“Agreed, Reba.” I looked at her with fresh interest. “Fire away.”
“Ain’t much firing, really. Marie Louchard, the ancestress you don’t talk about, was a dilly in capital letters. At fifteen she was in a wealthy planter’s pants long enough to rob him. She shilled for a riverboat gambler. She was come-on for a saloon keeper who rolled his passed-out patrons in a back alley. She was part of them hoodoo’ers for a while, would go to their bonfires and naked dances in swamp glens. She bedded with that cutthroat Alberto Batione y Ochoa, who was spawned by families worse than Attila and Hitler. She had a bastard boy, Ranee Louchard, who was doubtless the seed of Alberto. He ended up on the gallows for cutting a trapper’s throat and selling the pelts, but not before he’d sired a son, who sired a daughter, who was Valentina’s grandmother. And that’s the whole of it, Mr. Barnard.”
“How did she end up, this dilly of an ancestress?”
“The story goes that she gave her bastard away, met a ship’s captain, went to live in France, turned professional with her hoodoo dancing, making a great hit, toast of Paris. Her salon became the watering place for artists, writers, musicians, high-ranking politicians. She lived to a great age, passing peacefully in her château in the south of France.”
“Some woman.”
“And I guess ninety percent of it ain’t fable. You want anything else?”
I shook my head, thanked her, and left the kitchen.
Once a stable, the garage was perhaps fifty yards off behind the house where the graveled driveway ended. A pickup truck was inside the sprawling frame building, keys in the ignition. Always wheels of some sort around, Val had said, so help yourself anytime you feel ambulatory.
I got in the truck, backed out, turned it, and drove off, trying to recall the street pattern between the Marlowe place and downtown.
The Sword occupied a three-story concrete-and-glass building in an area that had received city and private sector planning and reclamation money. Old structures had been razed to make way for a shopping arcade, off-street parking, a modern high rise, an arts center.
The state seal and motto were inlaid in the terra-cotta flooring of the spacious entry foyer. The main-floor office was a busy, sweeping array of desks devoted to advertising, bookkeeping, circulation. Wicket gates and a counter confined the public. A girl came to the counter, smiling and asking what she could do for me.
I told her who I was and asked if I could see Keith. She clicked a switch and intercommed with someone upstairs.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Barnard. Mr. Vereen is out. He’s on the parks commission and an inspection of some sort was scheduled this morning. If you’d care to wait, the reception room is off the foyer, a TV, copies of the paper...”
“May I wait for Mr. Vereen in your library?”
“He may be out all day and just phone in. But if you like, the morgue is on the third floor. You can take the self-service elevator in the foyer. I’ll tell Mr. Vereen’s secretary where you are, and let Miss Kitterling know you’re coming up.”
“Thank you.”
Miss Kitterling was a grayish, spare, pleasantly smiling woman in a long, brightly lighted warren of filing cabinets, tables strewn with clippings, packed bookshelves, and microfilm equipment.
An efficient woman, she soon had me seated at a small table whereon was a monitor screen, beside which she deposited the films I requested.
“I’ll see if my computer gives me any further cross-indexing, Mr. Barnard, but I’m sure this is the batch of it.”
I thanked her, and she retired to her long table and clipping shears, giving me a covert glance that expressed curiosity... an assistant secretary of state, personal friend of Mr. Vereen’s, poring through files covering St. Valentine’s Day, unsolved murders of the past ten years.
I imagined she would have a go at the files herself, once the mysterious stranger was out of sight. She wouldn’t find any answers, I finally admitted to myself. She wouldn’t know what she was actually looking for. I knew vaguely, and I didn’t find any answers.
The stories were routinely out of police records: DEAD MAN FOUND IN MAD FRENCHWOMAN’S COVE. DEAD WOMAN FOUND IN APARTMENT. MAN SOUGHT IN SHOOTING. GIRL STRANGLED IN BACK ALLEY.
I thought of the Atlanta child murders and how many little black boys had died before the city got the drift. Sometimes you do have to hit people over the head to get their attention. The Atlanta case had two critical elements: black boys, and a compressed time frame.
The Wickens situation lacked both. No visible relationship or common link between the victims — until Lissa, only Lissa had glimpsed a shred of light. No mounting certainty that next week or the week after would yield a dead body of prescribed race and color.
Just a body fished out of Mad Frenchwoman’s Cove now and then, some of them coincidentally on St. Valentine’s Day. Start digging in that direction and you might find Yuletide, even Halloween victims.
Without critical elements, there was no hue and cry, no marshaling of special forces by police, not even the same detective quoted in consecutive years, except for the past two. His name was Homicide Detective Max Dufarge.
I thanked Miss Kitterling for her hospitality and asked the directions to police headquarters.
It was less than two blocks distant.
“Max is out, can I help you?”
“Out on a case?” I asked the burly desk sergeant.
He nodded. “That’s his job, isn’t it? Girl this time, right under our noses.”
“Your noses?”
“Cruddy parking garage... girl strangled, body in her car... before this, too many muggings, senior citizens mostly, like we should patrol every level around the clock.”
Phones were ringing; a lawyer was haggling bail for a client; two cops dragged in a wildly resisting drunk.
“This girl — have you identified her?”
The desk sergeant grimaced. “Max and his people just got over there and cordoned it off. She must have been killed within the hour. Max just radioed in for a make on a tag number and driver’s license issued to a Lissa Aubunelli.”
A captain was yelling at the sergeant from a frosted glass cubicle.
The sergeant muttered a curse under his breath. “Look, friend, the public is always curious. That’s why we have TV. You can see all about it on the evening newscast.”
4
Valentina reacted to the news with a frightful calm. “Lissa is dead,” she said to no one outside herself. “I won’t be seeing Lissa again.”
She looked then, at the faces, mine the closest. “I would like to go up to my room, Cody.”
“Val—”
“I’ll be okay. Just give me a small moment to accept it.”
She went, quietly and quickly, up the broad stairs, and, watching from the bottom level, I heard her door close. I crept up and stood uncertainly. Then I heard her weeping beyond the closed door, and I knew she would come out, steady, dry-eyed, when she was quite ready.
George and Elva still stood in the lower hallway. George was stunned, but had presence — white faced, tight lipped, in control, the unflappable career army officer. Elva was rigidly steeled, tears in her eyes.
She shook off George’s supporting arm. “I’ll have to tell Reba and Clyde.”
“How about Lissa’s family?” I asked. “Shouldn’t it be one of you, rather than a policeman knocking at their door?”