“I’d better go home.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Let’s keep it professional from here on out,” she said. “Is that okay?”
I felt a crack spread across my heart.
“No problem,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THE NEXT MORNING I found Ennis Patout’s name in the Opelousas phone directory. I checked out a cruiser, and Bailey and I drove to St. Landry Parish. The morning was clear and cool, the grass in the neutral ground mowed and sparkling with dew. As we neared Opelousas, I looked across the seat at her and said, “A good night’s sleep is the cure for lots of things, isn’t it?”
She smiled and didn’t reply.
I turned off at the exit and drove to an old two-story soot-stained stucco building on the two-lane to Baton Rouge. It had been a car dealership during the Depression and was now a wrecker service and repair shop for diesel trucks. The gas pumps in front were out of order and rusted. I had called Patout before we left New Iberia; when I’d identified myself, he’d hung up. A black man in a filthy white jumpsuit was working on an engine in the shop.
“Is Mr. Patout here?” I said.
“Upstairs. What you want?”
I opened my badge holder. “I called earlier. Ask him to come down.”
“He ain’t gonna like it.”
“Why’s that?”
“Mr. Ennis don’t need a reason.” He went up a wooden staircase inside the shop and came back down. “He’ll be down in a minute. He’s got to take his heart medicine.”
A moment later, a towering man emerged from the doorway that led to the stairs. He had the same wide-set pale blue eyes as Desmond, and the same long upper lip and the same muscularity, but that was where the similarity ended. His face made me think of a broken pumpkin. The eyes were out of alignment, the blank stare like a slap. There was a repressed ferocity in his stance. His hands were grimed and hung at his sides. His jumpsuit was dirtier than the black man’s. From five feet away he had an odor like a barrel of old shrimp.
“I’m Detective Robicheaux,” I said. “This is Detective Ribbons. I called you from New Iberia.”
He didn’t look at Bailey. “I know who you are.” Even though he had a French name, he had a deep-throated Mississippi or North Louisiana accent.
“We’re looking for an escaped convict named Hugo Tillinger,” I said. “We have reason to believe he might try to contact you.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He’s heard of you,” Bailey said. “Your name and city of residence were in his notebook.”
“Tillinger, you say?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “He was convicted of burning his family to death.”
“What’s he want with me?”
There are many ruses police can use legally in interrogating a witness or suspect, and one of the most effective is to indicate you posses knowledge that in reality you don’t. “I think he wants to talk to you about your son, Desmond Cormier.”
“Who says I got a son?”
“It’s a matter of record,” I said. “You took the baby to Charity Hospital in Lafayette many years ago. You probably saved his life. You never see Desmond? He’s a famous man.”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” he said. “This is about her, ain’t it? She’s back telling lies.”
“Could be,” I said, with no clue about the reference. “Why not give us your perception of the situation and put it to rest?”
“She’s a drunk and a whore,” he said. “I was good to her when nobody else was. She slept with everything that wore pants. I caught her a bunch of times, but I never hit her.”