I went home, changed shirts, and returned to the office. Helen was waiting for me, as I knew she would be, her hands stuck in her back pockets, a quizzical look in her eye, one tooth chewing on the corner of her lip. "You pumped Honoria Chalons?" she said.
"Why don't you be more direct?" I said.
We were standing in front of her office door, and people were passing in the corridor. "Answer the question," she said.
"Val Chalons believes what he needs to believe. End of discussion," I said.
"Step inside," she said.
She closed the door behind us. Through the window I could see the cemetery and a black kid trying to fly a red kite among the crypts. I wanted to be outside in the wind with him, away from all the sordid details that my life had taken on in only a few days. "Why would Val Chalons make up a story like that?" Helen asked.
"I believe there's a form of evil at work inside the Chalons home that we can't even guess at. Honoria tried to tell me about it. Now she's dead."
"You don't think the Baton Rouge serial guy is involved in this?"
"Honoria's death is connected to the Chalons family and the Chalons family only. Don't let them put it off on somebody else, Helen."
"That doesn't sound like an entirely objective statement. At the crime scene you seemed a little nervous about something. Have you been inside that guesthouse before?"
"No," I said, and felt my heart jump, just as though it had been touched with an electrical wire.
"Okay, bwana," she said, her manner relaxing now. "By the way, I was proud of you out there."
I left her office and washed my face in the men's room. When I looked at my reflection, I felt as though I were looking at the disembodied head of a Judas, that it was I who was the liar, not Val Chalons. But I had no idea why I felt that way.
chapter SEVENTEEN
That evening, at dusk, Clete Purcel and I sat in canvas chairs on the edge of Henderson Swamp, pole-fishing with corks and cut-bait like a pair of over-the-hill duffers who cared less about catching fish than just being close by a cypress-dotted swamp while the sun turned into a red ember on the horizon.
I told him of the bender I had gone on and the discovery that morning of Honoria Chalons's body. I also told him of the compact disk I had found in my truck and the fact I had no memory at all of what I had done from Friday night to Sunday morning.
I thought he would take me to task, but sometimes I didn't give Clete enough credit and would forget that he was the man who once carried me down a fire escape with two .22 rounds cored in his back.
"This Ida Durbin broad's voice was on the CD and she was singing a song that wasn't written until years after she disappeared?" He had taken off his Hawaiian shirt and sprayed himself with mosquito repellent, and in the shadows the skin across his massive chest looked as gray as elephant hide.
"You got it," I said.
"But that's not what's bothering you, is it?"
"At the crime scene, I felt I'd been there before. I knew where everything was in Chalons's guesthouse."
"It's called deja vu. Look at me, Streak. You were drunk all weekend. You clean those kinds of thoughts out of your head."
"There's blood on the CD. Chalons's stereo was turned on but the CD slot was empty."
"You're incapable of hurting a woman. Somebody is setting you up. Don't buy into it."
"Nobody set me up, Clete. I got drunk and had a blackout. I could have done anything."
"Shut up and give me time to think. This punk Chalons actually hit you in the face?"
That night, just before going to bed, I received a call from Jimmie. He was on his cell phone, and in the background I could hear the sounds of wind blowing and waves bursting against a hard surface.
"Where are you?" I said.
"At the southern tip of the island in Key West. That dude Lou Kale is down here," he said.
"How do you know?"