The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

• • •

I FIXED A BOWL of Grape-Nuts and milk and blackberries and ate it on the back steps. I also brought a bowl of cat food for Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon. The trees were dripping with humidity, the bayou high and swollen with mud, the flooded elephant ears along the bank beaded with drops of water that slid like quicksilver off the surface. I heard a vehicle pull into the driveway, then footsteps coming around the side of the house.

“Hope I ain’t disturbing your Sunday morning,” Sean said. He was in uniform, his cheeks bright with aftershave, his gun belt polished, the creases in his trousers as sharp as knife blades.

“Get yourself a cup of coffee off the stove. Alafair is still asleep. Give me a refill, too.” I handed him my cup.

He went inside and came back out with a filled cup in each hand. He sat down beside me and looked at Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon. He had a small mouth, like a girl’s, and eyes like a child’s. “I went out to the airport this morning.”

“What for?”

“To watch them movie people take off. They were happy, like all the things that happened here don’t mean anything.”

“I’m not following you.”

“I killed a man. I’ll have him in my dreams the rest of my life. None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for these people.”

“Blame other people, and you’ll never have peace.”

“That’s what you told yourself in Vietnam?”

“I wasn’t that smart.”

“Dave, I’d give anything if I hadn’t shot Tillinger. It’s eating me up.”

“I don’t think Tillinger would hold it against you, Sean. He made a choice—the wrong one. Wherever he is, I think he knows that and forgives you for it.”

“You don’t dream about the men you killed?”

“Sometimes.”

“What do you do about it?”

“Not drink.”

He put down his coffee cup and rubbed one hand on top of the other. “I feel like I ain’t no better than them deputies that suffocated the deaf man at the jail.”

“You’re nothing like those deputies.”

“That’s a sad story, you know? I heard the deaf man was trying to make sign language when he died.”

I looked at my watch. “I’m going to Mass at St. Edward’s. Want to go?”

“Thanks for the coffee. I appreciate you listening to me.”

“Run that by me again about the deaf man and sign language?”

• • •

AFTER HE WAS gone, I went to St. Edward’s. When I returned, a note was on the refrigerator door. It said: Went to Café Sydnie Mae for brunch. See you this afternoon.

I looked out the side window. Alafair’s car was still in the porte cochere. I called her cell phone. The call went straight to voicemail. I called the Café Sydnie Mae in Breaux Bridge. She wasn’t there. It was 11:14 a.m.

I went to the office and opened my file drawer and took out every folder I had on the series of homicides that had begun with the murder of Lucinda Arceneaux. I also accessed every bit of electronic information I could find on Frank Dubois, the deaf man who had been suffocated in the Iberia Parish jail. He had one of those rap sheets that was full of contradictions, like a puzzle box shaken up and dropped on the floor. He grew up in New Orleans, on the edge of the Garden District, and attended Tulane University for three years in the 1960s, but was arrested twice for possession; then he cruised on out to sunny CA and got hooked up with the Mongols. He had half a dozen narcotics-related arrests in San Bernardino, Bakersfield, and Oakland, and ended up spending a year in Atascadero. A prison psychologist had noted in the margin of his sheet: I.Q. above 160, symptoms of borderline personality disorder. Antisocial, narcissistic, and fears isolation and physical restraint. Potentially dangerous.

I went through my notes on all the victims. Joe Molinari still perplexed me more than the others. Why did our killer want to murder such a harmless man? His jobs took him nowhere, and his employers were of no substance and rarely kept records. Except one: Molinari had been a janitor for two years at the Iberia Parish courthouse.

This may sound strange to an outsider, but the patronage culture in Louisiana is systemic, from the most humble kind of work to the governor’s office. Procedure, honorable conduct, attention to the rules, acuity, experience, and skill have secondary value at best. You cannot get a state job cleaning a toilet unless you know someone. For a man like Molinari—who did asbestos teardowns—a steady paycheck, decent hours, health insurance, social security, and unemployment coverage were a gift from God.