Like a drowning man who has just popped to the surface of a vortex that has crushed his hearing, I saw Clete's lips moving without sound, then heard his words become audible in midsentence: "… took us upcountry into Shitsville, Streak. Why you'd have to load their gun? Why you'd do it, big mon?"
chapter TWENTY-FOUR
Valentine Chalons was taken by ambulance to Iberia General and I was taken by five policemen to a holding cell at the city jail. Molly got me out at midnight, but I was to be arraigned the next morning and I had no doubt about the seriousness of the charges. At the top of the list was felony assault.
At the house, Molly filled a tin pan with ice cubes and water for me to soak my hands in. Through the window I could see the humid glow of sodium lamps across the bayou and hear Tripod running up and down the clothesline on his chain.
"Were you trying to kill him?" she asked.
"Maybe." Then I thought about it. "Yeah, I probably was."
"Why?"
"He had it coming. He's a fraternity pissant and should have been blown out of his socks a long time ago."
"You can't live with that kind of anger in you, Dave."
"He threw his drink in my face. He dealt the play. He got his sticks broken. That's the way it flushes sometimes. Can we give it a rest?"
She was at the sink, the water running loudly. She turned off the faucet and stared at me. "Why are you talking like this?"
"He said his old man screwed you."
"Val Chalons said that?"
"I just told you." I watched her face, my heart beating.
"Did you believe him?" she asked.
"Of course not."
"Then why did you tear him apart?"
"Because that's what I'll do to any sonofabitch who insults my wife."
In the silence I could hear the creak of the trees in the yard. Snuggs rubbed himself against my leg, his tail stiff, his head butting into my calf. I picked him up, my hands numb from the ice water in the pan. I flipped him on his back and scratched him under the chin. "What do you think about it, Snuggs?" I said.
Molly took him from my lap and set him on the floor. Then she leaned over me and held my head tightly against her breasts, squeezing so hard it hurt, her mouth pressed into my hair. "I love you, Dave Robicheaux," she said.
I felt Bootsie step inside her skin.
At 8:00 a.m. the next day I went directly into Helen Soileau's office. The arrest report from the Iberia city police was already on her desk. "I just can't believe this," she said, picking up the typed pages and dropping them as though they were smeared with an obscene substance.
"Why not?" I said.
"You want to look at the photos of your handiwork? Val Chalons looks like he was chain-dragged behind a car."
"He threw a glass of gin in my face. He made a filthy statement about my wife. I think he got off easy."
"He set you up, bwana."
"Am I on the desk?"
"Guess," she said.
It was 8:16 a.m. My arraignment was at eleven. I knew my time as a viable member of the sheriff's department was running out. I picked up my desk phone and called Mack Bertrand at the crime lab. "I got into some trouble last night," I said.
"I heard about it," he replied.
"I think I'm about to go on suspension. You remember those casts you made under my bedroom window?"
"Sure," he said.
"Can you run some comparisons between them and the casts you made at the Chalons crime scene?"
"I already did. Your prowler wore workboots, size ten and a half. Our person of interest at the Chalons guesthouse probably had on rubber boots., around size eleven. No help there, Dave."
"Why'd you make the comparison?"
"Probably for the same reason you wanted it done. We don't have one clue indicating who might have gone into the Chalons guesthouse and chopped that sad girl to death. Let me run something else by you a second."
"Go ahead," I said.
"Raphael Chalons has called me three times. But I'm not quite sure what he wants."
"I'm not following you."
"In one breath, he wants to know if there's any evidence the Baton Rouge serial killer murdered his daughter. When I tell him no, he seems relieved, then he gets upset again."
"Why did you call Honoria Chalons a 'sad girl'?"
"She attended our church for a while. I always had the feeling she'd been raped or molested. But I'm not an expert on those things."
"Did she ever say anything on the subject?"
"No, she just seemed to be one of those people who always have reflections inside their eyes, like ghosts or memories no one else can touch. Maybe I watch too much late-night television."
No, you don't, Mack, I said to myself.
I had spoken boldly to both Molly and Helen Soileau about wiping up the floor with Val Chalons. But my casual attitude was a poor disguise for my real feelings. It was ten minutes to nine now and my stomach was roiling, in the same way it does when an airplane drops unexpectedly through an air pocket. My scalp felt tight against my head and I could smell a vinegary odor rising from my body, like sweat that has been ironed into fabric. I bought a can of Dr Pepper in the department waiting room, ate two aspirin, and called Dana Magelli at NOPD.
"Do you have casts from the area where Holly Blankenship's body was dumped?" I asked.
"Yeah, there were footprints all over the place. Some homeless guys use it for a hobo jungle. What are you looking for?" he said.
"Size eleven rubber boots or ten-and-a-half workboots?"
"Why don't you call the task force in Baton Rouge?"
"My prints showed up at a crime scene they were investigating. They're not big fans."
"Hang on a minute," he said. He set the phone down, then picked it up again. "Yeah, there was one set of footprints that could have been made by rubber boots, around size eleven or twelve. Wal-Mart sells them by the thousands. What was that about your prints at a crime scene?"
I started to tell Dana the whole story, but I had finally grown tired of revisiting my own bad behavior in order to publicly excoriate myself. So I simply said, "Come on over and catch some green trout."
"Thought you'd never ask," he replied.
I wished I had come to appreciate the value of reticence earlier in life.
Molly and I met with my attorney outside the court at 10:45 a.m. He was a Tulane law graduate and a good-natured, intelligent man by the name of Porteus O'Malley. He was a student of the classics and liberal thought, and came from an old and distinguished family on the bayou, one known for its generosity and also its penchant for losing everything the family owned. Because our fathers had been friends, he seldom charged me a fee for the work he did on my behalf.
I was sweating in the shade of the oak where we stood, my eyes stinging with the humidity. Porteus placed his hand on my shoulder and looked into my face. He was larger than I and had to stoop slightly to be eye-level with me. "You gonna make it?" he said.
"I'm fine," I said.
But I could tell something else besides his client's anxiety was bothering him. When Molly went inside City Hall to use the restroom, he said, "Ever hear of a woman by the name of Mabel Poche?"
"No, who is she?"
"She's hired an oilcan to sue you. The oilcan also happens to do legal grunt work for the Chalons family. She's also filing criminal charges."
"For what?"
"She claims you took her four-year-old son into a restroom at Molly's place and molested him." His eyes shifted off my face.
"It's a lie," I said.
"Of course it is. But that's how Val Chalons and his friends operate. Screw with them and they'll make a speed bump out of you."
Judge Cecil Gautreaux was an ill-tempered, vituperative man, disliked and feared by prosecutors and defense lawyers alike. He was also a moralist who liked to bait the ACLU by making references to Scripture while handing down severe sentences. A wrongheaded remark by a defense attorney could make his face tremble with quiet rage. He lectured rape victims and showed contempt for the collection of indigent drunks who were brought daily into morning court on a long wrist chain. Huey Long once said that if fascism ever came to the United States, it would come in the name of anticommunism. I had always believed that Huey had the likes of Judge Gautreaux in mind when he made his remark, and that Judge Gautreaux, given the opportunity, could make the ovens sing.