Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

“Yonkers and the South Bronx. Why?”

“What’d your father do?”

“He was a baker. He made bread. My mother was a seamstress. What, you think my parents were trash?”

“No, I don’t think that,” Clete said.

“So what is this about? We’re doing family counseling here? If so, mission accomplished.”

Clete pointed at a thicket of persimmon trees on the bank of a coulee that meandered into a dry rice field. “The decomposed body of a black girl was found in there. One of the Jeff Davis Eight.”

“I wasn’t living around here when that happened.”

“I think you were, Kev. I dream about those girls.”

“My son and I will bring you a souvenir from Six Flags,” Penny said. “Don’t be mixing in my family life no more, Purcel. It can bounce back on the wrong people. Like you say, maybe I’ll lose it again. Then you’d really have some thumbtacks in your head, wouldn’t you?”

Penny went back into the trailer. The young woman stared at Clete like a drowning woman watching a lifeboat paddle away. Penny slammed the door.

* * *

I HATED THE thought of interviewing Rowena Broussard. Her story and behavior were of a kind no ambitious prosecutor wants to touch. The particulars that would come out in the trial were a defense attorney’s delight; I knew defense and liability lawyers who would drink out of a spittoon. They would be lining up at Jimmy Nightingale’s door.

I made an appointment Sunday afternoon at the Broussard home. Normally, I tried to avoid working on the weekends. But I suspected Levon and Rowena already considered me unfocused and preoccupied, since, like most civilians, they had no idea how many open cases a detective has on his desk at any given moment.

I parked my truck in front of their home on Loreauville Road. The yard had just been cut, the oak leaves ground into tiny gold and red and brown pieces on top of the grass. The hydrangeas were blooming in the shade, the bougainvillea bloodred on the trellises, the posts on the wide steel-gray gallery wrapped with Mardi Gras beads.

Rowena answered the door. She was wearing huaraches and faded jeans low on her hips and a workout halter and a bandana twisted around her brow. Her forearms and the backs of her hands were flecked with paint. She didn’t speak. At least not to me. “He’s here, Levon!” she shouted over her shoulder.

“May I come in, please?” I said.

“Come in.”

“Thank you.” I stepped inside. “I need to apprise you of your rights about a couple of things, Miss Rowena.”

“Where do you want to do it?”

“Do what?” I said.

“Talk to me or whatever.”

“Wherever you like,” I said. “You can have a lawyer or a female officer present. Anytime you feel uncomfortable, we can take a break or simply discontinue the discussion. Our intention is to give the prosecutor’s office the best information available.”

I thought I had been as accommodating as I could. Perhaps I wished she would not cooperate and allow me to drop the investigation. I didn’t think I had ever seen a woman look more strangely at the world. She made me think of a thick-bodied, frightened bird trapped in a small cage.

“Levon wants to be with us,” she said.

“I’d prefer you and I talk first.”

“Go tell him that. He’s at the end of the hall.”

“Didn’t you just call him?” I asked.

“Watch the steps.”

The center of the house was raised on pilings, the ornate baths and rooms with tester beds and Levon’s office on a lower level. The hallway was long and lined with bookshelves and glass cases containing antique firearms. The woodwork in all the rooms was done with restored century-old cypress and radiated a soft, polished glow like browned butter. Levon’s office was enormous and filled with light from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Two big fans circulated slowly on the ceiling; there were bamboo mats on the carpet that creaked dryly under my shoes. Outside, windmill palms and banana fronds and chest-high philodendron were threaded with moisture. I felt I had walked into a 1940s Sydney Greenstreet film.

Levon was bent over the keyboard on his desk, which ran the entire length of one wall, with a crucifix at either end. The Civil War sword that had belonged to his great-grandfather lay next to his computer. He saved the material he was typing and turned around. “Sorry to keep you waiting. If I stop in the middle of a paragraph, I can’t put it together again.” He looked at the paragraph again. I had to wonder about his priorities.