I swallowed.
“You could have deleted the call,” she said.
“I didn’t.”
“How can you say what you did? Did you call the Dartez house on your landline?”
“I don’t remember doing that. I remember I was going to St. Martinville to sit on the bench under the Evangeline Oak.”
“Do you know how silly that sounds?”
“It’s the way I felt at the time.”
She picked up my right hand and looked at my knuckles. I pulled my hand away.
“I’m on your side,” she said. “Even if you killed that man, I’m on your side. But don’t lie to me.”
“I don’t know what I did, Helen. That’s the truth. Does Ms. Dartez have a cell phone or a landline?”
“A cell.”
“Did Labiche check it?”
She looked away from me. “Not yet.”
“Don’t leave him on the case.”
“Maybe he’s a little hinky, but he came to us with a clean jacket.”
“Two black women filed complaints against him.”
“The same women have filed complaints against bill collectors and their estranged husbands.”
“They’re probably telling the truth.”
“Get used to seeing him around.”
“Thanks for the hand up,” I said.
“Piss off, Dave.”
She closed the door quietly behind her, sealing me in an airless vacuum, my sweat cold inside my shirt.
* * *
CORMAC WATTS CALLED three hours later. “Hi, Dave. I wanted to update you on the Dartez homicide.”
“Spade Labiche is handling that.”
“Oh.”
“What have you got?”
“Cause of death, blunt force trauma. Maybe he was stomped and kicked by someone wearing steel-toes. There was a filter-tip cigar stub lodged in his throat, plus a couple of teeth.”
“That’s it?”
“He went out hard. What else is there to say?”