Cree thought so, too. "How was he killed?"
"Bullet to the back of his head, close up."
"What kind of gun?"
"Some kind of forty-four. Can't tell just what 'cause we never found the gun, or any shell casings, either."
Cree was feeling that they'd drifted away from what she really wanted. She wasn't here to solve a murder but to get information that might help her identify a ghost. The more she learned about Temp Chase, the more she sensed he was irrelevant to the haunting that terrorized Lila.
But it was too soon to rule anything out. She plugged on.
What kind of person was Temp Chase? Guidry fished in a file cabinet and handed Cree photos of both Chases. Temp's was a studio shot of a man in his late forties: a hint of African ancestry in his cafe-au-lait skin and short black hair, a slight smile intruding charmingly on a look of journalistic sobriety. Jane- Chase's photo was also a studio production, showing a much younger woman with pale skin airbrushed to perfection, full red lips, big raven-black hair. Both handsome, a perfect media couple. According to Guidry, "Whites liked Temp because he was pale enough to mostly pass," and his success spoke flatteringly about how progressive New Orleans had become; blacks liked him because he was "one of us" and a local boy made good. Guidry described him as gregarious, a climber, still popular but maybe not aging as gracefully as he might've, putting on a little weight. Born in New Orleans but studied broadcasting out east. His wife had been a model he met at a commercial shoot at the station early in his tenure there; she was eleven years younger. From Ohio, moved to New Orleans as a teenager when her engineer daddy took a j ob at the NASA assembly facility up in Michoud. Their marriage seemed okay, she never seemed to mind giving up her career to be housewife and manager of their busy social calendar. As for Temp's state of mind at the time of his death, Guidry thought he had to be going through some trouble. For one thing, the bosses down at Channel 13 were considering replacing him with a younger anchor, or maybe the kind of male-female tag team you saw a lot of nowadays. When the organized crime thing had surfaced, Guidry had thought that with his career in broadcasting hitting a major bump, maybe Temp had gotten worried enough about his financial future to look for other opportunities, maybe with the wrong people. But whether that was how he'd managed to get himself killed or not, surely he'd known something was coming his way. Friends and relatives stated he'd seemed depressed and anxious in the weeks before his death.
A call must have gone out, because there was a flurry of activity in the parking lot as a couple of squad cars lit up and squealed away. Guidry watched disinterestedly until they were out of view, then looked back to Cree.
"What else you need?" he asked.
There was a lot more Cree would have liked to ask, but she sensed she was running out of time with the detective. "What happened when he was killed? I mean, the sequence of events that night?"
"Conjectural," Guidry said immediately. "Seems like the killer had the jump on Chase, he was shot close-range from behind, had a sandwich half eaten on the kitchen table. Pretty well taken by surprise, I'd say."
Surprise, Cree thought, a strong element in the gust that had blown past and through her in the kitchen. Of course, the experience of dying came as a surprise for almost everyone.
"I have just two more questions," Cree said. "When you interviewed Lila Warren, do you remember her state of mind? Was she very upset by the murder?"
Guidry had to think about that, chewing gum and staring into space. "Can't remember too well. Shocked, upset, not too happy to be involved, I guess, the way anybody would be. Cooperated fully but didn't have anythin' for me. She didn't know the Chases, didn't socialize with 'em. Nothin' any of the Beaufortes did or said rang my bells."
"If I wanted to get to know Temp better, how should I do it? I mean his personal style, the way he talked, dressed, that kind of thing?"
"The wife, of course, you could talk to her. But I wouldn't – I'd let her be. I wouldn't stir it up for that gal." Guidry's compassion seemed genuine. "Best bet'd be talk to Deelie Brown. She's the reporter did most of the stories in the Times-Picayune."
Cree made a note. "Any other advice for an out of towner wanting information on this?"
Guidry shoved himself away from the desk, indication it was time for Cree to leave. She stood and followed his thick, shiny hair toward the door.
"Sure, I got some more advice. Go ahead and write your article, but don't play amateur detective here. First of all, because you'll be wastin'your time – we been over this whole pile of bushwah with a fine-tooth comb every which way for two years, you won't find anything we didn't. Second, because if whoever did it notices you sniffin' around and thinks you might find somethin', then you've bought yourself a peck of trouble, haven't you? A word to the wise, is all."
Guidry looked up at her expressionlessly and extended a little, hard hand to shake. "And, hey – welcome to the City That Care Forgot," he said.
15
In Gloucester, Edgar spent the morning at the site, setting up equipment and thinking about Cree. The equipment part was easy. The house was tall, weathered to gray, with a Wyethesque starkness that was austerely beautiful. It had tall, narrow windows, elaborate cornices in the Victorian tradition, and porches knotted with gnarled wisteria vines that wound among the gingerbread. Generations of birds had nested in its eaves and streaked its buckling clapboards with droppings. Inside, the empty rooms smelled of dust, mouse piss, and old wood, except when gusts of sea breeze rattled the windows and blew drafts of clean, briny scent through.
Giving Edgar a little shot of adrenaline as the invisible cold moved in the rooms. For all its charm, the place keyed him up. Put him on edge.
Part of the house's appeal derived from its proximity to the rugged shore, Edgar decided, so different from the broad California beaches he'dgrown up with. From its windows and porches, or from the iron-railed widow's walk, he could see up and down the coastline, irregular steep headlands meandering to the north and south, interspersed with salt marshes and sand beaches. New England seemed drenched in history. With her synesthetic and empathic talents, Cree would love this place and the seemingly endless layers you could sense here; but even a thickheaded, cognitive-normal California engineer could appreciate it. Sometimes, staring across the ragged, winter-brown fields toward the water, Edgar imagined he could sense prior presences: the early Native Americans, the probable Norse seafarers, the Pilgrims, the successive waves of European immigrants who had lived and striven and died here. The vistas brought back images garnered from grade school history classes: the Salem witchcraft trials, the American Revolution, the whaling industry with its far-flung wooden ships.
Whoever had lived here, from whatever era, their lives had revolved around the sea – the cold, gray-green, salt-smelling North Atlantic that surrounded the spit of land on which the house stood.
To the north, the fields sloped gently away toward the water, ending abruptly in rocky cliffs. At low tide, the shore rocks humped out of the water, shaggy with black seaweed and crusted barnacles; at high tide, they lay like slumbering whales just under the surface, waves foaming over the rugged tops. Straight east, the water tossed and rolled out to the horizon line, where a lone freighter slouched slowly out to sea. To the south stretched a vast, flat labyrinth of salt rnarsh, islands of grasses and reeds interspersed with waterways that became stagnant pools and glistening mud flats at low tide.