Sean McClain was leaning against my pickup in uniform, his head on his chest, the brim of his hat pulled down over his eyes.
“What’s happenin’?” I said.
“Didn’t mean to get in your face last night,” he replied.
“You didn’t.”
“I been studying on a few things. I don’t know if they’re he’pful or not.”
“You figured out who was in your barn?”
“Probably that little rodent nobody can catch.”
“Wimple?”
“Whatever,” he said.
“Let me set your mind at ease on that,” I said. “If that were Smiley Wimple, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“I’d be dead?”
“Probably.”
“I been thinking about various clues on these murders,” he said.
“Clues?”
“There haven’t been many. Not from the day we seen that poor lady floating on the cross.”
“I’m not following you, Sean.”
“The clue we didn’t give much mind to is that green tennis shoe me and you found on the beach. Size seven.”
“It’s not much of a clue, Sean.”
“Y’all run a DNA on it, though, right?”
“Yeah, it belonged to Lucinda Arceneaux.”
“If she was wearing one, she was wearing two.”
“That’s right,” I said, my attention slipping away.
“One of the people who called in the 911 said there was a scream from a lighted cabin cruiser.”
“You got it.”
“Why not search every cabin cruiser on Cypremort Point?” he said.
“Search warrants aren’t that broad, Sean.”
He picked up a pebble from the curb and flung it at the street. “Well, I was just trying to come up with something. Sorry I ain’t much he’p.”
But Sean had opened a door in my head. A green tennis shoe with blue stripes. It didn’t go with the purple dress Lucinda Arceneaux had died in.
“Why you got that look on your face?” Sean said.
“Because I just realized how stupid I’ve been.”
I wouldn’t call it an epistemological breakthrough, but it was a beginning. Monday morning I went to our evidence locker and found Lucinda Arceneaux’s purple dress. I also retrieved the green tennis shoe with blue stripes that Sean and I had found. I signed for both the shoe and the dress, then drove to St. Martinville and got a plainclothes to let me in Bella Delahoussaye’s house. In her closet I found almost the same purple dress on a hanger, except it had been sprayed with sequins. She had been wearing it the first time I saw her at the blues club on the bayou.
I drove to the little settlement of Cade and the trailer home of Arceneaux’s father, located on cinder blocks behind his clapboard church. The bottle tree next to the church tinkled in the wind. When the reverend opened the door, he looked ten years older than he had at the time of his daughter’s death. I was holding the dress and the tennis shoe inside a paper bag.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“I’m Dave Robicheaux, Reverend. I wondered if I could talk with you a few minutes.”
“You’re who?”
“Detective Robicheaux. I was assigned the investigation into your daughter’s death.”
“Oh, yes, suh. I remember now,” he said, pushing open the door. His hand was quivering on his cane, his eyes jittering.
I stepped inside. “I need you to look at this dress.” I pulled it from the bag. Sand and salt were still in the folds.
“Why you want me to look at it?”
“Lucinda was wearing this when she died. Have you seen it before?”
“I don’t remember her wearing a dress like that. But I cain’t be sure, suh.”
“I see.”
“What else you got in there?”
“A tennis shoe. Do you recognize it as hers?”
He took it from my hand. The wet shine in his eyes was immediate.
“She was wearing tennis shoes like these the last time you saw her?” I said.
“Yes, suh. When she left for the airport.”
“Sir, why don’t you sit down? Here, let me help you.”
“No, I’m all right. Can I have her shoe?”
“We have to keep it a while. I’ll make sure it’s returned to you.”
“That dress couldn’t be hers,” he said.
“Why not?”
“She always called her green and blue shoes her ‘little girl’ shoes. She wore them with jeans. She always dressed tasteful.”
“What do you know about Desmond Cormier?”
“He paid for her burial. He’s a nice man.”
“You ever hear of a man named Antoine Butterworth?”
“No, suh.”
“Did Lucinda talk about Mr. Cormier?”
“I never axed her much about those Hollywood people. She said most of them were no different from anybody else. How’d she get that dress on? They took her clothes off when she was dead? Who would want to degrade her like that? I don’t understand. How come this was done to her?”
His voice broke. He couldn’t finish.
I silently made a vow that one day I would have an answer to that question, and I would put a mark on the perpetrator that he would carry to the grave, if not beyond.
Tuesday morning, we got a search warrant on the entirety of Desmond’s house at Cypremort Point. It was a hard sell. Previously, we had been granted a search warrant on the part of the house considered the living area of Antoine Butterworth. The district attorney had to convince the judge that Desmond was a viable suspect in the death of Lucinda Arceneaux. The truth was otherwise. Desmond was a walking contradiction: a Leonardo, a humanist, a man who had the body of a Greek god, a man who would hang from the skid of a helicopter and then bully one of his subordinates. The DA got lost in his own vagueness and asked the judge if I could speak.
“Since you don’t seem to be informed about your own investigation, I would be happy to hear from Detective Robicheaux,” the judge said. He was a Medal of Honor recipient and had thick snow-white hair and was probably too old for the bench, but his patrician manners and soft plantation dialect were such a fond reminder of an earlier, more genteel culture that we didn’t want to lose him. “Good morning, Detective Robicheaux. What is it you have to say, suh?”
“Desmond Cormier has been elusive and uncooperative since the beginning of our investigation, Your Honor,” I said. “Through a telescope on Mr. Cormier’s deck, I saw the deceased, Lucinda Arceneaux, tied to a cross floating in Weeks Bay. I asked Mr. Cormier to look through the telescope and tell me what he saw. He denied seeing anything. The deputy with me, Sean McClain, looked through the telescope and saw the same thing I had.”
“The body?” the judge said.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“I don’t know if that’s enough to grant you a warrant, Detective.”
“Mr. Cormier also broke in to the home of Deputy Frenchie Lautrec after Lautrec took his life or was killed by others. Lautrec had a tattoo of a Maltese cross on one leg. Desmond Cormier has one, too. I’ve seen it. We have reason to believe that Lautrec may have been involved both with prostitution and the series of the murders in our area. I believe Mr. Cormier may have been an associate of Deputy Lautrec.”
I had overreached the boundaries of probability and even the boundaries of truth, but by this time, I didn’t care about either.
“I am deeply disturbed by the implications in this investigation and the paucity of evidence it has produced,” the judge said. I absolutely loved his diction. “Your warrant is granted. I recommend you conduct your search in such a way that there will be no evidentiary problems when the person or persons who committed these crimes is brought into court. We are all sickened and saddened by what has occurred in our community. Good luck to you, gentlemen.”
One hour later, Sean McClain, Bailey, and I began ripping apart Desmond’s house.