James Burke - The New Iberia Blues

“Was there any sexual violation?”

“Not that I could determine.”

“Most intravenous users start on the arms,” I said. “Those who shoot between the toes usually have a history.”

“It gets weirder,” he said. He lifted her hand. “Her nails were clipped and scrupulously cleaned. Her hair had been recently shampooed and her skin scrubbed with an astringent cleanser. There were no particles of food in her teeth.”

“You can tell all that in a body that was in the water for half a day?” I asked.

“She was floating on top of the cross. The sun did more damage than the water.”

“Was she alive when the nails went in?”

“No,” he said.

“What do you think we’re looking at?” I asked.

“Fetishism. A sacrifice. How should I know?”

I could hear the hum of a refrigeration unit. The light in the room was metallic, sterile, warping on angular and sharp surfaces.

“You’d better get this motherfucker, Dave.”

I had never heard Cormac use profanity. “Why?”

“He’s going to do it again.”

The Iberia Sheriff’s Department was located in city hall, a grand two-story brick building on the bayou, with white pillars and dormers and a reflecting pool and fountain in front. I went into Helen’s office early Monday morning.

“I was just about to buzz you,” she said. “An elderly black minister in Cade called and said his daughter went missing six days ago. Her name is Lucinda Arceneaux.”

“He’s just now reporting her missing?”

“He thought she took a flight out of Lafayette to Los Angeles. He just found out she never arrived.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Want me to talk to him?”

“Yeah. What were you going to tell me?”

“About two weeks ago Clete Purcel was fishing on the Mermentau River and saw a guy jump from the top of a boxcar into the water. Clete saw the story in the Iberian about our Jane Doe and thought he ought to tell me. The guy was wearing a white uniform with blue trim on it.”

“Like a Texas convict?”

“Possibly.”

There was a beat. “Clete didn’t want to call it in?” she said.

“Ice cream vendors wear white uniforms. So do janitors and cooks. After Clete saw the story in the paper, he found a story on the Internet about a condemned man who escaped from a prison hospital outside Austin. The name is Hugo Tillinger.”

Helen got up from her chair and wrote on a notepad that rested on her desk blotter, her jaw flexing. She had a compact and powerful physique and features that were androgynous and hard to read, particularly when she was angry. “What was Tillinger in for?”

“Double homicide. His wife and teenage daughter. He set fire to his house.”

“Tell Clete he just went to the top of my shit list.”

“He didn’t have the information we have, Helen.”

“Lucinda Arceneaux’s father says she worked for the Innocence Project. They get people off death row.”

I let my eyes slip off hers. “What’s the father’s address?”

“Try the Free Will Baptist Church. Tell Clete I’m not going to put up with his swinging-dick attitude.”

“Cut him some slack. He couldn’t be sure the guy was an escaped convict. He didn’t want to mess up a guy who was already down on his luck.”

“Don’t say another word.”

I checked out a cruiser and drove to Cade, a tiny, mostly black settlement on the back road between New Iberia and Lafayette. The church house was a clapboard building with a faux bell tower set back in a grove of pecan trees. A house trailer rested on cinder blocks behind the church. In the side yard stood a bottle tree. During the Great Depression and the war years, many rural people hung blue milk of magnesia bottles on the branches of trees so they tinkled and rang whenever the wind blew. I don’t believe there was any reason for the custom other than a desire to bring color and music to the drabness of their lives. Then again, this was Louisiana, a place where the dead are not only with us but perhaps also mischievous spirits you don’t want to think about. I knocked on the door of the trailer.

The man who answered looked much older than the father of a twenty-six-year-old. He was bent and thin and walked with a cane, and wore suspenders with trousers that were too large. His cheeks were covered with white whiskers, his eyes the color of almonds, unlike those of our Jane Doe. I opened my badge holder and told him who I was.

“Come in,” he said. “You got news about Lucinda?”

“I’m not sure, Reverend,” I replied. I stepped inside. “I need more information, then maybe we can make some phone calls.”

“I’ve done that. Didn’t help.”

I sat down on a cloth-covered stuffed chair. I looked around for photographs on the walls or tables. My eyes had not adjusted to the poor lighting. A fan oscillated on the floor. There was no air-conditioning in the trailer. I hated the possible outcome of the conversation I was about to have.

“Miss Lucinda works for the Innocence Project?” I said.

“She used to. She got a job in California.”

“Doing what, sir?”

“What they call organic catering. She always loved cooking and messing with food. She’s been working for a caterer about three months.”

“How long was she with the Innocence Project?”

“Two years. It was mostly volunteer work. She’d visit men in the penitentiary and interview them and help their lawyers.”

“Over in Texas?”

“Yes, suh. Sometimes. Other times in Angola.”

“Do you recognize the name Hugo Tillinger?”

“No, suh. Who is he?”

“A man we’d like to find.”

He was sitting on a faded couch printed with roses. The coffee table in front of him was stacked with National Geographic and People and Sierra magazines. “I called the airline. They wouldn’t give me any information. I called a friend she worked with in Los Angeles. Nobody at her workplace knows where she is.”

“Is your wife here, sir?”

“She passed nine years ago. We adopted Lucinda when she was t’ree. She never went off anywhere without telling me. Not once.”

“Do you have a photograph?”

He went into a short hallway that led to a bath and a pair of bedrooms, and returned with a framed photo he took from the wall. He put it in my hand and sat down. I glanced at the young woman in the picture. She was standing next to the reverend, a beach and a mountain behind her. She was smiling. A wreath of flowers hung from her neck. I felt the blood in my chest drain into my stomach.

“That was taken in Hawaii two years ago,” he said. “We went on a tour with our church.” He paused. “You’ve seen my daughter before, haven’t you?”

“Sir, I need you to go with me to Iberia General.”

He held his gaze on me, then took a short breath. “That’s where Lucinda is?”

“We found a young woman in Weeks Bay.”

“Lucinda wouldn’t have any reason to be out there.”

“Is there someone who should come with us?” I asked.

“It’s just me and her here. That’s the way it’s always been. She was always the sweetest li’l girl on earth.”

His eyes would not leave mine. There were moments when I hated not just my job but the human race. I had no adequate words for him.

“You’re sure about this?” he asked.

“Let’s take care of the identification, sir.”

“Help me up, please. My knees aren’t much good anymore.”

He held on to my arm, weightless as a bird when we walked down the steps to the cruiser. Then he veered away from me as though he could undo our meeting and the message I had brought him. “Who would want to hurt her? She tried to get justice for people nobody cares about. Tell me what they did to her. Tell me right now.”