceptance. It was a matter of disengagement. The two were quite different. “Where’s Alf?” I said.
“Why do you still call her that?”
“Because that’s the way I’ll always see her. A father never sees the woman. He always sees the little girl.”
Molly looked at her watch. “She left a message on the machine. She got stuck in the traffic coming back from Lafayette.”
“How long ago did she leave the message?”
“About twenty minutes.”
I folded up our two chairs and walked with Molly up the slope to the back porch. The ground under the trees had fallen into deep shade, the sun golden on the canopy. Tripod and Snuggs were sitting on top of Tripod’s hutch, watching us. “Can you guys handle some ice cream?” I asked.
They both seemed to think that was a good idea. I got the ice cream out of the freezer and put a scoop in each of their bowls and placed their bowls on top of the hutch and went inside the kitchen again. I noticed the red light on the message machine was still flashing. I pushed the play button.
“It’s me again,” Alafair’s voice said. “I’m in Broussard. I ran into somebody I need to talk with. I’ll be along in a little bit. Just put my dinner in the refrigerator. I’m sorry.”
I looked at Molly. “Ran into who?” I said.
She shrugged.
I dialed Alafair’s cell phone, but it went instantly to voice mail.
“It could be anyone. Don’t jump to conclusions,” Molly said.
“When Alf avoids mentioning the name of a person to me, it’s because she knows I think that person is toxic.”
Molly started to speak but instead drew in her breath and held it and looked at my face, trying to hide the conclusions she herself was already coming to.
ALAFAIR HAD SEEN the black Saab in front of her on the two-lane highway that wound through mossy oaks in the little sugarcane town of Broussard. The highway was called Old Spanish Trail and was usually empty, and for that reason she had swung off the four-lane and driven through Broussard in hopes of avoiding the rush-hour traffic. Up ahead, by the four corners, the Saab had pulled in to a filling station, and the driver had gotten out and was filling his tank. He seemed to be gazing idly back down the road, his face clean-shaven, his jeans and sport shirt freshly pressed, the tragedy that had befallen his grandfather somehow locked temporarily in a box. Then he saw her and smiled in the boyish way she had always associated with him until he had brought Robert Weingart into their lives.
He stuck the nozzle of the gas hose back in the pump and waved her down. She looked at her watch. She could be home in under twenty minutes. Should she pass him by and pretend she had not seen him on the same day he had buried his grandfather? She had not attended the funeral service. Actually, she had hoped she would never see Kermit again. But how do you ignore someone who was once the center of your life, someone who encouraged your art and read your prose line by line and took as much pleasure in its creation and success as you did?
Without making a deliberate choice, she felt her foot come off the accelerator and step on the brake pedal, felt her hands turn the car in to the station, saw Kermit’s face looming larger and larger through the windshield. He walked to her window, the summer light trapped in the sky above his head, his dockworker’s physique backdropped by blooming myrtle bushes and oaks hung with Spanish moss. She started to speak, but he raised his hand. “You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “I know you liked and respected my grandfather. He always held you in the same regard.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t attend the funeral,” she replied.
“He’d understand. So do I.”
“Are you doing all right?” she said.
“I’m not staying in the house right now. It’s still a crime scene. I want to have it cleaned and painted. I want to start things all over. Not just at the house but in my life.”
The gas pump behind him was a dull red, solid-looking, part of the evening, part of Americana in some way. But something about it bothered her.
“Can you have a drink with me?” he said.
“I’m late for supper. I was shopping in Lafayette and got caught in the afternoon rush.”
“I really need to explain some things,” he said.
“Where’s-” she began.
“Robert is not here. That’s what I need to talk to you about. I need to clear my conscience, Alafair.”
