We went into the kitchen together. The wind was blowing through the windows I had broken, the linoleum shiny with glass. “How well did you know the woman?”
“Well enough.”
“You won’t hurt my feelings.”
“She was an artwork, a Creole Venus rising from the sea with a guitar hanging around her neck.”
“I smelled alcohol on Sean.”
“He’s a one-beer kid. It wasn’t a factor.”
“I also smell it on you.”
“I picked up a drink by mistake.”
She ran her hand down my arm and wrist and squeezed my hand and pressed her forehead against my shoulder. “If Tillinger didn’t do this, we’ll find the guy who did and gut him from his liver to his lights and hang him on a fence post. I promise you.”
• • •
THE AMBULANCE DROVE away with Tillinger. The plainclothes who’d flipped his cigarette in the yard was Jody Dubisson. He wore sideburns and had hair that looked like a black plastic wig, and chewed gum constantly and probably had something wrong with his wiring, but he wasn’t a bad guy. “The perp was trying to tell me something. I put my notebook and a felt-tip in his hand.”
“We don’t know he’s the perp,” I said.
“Yeah, Spider-Man probably did it. Want to take a look?”
I opened the cover of the notebook. Tillinger had scrawled “AB” and “PRO” and “UNC” and “JAIL” on the first page.
“Mean anything to you?” Dubisson said.
“?‘AB’ could stand for Aryan Brotherhood. The rest of it could mean anything.”
He handed me two sticks of gum. “One for you and one for the kid.” He raised his eyes to mine. “Get me?”
“Alcohol wasn’t a factor in the shooting.”
“Did I say it was? You look like shit.”
“It’s part of my mystique.”
“Your what?” he asked.
“Did you know Bella?”
“Saw her a couple of times on the street. She was a juju woman or something?”
I looked at the sky. It was roiling with black clouds. “I like to think she’s with the stars.”
“You’re a funny guy, Robicheaux.”
I put my finger on the first page of his notebook. “Can I have that?”
“You can copy it. This is our collar.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
AT 10:17 ON Monday morning, Helen came down to my office. “I just got off the phone with the authorities in Texas. Guess what?”
“They’re no longer in a hurry to get Tillinger back,” I said.