“He’s probably down in Vermilion Parish, down by the coast. His company covered a lot of the houses down there.”
“I understand your old man is standing up for his clients.”
“Standing up, like?” she replied, her eyelids fluttering as though she could barely deal with my impaired abilities.
“Your dad is making good on his clients’ water-damage claims. I hear a lot of people aren’t that lucky.”
“Maybe my father will end up working as a route manager for the newspaper, too.”
“Could we sit down somewhere?”
“I have a class at one.”
“Is your mother home?”
“I told you, she’s my stepmother. And no, she’s not here.”
“I don’t want to be rude, Miss Thelma, but I’m pretty tired of your bad manners. Step out in the light, please.”
“What for?”
“We’d like to make sure we have a positive ID on the men who were looting your neighborhood. One of these guys is dead and one is a vegetable who was kidnapped and possibly tortured because he knows where some stolen property is hidden. I don’t want any more sarcastic remarks from you. In truth, I think your family is about to drown in its own shit. Maybe you can do them a favor by being honest for a change.”
We were standing in the yard now. She was trying to blow off the lecture she had just gotten, but her face was white inside the black rectangle of her hair, her bottom lip twitching. I seemed to tower over her and I didn’t like the feeling it gave me.
“Here,” I said, putting the lineup holders in her hand. “Do any of these guys look like the ones you saw in front of your house the night of the shooting?”
She began sifting the holders, sliding one stiffly against the other, perfunctorily, her eyes not quite focused, as though she already knew she would not recognize any of the men. But I did not expect what happened next. She widened her eyes, not in surprise but in an attempt to control the water welling into them.
“Look, kiddo, I was a little hard on you there. Sit down in the glider and take your time. You and your family are decent people. Y’all got hit by a wrecking ball, but eventually you’ll get this behind you.”
She sat down heavily in the glider and I realized that something far more serious was on her mind than seeing again the faces of men who had been looting her neighborhood.
“What is it?” I said.
“What is what? I’ve never seen any of these people. It was dark. I was still half asleep. How could I recognize these people?”
Her fingers were pinched tightly on the photo holders. Then, almost as an afterthought, she pushed them at me. I didn’t offer to take them. “You don’t recognize anybody in those mug shots?” I said.
“No, I just told you. I don’t know who they are.”
I sat down next to her. I could hear the chains on the glider biting into the oak bark overhead. “Look at me, Thelma.”
“I don’t want to look at you. Please go, Mr. Robicheaux. I have an anthropology class. I have to get ready.”
I took the photos from her hands. “Why do you want to lie? Why not admit you recognize someone in these photos? Was it you who fired the rifle?”
“No. I’ve never fired a gun in my life. I hate guns.”
Then she pressed the palm of her hand over her mouth and began to gag. I placed my hand on her back. Her shirt was damp with perspiration and it flattened and stuck against her skin. I could feel her muscles constricting with each breath she drew. A tremor rippled through her body and she began to sob and shake all over.
&nb
sp; Suddenly I knew her secret. Only one kind of injury produces the level of injury and misery she was experiencing. It’s of a kind that never goes away, that carries with it an unearned sense of shame and dishonor and humiliation and rage that the worst of my own memories cannot compete with.
“These are the guys who raped you, aren’t they?”
“No,” she said, swallowing, drawing it back inside herself, wiping the tears off her cheeks with her fingers.