The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

“When I fire him arbitrarily, you can handle the lawsuit,” she said.

“I think he may be working with a pimp.”

“Which pimp?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I talked to a black prostitute in Jeanerette. She wouldn’t give him up. Do we have anything more on the escaped convict from Texas?”

“No, why?”

“The prostitute is named Hilary Bienville. Her baby had a Maltese cross tied on her ankle. It was an icon worn by Crusader knights.”

“What’s the connection?”

“Lucinda Arceneaux had a chain on one ankle. The medal on it had been pulled off.”

“I got that. What’s the connection with Hugo Tillinger?”

“I don’t know, Helen. I’m lost. From everything we hear, Tillinger’s head is full of superstition and general craziness.”

“Do you know how many people in southern Louisiana wear a charm or religious medal on their body, including you?”

We had reached a point where we were taking out our anger on each other, which, in a police investigation, almost always signals a dead end in the making.

“I’ll talk to Sean,” I said.

“Here’s the rest of it. When Devereaux passed him in the corridor this morning, he went ‘Bow-wow’ and ‘Meow-meow.’?”

• • •

THAT NIGHT THE weather was hot and dry, the end of summer floating like ash on the wind. The sky flickered with heat lightning, like flashes of artillery that began on the horizon and spread silently through the clouds. A drunk plowed into a power pole and knocked out the electricity on East Main, and the three air-conditioning units in my house made a groaning sound and died like sick animals. I took a jar of lemonade from the icebox and rolled it on my face, then sat in my chair on the bayou and drank the lemonade and watched the stars fall out of the sky.

The phone was ringing and the message light blinking when I came back inside. It was 2:13 a.m.

“Where’ve you been?” Helen said.

“Outside.”

“Need you on Old Jeanerette Road,” Helen said. “Between Alice Plantation and the drawbridge. Hang on. I’ve got to get a news photographer out of here.”

The location made my stomach flip-flop. It was a short distance from the trailer of Hilary Bienville.

Helen came back on the line. “We’ve got a body. Or what’s left of it. Haul ass, will you?”

“Man or woman?”

“Good question,” she replied.

Chapter Eight

THE MOST SURREAL aspect of the scene was the juxtaposition of the antebellum plantation homes on the road, the carriage lamps glowing like candles on a wedding cake, and the drag on the asphalt. It began by the LSU experimental farm and continued in a wet serpentine line almost to the drawbridge, a journey of about half a mile. That was where the vehicle stopped and someone cut the rope that had been cinched around the victim’s neck.

He lay in the weeds on his side, his eyes open, clotted with blood. Most of his face and hair had been sanded off. His teeth and shoes were gone, his jaw broken. His legs looked like bloody sticks clothed in rags.

Emergency vehicles, their flashers rippling, lined the road. “There’s no ID on him,” Helen said.

“His name is Travis Lebeau,” I said.

“Clete’s snitch?”