James Burke - The New Iberia Blues

“Afraid so.”

Her eyes lifted to mine, flat and all business. “A great loss to the world? That’s what you’re about to say?”

“If I grew up like he did, I probably wouldn’t be any different. I can’t figure out how the shooter got the drop on him.”

Helen put on latex and squatted down and used a ballpoint to ease the semi-auto from Smiley’s hand. She dropped the magazine and pulled back the slide. A round was in the chamber, an indentation where the firing pin had struck it. She tapped the round loose and caught it in her palm. It was unfired. The firing pin had hit upon a dead round. She stood up and bagged the gun and magazine and loose round.

“How do you read it?” she said.

“According to Sean, the 911 caller said, ‘He didn’t have to do it.’ There’s no brass on the ground. Wimple didn’t get off a shot. The shooter had a choice. He decided to pop Wimple. At least that’s what the 911 caller seemed to be saying.”

“You ran the tags?”

“I don’t have to. That’s Butterworth’s car.”

“Why would he arbitrarily kill Wimple?”

“Maybe he was scared shitless. Or maybe he did it for fun.”

“Any lawyer would get him off on self-defense. Why would he flee the scene?”

“He’s probably heard stories about the bridal suite at Angola.”

“I don’t buy that,” Helen said. “Wimple had a reason for targeting Butterworth. He killed only two types of people: child abusers and people who tried to hurt him. Butterworth is not a child abuser. So something else is involved. Maybe Butterworth is our guy after all.”

“That, or he’s one of our guys.”

“Who do you think the woman might be?”

“Someone poor and desperate and willing to do anything for a few dollars.”

The wind blew through the trees, scattering the leaves and straightening the air vines, and I saw something I hadn’t seen before. I squatted down next to Smiley’s body again. Broken daisies and crushed buttercups and rose petals were with the leaves. I picked them up in my hand and stared at them. Even in the shade they were as bright as splashes of paint from a brush. There were no flowers of this kind growing anywhere near the crime scene. I looked into Smiley’s face. There was a wet glimmer sealed in one eye, more like an expression of warmth than sorrow.

“What are you looking at?” Helen said.

“These flowers. I don’t know how they got here.”

“What flowers?”

“These.” I lifted my hand.

“Those are leaves.”

I stood up and looked at the shafts of sunlight shining through the canopy. I brushed off my fingers. I looked at her and then at my hands. “I haven’t had much sleep the last couple of nights.”

“Don’t go weird on me, bwana. Let’s get whatever we can to the lab.”

The paramedics placed Smiley into a body bag and pulled the zipper over his chin and nose and eyes and the crown of his head, then dropped him onto the gurney and trundled him into the ambulance, the bag shaking as though it were filled with porridge.

Two hours later, I was at Clete’s motor court. He sat silently in a chair by the window, his profile silhouetted against the window shade, while I told him everything that had happened in the park.

“I never believed Wimple would get capped by an amateur,” he said.

“He probably had a box of old ammunition and got careless after he was wounded at the motel.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” he said.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t say it was. What’s the plan?”

“There’s an APB on Butterworth.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“We take him down and give him his alternatives. We stop screwing around. I don’t believe there’s just one guy anymore. Cormier could have stopped all this a long time ago.”

“I’ll take it a step further,” Clete said. “From what I know, or what you’ve told me, I think Cormier and the rest of them are on the spike and their heads glow in the dark. Maybe the bunch of them are into S and M. I hear Cormier has a pole you could fly the flag on.”

As always, I was awed by the images Clete picked out of the air. “I wouldn’t know,” I said.

More important, I didn’t want to believe that the shy redbone boy whom I had always admired was capable of allowing a murderer and a sadist to thrive in our midst. By the same token, I had no doubt there was a cruel element in his personality, one that was like a candle guttering and flaring alight again.

“I feel like we’ve passed over something,” Clete said.

“That’s the way every investigation goes,” I said.

“This is different. This ritual stuff, the tarot, posing the victims, yeah, that’s all real. But there’s something we missed, something real simple.” He waited for me to speak. “Come in, Houston,” he said.

“I saw some crushed flowers by Wimple’s body. There were no flowers anywhere around the crime scene. I picked them up in my hand and tried to show them to Helen and they turned into leaves.”

He lifted his shoulder holster from the back of a chair and slipped his arm through it. “We’ve got enough problems, noble mon.”

“I interviewed three people at the picnic who said they saw a man answering Wimple’s description talking to two little girls who were wearing flowers in their hair and around their necks. No one knew who they were or where they came from.”

“Drop it.”

“It was you telling me we may be living in a necropolis. How cheerful a thought is that?”

“That’s why I never listen to myself,” he replied.

“I went by St. Edward’s this afternoon. I think I might be headed for the barn. You know the feeling. Don’t tell me you don’t.”

“If you go down, so do I. So fuck that.”

Clete removed his .38 snub from his holster, flicked out the cylinder from the frame, and dumped the rounds into the wastebasket. He took a fresh box of shells from the kitchen cabinet and began dropping them one at a time into the chambers, his eyes clear, his face untroubled. “Who do you think the little girls were?”

“A woman said she heard one of them say her name was Felicity and her friend’s was Perpetua.”

He nodded as though the names meant something to him, but I was sure they didn’t. They were the names of two women who died in a Roman arena in the early third century.

“Wimple looked at peace. I think—”

“Yeah?” he said.

“I hope Smiley is in a good place. Let’s take a ride.”

Ten minutes later, my cell phone vibrated and I answered the strangest phone call I have ever received.

The caller ID said Caller Unknown, but there was no mistaking the voice.

“Detective Robicheaux?”

“Butterworth?”

“Yes,” he said. The word had a knot in it as tight as a wet rope.

“Where are you, sir?” I asked.

“That’s not important.”

“Do you want to tell me something?”

“Yes.”

“About Smiley Wimple?”

“Yes.”

“There’s an echo. Are you on a speakerphone?” I said.

“Yes.”

“It would be better if you came in on your own. Bring a lawyer. The shooting looks like self-defense to us.”

“No. I’ll be going away.”

“Not a good idea,” I said. Clete and I were still in his cottage; he was looking at me from across the room.

“I’ve had many problems over the years,” Butterworth said. “I ruined my reputation in Hollywood. Desmond has been a good soul to me. But he’s about to bid his origins adieu, and perhaps the love of his life. That’s all I have to say.”

“Where are you, sir?”

“What difference does it make?”