The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (14 page)

“Koko, I just need the information. I don’t need an interpretation of it. I don’t need the drama, either.”

“You trying to tell me something?”

“Yeah, everybody experiences loss.”

He got up from the chair. His body had the sloping contours of a haystack. “Keep the file. I got the Xerox in my office,” he said.

“You test people. That’s all I was saying. It gets to be a drag.”

“You want my opinion of how she went out? The Bible says Jesus sweated blood. At a certain level of fear and depression, it can happen. The capillaries pop, and blood issues from the pores with a person’s sweat. You want to know if this girl suffered? You bet your ass.”

When he closed the door behind him, his odor clung to the furniture like a gray fog.

A half hour later, Mack Bertrand, our chief forensic chemist, called from the Acadiana crime lab. He believed the saucer and teacup and shoes and lipstick tube and handbag and winter coats and the other items retrieved from the burial site on the Delahoussaye property had been placed inside the grave with the girl’s remains and had not been dumped there earlier.

“How do you know?”

“Her body fluids are on every item we ran. Outside the immediate disturbed area, we found no buried garbage or debris of any kind.”

“What do you have in the way of prints?”

“Either rainwater or mud ruined anything that might have been there. If this is any help to you, the winter coats had levels of mold inside them that indicates they were stored a long time, probably in a damp place, before they went into the ground.”

I called the sheriff’s department in Jeff Davis Parish and then went into Helen’s office and told her of the information I had gotten from Koko Hebert and the crime lab. “Has Jeff Davis Parish got a missing girl that fits the description of the vic?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Why did the perp bury her here?”

“Who knows? People dump dead animals out there. No one is going to pay attention to carrion birds circling around.”

“Think we have a serial killer, a guy with a fetish?”

“Guys with a fetish don’t give up their souvenirs. They move their hiding place around, but they don’t give up their trophies.”

She turned her swivel chair toward the window. Across the bayou, the children had gone and the park was empty. A birthday balloon, the air half gone, the painted face on the Mylar surface shriveled into a grimace, floated out of a tree onto the water.

“We need somebody in the box,” Helen said. “This all started with that convict over in Mississippi, what’s-his-name—”

“Elmore Latiolais.”

“Right, the guy who was trying to dime Herman Stanga. Pick up Stanga.”

“For what?”

“His front yard is covered with dog shit. He didn’t brush his teeth this morning. His mother should have had herself sterilized. Any of those will do.”

C
LETE
P
URCEL’S OFFICE
was located on Main, in a refurbished nineteenth-century brick building that had a steel colonnade attached to the front wall. He was proud of his office, and on the flagstone patio in back, he had placed a glass-topped table inset with an umbrella, and when life with his clientele was too much, he sat on the patio among the banana fronds and enjoyed a snack and read the newspaper or enjoyed the fine view of Bayou Teche and the drawbridge at Burke Street. When he went onto his patio, he entered his private domain, and his secretary was instructed not to bother him with any of the miscreants, addicts, and marginal hookers who visited and left and returned to his waiting room as though it were a social center.

If a client became disruptive or experienced a psychotic episode or began throwing furniture, the secretary called Clete on his cell phone. Otherwise, he ate his snack and gazed at the flowers and caladiums and oak trees and flooded elephant ears along the banks of the bayou and the passing tugs and workboats that were headed for the Gulf of Mexico. On this day in particular, Clete had resolved he would stop thinking about Herman Stanga and the jail time he might have to do for tearing the man up behind the Gate Mouth club. He had just set aside his copy of
The Daily Iberian
and nodded off in his chair when his secretary opened the French doors that gave onto the patio. “Mr. Layton Blanchet is outside,” she said.

“What does he want?”

“He says he has an appointment. He said he called this morning.”

Clete thought about it. “Yeah, he called, but he didn’t have an appointment.”

“What do you want me to tell him?”

Clete put a mint in his mouth and took his comb out of his pocket. He widened his eyes to wake himself up. “Send him on through,” he said.

The nature of Clete’s vocation did not allow him selectivity. Daily he came in contact with bail skips, pathological liars, bill collectors, loan-company operatives who ran sales scams in slums, wife batterers, runaway girls who had been raped by their fathers and brothers, attorneys who were kept on retainers by pimps and drug dealers, and insurance reps who convinced doped-up accident victims in hospital beds to sign claim waivers. The subculture that provided his livelihood was predatory and Darwinian and often without mercy, but to those who lived inside it, it was as natural a way of life as a zoning board licensing porn theaters and massage parlors in a residential neighborhood comprised primarily of elderly and poor people.

Clete dealt with problematic situations among his clientele in the way a field surgeon would treat a gangrenous wound, or perhaps in the way a nurse in a third-world typhus ward would treat her patients. He clicked off a switch in his head and did not think about what his eyes saw and what his thoughts told him and what his hands were required by necessity to do.

Dealing with people from the mainstream presented a different kind of challenge. Non-felons, people who attended church and ran businesses and belonged to civic clubs, upscale women whose faces wore the ceramic glaze of Botox, came to him in almost secretive fashion, explaining their problems in meticulous detail, keeping the wounds green and festering as they talked about seeking justice. Almost always they attributed the origins of their problems to the misdeeds of others. They considered themselves normal and without blinking lied both to him and to themselves. At the end of their relationship with Clete, no matter how positive the outcome, they had a way of not recognizing him on the street.

What bothered Clete most about Layton Blanchet was his manic level of energy and the power that seemed to flow through his arm when he shook hands, as though control of the other person was supposed to begin as soon as Layton’s fingers crawled up someone’s wrist. The freshness of Layton’s expensive clothes and the intense clarity of his eyes made Clete think of a sailing ship bursting through waves, or in a darker mode, of an avaricious Greek warrior dropping from inside a wooden horse into the silent streets of Troy.

“This is where you work, huh?” Layton said, seating himself in the umbrella’s shade without being asked. “Dave Robicheaux and I were talking about you not long ago. I’m glad you’re making it in New Iberia. It can be a tough town for outsiders, you know, and all that antebellum family crap. Where’d you get that bunch in the waiting room? You bus them in from detox?”

“Jerry Springer does referrals for me.”

But Layton didn’t laugh. He looked at the backs of his hands, then at the bayou and at the old convent building on the other side of the drawbridge, deep in the shadow of the oaks. “I think I got a problem with my wife,” he said. “One that’s eating my lunch.”

“You have security people who can handle that, Mr. Blanchet.”

“It’s Layton. ‘Mister’ is for the country club. My corporate employees don’t need to know my family business. Carolyn is a good girl, but I think she’s having an affair. Maybe it’s middle age. Maybe she thinks she’s losing her looks. Maybe she’s tired of a man who talks about money all the time, although she has no trouble spending boxcar-loads of it. But she’s getting it on with somebody, and I want to know who the guy is.”

“How do you know she’s unfaithful to you?”

“I can tell.”

“How?”

“Do I have to go into detail?”

“It doesn’t leave my office. It doesn’t go into a written file.”

“About nine o’clock she goes into the library and buries herself in a book. Or she’s got a stomachache. Or she pulled a muscle on the tennis court. Look, I’m a realist. I’m fifteen years older than she is. But if some guy is in my wife’s pants, he’s not going to be out there laughing at me behind my back. Get me?”

“Not exactly.”

“What is it I’m not clear about?” Layton asked.

“Are we talking about breaking somebody’s wheels?”

“What difference does it make? You give me the information, then you’re out of it.”

“I don’t like being party to a domestic homicide,” Clete said. “Let me share a secret with you. Sometimes clients with problems like yours come in and tell me only half of the story. They’re having affairs themselves, they’re full of guilt, and they transfer it to the wife. So they spend a lot of money and accuse me of colluding with their old lady when I come up with nothing.”

Layton stared out into the sunlight, his eyes as clear as blue glass. “You’re good at what you do, Mr. Purcel, or I wouldn’t be here. I don’t assault or kill people, and I don’t pay others to do it, either. As far as my own behavior is concerned, yeah, there have been instances when I haven’t always done the right thing. But that’s not the problem. I know my wife, and I know how she thinks, and I know she’s pumping it with somebody. Can you help me or not?”

“It’s a hundred and fifty dollars an hour and expenses.”

“Done.”

Clete rubbed at his mouth, wondering why Layton Blanchet had bothered him, wondering why a tuning fork was vibrating in his chest. The wind ruffled the canvas umbrella over his head. Layton continued to stare at Clete, either waiting for him to speak or taking his inventory or secretly savoring the moment after imposing his will on Clete.
The Daily Iberian
still lay on the tabletop. Its thickness was folded across the lead story. Clete flipped it open, exposing the headline. “That’s too bad, isn’t it?” he said to change the subject and end the conversation.

“What is?” Layton asked.

“Another young girl killed and dumped on a country road.”

“It’s going to continue till we get to the root of the problem.”

“Pardon?” Clete said.

“Welfare, illegitimacy, people with their hand out. That’s where it all starts. They’ve got their boy in the White House now. They’ll be lining up for every dollar they can stuff in their pockets. Most of them would strangle on their own spit if you didn’t swab out their throats for them.”

Clete kept his face empty. “I’ll give you a call when I have some information for you, Mr. Blanchet,” he said.

“It’s Layton.”

H
ELEN
S
OILEAU HAD
told me to bring in Herman Stanga and put him in the box. But Herman was an elusive quarry. He was not at his house, nor down on Hopkins or Railroad Avenue in New Iberia’s old red-light district. I called the Gate Mouth club in St. Martinville, the place where Clete Purcel had broken open Herman Stanga’s head against an oak tree. The man who answered the phone said, “You got the Gate Mout’. What you need?”

“Is Herman there?” I said.

“Who wants to know?”

I hung up without replying and called my fellow A.A. member Emma Poche at the St. Martinville Sheriff’s Department and asked her to sit on the club till I got there.

“Maybe this is providential,” she said. “I was thinking of calling you today.”

“About what?”

“Some twelve-step stuff.”

“You ought to take that up with your sponsor.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Don’t let Stanga go anywhere. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“You got a warrant?”

“He’s not under arrest. We just need a little information from him.”

“Sounds believable to me. Herman Stanga, friend of the court. Glad to hear about that,” she replied.

I checked out an unmarked car and drove into St. Martinville’s black district and pulled in behind Emma’s cruiser, which was parked two doors down from the Gate Mouth club. She was sitting behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette, the driver’s window half down. She was wearing shades and looked thoughtful and pretty with her hat pushed back on her head. Her cheeks were pooled with color, the sunlight catching in her gold hair. I got in her vehicle and choked on the smoke. “Stanga is still inside?” I said.

“Unless he grew wings. You got a minute?” she said.

“Sheriff Soileau is waiting on me.”

“I’ve got a situation on my conscience. I don’t want to drink over it. It goes beyond even that. I’m desperate, Dave.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out, either. “You should be talking to a female sponsor. The two operative words there are ‘female’ and ‘sponsor.’”

“My sponsor is in jail. Guess what for. Driving under the influence. Top that.” She threw her cigarette into the street and rolled down the windows and turned on the air conditioner full blast. The sidewalk was empty, the front door of the club within easy view.

“I’ll try to help if I can,” I said.

“I’ve been seeing somebody. We had a relationship a long time ago, then we bumped into each other during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. We found out we were both going to the same party in the Quarter later, and we got pretty drunk and woke up at one in the afternoon the next day at the St. Charles Guest House. I’ve had bad hangovers, but never one that bad.”

“Have you been to a meeting since?”

“Yeah, I went to a couple.” She twisted her mouth into a button.

“Did you own up to a slip?”

“Not really.”

“You haven’t owned up to anyone?”

“That’s what I’m doing now, right?”

I was beginning to feel I had been played. “I don’t think you’re going to get any peace on this until you come clean at a meeting, Emma.”

“Last week my long-lost lover told me it was over. This was the same person who told me I smelled like the Caribbean and that my climaxes were like strings of wet firecrackers. I have to make some choices, Dave.”