He slammed the door.
“What a happy guy,” Bailey said.
I pushed the door snug with the jamb and wedged a chair under the knob. “He’s going to be even unhappier.”
“What are you doing?”
“Tillinger was in the room for over two weeks. He left behind everything he owns.”
“The Cameron deputies or cops from Texas probably bagged it,” she said.
“They bagged what they saw. Tillinger has outsmarted all of us at every turn.”
The desk and closet and chest of drawers were empty except for a Gideon’s Bible in the desk drawer. A copy of Time magazine and a soiled shirt lay on the floor in the bathroom. I pulled the sheets and blanket and bedspread off the bed and upended the mattress against the wall. Nothing. I stood on the bed and unscrewed the vent high on the wall and reached inside. When I removed my hand, it was covered with cobwebs and dust. I climbed back down and ran the pages of the Bible against my thumb. They were heavily annotated with a ballpoint. The ink did not look old.
“What are you looking for, Dave?”
“Tillinger has his own frame of reference. He thinks he’s more intelligent and insightful than other people. He may be a religious fanatic, but he also wants to be onstage. That kind of guy always keeps a diary or a collection of drawings or notes about the world. He’s like all megalomaniacs; he wants to scratch his name on history.”
“Maybe we should talk to the Cameron sheriff.”
“We’ll be fooling around here for two days,” I said.
I rolled up the mattress and felt along the edges. Then I saw a slit in the side and a rectangular lump under the case. I worked my hand deep inside, but the object had slid to the center. I pulled my arm free and opened my pocketknife and ripped open the case and tore it loose from the stuffing. A notebook with thick cardboard covers lay among the stuffing.
I clicked the light switch, but the power was off. I had the feeling the owner had hit the circuit breaker to make our job harder. I went to the window and opened the notebook and held it to the light. The handwriting was cramped, like Tillinger’s mind, a place that I suspected was filled with images generated by biblical accounts of genocide and divine wrath. The first page read: “The Story of Hugo Jefferson Tillinger and His Search for Justice and the Killer of Lucinda Arceneaux.” The narrative was rambling, much of it dedicated to his trial and conviction and removal to death row. There appeared to be water stains on the page that contained his account of the house fire and the death of his family. I think the emotion was real. Then the narrative took a turn, with several entries written in red ballpoint rather than blue.
Here’s the first:
Found the jackpot in the old records of Charity Hospital in Lafayette. Desmond Cormier was brought there when he was
one day out of the womb. The man who brought him was named Ennis Patout. Patout wouldn’t admit to being the father. He said the mother was Corina Cormier and came from the Chitimacha Indian Reservation. She left the baby in the back of a semi in Opelousas and went wherever her kind go.
The second entry in red:
The Cormier grandparents ran a little store but have been dead many years. Looks like Desmond dumped his folks and went to Hollywood. Wonder if he knew Charlie Manson’s crowd. Wonder if he ever kept his joystick in his pants. The whole place is deserving of a firestorm, if you ask me.
These words were written by the same man who wanted a Hollywood documentary made about his life.
He had made notations about Antoine Butterworth and Lou Wexler and several actors I had not met, as well as Joe Molinari, the victim hanged in a shrimp net; he also mentioned the names of the dirty cops, Frenchie Lautrec and Axel Devereaux. But there was no question about the person at the center of his investigation: The emphasis was on Desmond Cormier. I had no idea why. Maybe Tillinger was simply a celebriphile. Or a potential assassin. Desmond was everything Tillinger was not. There was another consideration I couldn’t ignore: Tillinger had known Lucinda Arceneaux well, and the rest of us had not known her at all.
The notebook ended with these words, again in red ballpoint:
There’s an Ennis Patout in Opelousas. Maybe this is the father of Desmond Cormier. Or maybe he’s the son of the father. I think time is running out for me. I think the men from Huntsville are going to find me and take me back and fill my veins with poison and drive the light from my eyes. I’ve got news for them. If they want to take me alive, they’d better bring a lunch. “The day is coming, burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff and the day that is coming will set them ablaze.” Malachi 4:1.
I closed the book. The western sun was blue and red and strung with clouds that looked like industrial smoke as it descended into the Gulf.
“Are you too tired to go to Opelousas?” I said.
“What’s in Opelousas?”
“The past.”
“Let’s go,” Bailey said.
I could see the fatigue in her face, a deadness in her eyes. Neither of us had mentioned my leaving her house yesterday after she had probably spent half the day preparing for my arrival.
“We’ve done enough for today,” I said. “I’ll buy you dinner.”