"It don't make no sense to me, either," he replied.
"Nice spot you have here," I said.
"It ain't bad," he said.
"How'd you get the drop on this dude? I'd say that was pretty slick," I said.
"Seen him out of the corner of my eye. Circled 'round the house, got my tool off the po'ch, and you know the rest."
"I knew this guy, Andre. He worked for money and no other reason. He was the best in the business and charged accordingly. You make somebody mad at you, somebody so mad he'd pay an uptown guy like Jericho Johnny Wineburger to kill you and your family?" I said.
"What I know, me?"
"You don't think he was after Mr. Val?" I said.
"Ax Mr. Val," he replied.
"Thanks for your time, partner," I said, and handed him one of our business cards. "Mr. Val is a man of mystery, isn't he? You know where he might be now?"
"He had an argument wit' a man in the front yard this morning. Man wit' real li'l ears. He flipped the man's tie in his face and told him not to come 'round here no more. Then he went off by hisself."
"By the way, where's the hatchet?" I said.
"Cops took it. I got to get to my chores. Anyt'ing else?"
Helen and I got back in the cruiser and drove down the driveway, past the carpenters repairing the house and the tree surgeons pruning the oaks. Then, for no apparent reason, Helen braked the cruiser and rested her arms across the top of the wheel. Her shirt was stretched tight across her shoulders, the fingers of her right hand flicking at the air, as though she were trying to pick thoughts out of it. The sunlight through the pruned trees was so bright she had put on shades and I couldn't read her expression. "You feel jerked around?" she said.
"Yep."
"Like he was pointing the finger at Val Chalons but pretending not to?"
"That's what it sounded like to me."
She took her foot off the brake and let the idle carry the cruiser toward the highway, the pea gravel ticking under the tires. "Why would Chalons pay to have his handyman hit?" she said.
"Money."
"Money?"
"Money," I said.
"Like Bergeron might have a claim on the estate?"
"You got it."
"Try to make that one stick," she said, easing her foot back on the gas.
As soon as we got back to the department, I found a note in my mailbox asking me to call Jimmie at his apartment.
"Lou Kale was here about thirty minutes ago. He seems a little irrational," Jimmie said.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, he thinks I'm involved in some kind of scam with Clete Purcel. He says Purcel is trying to blackmail either him or Val Chalons. What's the deal?"
"Clete sent letters simultaneously to both Kale and Chalons."
"He deliberately stoked up this guy?"
"I helped a little."
"A police officer?"
"I think Val Chalons's real parents are Lou Kale and Ida Durbin. I think Old Man Chalons died without leaving a will. That means Val has no familial claim on the Chalons fortune. I think the handyman, Andre Bergeron, may be the heir to a hundred million dollars. So Val Chalons hired Jericho Johnny Wineburger to kill the handyman and maybe his wife and child, too."
"You're making some of this up?"
"Nope."
"And Kale thinks I'm involved in a plot to blackmail him or his son, with that kind of money at stake?"
"Seems like it."
"I don't believe this."
"I'll have a talk with Kale."
"Let it slide. Rest up and try not to think. You and Purcel, both. No matter what happens, don't think," he said, then quietly hung up the phone.
In the morning I walked downtown to Koko Hebert's office and waited for him to get off the telephone. Outside, the wind was blowing in the trees on Main Street and the air was still cool and damp-smelling in the shade, but inside Koko's office the atmosphere was stifling, the odor of nicotine wrapped like cellophane on every surface in the room.
"What is it?" he said.
"Did you get the post on Johnny Wineburger from the forensic pathologist in St. Mary?" I said.
"What about it?"
"We're on the same side, Koko. Can't you speak civilly to people?"
"No, you're on your own side, Robicheaux. That said, what do you want?"
I gave up. "Could the wounds on Johnny Wineburger have been made by the same instrument that killed Honoria Chalons?"
"No."
"You're sure?"
"She was cut by an instrument that was honed like a barber's razor. The hatchet Wineburger was killed with must have been used to chop bricks. You trying to make the black guy for Honoria Chalons's death?"
"It occurred to me."
He swiveled himself around in his chair and stared out a side window at a brick wall. From the back, he looked like a sad elephant humped on a circus stool. He drew in on his cigarette, then released a thick ball of white smoke from his mouth. "You're not going to win," he said.
"Excuse me?"
"You think you're going to bring down Val Chalons. But he and his people are just getting started. When they're finished with you, your name won't be worth warm spit on the sidewalk. You and your wife will be picking flypaper off your skin the rest of your lives."
"That's the breaks," I said.
"I hate talking to you," he said.
That night a hurricane watch was in effect from Pensacola, Florida, to Morgan City, Louisiana. But in New Iberia the air was dead, superheated, stained with the smell of dead water beetles, the trees traced with the wisplike patterns of fireflies. Along East Main the windows sparkled like ice with condensation. Just before 11:00 p.m. Dana Magelli called from New Orleans.
"Better turn on CNN," he said. In the background I could hear laughter, music, bottles or drink glasses tinkling.
"Where are you?" I said.
"In the Quarter. Half the Second District is here. We got him."
I had already hit the button on the remote TV control. "You've got the Baton Rouge serial killer?" I said.
"The DNA won't be in for a day or so. But he's the guy. Fibers on the clothes of Holly Blankenship match a shirt in his closet. He got stopped in his Popsicle truck at a DWI check."
On the television screen I saw a New Orleans police official talking on camera, a dilapidated house and weed-infested yard in the background.
"The guy started acting hinky at the check," Dana said. "So we got a warrant on his house. He had a fifteen-year-old hooker tied up in there."
"He's from New Orleans?" I said.
"You sound disappointed," Dana said.
"No, it's just late. Congratulations."
"Yeah. Thought you'd like to know," he replied.
After I hung up, Molly sat down next to me on the couch. Our air-conditioning had broken down and the attic fan was on, the curtains on the living-room window churning in the air. "What was all that about?" she said.
"Dana Magelli says NOPD nailed the Baton Rouge serial killer," I said.
She studied my face. "You have doubts?" she said.
"The guy in custody is from New Orleans. Why would he drive from Baton Rouge to Iberia Parish to dump his victims?"
"It's late. Come to bed," she said.
"I'm going to bring Tripod and Snuggs inside."
"It's not supposed to rain until tomorrow."
"Both those guys need to come inside," I said.
chapter TWENTY-NINE
The next morning the sky was the gray-black of gun cotton, the dried-out palm fronds in my neighbor's yard stiffening in the wind. The air was full of leaves, and smelled like iodine or ship's brass on a hot day out on the salt. Helen called me into the office as soon as I got to the department. "I want you to go to New Orleans with me and question the guy they've got in custody," she said.
"Why not wait on the DNA report?" I asked.
"It's a media circus there. Iberia Parish is going to get shuffled out of the deck. We're going to be left with two unsolved homicides."
"I'm not understanding you," I said.
"The Baton Rouge serial killer dropped two DOAs on our doorstep. The guy in custody had a Popsicle route in the Garden District and Baton Rouge. You brought up the question first – why would he drive eighty miles to leave his victims in our parish?"