The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 34

I rap on the door. A gray-haired woman with her hair in pink foam curlers (I’ve never seen this before, except on old TV shows) calls over from the porch of the trailer next door. “They ain’t home. Help you with somethin’?”

“We’re looking-,” I start, but Pinky takes over.

“How’re you doing today, ma’am?” he says.

“You selling something, sugar? ’Cause I don’t have a dime; I might as well tell you that right off. I got time, though, so y’all can practice on me if you want.”

“We’re not selling anything,” Pinky says. “We’re-”

“Pardon me but are you a albino?”

I start to say something, offended on Pinky’s behalf, but Pinky just laughs.

“Yes, I am,” he says in a booming voice. “I’m a genetic oddity standing right here in your front yard, ma’am. I know it can throw people off their normal manners at first, just like someone with an unfortunate deformity. In a funny kind of way, I think it’s a form of racism. Now, who would believe that here in Louisiana there’d be such a thing as being too white?” He smiles.

“Let me ask you something,” the woman says. “You get sunburnt easy?”

“It’s a big problem,” Pinky admits.

“I’m really fair myself, plus I have the rosacea and I burn right up. Lord, I put sunscreen on with a spoon. Why don’t you and your friend come on up here out of the sun, and tell me what brings you to Meadowlands.”

Up here is a rickety deck made out of plywood and elevated by cinder block columns. Metal folding chairs and an ancient wicker coffee table comprise the deck furniture. On the table is an ashtray and a plastic caddy of manicure supplies. The woman has given herself a pedicure, her feet in some kind of device, her gleaming red toes separated from each other by nubs of foam.

“I’m Pinky Streiber,” Pinky says. “And this is Alex Callahan.” Pinky extends his hand.

“Sorry, honey,” the woman says, holding her hands out, fingers splayed so we can see the fresh polish on them. “I’m not near dry yet. I’m Dora Garrity,” she adds, then turns toward me. “I seen you on TV,” she says, “right?” And then, the light really dawns. “Ohmygod, you the daddy of them two little tykes. Oh. My. Sweet. Jesus.”

“We think Byron Boudreaux might be the one took those boys,” Pinky says.

Dora’s hand flies up and covers her mouth, the perfect red nails like blood against snow. “Oh, Lord.” I’m familiar with the emotion that pinches her lips and seems to make her face shrink. It’s fear. “That boy,” she says, after lighting a cigarette, and exhaling a long stream of smoke. “That boy was born bad. Bad to the bone.”

“Do you know where he is? Where any of his family is?”

She shakes her head. “Sorry, sugar. I can’t help you there. I haven’t seen that boy since they took him away. His folks’re dead, of course. I didn’t even know he was out of the asylum. When did that happen?”

“Ninety-six.”

“Well, I’m right glad he didn’t come home.”

“What about the people who live there now? Are they related to Boudreaux?”

“No. Claude and Marie, they didn’t own the home. It’s a rental, you understand. So there’s been a whole string of folk in there.”

“I just had a thought,” Pinky says to me. “There ought to be records. Claude must have left some kind of estate. We can check on that. Remind me.”

“Way I heard it, everything went to Byron,” Dora says. “Which royally pissed off Claude’s brother, Lonnie. Not that there was much of anything left by the time Claude got buried and all. Course, Lonnie was in a real temper over Byron getting anything, but there wasn’t nothin’ for it. The way it came out, with the insanity plea and all, legally Byron didn’t actually commit no crime.”

“Lonnie live nearby?”

“Lonnie passed,” Dora says.

“What about friends?” I ask. “Did Byron have friends here?”

“That boy had no friends. No friends at all. Time he killed Claude, he was spending most of his time over in niggertown, hangin’ with some witch doctor.”

“Witch doctor?”

“What I heard.” She seems to bristle at my skepticism. “They got ’em, you know. Three hundred years here and they still ain’t left the jungle.”

I know I should keep my mouth shut, but it’s hard. “You know, that’s-”

Pinky interrupts: “You know this witch doctor? Know his name?”

Dora looks offended. “Nossir, I do not. How would I know something like that?”

“But you did know Byron?” I manage.

“Honey, he lived right next door. Your home is a trailer, you spend a lot of time outdoors. I been living here for more than thirty years. And believe it or not, that’s not even the record.” A smoker’s laugh, half cough. “Old Ralph Guidry been here even longer.”

“Can you tell us about Byron?”

“Like what kind of stuff you want to know?”

“Everything,” Pinky says. “Anything. We got no idea what might help us find him.”

“Well…” She lights another cigarette, a Misty menthol. “Lemme see now. Byron was one of two children. At least, he was for a while. When Byron was ten and his brother, Joe, was about four, Byron saw – some say he watched – the younger boy drown in the municipal pool. It’s gone now, but it wasn’t but a mile from here. Real popular with the kids.”

Pinky looks at me. “This is what Vicky was talking about. His brother drowned in front of him? That’s terrible. Did he try to save him?”

“Well, that’s the thing – why I’m telling you this story. Everyone agreed it was a tragedy, but some people wondered if it wasn’t something even worse. On account of it happened at night, when Byron and his kid brother snuck out of the house. Doesn’t seem like that’d be little Joe’s idea, does it? Anyway, they were marauding around the neighborhood. Byron had a bright idea and helped his little brother climb over the Cyclone fence around the pool, which was closed, of course. According to what Byron said, the two of them were horsing around when little Joe slipped and fell into the deep end. Since neither of the boys knew how to swim, that was it. Byron couldn’t save his brother.”

“They didn’t know how to swim?” Pinky says. “Then why’d they sneak into the pool?”

“Well, you know, that was a funny thing. Marie – that’s Byron’s mama – used to take those boys to the pool. I’d see ’em settin’ out with their towels and their float rings and all. But when Byron said he couldn’t swim, Marie – she didn’t say boo.” Dora shrugs.

“So people thought – they actually thought Byron drowned his brother?”

“They were suspicious. See, there was this aluminum pole with a net attached? – that they used to remove debris from the pool?”

I nod my encouragement.

“Well, when the police arrived, it was lying on the apron. Dry as a bone. Hadn’t been touched. Byron was bone dry, too, and there was no water around the side of the pool. Now, Marie had read those boys a story and put them to bed just about an hour or so before Byron runs screaming down the street and nine-one-one is called. Yet when the Fire and Rescue guys got to the pool, everything was bone dry.”

“Hunh.” I don’t see the point.

“Well, it stuck in this one paramedic’s mind, see, bothered him, just didn’t set right. Down here it takes a long time for water to evaporate. Mildew and mold’s a big problem. Question was, it didn’t look like Byron so much as went to the edge of the pool and stuck his hands in. Didn’t look like he tried to reach out whatsoever. Why didn’t he use the pole? It was right there. So it just didn’t set right.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s a big jump from that to think the kid murdered his brother. Maybe he just froze. It happens.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Dora says. “After all, the kid was only ten. And that’s what Byron told the police: He didn’t see any pole. He didn’t think of reaching in. Then he cried and cried until they left him alone.”

“You’d think at ten years old, you’d get the benefit of the doubt.”

“Oh, even by then, that kid kinda scared people. And it wasn’t just that. There was a witness, a waitress coming home from the Shrimp Shack. She walked past the pool that evening. She said she saw Byron sitting at the end of the diving board – you know, Indian style – looking down into the water. There wasn’t anyone else around that she could see – and there certainly wasn’t any ‘horseplay.’ The scene was as quiet as a photograph. So where was Little Joe?”

“Hmmm.”

“‘In the bathroom,’ is what Byron said. But that was a lie, ’cause the doors were locked. What we all thought was – that little boy’s down in the water and Byron’s just up there on the diving board looking down on him. Like to ’bout creep you out, you know? After that, Marie wouldn’t let anybody near him. Said how they’re cruel, Byron felt bad enough, he’s cryin’ his eyes out. It never did amount to nothing; nobody out and out accused him of anything. I know the death was ruled an accident.”

Dora delicately touches a finger to one of her gleaming nails. “Know what?” she says, rising to her feet with a soft grunt. “I got plenty more to tell you about Byron, but I b’lieve I’m dry.” She rotates her hands in the air. “Why don’t we go down the way ’n’ see Ralph? Together we’ll remember more. He knew the family real well. Worked with Claude – that’s Byron’s daddy. They were out on the rigs together. And they were fishing buddies, too.”

She asks us to wait and comes back out, five minutes later, hair still in curlers but the pedicure sandals replaced by a gleaming pair of New Balance running shoes.

“Should we walk?” Pinky asks, looking at the shoes.

“Hell, no,” Dora says. “I want a ride in that car.”

Ralph insists on making iced tea. He distributes the glasses with elaborate care, then excuses himself to “fetch something.” We wait in a miniature living room crammed with furniture, and Ralph comes back with a couple of dusty photo albums. “I had the camera bug in those days,” he says, leafing through one of the albums until he finds the page he’s looking for.

“Here,” he says, and we lean in, looking at a three-by-five snapshot. “That’s Claude,” Ralph says, pointing to a handsome man with long sideburns, seated on a park bench. “And that’s Marie.” He indicates the demure-looking woman next to Claude. Her head is turned, and with a fond smile, she gazes at the handsome, well-scrubbed little boy next to her. The part in the boy’s hair is as straight as a ruler.

“And that there is Byron,” Dora says. “This was before little Joe came along. Oh, how she doted on that boy, Marie did. Isn’t that right, Ralph?”

“Oh, my, yes. He couldn’t do no wrong far as his mama was concerned.”

“Wasn’t nothin’ that boy wants, she doesn’t get for him,” Dora says. “Every toy and game, every bicycle. Nintendo machine. Guitar. Trampoline. Go-Kart. Two-hundred-dollar sunglasses, if you can believe it. Clothes… nothing’s too good.”

“Claude, now,” Ralph adds, “he loved that boy, too, but tried to give his son some discipline, you know, what kids need. Marie – she wouldn’t let Claude touch the boy. Nor even speak harsh to him. And look what happened.”

“I don’t hold with blaming the parents,” Dora tells us. “Marie was sweet as pie. And Claude was a good man, too. I just think that boy was born twisted.”

“Maybe so,” Ralph allows. He finds another snapshot, taken a couple of years later. Byron is seven or so. Dressed in a suit, top hat, and what looks like a cape, he’s got a curly mustache penciled onto his upper lip. Behind him, affixed to the double-wide is a handmade banner: BYRON THE GREAT.

I remember what Karl Kavanaugh said about magicians starting as kids. The photograph gives me chills.

“Oh, the magic shows!” Dora says. “I plain forgot about that. Byron would sell tickets for a quarter, and everybody was more’n glad to pay because Marie would fix lemonade and sandwiches and potato salad, so in the end it was quite a bargain.”

“She made a mighty fine potato salad,” Ralph says. “Although not,” he adds diplomatically, “not as good as Dora’s.”

“Remember?” Dora asks. “We’d watch the show on folding chairs Byron set up outside the trailer.”

“He got pretty good at it, too,” Ralph says, “for such a little kid. I never did figure out how he did some of the shit he did, pardon my French. He had this one trick – he’d put a few feathers and scraps of grass in a pan, say some abracadabra stuff, and next time he opens the pan a bird flies out. I looked at the pan, too. No place to put a live bird in there.”

A dove pan, I think, remembering Kavanaugh’s description.

“Tell me about the father,” Pinky says.

“Worked offshore, same as me. Hardworking guy, Claude. Marie, she worked, too, took in ironing.”

But mostly, from what the two neighbors say, Claude was an absentee father. Working for Anadarko meant six-week stints on oil rigs in the Gulf, followed by three weeks at home. “When he was home, he wasn’t really home that much. He was out fishing or shrimping.” Ralph laughs. “Most of the time with me.”

“Did Byron go along?”

“Nah. He got bored. He’d rather stay home with his mama.”

“Did they go to church? I heard something about Byron being a boy preacher.”

“My goodness, yes,” Dora says. “They’s churchgoers all along, mind you, but after little Joe died, Byron really got religion.”

“A transformational experience,” Ralph says.

“A what?” Dora asks. “Where’d you get that?”

Ralph blushes. “Bible study. That’s what they call it – like Paul on the road to Damascus. When Joey drowned, the idea is, that must have set Byron to thinking about his mortal soul.”

“I don’t know about any transformation,” Dora says, “but that boy did catch the preaching bug. Byron – he’d be preaching to anyone who’d listen, standing on the bridge, even thumping a Bible down by the wharves when the shrimp boats come in. Marie was havin’ fits about it, the kind of men you got down there. Drunk and all, you know. But Byron – you couldn’t stop him.”

“He was even getting a reputation as a healer, right, Ralph?”

“Absolutely. Folks said he had a calling.” Ralph pauses, then resumes. “It was bullshit, of course. But he had a following, no question about that. He was quite the little showman.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “What kind of ‘showman’?”

“Oh, for instance, he give a sermon one time ’bout shirking responsibility. He’s talking ’bout Pontius Pilate, and he’s got this big clear bowl of water on the altar, and he’s steamin’ on about how Pilate washes his hands of the matter… ‘Jesus Christ is just not any of his business.’ And little Byron, he lathers up with soap as he’s preachin’ and sticks his hands in that water and the water turns bloodred, and a big oooooooh goes up, you know – I mean damn! It’s right dramatic. Byron, he raises his hands and they’re dripping ‘blood’ and he’s thundering on about how Pilate cannot wash away the blood on his hands.”

“A trick.”

“Some kind of gizmo soap is what Claude told me, but it gets your attention, know what I’m saying? He had all kinds of stuff like that. Snap his fingers, big puff of smoke comes up. And then that thing with the puppy happened, and-” He turns to Dora. “Didn’t they bounce him out of the church?”

“What ‘thing with the puppy’?” Pinky asks.

“This was later,” Dora says, “when he was a teenager.”

But I’m not listening. I’m thinking of the boy preacher with his hands dripping “blood.” The boy preacher snapping his fingers to puffs of smoke. The boy preacher doing magic tricks.

The seven-year-old Byron the Great, honing his skills even then. Images of the Gabler twins come into my mind. In their costumes. The police photo of Clara Gabler’s lower half. I think about the Ramirez boys. One of them dismembered. The Sandling kids climbing ropes and doing “exercises.” Why? To what purpose?

A real showman.

When I think about what this psycho has in mind for my sons…

“You all right?” Pinky asks.

“More iced tea?” Ralph suggests.

I shake my head. “I’m all right.”

“What’s this about a puppy?” Pinky asks.

Dora frowns. “You mind if I smoke, Ralph?”

“It’s bad for you. But go on.”

“That puppy,” Dora says. “Oh, my Lord. That’s when we knew the boy was really crazy.”

“Put an end to his preachin’ days, too,” Ralph adds.

“What did he do?” Pinky asks. “Torture the poor critter?”

“Worse than that,” Ralph says.

“What could be worse than that?”

Ralph lets out a sigh, rocks back in his chair. “It’s Christmastime. And maybe this is hindsight, but what folks say now is that Byron was getting a little scary. No one can put their finger on it, but he put folk on edge. You just plain didn’t want to be around the boy. He’s still preaching a lot, but when he’s not preaching, he disappears entirely for hours and hours. He’s what?” He turns to Dora. “Fourteen?”

Dora nods.

“Marie – she’s worried,” Ralph continues, “says he’s got some kind of secret place, she don’t know where he goes or what he gets up to.”

“And the boy next door,” Dora says with a shudder, “gets a puppy for Christmas.”

“Now, remember how Dora said Byron got everything he ever wanted?”

Pinky and I nod.

“But there’s one exception,” Ralph tells us. “Marie – she’s got the asthma, bad, and she can’t have no animals. Set her wheezin’, send her to the hospital, you know? So Byron couldn’t have no puppy or kitten, not even a hamster.”

“What happened is this,” Dora says. “Little Emory Boberg, the kid next door on the other side? He gets a puppy for Christmas, a little golden lab, cutest little thing. And he’s out walking this little pup past Byron’s trailer, and Bryon asks can he play with it.

“Emory doesn’t want to, but he’s scared of Byron – so he hands him the leash. Byron gave him some money, sent Emory down to the 7-Eleven to get Slurpees for the both of them. As soon as Emory’s out of sight, Byron digs a hole in the yard and buries the puppy up to its neck. Now, if I’d been here, maybe I coulda stopped it, but I was off to Lafayette at my sister’s.”

“Byron tried to explain this later,” Ralph says. “Some lame-ass story about how the pup keeps slippin’ his collar and puttin’ him in the ground is Byron’s way of keeping him from runnin’ off. While Byron does his chores. Like he couldn’t wait ten minutes for Emory to come back. Like anyone believes Marie really told him to mow the lawn – it’s December. Anyways, he gets the power mower from the shed and begins to cut the lawn.”

“Oh,” Dora says, putting her head in her hands as if she can’t even stand the memory. “Lord.”

“Little Emory comes back just in time to see Byron cut right over the puppy’s head. I’m down here when Emory lets out this horrible scream. And me and whoever else is around, we come running. It’s just a geyser of blood. You can’t imagine.”

“He mowed the dog’s head off?”

“So, Emory’s mother, she calls the police. And they come. And no one’s buying it when Byron insists it was just an accident.”

“He was charged with malicious mischief,” Dora adds.

“And what happened to him?”

“Nothing. He got off with counseling. The Bobergs moved away as soon as they could.”

“Word got out,” Ralph says. “That Boudreaux boy ain’t right. Got a screw loose, maybe more. Parents told their kids to stay away from him. The church wouldn’t let him preach no more.”

“A little while after that, Byron dropped out of school,” Dora says. “And that’s when he started hanging around down in Morgan City.” She stubs out her cigarette. “Hooked up with that nigger witch doctor.”

I’m so put off by the racism I want to leave. I stand up, but Pinky ignores me. “You got a name for this guy?”

“I already told you,” Dora replies. “How would I know something like that?”

“I think I know who it is,” Ralph says, “but I don’t know his name. You go down around that area in Morgan City and you ask, and somebody will tell you where to find him. Hell, folk come all the way from N’Awlins to see him, get a number or who’s gonna win the Final Four. He’s world-famous, that fella.”

“Just… uh… ask for ‘the witch doctor’?” Pinky says. “That gonna do it?”

“Well,” Ralph says. “They don’t exactly call themselves witch doctors. They got some voodoo name for it what I don’t remember. Higgan? Hungin?”

“Houngan,” Pinky says.

“That’s the one. And see, there’s more than one o’ these guys over there in the city. The guy Byron took up with after the puppy thing? Ask for the one with no upper lip.”

“Get outta here,” Pinky says.

“Swear to God,” Ralph tells him. “I seen him. Maybe it’s just some kind of voodoo jive – I don’t know the actual cause of the injury.” His face contorts into a look that’s half smile, half grimace. “What he says is – a zombie got pissed at him and bit it off.”

“Bit off his lip?” Dora gasps. She crosses herself in a surreptitious way, the motion so minimal as to be almost undetectable.

“Like this,” Ralph says, and makes a lunging, biting motion toward Dora, “like a snapping turtle.”

Dora lets out a yelp.

“One bite,” Ralph says. “That’s all it takes.”