Faye Longchamp had been pointing at something with that hand motion that she’d thought was so damn subtle. What in the hell was it?
Leila turned her thoughts off and just let her eyes drift over the desk. The paperweight was harmless, though she was so rattled that she believed she could just slam it into the detective’s head, if given half a chance. The scissors gave out no incriminating information, though they too could serve well as a weapon to ensure that Detective Bienvenu would leave her the hell alone. Ditto for the letter opener.
The papers were all harmless. They’d all been generated within the past month, for innocuous reasons. They had no pertinence to the matter at hand. Well, the handwritten ones in the detective’s grasp did, but she’d already admitted the obvious fact that one of those damnable lists was written in her own handwriting. It was unfortunate that she’d had to give up even that shred of information, but not catastrophic. As long as no one ever found out what those lists were…
The memories welled up, and so did the adrenaline. Leila closed her eyes and willed away the trembling and the quick, shallow breaths. Post-traumatic stress disorder was for the weak, no matter what her psychologist tried to tell her. After a moment devoted to blanking out memories, Leila opened her eyes again, and she saw it.
It was only a nameplate, and it had been sitting on her desk unnoticed for seven years.
Leila Martin Caron.
The sight of those three names infuriated her. Of its own volition, her hand reached out and snatched up the offending nameplate. Without conscious control, she slung her arm back and overhanded the evidence at her office wall.
The nameplate left a tiny scar in the fashionable taupe paint as it caromed off the wall and slammed to the tile floor, ruined. No matter. Leila was an administrative assistant, which meant that she kept charge of the office supply catalogs. She could simply order herself another nameplate, one that didn’t broadcast her mother’s maiden name. No one would be the wiser.
***
Faye sat with Joe and Jodi, huddling over yet another batch of po-boys, while they studied Shelly’s two lists of names with magnifying glasses. Faye was trying a new variety of po-boy—sliced ham, anointed with barbecue sauce. It tasted great, but it was saltier than the Gulf of Mexico. It was so salty that she was pretty sure she could feel a stroke coming on. She drank half a glass of water without setting down the glass, hoping to dilute all that sodium.
“I got a sample of Shelly’s handwriting from her aunt,” Jodi announced. “She didn’t write either of these lists.”
“Shit,” Faye said, and Joe twitched one shoulder. He hated it when she cursed. “So we have no idea who wrote the scribbly list.”
“The ‘scribbly’ list, as you call it, was written with a pencil,” Jodi said. “And I’d say the person was under lot of stress.”
“Because the writing’s messy?” Faye asked.
“Well, yeah, but I was also looking at how hard the person was pressing into the paper.”
Joe pointed to the last name on the list. “Look there. You can even see the pencil getting blunter, the further you look down the page.” Picking up the other sheet, he said, “This one’s in pen, but the person was bearing down pretty hard, too. See here? The pen nearly punched through the paper in a couple of spots.”
“So you’d say that both writers were under stress? I wonder what a graphologist would say.”
“I don’t think the neat writing means that this other person was calmer or easier in their mind,” Joe said, cocking his head to one side as he brought the paper almost to his nose. “I think the writing’s neat because the person writing was feeling really…” He considered the paper again. “…really careful.”
Faye made a mental note to tell Jodi that she should listen to Joe at times like this. He understood every animal that walked. Some of those animals walked around on two legs. And a few of those were dangerous.
“Let me back up and think about what we know about Shelly’s last days,” Jodi said. “She rode out the storm in a higher area west of town that stayed dry, probably with some of her co-workers. They found out about the rescue work at Zephyr Field, so they went there to help. And they got there…how?”
“By car, I figure,” Joe said. “When the rain stopped, you could probably drive just fine on a lot of the streets where it didn’t flood. You might have to take the long way around, though.”
“But not to the Lower Ninth Ward,” Faye said. “That would really have been the long way round. And going there would have taken you through…oh, fifteen feet of water. And we know she was alive for days at Zephyr Field, before she somehow got to the Lower Nine, so never mind.”
“Okay,” Jodi said. “So she went to Zephyr Field for several days, but we don’t know how many. A lot of people saw her there. She worked like a dog. She may have disappeared after taking a nap—“
“Not to butt in here,” Faye said, “but don’t forget that Bobby said that he heard Shelly yelling at somebody shortly before he lost track of her.”
“Damn, I wish I knew something about that argument—who she was yelling at and why.” Jodi picked up the lists again. “Anyway, she left Zephyr Field at some point, but we don’t know when, why, or how. We don’t know whether she was alone. We don’t even know if she was alive. We just know that sometime since then, she turned up dead in the Lower Nine.”
“I’ll argue with you on one point,” Faye said. “I think we know why she left Zephyr Field. Think about it. She was looking for her parents. We know that she was agonizing over them for days. Trying to reach them by phone. Crying over her work. If she was alive when she left the rescue operation, then she was going after her parents.”
“Reckon she got there?” Joe asked. “We could look.”
“Hmm?” Jodi gave him a sharp look. “It would be good to know that, but I don’t know how we could possibly tell. Where would you look for that information?”
“We know they drowned in their attic,” he began. “If you were in a boat and you floated up to a flooded-out house where you thought somebody was trapped, what would you do?”
Jodi had asked him the question, but Joe looked at Faye like a law professor grilling a first-year student…and she knew why. It was because he knew precisely what she would do in that situation.
Her answer was instantaneous. “I’d try to go through the roof. And if I knew I might have to do that, I’d bring an ax with me.”
“We already said she probably hopped a ride in a rescue boat.” Jodi rubbed her forehead as if it hurt. “They would have had axes…”
Faye could see Jodi thinking. She could almost see the ideas as she conjured them up, weighed them, and cast them aside.
Joe gave Jodi the answer before she got to it. “If the rescuers—with or without Shelly—got to that house and wanted to see if her parents were still alive, they would have…what? Made an unholy noise by knocking on the walls and roof until somebody answered?” He knocked on the table to give the image a bit of reality. “Is that how they worked?”
Jodi nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “If nobody answered and they didn’t have a real good reason to think somebody might be alive inside, trapped, I’m guessing they moved on, because lots of people were out there waiting for help—”
Jodi nodded and Joe kept talking without missing a beat.
“—but if somebody answered when they knocked, they would have had to chop through the roof to get to them. I bet we can find out if that happened at Shelly’s parents’ house without leaving this room.” He nodded at the stack of aerial photographs Faye had stacked on the table where they sat. “Do you have their address?”
Jodi slapped the file folder in front of her. “I sure do.”
He looked at Faye. “You’ve pretty much memorized those photos. I watched you. Can you find their house by its address?”
“The Lakeview photos are overlaid with street maps. Yes. I can.”
Within minutes, the three
of them were gathered around a detailed map of Lakeview taken days after the storm, looking at the roof of the very house where Shelly’s parents drowned. Some other houses in the neighborhood had clearly visible holes battered through their shingles, but not the Broussards’. Dark water surrounded them all.
Faye wondered why the photo made her stomach knot. She already knew that Aimee and Dan Broussard had died under that roof. The visual proof of it unsettled her, anyway.
“So the rescuers got there and, even if Shelly was with them, it was too late. They never even tried to get into the house. God rest their souls.” Jodi ran a gentle finger around the outlines of the undamaged roof. Then she drew it back and crossed herself.
“Shelly wasn’t with the rescuers when they got to her parents’ house.” Faye heard certainty in her voice, even though the words had come to her without conscious thought. “Of course, she wasn’t with them. She would have pried off those shingles with her teeth. She would have peeled back the plywood under them, splinter by splinter. Wouldn’t you, if it was your mama and daddy underneath those shingles?”
Jodi’s face lost its wistful look. “Yes. You’re right. The rescuers had to follow procedures—they had thousands of people to save. If nobody answered their calls or knocks, then they moved on. Shelly had two people to save. She’d have done everything in her power to get into that house.”
Faye nodded, more certain about this than she’d been about anything else related to the investigation. “If she’d gotten this far, you’d be able to see the hole she made in that roof from any photograph, whether it was taken by a plane, helicopter, or satellite. You’d be able to see it from space. Sometime between leaving Zephyr Field and arriving at this house, Shelly got off-track. And about the only way she could have gotten so off-track that she failed to go after her parents would be because she was dead.”
The three of them sat there silent, eyes focused on the photo, until Joe reached out and turned it over, face-down. It felt like the right thing for him to do, just as it would have been right to gently close the eyes of a person newly dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Faye wished there was some way to guarantee that she’d never have to smell a hospital, ever again. She didn’t think of herself as having a particularly keen sense of smell, but some odors seem to cling to her skin. They lingered, and her body responded viscerally, time and again.
Death. Antiseptics. Sickness and stale sweat. Disinfectant. Institutional food. Fear. Hospital air carried layers of bad smells. How lucky for Nina that she was escaping those foreboding odors.
Faye and Joe had just stopped for a quick evening visit. Dauphine had done the same thing, so she stood with them now wearing a puzzled expression that reflected their own thoughts:
Going home? That’s great…but…
Where will she go?
Can she care for herself?
Can she make herself understood in a world that doesn’t wait for people to grope through their memory banks for the right words?
Is she ready for this?
Faye didn’t think she was ready. Not at all.
Nina’s face should have been radiant as the orderly pushed her wheelchair toward the elevator and freedom. If she were really ready to go home, she would have been casting girlish glances at the man walking beside that wheelchair. Under ordinary circumstances, Charles’ mere presence would have made her pale cheeks glow.
Instead, she canted her head nervously in Faye’s direction and reached a tentative hand toward the bandage wrapping her head. After a few seconds’ stammering, she came out with, “Head…water…save. Thank.”
Faye put a hand on her arm and said, “You’re very welcome. Joe and I are just happy we were there. You would have done the same for us.”
Nina nodded without speaking, but she seemed determined to try to communicate. Nothing but a groan came out of her mouth for a hard second, but the groan finally coalesced into recognizable words. “ Mmmmuh…mom. Da-aaa-aad. Save.”
Faye looked at Joe, then Dauphine. What was there to say? Nina’s parents had been dead for many years. Had she forgotten that? Who knew what random damage was done by a powerful blow to the head?
It would be a long time before Faye let go of the image of Nina, who had challenged authority on the evening news with such strength and vitality, being wheeled toward the elevator. She had lost so much weight in the few days since the attack that she looked shrunken, with her arms wrapped tightly around her breasts.
When the bell sounded to signal the elevator’s arrival, Nina turned around in the chair, looked at Faye and reached a hand just a few inches in Faye’s direction. Her mouth worked for a second, but all that came out of it was, “Save.” And again, louder, “Save!”
Then the orderly pushed her into the elevator, Charles stepped in, and the door closed behind them.
***
“You’ve got to get some sleep, Faye.”
Joe said this as if he thought she was unaware that the human body needed sleep. Or as if he thought she was lying in bed awake because it was a fun way to spend the hours between midnight and three a.m.
Maybe Joe had total control of his autonomic nervous system. Maybe he could wake at will and sleep when he wished. Maybe he could consciously slow his pulse so that no pesky heartbeats would jostle his arm as he pulled back his bowstring and took aim.
Faye could do none of these things. She couldn’t do anything but stare at the ceiling and pretend like she didn’t know that dozens of candles lit the open yard between her apartment and Dauphine’s house.
Dauphine had begun setting those candles hither and yon, muttering to herself and singing, as soon as she, Faye, and Joe had returned from the hospital. She had spoken to them as they walked past her on their way from the car to Faye’s apartment, but her speech was hardly distinguishable from the mumbling she’d been doing before they approached.
A heavy fog was settling like a miasma over the scene, but the candles burned despite the dampness. Their flames set small globes of gray mist alight.
Dauphine had glanced over her shoulder as Faye passed, and kept up her unintelligible speech. The quiet words had prompted Faye to move closer, but Joe had just drifted on upstairs, perfectly willing to let her have a few minutes of girl talk with her mambo friend without his supervision.
If he’d known about Dauphine’s brand of girl talk, he might’ve stayed, just to get a chance to compare Haitian ceremonial magic with his own Creek ways.
“My blood is flowing,” Dauphine had crooned as she wiped the top of a broad stump clean and spread a red cloth over the worn wood.
Faye had thought the woman was oblivious to the wet mist dropping from the sky, but maybe she wasn’t, because she turned her face skyward. The song changed to, “When you see Dantò pass, you think it is a thunderstorm. My blood is flowing, Dantò.”
In mid-song, Dauphine’s voice had quieted to a hum, then gone silent as she watched Faye approach.
Faye had thought at that moment that it had been a mistake to approach Dauphine. She had no idea what one said to a mambo in preparation for…for whatever it was that voodoo practitioners did. She’d settled for saying the first thing that entered her head. Perhaps that was what voodoo mambos wanted to hear, anyway.
“How are you, Dauphine? Are you feeling as worried about Nina as I am?”
“I give my worries to my lady Ezili Dantò,” Dauphine had said, plunking a metal plate loaded with fried pork onto the red cloth.
The odor of the crisp meat, redolent with spices, grabbed Faye’s attention and kept it. She’d forgotten to be hungry.
“My lady does not smile when women are harmed,” Dauphine declared, slapping an open palm on the altar’s red cloth. “She acts to defend victims, always. My lady knows that women and children are so often victims. Lady Dantò and I will dance tonight for our poor Nina. And for our Shelly, too. Always for Shelly.”
Dauphine had then set an open pack of Camels on the stump,
letting it rest there for a moment before removing one from the pack and lighting it. The cigarette had dangled from her fingers as she poured Lady Dantò four fingers of rum, then lifted the glass to help her lady drink it. She plunked the bottle and the empty glass onto the red cloth, right next to the pack of cigarettes.
The offerings had been stored in a shapeless bag slung over Dauphine’s shoulder. Reaching her hand back into its depths, she’d retrieved a large piece of canvas, rolled up and secured with a dirty string. She’d driven a nail through the canvas, nailing it to a tree beside the lady’s makeshift altar, then unrolled it and held it flat against the trunk while she fumbled for another nail. Faye had hurried over to help her get it straight.
Once the canvas was fully visible, Faye found that she couldn’t look away from the fierce female face emblazoned on it. The face had been splashed across the canvas in Dauphine’s trademark shades of brilliant blue and red and black paint. There were scars on the woman’s cheeks and she cradled seven infants in her massive arms. Ezili Dantò’s image was not a comforting one. If the Madonna had gone to Haiti, watched her children suffer, and worked herself into a towering rage, she might look like this.
“I do not think our Nina’s pain is past, no. She cannot tell us her troubles, and that puts me in mind of the Lady.” Dauphine drew an endless drag of cigarette smoke. “Lady Dantò carries her pain inside, too, ever since she led the slaves in Haiti to revolt. The masters cut out her tongue for that, you know. She cannot talk any more than Nina can, but she is strong. I cannot talk for our Nina, either, but I can dance for her.”
Dauphine had stubbed the cigarette out on the red cloth, leaving a smut-black hole. “Lady Dantò and I will do our best to dance that pain away, if God wills it. Away with you. We do not need your help.”
From the bottom of her sack, Dauphine had drawn a jewel-hilted dagger. She’d freed it from its scabbard and laid it carefully with the other offerings on her makeshift altar to Lady Ezili Dantò. After that, nothing Faye said could induce Dauphine to speak. The woman had swayed and moaned and clicked her tongue in a “keh-keh-keh-keh” sound, but she couldn’t be induced to say anything more intelligible than Nina’s few words. Maybe she really had lost her ability to speak as she surrendered to the avenging power of the mute but fearsome Lady Ezili Dantò.
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