The New Iberia Blues

Chapter Ten

I slept late on Saturday morning and woke to birdsong and sunshine in the trees. Alafair was gone and had not left a note. Snuggs was sitting on the back steps, his white coat smudged with mud, a cut like a three-inch piece of red string threaded through his fur. I wiped him off with paper towels and dressed his wound and took him inside and fed him on the floor. The cut was jagged, as if he’d hooked himself going over a chain-link fence.

“You okay, old fella?” I said, stroking his head.

I went outside and looked for Mon Tee Coon. There was no sign of him. I called Clete and told him of my conversation with Bella Delahoussaye the previous night and my worries about my animals.

“Axel Devereaux is shaking down local hookers?” he said.

“On one level or another. Maybe they’re just hauling his ashes.”

“You think he hurt your coon?”

“He probably killed Sean McClain’s pets.”

“Everyone thinks that?”

“That’s right.”

“And he’d do the same to yours when he’d be the first guy people would suspect?”

“He’s a sociopath and a sadist,” I said. “He can’t change what he is. If he’s not cruel to an animal, he’ll be cruel to a person.”

“How about if I break his wheels?”

“That’s out.”

“You called me, Dave.”

“Sorry I did.”

“What the hell is the matter with you?” he said.

“I’m like you. I want to do it the old-time way. But we can’t.”

“Speak for yourself,” he said. He hung up.

I called him back. “I apologize.”

“Quit tormenting yourself, big mon. We handle the action. They deal the play, we scramble their eggs.”

Wish it worked that way, I thought. But I didn’t try to argue.

On Monday my office phone rang at 8:06 a.m.

“Detective Robicheaux speaking,” I said.

“I tried to get you all weekend,” a man’s voice said. “Nobody would give me your number.”

“That’s because it’s unlisted,” I said. “Who is this?”

“Never mind who I am. You’re the guy working the Travis Lebeau homicide, right?”

“I’m one of them.”

“You figure the AB did it?”

“You need to tell me who you are, partner.”

“No, you need to listen. Maybe the AB caught up to Travis, maybe not. Or maybe some of your own people did it.”

I punched in Helen’s number on my cell phone and placed the phone on my desk so she could overhear my conversation with the man as soon as she picked up. “Am I talking to Mr. Tillinger?” I asked.

“Call me Hugo. You know my history, right? The fire, the trial, me busting out of that hospital?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I didn’t kill either my daughter or my wife. I wouldn’t harm a woman or a child under any circumstance.”

“Why’d you come here?”

“To find Miss Lucinda. To ask her for money so I didn’t have to steal it, then get as much gone from here as I can.”

“Who killed her?”

“That’s why I called. I aim to get those who done it.”

“We don’t have any leads,” I said. “Maybe I can establish a back channel with you.”

“Yeah, in a heartbeat. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“A guy who’s con-wise, a fellow who perhaps went down on a bad beef.”

There was a brief silence. “Did Miss Lucinda suffer?”

“She wasn’t tortured or violated, if that’s what you mean.”

“But she suffered?”

“She was injected with heroin. Maybe she just went to sleep.”

“But she suffered just the same, didn’t she?”

“You know the answer to that,” I said.

“Who’s the last person she saw?”

“We ask the questions,” I said.

“It’s done a lot of good, hasn’t it.”

“She was supposed to get on a flight from Lafayette to Los Angeles. She never boarded the plane.” Again the line went silent. “Did she talk to you about movie people?” I asked.

“She just said they’d he’p me.”

“Which people in particular?”

“She didn’t say. There was one local name she gave me, though. A bad cop. He runs whores and such.”

“What does the dirty cop have to do with getting you off death row?”

“Nothing. Miss Lucinda said she wanted to put him out of business because he preyed on black women. You recording this?”

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think y’all cain’t find your asses with both hands.”

“It’s been good talking to you.”

“I’m fixing to make a statement, the kind a guy will remember, get my drift?”

“No, I don’t. I think talking to you is a waste of time.”

I hung up and waited. Five minutes later, he called back. “She left the airport with somebody she knew and trusted, somebody who was more important to her than the catering people or the boyfriend waiting to pick up her in Hollywood,” he said. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“You’re an intelligent man.”

“I’m a dead man walking, and we both know it,” he said. “You know what the upside of that is?”

“You’ve got nothing to lose.”

“See? You’re a smart son of a buck yourself.”

An escapee from death row who didn’t use coarse language? This case was getting muddier by the day.

At daybreak on Tuesday, Lou Wexler arrived in his Lamborghini to take Alafair to the private jet that would deliver them to Monument Valley, Arizona, in time for a late lunch. She gave me a card with the name and number and email address of the hotel where she would be staying. I asked her to step aside for a moment.

“What is it?” she said.

“I have to ask you something of a personal nature. I don’t want to offend you.”

She searched my face. “Don’t say it, Dave.”

“I have to.”

“Please don’t do this.”

“Do you have a single room?”

“You have no right to ask me that.”

“I don’t care. I’m your father. I don’t trust any of these guys.”

“That’s obvious. Goodbye. I’ll call you when we get there. Dave, you really know how to do it.”

As they backed out in the street, Wexler lifted his hat in a salute. I squinted one eye and cocked my thumb and aimed my index finger at him.

Axel Devereaux didn’t show up for the 0800 roll call. Instead, he called Helen from his home. She walked down to my office and opened the door without knocking. “Get Bailey and go over to Devereaux’s place. Somebody creeped his house.”

“You want us to investigate a B and E?”

“It sounds like it’s more than a B and E,” she said. “Maybe justice is finally catching up with this asshole.”

Bailey checked out a cruiser, and the two of us rode up the bayou to the drawbridge south of Loreauville where Axel lived by himself in a smudged stucco house with Styrofoam litter and car parts and two boats and stacks of crab traps in the yard. He met us at the door in a rage.

“Calm down,” I said.

“Look at my place. He did it in my sleep,” he said.

“Who did?” I said, stepping inside.

“The exterminator,” he said.

“Which exterminator?” I asked.

“A freelancer,” Axel said. “He was going from door to door yesterday.”

“You don’t use a regular service?” Bailey said.

So far he had not acknowledged her presence. “I take care of the termites myself. The guy gave me a deal.”

“How do you know the exterminator is the vandal?” she said.

“I keep a spare set of keys on the dresser,” Axel said. “I didn’t notice they were missing until this morning. Nobody else has been in here except me.”

The living room was a masterpiece of destruction, one that had obviously been accomplished with silent perfection. The couch and chairs had been sliced, perhaps with an X-Acto knife or a barber’s razor, the stuffing pulled out, the cheap decorative prints on the walls and the photos on the mantel slashed and pulled from the frames, the carpets and wood floor layered with paint. In the kitchen and bathroom, the intruder or intruders had poured concrete mix down the drains and oil sludge and glue in the appliances. A deer rifle and a shotgun and a German Luger had been taken from a closet, five hundred dollars from a desk drawer, a gold watch and a derringer from a jewelry box.

Bailey peered out the window at the backyard. A new electric-blue Ford pickup was parked by a tin boat shed. She went out the screen door.

“Where’s she going?” Axel said.

“Obviously to look around. You want us here or not?”

“What’s with you, Robicheaux? I never had a beef with you.”

“You’ve got a beef with the world, Axel. What was the exterminator’s name?”

“I didn’t get it. He’s an exterminator.”

“You didn’t look at his license or proof of insurance?”

“Crawling under the house and spraying poison on Formosan termites doesn’t take a college degree.”

“You didn’t hear anything during the night? While he was demolishing your house?”

“I had a couple of drinks. Somebody left a bottle of Dewar’s on the gallery.”

“That didn’t seem odd to you?” I asked.

“People leave me gifts.”

“For doing what?”

“For helping them,” he replied. “For doing my job.”

“What did the exterminator look like?”

“White, medium height, stocky, black curly hair, unshaved.”

“From around here?”

“Texas or Mississippi.”

“What kind of vehicle did he drive?”

“An SUV, lot of mud on it, Louisiana tag.”

“Remember the number?”

“I didn’t pay it any mind. I didn’t have any reason to.”

“Quit dancing around the problem, Axel. You hired an illegal sprayer.”

“Oh, I’ll live in remorse over that.” He bent down to see under the window shade. “What’s that bitch doing?”

“You call her that again and I’ll take your head off.”

“Try it. Either here or anywhere else.” He pointed at his cheek. “I haven’t forgotten what you did in the restroom. That one isn’t going away.”

I closed my notebook and clicked on a photo in my iPhone. “You recognize this guy?”

“That’s him, the exterminator.”

“That’s Hugo Tillinger.”

“The escapee? Why’s he after me?”

“Did you know Lucinda Arceneaux?”

“I saw her around, maybe. She was a do-gooder or something.”

“Yeah, or something. Why would Tillinger come after you, Axel?”

“Why does somebody get hit by lightning?”

Bailey came back through the door. “You didn’t check your truck?”

“I looked out the window. It was all right. It’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Sorry I have to tell you this,” she said. “You have four slashed tires. Your seats and headliner and door panels are slashed. There’s an empty sugar sack by your gas cap. The ignition was on, but the engine had died. The hood is still warm. The engine must have run quite a while.”

“The fuck?” Axel said.

She dropped the keys in his palm, releasing them high enough so her hand didn’t touch his. She gazed at him silently, in a benign way, as if staring at a stranger in a casket.

“What’s going on?” he said. “Why is this happening? Why am I getting treated like I’m the stink on shit?”

“Tillinger had a reason for doing this,” I said. “You know what it is. Want to tell us?”

“Get out of here,” he said.

“Gladly,” I said.

“What are you looking at?” he said to Bailey.

“A sad man,” she said. “Get some help.”

Alafair called me from Arizona late that afternoon. “You should see it here,” she said.

“Beautiful, huh?” I replied, a strange longing in my heart at the sound of my daughter’s voice.

“I didn’t mean to be hard on you this morning.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I have a way of saying all the wrong things at the wrong time.”

“I have a single room. Lou is just a friend.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“Yes, I do. You want to protect me. But I’m fine. Give me some credit.”

“Is Desmond out there?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“He’s decent to women.”

“But the people he works with are not?”

“I don’t trust Butterworth, that’s for sure.”

“He’s still at Cypremort Point.”

“When will you be back?”

“In a few days, probably. Dave, are you sure about Desmond?”

“How do you mean?”

“Sometimes he goes inside himself and doesn’t come back for a while.”

“He’s probably a depressive. Most artists are.”

“I asked him about it,” she said. “Know what he said? ‘Dead poets are always speaking to us. You better listen to them. If you don’t, they get mad.’ ”

I felt like someone had poured ice water on my back.

“Are you there?” she said.

“The last person who said something like that to me was a prostitute who lives in that trailer slum by the Jeanerette drawbridge.”

“That’s not unusual in Acadiana.”

“Her baby had a charm tied on her ankle. It was a Maltese cross. The mother wouldn’t tell me where she got it. There was a tiny ankle chain on Lucinda Arceneaux’s body, with a piece of silver wire attached.”

“You’re scaring me, Dave.”

“Come on back home.”

“I can’t do that. I made a commitment. Why don’t you come out? You’d love it here. It’s like stepping into eternity.”

“You were born to be a writer, Alfenheimer.”

I was on my cell phone in the backyard. I saw a gator slip under the hyacinths, its serrated tail slicing through the flowers and tendrils.

“I love you, Dave.”

“You, too, kid,” I replied.

“I have to go now. I’ll call in the morning.”

I said goodbye and closed my cell. I heard a sound in the oak limbs above me and felt a shower of leaves come down on my head, and I thought perhaps Mon Tee Coon had returned. A hoot owl with an injured wing was caught in the branches. I got a ladder from my toolshed and climbed into the tree and brought him down and placed him in a cardboard box and called a friend in Loreauville who ran an animal sanctuary and would pick up the bird. Then I drove to the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, from which I had graduated in 1960 with a teacher’s certificate and a degree in English.