The New Iberia Blues

Chapter Thirty-Nine

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?”

For just a moment I thought I heard wind rushing and waves breaking. “Don’t sign off, partner. Did you kill Lucinda Arceneaux?”

There was no answer.

“Are you hearing me? Get on the square, Mr. Butterworth. You’re an intelligent, educated man. Don’t buy in to self-pity.”

“You’re quite the fellow. It’s been good knowing you, Detective Robicheaux.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. That’s all any of it is. Nothing. Someday you’ll read between the lines.”

He broke the connection. Clete stared at me. The strap of his shoulder holster was pinched against his shirt. “What was that about?”

“I don’t know how to read it. I wish I had it on tape.”

“Got any idea where he was calling from?”

“Waves and wind in the background.”

“Cypremort Point?” he said.

The tide was in, and the clouds in the west had turned to gold, and the waves were curling and exploding on the blocks of concrete at the base of Desmond’s property. The garage doors below the house were open. No vehicles were inside. I cut the engine, and Clete and I walked up the two flights of wooden steps to the entrance. The door was slightly ajar. I tapped it with my fingertips. It drifted back on the hinges.

“Iberia Sheriff’s Department!” I called.

There was no answer. I went inside with Clete behind me, his snub-nose in his right hand. The sliding door to the deck was open, the room redolent with salt spray.

“Man,” Clete said, wincing.

Butterworth had slipped from a stuffed leather chair and was sitting on the floor, his head twisted to one side. There was an entry hole under his chin and a .22 semi-auto inches from his hand. The bullet had obviously traveled through the roof of his mouth and embedded or bounced around in the brainpan. One eye had eight-balled. The drip from the entry wound ran like a snake inside his silk shirt.

I started toward him. Clete clenched his fist in the air, the infantryman’s sign to stop. He went into all the rooms of the house and came back out. “Clear.”

I called Helen on my cell phone. “Send the bus to Desmond Cormier’s place. We’ve got another one.”

“Desmond?” she said.

“Butterworth. It looks like he capped himself. With a twenty-two auto. I have a feeling we’ll match the casing with the one in the back of his Subaru.”

“What are you doing there?”

“Butterworth called me. He wouldn’t tell me where he was. I thought he might be here.”

“Who’s with you?”

“Clete.”

“You took him out there and not Ribbons?”

“Affirmative. Out.” I shut my phone.

“Trouble?” Clete said.

“Always. You see anything wrong here?”

“About Butterworth? Hard to tell. He was the kind of guy who’s hell on his victim but can’t take the heat himself.”

“His Subaru is in the pound. How’d he get here?” I said.

“Maybe in a cab. Run the tape backward. Lucinda Arceneaux died of a heroin injection between the toes. Who uses needles like that except a junkie? You found Butterworth’s works during a search, right?”

“Desmond might be an intravenous user, too,” I said.

Clete was wearing his porkpie hat. He took it off and spun it on his finger. “Helen is pissed because I’m here?”

“Forget it. I’m probably winding down with the department anyway.”

“I’d better blow.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” I looked around the living room. The sun had started its descent into the bay. The light was shining in the hallway on the framed still photos. “Earlier you said we’d missed something.”

“Yeah, three women have been killed. What do they have in common?”

“Bella Delahoussaye was a singer,” I replied. “Hilary Bienville was a part-time hooker. Lucinda Arceneaux wanted to get innocent people off death row. All of them were black.”

“They all had qualities,” he said. “The guy who killed them hated and desired them. How about the guy in the shrimp net? What was his name?”

“Joe Molinari,” I said.

“He’s the one who doesn’t fit.”

Clete went out onto the deck. The wind was blowing hard, spotting his Hawaiian shirt with raindrops. He started back inside, then stopped and looked down at something in the track of the sliding door. He dug it out with the tip of his ballpoint and picked it up between his fingers. “Take a look.”

“A tooth?”

“Part of one,” he said. “There’s blood on it.”

“Maybe the round knocked it out of Butterworth’s mouth.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Think we’re getting played?”

“Before Butterworth hung up on me, he praised Desmond.”

“Like he was being forced to?”

“I’m not sure. He was obviously distraught. The last thing he said was ‘Someday you’ll read between the lines.’ ”

“Got any idea where Cormier is?” Clete said.

“No, but when we find him, he’ll appear shocked and indignant and dismayed.”

“Congratulations,” he said. “I think you’re finally catching on to this guy.”

I turned in a circle to look at the room again. Butterworth’s tenor sax was propped against the couch; the mouthpiece lay on the couch’s arm. A large vintage Stromberg-Carlson record player stood against one wall, its top open, its console lit. I looked at the LP on the spindle. It was a recording of Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic, which included Flip Phillips, the legendary tenor sax man Desmond had told me Butterworth admired.

“You give me too much credit,” I said to Clete. “I haven’t caught on to squat.”

I had no idea where to start looking for Desmond. Bailey showed up with the ambulance and Cormac the coroner and the forensic team. Clete stayed down by the water, his back to the house.

“No idea where Des is, huh?” Bailey said.

“Des?”

“Don’t take your anger out on me, Dave.”

“No, I don’t know where he is.”

“He’s a moody, sentimental guy,” she said.

“What’s that mean?”

“I hear the whole crew is headed back to Monument Valley in the morning,” she said. “I think he’ll sell his house and we’ll never see him again.”

I had to give it to her. She was always ahead of the game. I wondered what things would have been like if I had met her fifty years ago. “Will you take over here?”

“Where are you going?”

“To find Desmond.”

“Take Clete Purcel with you. Helen is on her way.”

I looked into the magical light that lived in her eyes, and I knew I would never get over her, no matter what she might have done in her younger years. “See you later.”

“I said Desmond was sentimental. That doesn’t mean I trust him. Watch your ass, Dave.”

“Don’t use that kind of language,” I said. I even tried to smile. But I couldn’t believe I’d said that, and in that moment I knew I was fixated on the image of Clementine Carter as much as Desmond was, and that I would have a secret longing for both Clementine and Bailey the rest of my life and I would share it with no one.

I went outside into the wind and picked up Clete and headed north up the two-lane. I told him of my conversation with Bailey about Desmond.

“So where do you think he is?” Clete said.

“At Lucinda Arceneaux’s crypt or his birthplace.”

“You’re buying in to that crap again?” he said.

“Buying in to what crap?”

“Cormier as the great artist. Great artists bully and degrade people on the set. Because that’s what he did, right?”

We drove in silence. The sun hung as bright as a bronze shield over the bay. Pelicans were plummeting from the sky like dive-bombers, their wings tucked back, disappearing under the water, then rising again with baitfish pouched inside their beaks.

“I got to say something,” Clete said.

“Go ahead.”

“I want to believe Butterworth isn’t a suicide and our guy is still out there. I want to believe that because I planned to blow up his shit. No, worse than that. I want to take him down in pieces.”

“So?”

“So, nothing. You talked to Butterworth before he did the Big Exit. If someone was holding a gun on him, he could have sent you a signal any number of ways.”

“Maybe it was that statement about reading between the lines.”

“Titty babies who beat up hookers like to sound profound. The truth is, they’re titty babies who beat up hookers, usually small ones.”

“He was listening to a recording of Jazz at the Philharmonic and maybe playing along with it. He might have stopped to clean his mouthpiece. Why would he suddenly call me up and commit suicide?”

“Suicide isn’t a rational act. I knew mercenaries in El Sal. They were all looking for the boneyard. They just didn’t know it. You know what I think?”

“No.”

“Butterworth and Cormier had some kind of complicated relationship going on. I also think we’ll never know. We’ll never know what it is either.”

Maybe he was right; maybe not. I didn’t care. I had always believed in Desmond in the same way I’d believed in Bella Delahoussaye. They came from the Louisiana I loved, and I loved Louisiana in the same way you love a religion. You don’t care if your obsession is rational, and you’re not bothered that your love is partly erotic. The Great Whore of Babylon is a commanding mistress. Once she widens her thighs and takes you inside her, she never lets go.

“Forget the crypt,” Clete said. “Go to the res.”

“Why the res?”

“The casino is there, and probably some of the scum-suckers out of Jersey who have been backing Desmond’s films. Maybe they brought their skanks and he can get his knob polished before he continues his life as a great artist.”