James Burke - Light of the World

“How did you know?”

“Clete was out there, too.”

“Wyatt reads lips. Love Younger was telling an ugly story to an ex — county detective, a man who worked with my brother. It was about Wyatt’s mother. Mr. Younger was bragging on seducing a cleaning girl in a motel years ago. Earlier he had asked Wyatt for the name of his mother. Wyatt told her it was Irma Jean. Mr. Younger told the detective that wasn’t the same woman he seduced.”

“I’m not sure what you’re saying, Miss Bertha,” I said.

“Mr. Younger said the cleaning girl’s name was Josie, so that meant she wasn’t Wyatt’s mother, and Wyatt couldn’t possibly be his son. What Mr. Younger didn’t know was that Wyatt’s mother was Josie Irma Jean Holliday. She used the name Josie at work, but to her family, she was always Irma Jean.”

“Love Younger is Wyatt’s father?” I said incredulously.

“His mother was working in the motel when Younger’s company was drilling not far from Wyatt’s home.”

“You’re saying Wyatt feels betrayed or rejected?”

“Have you seen his back? That’s what his stepfather did to him. He was punished every day of his life for his mother’s infidelity. Rejected? Where did you get such a stupid word?”

“Can I talk with him?” I asked.

“I don’t know where he’s gone. I thought he might be here.”

“Why here?” I said.

“He respects you.”

“What for?”

“He says you two are alike, that you see things that aren’t there. He also says you have blood on your hands that no one knows about. That isn’t true, is it?”

“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”

Clete leaned against his Caddy and lit a cigarette with his Zippo, the smoke breaking apart in the wind, his green eyes dulled over, locked on mine. He removed a piece of tobacco from his tongue and flicked it off his fingertip. I could see his shoulder holster and snub-nosed .38 under his seersucker coat. How many times had he and I operated under a black flag?

“Wyatt left the house with his bowie knife,” she said. “He has that old rifle in his truck, too. I have to find him.”

“If you see him, tell him to keep his mouth shut about the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide,” Clete said.

“I don’t like your tone,” Bertha said.

“Few people do,” Clete replied.

She turned back to me. “You have to help him, Mr. Robicheaux. He’s tortured by what Love Younger has done to his life. He also has uninformed religious attitudes that were taught to him as a child. Wyatt has both too little and too much knowledge about certain things. And he’s confused by the name this killer may have been using.”

“You mean Asa Surrette?” I said.

“Who else would I be talking about? Wyatt did his own investigation into the disappearance of the waitress. He said the killer was using the name of a Roman emperor.”

“As an alias?” I said.

“He was calling himself Reverend Geta Noonen.”

I had heard the name Geta in a historical context, but I couldn’t place it offhand.

“He was the brother of Caracalla,” she said. “He was a cruel man, just like his brother. The two of them gave the Christians a terrible time.”

Clete was staring at me, the connections coming together in his eyes. “This has to be bullshit, Dave. Right? It’s bullshit, and she knows it. I’m not buying into this. These people need to pack their heads in dry ice and ship them somewhere.”

“Mr. Purcel, how would you like a punch in the face?” Bertha Phelps said. “You just take your big rear end down to the cabin and stay there, because you are starting to make me angry.”

“Do you know who Saint Felicity was, Miss Bertha?” I said.

“No,” she replied. “Who was she?”

“She died at the hands of the emperor Geta in a Carthaginian arena.”

“I’m not up to this,” Clete said. He got into his Caddy and backed down the driveway and onto the dirt road, then continued to back up until he was at the vehicle gate on the north pasture, as though eating the road and the entire world’s irrationality with the rear bumper of his car.

A moment later, an electric-blue SUV with smoked windows and dealer’s tags passed by the arch over Albert’s driveway, headed toward the end of the hollow, the sun’s reflection wobbling like a pool of yellow fire on the rear window.

“If something happens to my man, you two are to blame,” Bertha Phelps said. “I may have to take care of this situation myself. Then I’ll be back.”

Asa Surrette parked his newly purchased SUV in front of the house at the end of the hollow, then went inside, his overnight bag on his shoulder. The nostalgia he’d experienced at moving into a home reminiscent of rural Kansas had been replaced by a growing irritability that he couldn’t compartmentalize. Maybe it was the dusty baseboards and the bare lightbulbs and the dirt ingrained in the floors and thread-worn carpets; they were not only realistic reminders of his natal home, they conjured up other images for him as well: treeless horizons, winds that blew at forty knots in twenty-below weather, Titan missiles sleeping in their silos under the wheat, the nightly mold-spore report on the local news.

His landlady didn’t help matters. She was Dutch or Swedish and had a loud voice and a North Dakota accent that hurt his ears. Her chirping evangelical rhetoric caused him to flutter his eyelids uncontrollably, not unlike a survivor of an artillery barrage.

He entered the house by way of the back steps, hoping to avoid her. Before he could make it to his bedroom, he heard a toilet flush and her feet pounding up the stairs. “Oh, there you are!” she said.

He stopped in the hallway. “Yes, here is where I am,” he replied.

She didn’t catch his annoyance. “Oh, my, what happened to your face?” she said, her fingers rising to her mouth.

“I walked into a nail.”

“My heavens. I hope you got a tetanus shot,” she said. Her hair was bleached and frizzed and resembled a wig. She wore bright coral-red lipstick and foundation that stiffened the fuzz on her cheeks and caused it to glow like whiskers against the light. “If you get lockjaw, you’ll have to take your food through a straw. Did you already get a shot? If you haven’t, you should.”

“I heard you. I’m fine.”

She looked past him into the driveway. “It looks like someone got himself a new SUV. You bought it in Polson?”

“What makes you think I got it there?”

“The dealer’s tag,” she said. “When I was a little girl, I’d memorize license numbers. That’s how I learned math. Did you say you got a shot?”

“I bought it from somebody who bought it in Polson.”

“Not to worry,” she said. “Geta, next time would you call?”

“Call about what?”

“You didn’t come home yesterday. We were worried.”

“I had to tie up a problem or two. That’s the nature of my work.”

“I see. Well, next time I’m sure you’ll remember to call. You look tired. Maybe you should take a nap.”

“I don’t need a nap.”

“Like Scripture says, we must always be alert. But as a minister, you already know that. You ran into a nail? How awful.”

“I’m going into my room now.”

“By the way, we’re going to be painting the upstairs. We’ll need to move you into the cubby for a few days.”

“What’s the cubby?”

“It’s in the basement. It’s only temporary. There’s a window and a toilet. You can come upstairs to bathe.”

“That’s not convenient for me.”

“Beg your pardon?” she said.

“I don’t live in basements. I’m not a bat.”

She sniffed the air and made a face. “What’s that smell?” she said.