“Broken glass with blood on it?”
“Yes, suh. It’s been under an old piece of tarp. I seen it.”
I stared at him stupidly. “Prospect, I think you’re a remarkable man,” I said.
“Women tell me that all the time.”
He dragged a large tangle of canvas off the pile, spilling a shower of wet pine needles and pooled water onto the ground. He lifted a jagged half-moon piece of broken glass from a circle of chrome molding. “Right there on the edge, you can still see the blood.”
I took a Ziploc bag from my back pocket and spread it open. “Just drop it right in there, partner. I need that molding, too. Is there anything else in here from Mr. Bello’s Buick?”
“No, suh, I don’t think so.”
“On another subject, how well do you know Monarch Little?”
“I taught him body-and-fender work. Taught him when he was knee-high to a tree frog.”
“Too bad he doesn’t make use of it.”
“Folks don’t always get to choose what they do,” he replied.
“You seem like a smarter man than that,” I said.
“His mama is at M.D. Anderson in Houston. She’s had every kind of cancer there is. Monarch ain’t tole you that?” he said, his pink-tinted eyes squinting in the sunlight.
I DROVE DIRECTLY to the Acadiana Crime Lab and logged in the evidence with Mack Bertrand. It was late and I could tell Mack was anxious to get home to supper and his wife and family. “What are you looking for on this?” he asked.
“A DNA match or an exclusion on Crustacean Man.”
“How soon you need it?”
“The owner of the vehicle is probably Bello Lujan. I doubt he’s a big flight risk.”
Mack raised his eyebrows. “Use the process as a buffer between you and him, Dave. No matter what he does, don’t react, don’t let it get personal.”
“What’s the big deal about Bello?”
“I think he’s a driven man. He came to our church for a while, but we had to encourage him to attend one that’s probably more suited to his needs.”
“Can you translate the hieroglyphics for me?”
“He’s got sex on the brain, he’s full of guilt, he shouts in the middle of the service. He may be dangerous, at least to himself. We sent him to some Holy Rollers who speak in tongues. But I’m not sure even they can deal with him. Does that give you a better perspective?”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What a sense of humor. I’ll have the DNA report for you in three days,” he said.
THAT EVENING I tried to disconnect my thoughts from Bello Lujan, in the same way that as a child I tried not to believe that a school-yard bully had become an inextricable part of my life. But I also remembered how, for some unexplainable reason, my path and the bully’s crossed regularly, as though by design, and regardless of what I did to avoid encountering him, my actions always led me back to a choice between public humiliation or the end of a fist.
Saturday morning I had visited Bello’s home and questioned his son, Tony, about the T-shirt emblazoned with the image of Pegasus that Yvonne Darbonne had been wearing the day she died. Inadvertently, Tony Lujan had told me his father was an investor in the track and casino advertised on the shirt and that he had planned to give her a job in the casino restaurant. This was after Bello had denied knowing anyone by the name of Yvonne Darbonne.
I had managed to expose the school bully as a liar. I should have known he would come calling as soon as he returned from his weekend visit to New Orleans.
“There’s a man standing in the front yard,” Molly said.
I looked out the window. Bello’s Buick was parked in the driveway, his son in the passenger seat, but Bello was staring at the street, as though he couldn’t make up his mind what he should do next. I walked out on the gallery. A sun-shower had just stopped, and water was ticking out of the trees.
I remembered Mack Bertrand’s cautionary words about using procedure as a buffer between me and Bello Lujan. “I suspect this is a business call. If that’s the case, I’d rather talk about it at the office, Bello,” I said.