James Burke - The New Iberia Blues

“Probably not,” I said. “But how smart are liars?”

“The woman had nails through her ankles?”

I nodded.

“But you don’t know the cause of death?”

“No. There was no blood in the nail wounds. I hope she was dead when the nails were put in.”

“You need to get these images out of your head, Dave.”

She had graduated with honors from Reed and at the top of Stanford Law. Before she started writing novels and screenplays, she’d clerked at the Ninth Circuit and been an ADA in Portland, Oregon. But to me she was still the little girl who hoarded her Nancy Drew and Baby Squanto books.

“What’s with this guy Butterworth?” I said.

“He started out as an actor and screenwriter, then became a producer. There’re some rumors about him, but actually, he has a lot of talent.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“Coke and pills, S and M.”

I didn’t reply.

“He makes pictures that people enjoy,” she said. “He casts the biggest stars in the industry.”

“I bet he’s a regular at his church, too,” I said.

“I don’t think you got enough sleep.”

“I’d better get ready for work.”

“It’s Saturday,” she said.

“Really?”

“I’ll get you another cup of coffee,” she said.

I put on my hat and went out the back door and walked down the slope and stood under a live oak tree and watched the raindrops dimpling the bayou. I could not get the dead woman’s gaze out of my mind, nor the smooth chocolate perfection of her skin — the only visible violations on it, the nail wounds. Helen was right. Marine life is not kind to the dead. But the woman seemed spared. Was it coincidental that dolphins were her escorts?

I have investigated many homicides. It’s the eyes that stay with you. And it’s not for the reason people think. There is no message in them. Instead, they force you to re-create the terror and despair and pain that marked their last moments on earth. Two kinds of cops eat their gun: the corrupt ones and the ones who let the dead lay claim upon the quick.

Later that afternoon Clete Purcel pulled into my driveway in the restored 1956 Cadillac he had bought the previous week. With its sleek lines and hand-waxed maroon paint job and chrome-spoked whitewall tires and leather interior, it made our contemporary designs look like shoe boxes with wheels. The top was down; two fishing rods were propped on the back seat. He stepped out on the gravel and removed a leaf from the hood and dropped it on the lawn as he might an injured moth. “Want to entertain the fish?”

“I’m meeting with the coroner at Iberia General,” I said.

“About that body y’all pulled out of the salt?”

“It’s in the paper?”

“Yeah,” he replied. He looked down the street at the Shadows — a plantation home built in 1834 — his hair freshly barbered, his face pink in the sun’s glow through the live oaks. “I need to tell you something.”

I knew the pattern. When Clete did something wrong, he headed for my house or office. I was his confessor, his cure-all, his bottle of aspirin and vitamin B, his hit of vodka Collins to sweep the spiders back into their nest. He was wearing pressed gray slacks and a fresh Hawaiian shirt and shined oxblood loafers. He had not come to fish.

“Anything going on?” I asked.

“Ten days ago I put a boat in by the train trestle over the Mermentau. Right at sunset. Nobody around. No wind. The water just right. The goggle-eye were starting to rise in the lily pads. Then I heard the train coming. A freight going about twenty-five miles an hour.”

Clete was not given to brevity. “Got it,” I said.

“It was a perfect evening, see. It’s kind of my private spot. So I was daydreaming and not thinking real sharp.”

“What are we talking about, Cletus?”

“I’m talking about the freight. It was wobbling and rattling, and the moon was rising, and about eight or nine cars went by, and then I saw a guy in white pants and a white shirt standing on the spine of an empty boxcar. There was blue trim on his collar and shirt pockets. Then the guy flew off the boxcar into the river. He must have hit in the middle or he would have broken his legs.”

“He was wearing a uniform?”

“Yeah.” Clete waited.

“What kind?” I said.

“The kind you see in a lot of Texas jails. He popped up from the water and looked right at me. Then he started swimming downstream.”

“You had your cell phone?”

“It was in the Caddy,” he said. There was a pause. “I wasn’t going to call it in, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t sure about anything. I couldn’t think. You know what those for-profit joints are like.”

“Let’s keep the lines straight, Clete. We can’t be sure he escaped from a for-profit jail. Or any kind of jail.”

“This is the way I saw it. Why dime a guy you don’t know the whole story on? I hate a snitch. I should have been born a criminal.”

“That’s what I’m saying. So what happened to the guy?”

“He waded through a canebrake and disappeared. So I wrote it off. Live and let live.”

“So why are you bothered now?”

“I did some googling and found out a guy who committed two homicides got loose from a joint outside Austin. That was eleven days ago. The guy is supposed to be a religious fanatic. Then there was the story in the Daily Iberian today about the woman you pulled out of the drink. There was nothing in the story about the cross. I got that from the reporter. Now I got this guy on my conscience.”

“What’s the name of the escaped inmate?”

“Hugo Tillinger. He set fire to his house and burned up his wife and ten-year-old daughter because they listened to Black Sabbath.”

“Why didn’t he get the injection table?”

“He did. He tried to kill himself. He got loose from a prison hospital. What should I do?”

“You saw a guy jump off a freight. You’ve reported it to me. I’ll take it from here. End of story.”

“Who’s the dead woman?” he asked.

“We have no idea.”

“This is eating my lunch, Dave.”

What could I say? He was the best cop I ever knew, but he’d ruined his career with dope and booze and Bourbon Street strippers and had hooked up with the Mob for a while and now made a living as a PI who ran down bail skips and looked in people’s windows.

“Come inside,” I said. “We’ll go out for supper.”

“You said you were meeting with the coroner.”

“I’ll talk to him on the phone.”

“You don’t have to babysit me. I’ll see you later.”

“Go easy on the hooch,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s the source of the problem, all right,” he replied. “Thanks for the reminder I’m a lush.”

Cormac Watts was our coroner. He had a genteel Virginia accent and wore size-fourteen shoes and seersucker pants high on his hips and long-sleeve dress shirts without a coat, and had a physique like a stick figure and a haircut that resembled an inverted shoe brush.

At Iberia General, in a room without windows, one that was too cold and smelled of chemicals, our Jane Doe lay on a stainless steel table, one with gutters and drains and tubes that could dispose of the fluids released during an autopsy. A sheet was pulled to her chin; her eyes were closed. One hand and part of the forearm were exposed; the fingers were a dark blue at the tips and had started to curl into a claw.

“Beautiful woman,” Cormac said.

“You got the cause of death?”

He lifted the sheet off her left foot. “There were three injections between her toes. She was loaded with enough heroin to shut down an elephant.”

“No tracks on the arms?”

“None.”