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I WAS THRICE A widower and lived with my adopted daughter, Alafair, in a shotgun house on East Main in New Iberia. When I got back from Weeks Bay, I went straight to bed and didn’t tell Alafair where I had been or what I had seen until the next morning. It was raining, and Bayou Teche was over the banks and running through the trees at the foot of our property, and there was sleet inside the rain that struck the tin roof as hard as birdshot. Alafair had spread newspaper on the kitchen floor and brought our warrior cat, Snuggs, and his friend Mon Tee Coon inside and begun feeding them. Her face showed no expression while I told her about the woman on the cross.
“No identification?” she said.
“A tiny chain around the ankle.”
“Nothing on the chain?”
“A piece of wire. Maybe a charm had been torn loose.”
Her eyes roamed over my face. “What did you leave out of the story?”
“I saw the cross and the woman through Desmond’s telescope. So did the deputy. But Desmond and this guy Butterworth said they couldn’t see anything.”
She put a plate of biscuits and two cups of coffee on the table, then sat down. “Would it make sense for them to lie about what you had already seen?”
“Probably not,” I said. “But how smart are liars?”
“The woman had nails through her ankles?”
I nodded.
“But you don’t know the cause of death?”
“No. There was no blood in the nail wounds. I hope she was dead when the nails were put in.”
“You need to get these images out of your head, Dave.”
She had graduated with honors from Reed and at the top of Stanford Law. Before she started writing novels and screenplays, she’d clerked at the Ninth Circuit and been an ADA in Portland, Oregon. But to me she was still the little girl who hoarded her Nancy Drew and Baby Squanto books.
“What’s with this guy Butterworth?” I said.
“He started out as an actor and screenwriter, then became a producer. There’re some rumors about him, but actually, he has a lot of talent.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“Coke and pills, S and M.”
I didn’t reply.
“He makes pictures that people enjoy,” she said. “He casts the biggest stars in the industry.”
“I bet he’s a regular at his church, too,” I said.
“I don’t think you got enough sleep.”
“I’d better get ready for work.”
“It’s Saturday,” she said.
“Really?”
“I’ll get you another cup of coffee,” she said.
I put on my hat and went out the back door and walked down the slope and stood under a live oak tree and watched the raindrops dimpling the bayou. I could not get the dead woman’s gaze out of my mind, nor the smooth chocolate perfection of her skin—the only visible violations on it, the nail wounds. Helen was right. Marine life is not kind to the dead. But the woman seemed spared. Was it coincidental that dolphins were her escorts?
I have investigated many homicides. It’s the eyes that stay with you. And it’s not for the reason people think. There is no message in them. Instead, they force you to re-create the terror and despair and pain that marked their last moments on earth. Two kinds of cops eat their gun: the corrupt ones and the ones who let the dead lay claim upon the quick.