The New Iberia Blues

by James Lee Burke

  “We’ll be running along,” I said to Desmond. “We’ll call the Coast Guard.”

  Sean looked through the telescope, then stood.

  “Let’s go, Deputy,” I said.

  “Hold on,” he said. He wiped the eyepiece with a handkerchief and looked again. Then he turned and fixed his eyes on mine.

  “What?” I said.

  “Son of a bitch is hung on a snag,” he said. “Those aren’t sharks out there, either. They’re dolphins.”

  I stared at Desmond and Butterworth. Desmond’s face blanched. Butterworth was grinning, above the fray, enjoying the moment.

  “I’ve got a boat,” Desmond said, collecting himself. “There’s really a body there? I didn’t see it, Dave.”

  “My, my, isn’t this turning into a lovefest?” Butterworth said.

  I punched in Helen Soileau’s number on my cell. “Y’all stick around. My boss lady might have a question or two for you.”

  Chapter Two

  WE REACHED THE body and the cross with a department rescue boat at 10:34 p.m. In the glare of searchlights, two divers jumped off the bow, freed the cross from a submerged tree, and glided it onto a sandspit, the waves rippling over the dead woman’s face. She was tied to the beams with clothesline. Her eyes were open; they were the same pale blue as Desmond’s.

  Our sheriff was Helen Soileau. She had worked her way up from meter maid to detective grade at NOPD and later became my homicide partner at the New Iberia Police Department. After the city department merged with the parish, she was elected our first female sheriff.

  Helen and a paramedic and Sean and I waded through the shallows onto the sand. Helen shone her flashlight on the body. “Jesus.”

  I’d been wrong in my earlier description. The dead woman was not just fastened to the cross with clothesline. Her ankles were nailed sideways to the wood, which twisted her knees out of alignment with her hips. Helen stooped down and straightened the dead woman’s dress and untied her wrists. A paramedic unzipped a body bag. I squatted down beside the cross. “How long do you think she was in the water?”

  Helen held her flashlight beam on the dead woman’s face. “She wasn’t submerged. Hard to say. Maybe eight or nine hours.”

  “That doesn’t compute with the 911 calls about a scream early this morning,” I said.

  “Maybe this isn’t the same woman,” Helen said.

  “We picked up a tennis shoe from the beach,” I said. “A size seven.”

  “That’s about the right size,” she said. “No wounds I can see except on the ankles. No ligature marks or bruising on the neck. Who the hell would do this?”

  We were both wearing latex gloves. I touched one of the nails that had been driven through the woman’s ankles. “Whoever did it knew something about Roman crucifixions. The nails went through the ankles rather than the tops of the feet. The bones in the feet would have torn loose from the nails.”

  Helen looked down at the body, her face empty. “Poor girl. She can’t be more than twenty-five.”

  I remained on my haunches and took the flashlight from Helen’s hand and shone it on the ankle wounds. They were clean, as though they had not bled. There was a cheap metal chain around one ankle. A tiny piece of silver wire barely clung to one of the links.

  In South Louisiana, religion is a complex matter. Not all of it originated in Jerusalem or Rome. Some of it has origins in the Caribbean Islands or western Africa. For many poor whites and people of color, the gris-gris—bad fortune or an evil spell—can be avoided only by wearing a perforated dime on a string around a person’s ankle. I knew a white couple, Cajuns who couldn’t read or write, who tied a string around their infant child’s throat to prevent the croup from getting into her chest. The child strangled to death in her crib.

  “See something?” Helen said.

  I stood up, my knees popping. “If she was wearing a charm, it didn’t do her much good.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Helen said.

  A ball of yellow heat lightning rolled through a cluster of storm clouds and disappeared without making a sound. “I didn’t catch that.”

  “There’s not a scratch on her,” Helen said. “You know what the crabs do to any kind of carcass?”

  I looked across the bay at Cypremort Point. All the lights were on in Desmond’s house. I wondered if he or his friend was watching us through the telescope. I wondered if I had ever really known Desmond Cormier.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Helen said. “This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

  • • •

  I WAS THRICE A widower and lived with my adopted daughter, Alafair, in a shotgun house on East Main in New Iberia. When I got back from Weeks Bay, I went straight to bed and didn’t tell Alafair where I had been or what I had seen until the next morning. It was raining, and Bayou Teche was over the banks and running through the trees at the foot of our property, and there was sleet inside the rain that struck the tin roof as hard as birdshot. Alafair had spread newspaper on the kitchen floor and brought our warrior cat, Snuggs, and his friend Mon Tee Coon inside and begun feeding them. Her face showed no expression while I told her about the woman on the cross.

  “No identification?” she said.

  “A tiny chain around the ankle.”

  “Nothing on the chain?”

  “A piece of wire. Maybe a charm had been torn loose.”

  Her eyes roamed over my face. “What did you leave out of the story?”

  “I saw the cross and the woman through Desmond’s telescope. So did the deputy. But Desmond and this guy Butterworth said they couldn’t see anything.”

  She put a plate of biscuits and two cups of coffee on the table, then sat down. “Would it make sense for them to lie about what you had already seen?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “But how smart are liars?”

  “The woman had nails through her ankles?”

  I nodded.

  “But you don’t know the cause of death?”

  “No. There was no blood in the nail wounds. I hope she was dead when the nails were put in.”

  “You need to get these images out of your head, Dave.”

  She had graduated with honors from Reed and at the top of Stanford Law. Before she started writing novels and screenplays, she’d clerked at the Ninth Circuit and been an ADA in Portland, Oregon. But to me she was still the little girl who hoarded her Nancy Drew and Baby Squanto books.

  “What’s with this guy Butterworth?” I said.

  “He started out as an actor and screenwriter, then became a producer. There’re some rumors about him, but actually, he has a lot of talent.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “Coke and pills, S and M.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “He makes pictures that people enjoy,” she said. “He casts the biggest stars in the industry.”

  “I bet he’s a regular at his church, too,” I said.

  “I don’t think you got enough sleep.”

  “I’d better get ready for work.”

  “It’s Saturday,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “I’ll get you another cup of coffee,” she said.

  I put on my hat and went out the back door and walked down the slope and stood under a live oak tree and watched the raindrops dimpling the bayou. I could not get the dead woman’s gaze out of my mind, nor the smooth chocolate perfection of her skin—the only visible violations on it, the nail wounds. Helen was right. Marine life is not kind to the dead. But the woman seemed spared. Was it coincidental that dolphins were her escorts?

  I have investigated many homicides. It’s the eyes that stay with you. And it’s not for the reason people think. There is no message in them. Instead, they force you to re-create the terror and despair and pain that marked their last moments on earth. Two kinds of cops eat their gun: the corrupt ones and the ones who let the dead lay claim upon the quick.

  • • •

  LATER THAT AFTERN
OON Clete Purcel pulled into my driveway in the restored 1956 Cadillac he had bought the previous week. With its sleek lines and hand-waxed maroon paint job and chrome-spoked whitewall tires and leather interior, it made our contemporary designs look like shoe boxes with wheels. The top was down; two fishing rods were propped on the back seat. He stepped out on the gravel and removed a leaf from the hood and dropped it on the lawn as he might an injured moth. “Want to entertain the fish?”

  “I’m meeting with the coroner at Iberia General,” I said.

  “About that body y’all pulled out of the salt?”

  “It’s in the paper?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. He looked down the street at the Shadows—

  a plantation home built in 1834—his hair freshly barbered, his face pink in the sun’s glow through the live oaks. “I need to tell you something.”

  I knew the pattern. When Clete did something wrong, he headed for my house or office. I was his confessor, his cure-all, his bottle of aspirin and vitamin B, his hit of vodka Collins to sweep the spiders back into their nest. He was wearing pressed gray slacks and a fresh Hawaiian shirt and shined oxblood loafers. He had not come to fish.

  “Anything going on?” I asked.

  “Ten days ago I put a boat in by the train trestle over the Mermentau. Right at sunset. Nobody around. No wind. The water just right. The goggle-eye were starting to rise in the lily pads. Then I heard the train coming. A freight going about twenty-five miles an hour.”

  Clete was not given to brevity. “Got it,” I said.

  “It was a perfect evening, see. It’s kind of my private spot. So I was daydreaming and not thinking real sharp.”

  “What are we talking about, Cletus?”

  “I’m talking about the freight. It was wobbling and rattling, and the moon was rising, and about eight or nine cars went by, and then I saw a guy in white pants and a white shirt standing on the spine of an empty boxcar. There was blue trim on his collar and shirt pockets. Then the guy flew off the boxcar into the river. He must have hit in the middle or he would have broken his legs.”

  “He was wearing a uniform?”

  “Yeah.” Clete waited.

  “What kind?” I said.

  “The kind you see in a lot of Texas jails. He popped up from the water and looked right at me. Then he started swimming downstream.”

  “You had your cell phone?”

  “It was in the Caddy,” he said. There was a pause. “I wasn’t going to call it in, anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wasn’t sure about anything. I couldn’t think. You know what those for-profit joints are like.”

  “Let’s keep the lines straight, Clete. We can’t be sure he escaped from a for-profit jail. Or any kind of jail.”

  “This is the way I saw it. Why dime a guy you don’t know the whole story on? I hate a snitch. I should have been born a criminal.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. So what happened to the guy?”

  “He waded through a canebrake and disappeared. So I wrote it off. Live and let live.”

  “So why are you bothered now?”

  “I did some googling and found out a guy who committed two homicides got loose from a joint outside Austin. That was eleven days ago. The guy is supposed to be a religious fanatic. Then there was the story in the Daily Iberian today about the woman you pulled out of the drink. There was nothing in the story about the cross. I got that from the reporter. Now I got this guy on my conscience.”

  “What’s the name of the escaped inmate?”

  “Hugo Tillinger. He set fire to his house and burned up his wife and ten-year-old daughter because they listened to Black Sabbath.”

  “Why didn’t he get the injection table?”

  “He did. He tried to kill himself. He got loose from a prison hospital. What should I do?”

  “You saw a guy jump off a freight. You’ve reported it to me. I’ll take it from here. End of story.”

  “Who’s the dead woman?” he asked.

  “We have no idea.”

  “This is eating my lunch, Dave.”

  What could I say? He was the best cop I ever knew, but he’d ruined his career with dope and booze and Bourbon Street strippers and had hooked up with the Mob for a while and now made a living as a PI who ran down bail skips and looked in people’s windows.

  “Come inside,” I said. “We’ll go out for supper.”

  “You said you were meeting with the coroner.”

  “I’ll talk to him on the phone.”

  “You don’t have to babysit me. I’ll see you later.”

  “Go easy on the hooch,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s the source of the problem, all right,” he replied. “Thanks for the reminder I’m a lush.”

  • • •

  CORMAC WATTS WAS our coroner. He had a genteel Virginia accent and wore size-fourteen shoes and seersucker pants high on his hips and long-sleeve dress shirts without a coat, and had a physique like a stick figure and a haircut that resembled an inverted shoe brush.

  At Iberia General, in a room without windows, one that was too cold and smelled of chemicals, our Jane Doe lay on a stainless steel table, one with gutters and drains and tubes that could dispose of the fluids released during an autopsy. A sheet was pulled to her chin; her eyes were closed. One hand and part of the forearm were exposed; the fingers were a dark blue at the tips and had started to curl into a claw.

  “Beautiful woman,” Cormac said.

  “You got the cause of death?”

  He lifted the sheet off her left foot. “There were three injections between her toes. She was loaded with enough heroin to shut down an elephant.”

  “No tracks on the arms?”

  “None.”

  “Was there any sexual violation?”

  “Not that I could determine.”

  “Most intravenous users start on the arms,” I said. “Those who shoot between the toes usually have a history.”

  “It gets weirder,” he said. He lifted her hand. “Her nails were clipped and scrupulously cleaned. Her hair had been recently shampooed and her skin scrubbed with an astringent cleanser. There were no particles of food in her teeth.”

  “You can tell all that in a body that was in the water for half a day?” I asked.

  “She was floating on top of the cross. The sun did more damage than the water.”

  “Was she alive when the nails went in?”

  “No,” he said.

  “What do you think we’re looking at?” I asked.

  “Fetishism. A sacrifice. How should I know?”

  I could hear the hum of a refrigeration unit. The light in the room was metallic, sterile, warping on angular and sharp surfaces.

  “You’d better get this motherfucker, Dave.”

  I had never heard Cormac use profanity. “Why?”

  “He’s going to do it again.”

  • • •

  THE IBERIA SHERIFF’S Department was located in city hall, a grand two-story brick building on the bayou, with white pillars and dormers and a reflecting pool and fountain in front. I went into Helen’s office early Monday morning.

  “I was just about to buzz you,” she said. “An elderly black minister in Cade called and said his daughter went missing six days ago. Her name is Lucinda Arceneaux.”

  “He’s just now reporting her missing?”

  “He thought she took a flight out of Lafayette to Los Angeles. He just found out she never arrived.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Want me to talk to him?”

  “Yeah. What were you going to tell me?”

  “About two weeks ago Clete Purcel was fishing on the Mermentau River and saw a guy jump from the top of a boxcar into the water. Clete saw the story in the Iberian about our Jane Doe and thought he ought to tell me. The guy was wearing a white uniform with blue trim on it.”

  “Like a Texas convict?”

  �
�Possibly.”

  There was a beat. “Clete didn’t want to call it in?” she said.

  “Ice cream vendors wear white uniforms. So do janitors and cooks. After Clete saw the story in the paper, he found a story on the Internet about a condemned man who escaped from a prison hospital outside Austin. The name is Hugo Tillinger.”

  Helen got up from her chair and wrote on a notepad that rested on her desk blotter, her jaw flexing. She had a compact and powerful physique and features that were androgynous and hard to read, particularly when she was angry. “What was Tillinger in for?”

  “Double homicide. His wife and teenage daughter. He set fire to his house.”

  “Tell Clete he just went to the top of my shit list.”

  “He didn’t have the information we have, Helen.”

  “Lucinda Arceneaux’s father says she worked for the Innocence Project. They get people off death row.”

  I let my eyes slip off hers. “What’s the father’s address?”

  “Try the Free Will Baptist Church. Tell Clete I’m not going to put up with his swinging-dick attitude.”

  “Cut him some slack. He couldn’t be sure the guy was an escaped convict. He didn’t want to mess up a guy who was already down on his luck.”

  “Don’t say another word.”

  • • •

  I CHECKED OUT A cruiser and drove to Cade, a tiny, mostly black settlement on the back road between New Iberia and Lafayette. The church house was a clapboard building with a faux bell tower set back in a grove of pecan trees. A house trailer rested on cinder blocks behind the church. In the side yard stood a bottle tree. During the Great Depression and the war years, many rural people hung blue milk of magnesia bottles on the branches of trees so they tinkled and rang whenever the wind blew. I don’t believe there was any reason for the custom other than a desire to bring color and music to the drabness of their lives. Then again, this was Louisiana, a place where the dead are not only with us but perhaps also mischievous spirits you don’t want to think about. I knocked on the door of the trailer.

  The man who answered looked much older than the father of a twenty-six-year-old. He was bent and thin and walked with a cane, and wore suspenders with trousers that were too large. His cheeks were covered with white whiskers, his eyes the color of almonds, unlike those of our Jane Doe. I opened my badge holder and told him who I was.