The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 33

“Tell you what,” Pinky says, once I’m settled into the Barcelona chair in his office. He’s given me the case file. Clipped to it is a map of Louisiana, the route to Morgan City marked on it, and an index card listing the various telephone numbers of Miss Victoria Sims. “Why don’t I come along?”

“Well, I-”

“Cajun folks is friendly but they can be a little twitchy toward outsiders. And truth be told, offshore rigs don’t make for a particularly orderly populace, so Morgan City can be a kind of rough-and-tumble place. It’s the second coming of shore leave when those boys come off shift.”

“Well…”

“You thinking about the money, don’t think no more. It’s on the château, so to speak.”

“Well, that’s-”

“Hold the applause. I been thinking about those two little boys of yours. ’Bout time for the Pinkster to do a little pro bono travail.” He gestures around the office. “Got nothin’ pressing here. Nothin’ can’t wait.”

Pinky’s office and expensive clothing denote the value of his time. “I appreciate it.”

“Oh, forget it,” Pinky says. “I need to get out of the office, pleasant as it is. And I know some boys out that way might prove helpful.”

We head out into the sunset in Pinky’s car, a silver BMW X5 SUV so new that it still has that smell. “Albinos generally have bad eyesight,” he tells me. “I’m the exception – I see pretty good, especially at night.”

It’s about a ninety-mile drive from New Orleans to Morgan City – where Pinky’s secretary booked rooms for us at the Holiday Inn. Despite the darkness, the way the lights are strung along riverbanks, clustered on shores, absent in large black expanses, conveys the constant presence of water. Going through Houma (“HOME-uh,” Pinky corrects me when I mispronounce it), we see faded remnants of patriotic support for the invasion of Iraq: tattered yellow ribbons and a big showing of the stars and stripes. When we swing around one corner, the BMW’s lights illuminate a marquee above a defunct gas station:

SADDAM? NEAUX PROBLEM

Vicky Sims meets us for the buffet breakfast at the Holiday Inn. She’s about thirty, with bad skin and a sweet, soft voice. “I located the case file at the courthouse in Franklin,” she tells us, “after I talked to you, Pinky. It’s in the public record, so there’s no problem with getting it, although some of the medical opinion leading to commitment is likely to be under seal. I did my best to hurry ’em up over there, but it’s going to take a couple days to retrieve and copy. Staff cutbacks, you know? Parish finances are just in terrible shape.”

“Same everywhere,” Pinky says. “Just pitiful. But why don’t we just start with what you remember your own self about Mr. Byron Boudreaux. Then Alex and I plan to go talk to people mighta known the guy, what folk may still be around.”

She dabs her lips. “Excuse me,” she says. “I consider grits a platform for butter and salt. It can get messy.”

“Obviously you don’t indulge too often,” Pinky says.

Vicky Sims smiles. “I don’t know as I can help you all that much with Byron. He lived in Berwick – across the river – so I didn’t really know him. Just knew about him – we all knew about him.” She frowns. “Good-lookin’ boy, and really smart, almost like a genius, or maybe really a genius. He had quite a following during his preaching days. He was the kind of kid could turn out to be a great man, or could turn out to be as crazy as a bedbug. Which was the way Byron went.”

“He was a preacher?” I ask.

“Boy preacher, oh, yes.”

“Really,” Pinky says.

“Oh, yes, he could preach up a storm, that boy. He was like a little Billy Graham. People came from all over to see him. He was at the Primitive Baptist Church over to Berwick. As I recall, he took up preaching after his little brother drowned.” She frowns. “I didn’t live here when that happened. We were still in Baton Rouge then, but apparently there were rumors.”

“Like what?” Pinky asks.

“Like it wasn’t an accident. Like maybe Byron drowned his baby brother.” She shakes her head. “But I don’t know – Byron was just a kid himself when it happened. And I can’t really remember whether people had suspicions at the time, or if it just came up later, after he killed his father.”

“Is that what he did?” I ask. “He killed his father?”

“Now, this, I do remember very well. And it’s what sent him away to the asylum. He murdered his crippled daddy.”

“You’re kidding,” I say, although nothing this monster could have done would surprise me.

“I’m not. Byron was seventeen years old, and they were planning to try him as an adult. Then he was found incompetent. Which everybody figured was about right, because that boy was about as twisted as a corkscrew.”

Pinky drains his coffee. “His father was crippled?”

Vicky Sims dabs at her lips with a napkin. “Claude, Byron’s daddy – he worked out on the rigs for Anadarko. Had some kind of accident and surgery. He was on the mend, but he was still in a wheelchair at the time of the murder – which seemed to make it even more terrible.”

“What’d he do – shoot his old man?” To me Pinky adds: “We tend to be kinda heavily armed down here.”

“Oh, no, nothin’ that normal,” Vicky says. “Poisoned him in some sneaky way – through his skin, I think it was. Can that be right?”

“Transdermal,” Pinky says. “Hell, yes! But wow. How’d he get caught?”

Vicky frowns. “I don’t know as I ever knew that. It never did come to trial. But since it was poison – there was no question it was premeditated. So that’s why they were going to try Byron as an adult.”

“He pled insanity,” I say.

“Right. The lawyers said he was crazy, that he heard voices, that his daddy abused him from when he was a little guy.” She sprinkles some more salt on her grits. “Usual stuff. There’ll be more about it in the court records. Or in the paper – The New Iberian might be your best bet there. Come to think of it, I know the editor – Max Maldonado. You want his telephone number?”

We call from my hotel room, with Pinky on the extension. I explain who I am and what I want, and Maldonado says he’s on deadline but he was a reporter back in the day and of course he remembers the Boudreaux case. He’ll call me in the afternoon. I’m agreeing to that when Pinky weighs in.

“Shame on you, Max. Start talking right this minute. Surely you can spare five minutes of your invaluable time for two missing bambinos. Come on now.”

“Am I talking to the whitest private investigator in Louisiana?” Maldonado says. “Shit, Pink, why didn’t you say it’s you?”

“I’m testing your moral compass, Max.” He lets out a rumble of laughter at the protesting hoot from Maldonado. “I am. I’m not kiddin’. All we want is a heads-up on this fellow. Like where did he live, where did he work, somethin’ to go on. We don’t want to twiddle our thumbs while we’re waiting for them to find the damn court record.”

“My moral compass, huh? Well, all right, I’ll try to swing it around your way, Pink. Byron Boudreaux – why am I not surprised we didn’t hear the last of him?” A sigh. “I can give you five minutes now, all the time you want later tonight.”

“Great.”

“Well, let’s see. Byron’s family lived over to Berwick in a trailer park called Meadowlands. Kind of a dog-assed place, although chez Boudreaux was neat as a pin. I know that because at the time of Claude’s murder I was filling in for the photographer at the time and I took a bunch of pictures over there. Marie, Byron’s mother – she was a fine woman, to all accounts. Claude – he was a good man, too, is what I hear, a hard worker. Worked for Anadarko out on the rigs. Imagine being poisoned by your own son! That boy was just plain rotten through and through. Most folks didn’t believe that crap about Claude abusing the boy, that was a boatload of bullshit.”

“Like the Menendez brothers.”

“Just like that. Really – word was Claude was a stand-up guy. Let’s see – if I was y’all, I’d head over to Meadowlands. Good chance there’s still folk around knew the family. In the meantime, I’ll set someone here to pulling up the old papers covering the case.”

“Where do we find Meadowlands?” Pinky asks.

“Where are you?”

“Morgan City Holiday Inn.”

“You get on across the bridge to Berwick, go along about… hmmm… maybe half a mile. Meadowlands, it’s off… hmmm… Tupelo, maybe. Or Live Oak. One of the tree streets. You won’t have any trouble finding it.”

We hear a bunch of shouting in the background. Maldonado covers the receiver, but we hear him talking. Then he’s back. “Okay.”

“Does Boudreaux still have family there?” I ask. My voice sounds shaky. The emotion in it comes across so clearly that Pinky raises his sunglasses and shoots me a look from across the room.

“I don’t think so,” Maldonado says. “No family left I know of. Daddy died from the poisoning, mom died a few years beforehand. And – hang on.”

He’s interrupted again.

“Sounds like you gotta go,” Pinky says.

“I can meet you later tonight if you like – after we get this baby to bed.”

“Buy you dinner,” Pinky suggests.

“Deal,” Maldonado says.

We cross the expanse of the Atchafalya River (“’Chafalaya,” Pinky tells me) on the Huey P. Long Bridge, and find Meadowlands within ten minutes. Despite the bucolic name, there’s nothing resembling a meadow in sight. The complex consists of two dozen trailers, most of which have obviously been there for decades. Some are fenced in by stretches of chain link; most are patched together with slabs of plywood. A few stand out from the rest, with shutters and fresh siding, picket fencing, and plantings of flowers.

A sign shows a logo of children hand in hand and posts a speed limit of five miles per hour. The sign is bullet-pocked, with the concentration of hits within the silhouetted children. Brown plastic Dumpsters, most too full to allow their tops to close, sit out in front of many of the trailers. Ragged front yards hold plastic chairs, more seating in the form of inverted white buckets, kids’ bicycles, toys of all sorts, plastic wading pools, boat trailers, discarded tires. Every trailer seems to have a vehicle or two parked in front – most of them pickups.

Pinky rolls down the road and pulls up in front of number 14, a siding-covered trailer with an awkward bay window clapped onto the front. The BMW gleams on the rutted dirt like an alien spaceship.