“No clever remarks?” he said.
“I think you’re full of it.”
“Just going to let it roll off your back?”
I didn’t look up. “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?”
“Let’s see. Three things, actually. I took a couple of AK rounds that probably had feces on them. One of my wives gave me the clap. And spending time in this place.”
I took the manila envelope from his hands, walked him to his vehicle, and slammed him into the seat hard enough to jar his teeth. Then I tore his envelope into pieces and sprinkled them on his head.
“Keep being the great example you are,” I said. “We know you can do it.”
Then I got into my truck, drove around his Subaru — scraping the fender with my bumper — and headed up Loreauville Road to Bailey’s cottage, my heart the size and density of a cantaloupe.
She wasn’t home. I got on my cell phone and called Frank Rizzo, an old friend and former arson investigator who had served five years as a superintendent with the New Orleans Fire Department. “Bailey Ribbons?” he said. “Yeah, that clangs bells. You say a schoolhouse in Holy Cross?”
“Yeah, in the Lower Ninth.”
“Can you give me a date?”
“No.” I hated to tell him I had torn up the document that contained the information we needed.
“I’ll get on it. You need it right away? It’s the weekend.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
Two hours later, he called back. “It was twenty-one years ago, after school. Some Girl Scouts were holding a meeting there. One of them said she had learned how to make a fire with flint and kindling. But she couldn’t get the fire started. The other girls lost interest and went outside. A few minutes later, the curtains were burning.”
“Who was doing the demonstration with the flint and kindling?”
“Bailey Ribbons. She was thirteen.”
“So it was an accident?” I said.
“This is where it gets sticky. She denied starting the fire. There was a hot plate in the room. She claimed one of the other girls had left it on and a coat had fallen off a wall hook on top of the coil. Except there were match heads in the kindling. It was obvious she wanted to impress the other girls and had set up the demonstration before she got there.”
“What was the conclusion on the report?”
“Maybe the coat did fall on the hot plate. A social worker and the school counselor said the girl had problems. The mother was a drunk, the father gone. The mother and daughter lived on food stamps and church charity. We gave the girl a lecture and dropped it. It was a judgment call, the kind you want to forget.”
I could hear a sound in my ears like wind blowing in a seashell. “Why did you want to forget it?”
“When you train as an arson investigator, you try to learn what goes on in the head of a firebug. It’s about power and control. That little girl had every warning sign on her. Has this woman done something I should know about?”
I felt my throat tighten. “Her jacket is clean. A guy was trying to spread some dirt on her.”
“You doing a background check for the department?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Glad to hear everything worked out.”
“Yeah,” I said meaninglessly.
“It can go the other way sometimes.”
“Pardon?”
“You know, you err on the side of compassion. Then ten years down the line, you find out the person you let go fried a bunch of people.”
After I hung up, my knees were so weak I had to sit down.
That evening a squall blew through the parish, knocking down branches on power lines and flooding the storm sewers and gutters on East Main. I had no idea where Bailey was. I wondered if I had been played, or if I was dealing with a sociopath or a pyromaniac. But that’s the nature of gossip and lies or half-truths or incomplete information. Suspicion begins with a fine crack and grows into a chasm. I fed Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon in the kitchen and tried to take comfort in their company.
“How are you guys doing?” I said.
I got a tail swish from Mon Tee Coon.
“Let me make a confession to you,” I said. “I think the world would be a better place if we turned it over to you and the rest of us got off the planet.”
They continued eating, noncommittal. I heard Alafair pull into the drive and get out and run through the puddles into the house. She got a towel out of the bathroom and came into the kitchen, wiping her face. “All the traffic lights are knocked out. What a mess.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“Playing handball at Red Lerille’s with Lou.”
“Earlier today Antoine Butterworth was here with some dirt on Bailey Ribbons.”
“Dave, I don’t want to hear any more about Antoine. He’s weird. What else is new? End of subject.”
“This isn’t about Butterworth. He says he got his information from Lou Wexler.”
“No, this isn’t adding up. What would Lou know about Bailey Ribbons? Why would he have any interest in her?”
“Evidently, Wexler hired a PI as part of his scut work for Desmond Cormier.”
“Lou does not do scut work. He’s a producer and a writer. He’s bankrupted himself out of his loyalty to Desmond. You may not know this, but when Des finishes the picture, he may well have produced one of the greatest films ever made. And the only way he can finish it is to beg, borrow, and steal every nickel he can. Maybe you don’t agree with that, but give him and Lou some credit.”
I took the towel from her hand and wiped her hair with it. “You want me to fix you something to eat?”
“No.” Her eyes remained on mine. “This isn’t about Antoine or Lou, is it?”
“No.”
“What did the PI dig up on Bailey?”
“She may have accidentally started a fire in a schoolhouse when she was thirteen.”
“That’s it?”
“She’d put some matchheads inside some kindling she wanted to light with a flint.”
Alafair went to the icebox and took a pitcher of tea from the tray, her eyes neutral and impossible to read. She had graduated with honors from Reed and had finished Stanford Law at the top of her class. She had an IQ that only two people in a million have.
“What’s the rest of it?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Don’t play games with me, Dave.”
“I’m not sure who Bailey is.”
“She’s got a history? Something to do with fire?”
“I’d better not say any more.”
She set the pitcher of tea on the table and turned toward me. “Oh, Dave, what have you gotten yourself into?”
One hour later, the sky had grown darker, the rain heavier, blowing in sheets on the bayou. The phone rang on the kitchen counter. I looked at the caller ID before I picked up. “Is that you, Sean?”
“Remember when we went fishing and you said you’d have my back?” he said.
“Sure.” The truth was, I didn’t remember. But that didn’t matter. “What’s up, podna?”
“I’m a little snaky today and probably not seeing things right. Some of Hugo Tillinger’s church friends was taking his body back to Texas, so I went over to the funeral home and hung around. I wasn’t in uniform.”
Wrong move, I thought. But I didn’t say it.
“One guy asked if I was a relative or friend. I told him I was just paying my respects. I guess you could call that lying.”
“You were in a difficult situation,” I said. I rubbed my forehead and sat down in a chair. I knew where we were going, and I wanted to get out of it as fast as I could. I started to speak again but didn’t get the chance.
“So the guy asks me where I knew Tillinger from. I told the guy I shot him.”