Christmas came and went. The days were warm and cool at the same time, and at night, electrified white clouds of smoke billowed from the stacks on the sugar mill. The weather seemed more a harbinger of spring than the real Louisiana winter that awaited us, one of dreary rain-darkened days that can seep into the soul.
My adopted daughter, Alafair, came home from France, then returned early to her part-time job in the bookstore at Reed. Penelope did not call. I grieved that I’d hurt her. The breakup was about Adonis, not Pen. No matter what she claimed about her marital status, she had lived with him for years. Furthermore, he was a dangerous and, I think, jealous man, and if he thought another man was taking her away, I believed he might kill her.
But my concerns with the Balangie family were about to fade quickly and be replaced by others. In mid-January, Father Julian called me at the office. “There’re two homicide detectives from Baton Rouge here. They say they have a search warrant.”
“For what?”
“It’s about my stamps.”
“Put one of the detectives on.”
The man who took the phone breathed heavily into the mouthpiece, like a heavy smoker or a consumptive. “Detective Niles,” he said. “What can I h’ep you with?”
The accent was North Louisiana or perhaps Mississippi.
“This is Detective Robicheaux,” I said. “Did you guys check in with us before you executed the search warrant?”
“We’re not required to do that.”
“Most law enforcement people consider it a professional courtesy.”
“That’s why you blew the Firpo homicide scene before I could interview you?” he said.
He had me. “I’m on my way, and I’ll be at your disposal.”
“Noted,” he said. “And not needed.”
He broke the connection.
I checked out a cruiser and was at Julian’s house in fifteen minutes. The screen door hung open. I stepped up on the gallery. The living room was a wreck. Through the hallway, I saw a big man in a brown suit leaning into the refrigerator, rattling things inside. His head looked as hard and large as a bowling ball. He held his fedora in one hand. His partner was flipping the mattress off Julian’s bed. Julian was watching both detectives at the same time, his face tight with anger.
“What’s with you guys?” I said to the detective in the brown suit.
He turned around, holding a saucer with four sugar cubes on it. “What’s this look like?” he said.
“Sugar cubes?” I replied.
He tilted them off the saucer into a Ziploc. “We’ll take them to the lab.”
“You’re talking about acid? In the refrigerator of a priest?”
“I know your reputation, Robicheaux,” he said. “I used to have a drinking problem myself. I know you just got reinstated. Leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone.”
“Why the search warrant on Father Julian?” I asked, hoping they had nothing of evidentiary consequence.
“There were some postage stamps stuck on Firpo’s shoe,” he said. “The stamps had the good father’s prints on them. His prints were also on file with the NCIC. Two federal busts for trespassing at the School of the Americas.”
Julian took a step toward the detective. “Those stamps were stolen from my house. Those sugar cubes aren’t mine, either.”
“You’re sure, Julian?” I said.
“I saw the other detective open the refrigerator earlier,” he said. “It looked like he put something inside.”
“How about it?” I said to Niles.
“Maybe the maid left the cubes in there,” Niles said. “But tell me this: Why didn’t the good father report the theft of the stamps?”
Julian started to speak, but I lifted my hand. “Father Julian gives odd jobs to people who have been in the system. He figures they’ve got enough grief without his adding to it.”
Niles didn’t answer. He was a hard man to read. Were he and his partner on a pad? Or was he just a burnt-out old-time flatfoot who had smoked too many cigarettes?
“What’s your opinion, Detective Niles?” I said.
“Firpo was mixed up with child porn,” he said. “Maybe Father Hebert did everybody a good deed. Maybe he’s like us. He’s tired of the degenerates running society. Maybe he decided to put his thumb on the scale.”
I glanced through the front door. An Iberia Parish cruiser was pulling onto the grass. Two people were in front, one a blond woman. She got out of the cruiser and stretched her arms. She was wearing navy blue slacks and a starched white shirt; her gold badge hung from a lanyard on her chest. I stepped out on the gallery.
Carroll LeBlanc, the pro tem sheriff, got out from behind the wheel and gazed at me over the top of the cruiser.
“Why the grin?” I said.
“Guess who your new boss is,” he replied.
Helen Soileau, my old Homicide partner, walked up the steps. She opened the screen and let it slam behind her. “What’s this crap about two Baton Rouge homicide roaches who didn’t check in?” she said.
“Long time no see, Soileau,” Niles said.
“Not long enough,” she replied. “And it’s Sheriff Soileau to you.”
Niles’s partner came out of the bedroom. He had a hooked nose and a head that looked like it had been squeezed inside a waffle iron. “I’ll be,” he said.
“Pardon?” she said.
“Weren’t you a meter maid at NOPD?” he said.
She looked at the disarray in the living room, then at Niles. “Y’all want to explain this?”
“Nothing to explain,” Niles said. “Father Hebert fled a homicide scene in Baton Rouge. Some collectible stamps belonging to him were on the vic’s body.”
“So you came down here and tore up his house?”
“No, we searched it,” Niles said. He held up the Ziploc. “This was in the refrigerator. There’s discoloration in each cube.”
“Get out of here,” she said. “Take your shit with you.”
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. As I answered, Helen went to her cruiser, slid her baton from the front seat, and smashed out a side window in the unmarked car driven by the two detectives.
Niles stared through the screen door. “Are you drunk?” he said.
She walked back inside and tapped him with the baton in the middle of his forehead, hard enough to leave a white spot. “File a complaint with the DA. I’ll give you his private number.”
But I was no longer paying attention to Helen and her behavior. I had seen her take down too many bad guys, some of them cops, some of then psychotic, and I knew how it would end. I was listening to Leslie Rosenberg on my cell phone.
“I had a nightmare and was burning to death,” she said. “When I woke up, there was ash in my hair. A green man was in the yard.”
“Start over,” I said.
“I’m not crazy. I could smell smoke in my clothes. I know him. From long ago.”
“Where are you?”
“In my cottage.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I said.
“I didn’t tell you the rest of it. I confronted him. He tried to touch me.”
“Where is he now?”
“Looking at me. Through the screen.”
I took the cell phone from my ear. “Helen, I want you to listen to this.”
“I’m a little busy right now.”
I walked down on the grass and shoved the detective named Niles. “Do what you’re told and haul your worthless ass out of here,” I said. Then I gave Helen my cell phone. “Now listen.”
I headed up old Jeanerette Road to the self-help center run by the activist nuns and the cottage where Leslie and her daughter were now living. Leslie was on the gallery when I arrived. The tide was in, and the bayou was high and dark and running through the canebrakes on the bank. I wondered if Gideon had hidden somewhere along the bank or escaped in a boat. That he had appeared at the cottage in broad daylight indicated that he had become bolder and perhaps more dangerous.