“Go on.”
“The black woman said, ‘There’s a little-bitty man been killed in the park. He didn’t have to do it.’?”
“?‘He didn’t have to do it’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No idea who ‘he’ is?”
“No, sir. Have you and me seen this car before? Maybe at Cypremort Point?”
“That’s exactly where we saw it. It belongs to Antoine Butterworth.”
I put on latex and looked in the back seat of the Subaru. There was a dime bag of weed on the floor and a .22 casing on the seat. I straightened up and closed the door just as Helen’s cruiser pulled in. She got out and looked at Smiley’s body. She was wearing navy blue slacks and a starched white shirt and her gold shield and service belt. “That’s Wimple?”
“Afraid so.”
Her eyes lifted to mine, flat and all business. “A great loss to the world? That’s what you’re about to say?”
“If I grew up like he did, I probably wouldn’t be any different. I can’t figure out how the shooter got the drop on him.”
Helen put on latex and squatted down and used a ballpoint to ease the semi-auto from Smiley’s hand. She dropped the magazine and pulled back the slide. A round was in the chamber, an indentation where the firing pin had struck it. She tapped the round loose and caught it in her palm. It was unfired. The firing pin had hit upon a dead round. She stood up and bagged the gun and magazine and loose round.
“How do you read it?” she said.
“According to Sean, the 911 caller said, ‘He didn’t have to do it.’ There’s no brass on the ground. Wimple didn’t get off a shot. The shooter had a choice. He decided to pop Wimple. At least that’s what the 911 caller seemed to be saying.”
“You ran the tags?”
“I don’t have to. That’s Butterworth’s car.”
“Why would he arbitrarily kill Wimple?”
“Maybe he was scared shitless. Or maybe he did it for fun.”
“Any lawyer would get him off on self-defense. Why would he flee the scene?”
“He’s probably heard stories about the bridal suite at Angola.”
“I don’t buy that,” Helen said. “Wimple had a reason for targeting Butterworth. He killed only two types of people: child abusers and people who tried to hurt him. Butterworth is not a child abuser. So something else is involved. Maybe Butterworth is our guy after all.”
“That, or he’s one of our guys.”
“Who do you think the woman might be?”
“Someone poor and desperate and willing to do anything for a few dollars.”
The wind blew through the trees, scattering the leaves and straightening the air vines, and I saw something I hadn’t seen before. I squatted down next to Smiley’s body again. Broken daisies and crushed buttercups and rose petals were with the leaves. I picked them up in my hand and stared at them. Even in the shade they were as bright as splashes of paint from a brush. There were no flowers of this kind growing anywhere near the crime scene. I looked into Smiley’s face. There was a wet glimmer sealed in one eye, more like an expression of warmth than sorrow.
“What are you looking at?” Helen said.
“These flowers. I don’t know how they got here.”
“What flowers?”
“These.” I lifted my hand.
“Those are leaves.”