“Thank goodness you’re home, Dave,” Emmeline Nightingale said, wiping the rain out of her hair. “Is Alafair here?”
“No.”
“Where is she?”
“She doesn’t tell me everywhere she goes.”
“I have some important information. I was going to tell her and let her tell you.”
Emmeline seemed to lie the way all narcissists do. Whatever they say, regardless of its absurdity, becomes the truth.
“Tell me what?”
“Are you going to invite me in?”
“Yes, please come in,” I said.
She stepped inside and blew out her breath. “It’s about your friend Levon and his wife.”
“Take it to the department.”
“Just drop in and chat up the boys in the coffee room?”
“No, talk to me in my office.”
“You’re getting jerked around, Detective.”
She was good. “What’s the information on Mr. and Ms. Broussard?”
“She was raped by two black men in Wichita, Kansas. The prosecutor’s office wouldn’t do anything about it.”
“Where’d you get this?”
“I hired a private investigator.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“Twenty years, maybe more. She was a visiting artist at Wichita State University. She was young and maybe drunk when she left the bar with the two black men. Nobody would believe her story.”
“You need to bring everything your PI has to the department.”
“Did I do wrong coming here?” she said.
Yes, she did. And there was no doubt she had a design. Nonetheless, if the information was true, it presented a problem for the prosecutor and was a gift to the defense. There was a good possibility that Rowena would be victimized by the system again.
“Could I have a drink?” Emmeline said.
“I don’t have any alcohol in the house.”
“A Dr Pepper, a Coca-Cola, a glass of lemonade.”
“Yes, I think I can find something.”
“I love the sound the rain makes on a tin roof. Your house is so quaint.”
“I have another question for you, Miss Emmeline. What did Jimmy do in Latin America that haunts him? Why are you two always at the center of other people’s misfortune when you never seem to pay dues yourself?”
“I think that is the most arrogant and ugly thing anyone has ever said to me.”
She was probably right. I didn’t like to speak that way to a woman or, for that matter, to anyone. Age does that to you. Sometimes charity toward others is the only respite you get from thoughts about death. And in that spirit, I said, “Let me get you a diet Dr Pepper.”
I don’t think she had a brain seizure, but close.
Chapter 18
The rain came down hard on the house and trees and yard through the night, and in the morning the bayou was running yellow and fast and high on the banks, the eddies frothy and filled with twigs and leaves. I raked a can of tuna for Mon Tee Coon on top of Tripod’s old hutch and washed my hands and made breakfast for Alafair and me. I told her about Emmeline Nightingale’s visit.
“Jimmy Nightingale’s lawyers will make Rowena Broussard look like a meltdown or a slut,” she said. “She’ll have to convince the jury not only of Nightingale’s guilt but also of the guilt of the two black guys in Wichita. That’s the place where BTK killed people under the cops’ noses for years.”
“What do you know about Jimmy Nightingale’s activities in Latin America?”
“He inherited his father’s company and worked down there awhile, then sold the company.”
“Why’d he sell it?”
“I don’t know. He likes casinos and attractive women and working people who think he’s one of their own.” She looked into space. “I remember something a woman said at a party once, like, ‘Jimmy would be the perfect man if he hadn’t tried to be like his father. He shouldn’t have done that to those poor people.’ ”
“Poor like sad or economic?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Don’t be fooled, Dave. He’s a chameleon.”
“Can you check out some of this stuff?” I said. “If you’re not doing anything else.”
“I don’t mind. Why don’t you copyedit my new book while I do that?”
From the office, I called Levon’s home and was told by the maid that he was at a bowling alley on East Main. It was a five-minute drive. Most of the lanes were empty. Levon was bowling by himself, his sleeves rolled. I walked up behind him and sat down. He curved the ball beautifully into the pocket and exploded the pins with much more force than I associated with him. A bottle of beer was perched next to the score sheet. The time was 9:13 A.M.
“I didn’t know you were an enthusiast,” I said.
“It beats analysis.”
“Emmeline Nightingale came to my house last night.”
“Here we go.”
“Nope. I’ll make it short. She says your wife was assaulted by two men twenty years ago in Kansas.”
“She’s a charming girl, isn’t she? And you’re a son of a bitch.”
“I didn’t make up the information. It’s part of the record. Maybe it’s time you start dealing with reality.”
“How is one assault related to the other?”
“In reality, it’s not. The courtroom is a different matter. Why didn’t you square with me?”
“Run the tape backward. I told you she has nightmares about a black man’s hand coming through a window.”
“I asked you about that at the time, and you changed the subject.”
He sat down behind the score table and took a swig from the beer bottle. There were no entries on his score sheet. “How bad is this going to hurt us?”
“Nightingale’s lawyers will use your wife’s history and her suicide attempt or her nationality or her life in Latin America or whatever bogus issue they can think up to bias the jury in his favor.”
“You really know how to say it.”
“What happened in Wichita?”
“The ADA was going to run for district attorney. She didn’t want to be perceived as a dupe for a white woman who willingly left a bar with two black men and went willingly to their house. That she was trusting and young was thrown out the window.”
“How’s Miss Rowena now?”
“There’re mornings I have to be by myself.”
He took another hit off the bottle. I clinked it with my fingernail. “If you’re depressed, this will screw you up proper.”
“I’m glad to hear that from such a great source of wisdom on the subject.”
I’d asked for it. “If I were you, I’d get together with my attorney and go to the department and make an addendum to my statement. See you around.”
“What does ‘see you around’ mean?”
“Let the dead bury the dead,” I said. “I’m done.”
I went back to the office and tried to clean out my head. It wasn’t an easy job. Being a cop rarely is, at least if you take the job seriously. My in-basket was full of paperwork. There were at least twenty messages on my machine, including two from Clete and one from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department and one from the widow of T. J. Dartez. My first call was to her.
“They say you gonna get off,” she said.
“Who did, Ms. Dartez?”
“I know you done it. You gonna lie to God? You gonna tell Him you ain’t done it?”
“I’m sorry about your husband’s death. But your husband was not sorry about the death of my wife.”
“You going to hell, you.”
My second call was to a female detective at the Jeff Davis Sheriff’s Department named Sherry Picard whom I’d never met but had heard about. She said, “Kevin Penny says you and your friend Clete Purcel are harassing him. In your case, with a pool cue.”