Last Car to Elysian Fields

by James Lee Burke

  “We take a lot of interest in anything that happens on Mr. Val’s property, Andre. We’d really appreciate your helping us out, that is, if you’d consent to talk with us,” I said.

  “I seen the gun in his hand. My wife and li’l boy was in the house. So I done what I had to. His words to me was he wasn’t gonna hurt my son or my woman. That’s what the man said. Then he died.”

  “Why do you think he would say that to you?” I asked.

  “’Cause he didn’t come here to kill nobody but me. Or maybe he was sent here to kill all of us but he couldn’t do it. You tell me.”

  “You seem like a smart man. Why would a professional hit man be here to kill you or your family?” Helen said.

  “It don’t make no sense to me, either,” he replied.

  “Nice spot you have here,” I said.

  “It ain’t bad,” he said.

  “How’d you get the drop on this dude? I’d say that was pretty slick,” I said.

  “Seen him out of the corner of my eye. Circled ’round the house, got my tool off the po’ch, and you know the rest.”

  “I knew this guy, Andre. He worked for money and no other reason. He was the best in the business and charged accordingly. You make somebody mad at you, somebody so mad he’d pay an uptown guy like Jericho Johnny Wineburger to kill you and your family?” I said.

  “What I know, me?”

  “You don’t think he was after Mr. Val?” I said.

  “Ax Mr. Val,” he replied.

  “Thanks for your time, partner,” I said, and handed him one of our business cards. “Mr. Val is a man of mystery, isn’t he? You know where he might be now?”

  “He had an argument wit’ a man in the front yard this morning. Man wit’ real li’l ears. He flipped the man’s tie in his face and told him not to come ’round here no more. Then he went off by hisself.”

  “By the way, where’s the hatchet?” I said.

  “Cops took it. I got to get to my chores. Anyt’ing else?”

  Helen and I got back in the cruiser and drove down the driveway, past the carpenters repairing the house and the tree surgeons pruning the oaks. Then, for no apparent reason, Helen braked the cruiser and rested her arms across the top of the wheel. Her shirt was stretched tight across her shoulders, the fingers of her right hand flicking at the air, as though she were trying to pick thoughts out of it. The sunlight through the pruned trees was so bright she had put on shades and I couldn’t read her expression. “You feel jerked around?” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “Like he was pointing the finger at Val Chalons but pretending not to?”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me.”

  She took her foot off the brake and let the idle carry the cruiser toward the highway, the pea gravel ticking under the tires. “Why would Chalons pay to have his handyman hit?” she said.

  “Money.”

  “Money?”

  “Money,” I said.

  “Like Bergeron might have a claim on the estate?”

  “You got it.”

  “Try to make that one stick,” she said, easing her foot back on the gas.

  AS SOON AS WE GOT BACK to the department, I found a note in my mailbox asking me to call Jimmie at his apartment.

  “Lou Kale was here about thirty minutes ago. He seems a little irrational,” Jimmie said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, he thinks I’m involved in some kind of scam with Clete Purcel. He says Purcel is trying to blackmail either him or Val Chalons. What’s the deal?”

  “Clete sent letters simultaneously to both Kale and Chalons.”

  “He deliberately stoked up this guy?”

  “I helped a little.”

  “A police officer?”

  “I think Val Chalons’s real parents are Lou Kale and Ida Durbin. I think Old Man Chalons died without leaving a will. That means Val has no familial claim on the Chalons fortune. I think the handyman, Andre Bergeron, may be the heir to a hundred million dollars. So Val Chalons hired Jericho Johnny Wineburger to kill the handyman and maybe his wife and child, too.”

  “You’re making some of this up?”

  “Nope.”

  “And Kale thinks I’m involved in a plot to blackmail him or his son, with that kind of money at stake?”

  “Seems like it.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “I’ll have a talk with Kale.”

  “Let it slide. Rest up and try not to think. You and Purcel, both. No matter what happens, don’t think,” he said, then quietly hung up the phone.

  IN THE MORNING I walked downtown to Koko Hebert’s office and waited for him to get off the telephone. Outside, the wind was blowing in the trees on Main Street and the air was still cool and damp-smelling in the shade, but inside Koko’s office the atmosphere was stifling, the odor of nicotine wrapped like cellophane on every surface in the room.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “Did you get the post on Johnny Wineburger from the forensic pathologist in St. Mary?” I said.

  “What about it?”

  “We’re on the same side, Koko. Can’t you speak civilly to people?”

  “No, you’re on your own side, Robicheaux. That said, what do you want?”

  I gave up. “Could the wounds on Johnny Wineburger have been made by the same instrument that killed Honoria Chalons?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “She was cut by an instrument that was honed like a barber’s razor. The hatchet Wineburger was killed with must have been used to chop bricks. You trying to make the black guy for Honoria Chalons’s death?”

  “It occurred to me.”

  He swiveled himself around in his chair and stared out a side window at a brick wall. From the back, he looked like a sad elephant humped on a circus stool. He drew in on his cigarette, then released a thick ball of white smoke from his mouth. “You’re not going to win,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You think you’re going to bring down Val Chalons. But he and his people are just getting started. When they’re finished with you, your name won’t be worth warm spit on the sidewalk. You and your wife will be picking flypaper off your skin the rest of your lives.”

  “That’s the breaks,” I said.

  “I hate talking to you,” he said.

  THAT NIGHT A HURRICANE WATCH was in effect from Pensacola, Florida, to Morgan City, Louisiana. But in New Iberia the air was dead, superheated, stained with the smell of dead water beetles, the trees traced with the wisplike patterns of fireflies. Along East Main the windows sparkled like ice with condensation. Just before 11:00 p.m. Dana Magelli called from New Orleans.

  “Better turn on CNN,” he said. In the background I could hear laughter, music, bottles or drink glasses tinkling.

  “Where are you?” I said.

  “In the Quarter. Half the Second District is here. We got him.”

  I had already hit the button on the remote TV control. “You’ve got the Baton Rouge serial killer?” I said.

  “The DNA won’t be in for a day or so. But he’s the guy. Fibers on the clothes of Holly Blankenship match a shirt in his closet. He got stopped in his Popsicle truck at a DWI check.”

  On the television screen I saw a New Orleans police official talking on camera, a dilapidated house and weed-infested yard in the background.

  “The guy started acting hinky at the check,” Dana said. “So we got a warrant on his house. He had a fifteen-year-old hooker tied up in there.”

  “He’s from New Orleans?” I said.

  “You sound disappointed,” Dana said.

  “No, it’s just late. Congratulations.”

  “Yeah. Thought you’d like to know,” he replied.

  After I hung up, Molly sat down next to me on the couch. Our air-conditioning had broken down and the attic fan was on, the curtains on the living-room window churning in the air. “What was all that about?” she said.

 
; “Dana Magelli says NOPD nailed the Baton Rouge serial killer,” I said.

  She studied my face. “You have doubts?” she said.

  “The guy in custody is from New Orleans. Why would he drive from Baton Rouge to Iberia Parish to dump his victims?”

  “It’s late. Come to bed,” she said.

  “I’m going to bring Tripod and Snuggs inside.”

  “It’s not supposed to rain until tomorrow.”

  “Both those guys need to come inside,” I said.

  Chapter 29

  THE NEXT MORNING the sky was the gray-black of gun cotton, the dried-out palm fronds in my neighbor’s yard stiffening in the wind. The air was full of leaves, and smelled like iodine or ship’s brass on a hot day out on the salt. Helen called me into the office as soon as I got to the department. “I want you to go to New Orleans with me and question the guy they’ve got in custody,” she said.

  “Why not wait on the DNA report?” I asked.

  “It’s a media circus there. Iberia Parish is going to get shuffled out of the deck. We’re going to be left with two unsolved homicides.”

  “I’m not understanding you,” I said.

  “The Baton Rouge serial killer dropped two DOAs on our doorstep. The guy in custody had a Popsicle route in the Garden District and Baton Rouge. You brought up the question first—why would he drive eighty miles to leave his victims in our parish?”

  “So he’s not the guy. Wait on the DNA,” I said.

  “This from you?”

  “Why not?”

  She paused, her eyes dissecting my face. “You don’t want your wife left alone?”

  “I’ve made some serious mistakes in the past and other people had to pay for them.”

  I saw the impatience go out of her face. “What if we’re dealing with two serial killers, not one? Two shitbags working together?” she said.

  “It’s a possibility,” I said.

  “I’m taking you off the desk. The D.A.’s office can go play with itself. Sign out a cruiser, bwana. We’ll be back by five,” she said.

  THE WIND SHOOK the cruiser all the way down the four-lane to New Orleans. When we crossed the bridge at Des Allemands I could see boats rocking in their slips, leaves starting to strip from the trees by the water. In the south, lightning was striking on a bay, quivering in the clouds like pieces of white thread.

  The suspect had already been processed into central lockup. His name was Ernest T. Fogel, a man whose race was hard to determine. He had uncut wiry hair, deeply pitted cheeks, and skin that looked chemically tanned. His jacket was not extensive: a molestation complaint that was dropped and two arrests for battery against prostitutes across the river in Algiers. Both victims had worked out of bars a few blocks from his rented room. Inside his file was a social worker’s recommendation to the court that Ernest Fogel be kept away from children and pornography. A guard opened Fogel’s cell and let me, Helen, and Dana Magelli inside.

  Dana was a trim, dark-haired man, a sharp dresser whose style often belied his emotional disposition. He introduced us to Fogel with the strange formality that characterizes relationships between criminals and law enforcement personnel inside the system. The protocol exists less for reasons of professionalism than the fact it allows guards and cops and prosecutors to insulate themselves from certain individuals who are dramatically different from the rest of us. I didn’t know if Fogel was one of these or not.

  He sat on a cot, unshaved, dressed in jailhouse orange, a metal tray of half-eaten food beside him. According to Dana, Fogel maintained he was innocent of any crime whatsoever. He claimed the fifteen-year-old hooker tied up inside his house was a niece by a former marriage and that he was trying to save her from a life as a crack whore. Simultaneously he kept offering pieces of information that seemed to indicate an enormous knowledge about the killings in the Baton Rouge area. So far he had not asked for a lawyer. I had the sense Ernest T. Fogel was having a grand time.

  “Fibers from your clothing were on the body of a girl by the name of Holly Blankenship, Mr. Fogel. How do you account for that?” I said.

  “Was that her name?” he said, looking up at me.

  “It was the name of a runaway somebody killed and threw in a garbage dump,” I said.

  “Me and my wife busted up. I ain’t proud of everything I’ve did since then. That’s just the way it is,” he said.

  “The way what is?” Helen said.

  “When you’re a single man, that’s the way it is. There’s women for hire. I ain’t put them on the street,” he replied.

  “She was murdered the same day a friend of mine and I interviewed her,” I said. “Then fibers from your shirt show up on her body. Then you get busted with a girl tied up in your home. That’s a lot for coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know about no interview or what that’s got to do wit’ me. But say what you want.” He was looking straight ahead now, seemingly indifferent to his legal jeopardy.

  “I think you’re a player in this, Mr. Fogel. But I think you’re the weak sister in the script,” I said.

  His eyes clicked up at mine. “I’m what?”

  “Serial killers often work in pairs. One guy is the orchestrator, the other guy does the scut work. Between the two of them, they form a third personality that commits deeds neither man could do on his own. You with me so far?”

  “No,” he said.

  But he was lying. I saw the insult take hold in his face, a resentful light glimmer inside his eyelashes.

  “It’s an easy concept,” I said. “One guy is the brains. The other guy is a sock puppet. You want to ride the needle for some dude who’s probably having a nice lunch right now, maybe knocking back a cold beer, while you take his weight?”

  Ernest Fogel made no reply.

  “Do you know where you are? This is central lockup,” Helen said. “Ever had the midnight express up your ass?”

  He looked into space for a long time. Down the corridor a cop dragged his baton along the bars of a cell door.

  “How about it, buddy? Why not get your side of things out on the table? Maybe your situation isn’t as a bad as you think,” Dana said.

  “I need a razor and some decent soap. I need a hairbrush, too, maybe some aftershave,” Fogel said.

  “That can be arranged,” Dana said. “You want to make a statement?”

  “No, there’s gonna be press at my arraignment. I ain’t going there looking like a street person. I’d better talk to a lawyer now. Y’all got a good one? I don’t mean nobody’s cousin in the public defender’s office, either.”

  Helen, Dana, and I looked at one another. The only sound in the cell was the reverberation of a flushing toilet farther down the corridor. Dana’s handsome face was pinched with anger and frustration.

  “You ever hurt children? You ever do that, Ernest?” he asked, his hands folding and unfolding by his sides.

  Fogel stirred the tip of his finger in a small jelly container on his food tray, then licked his finger clean, the back of his head turned to us so we could not see his face.

  ATRACTOR-TRAILER RIG had spun out on the bridge at Des Allemands, backing up westbound traffic all the way through St. Charles Parish, so Helen and I headed up the interstate toward Baton Rouge, our flasher rippling. On the southwestern edge of Lake Pontchartrain I asked her to pull off on the shoulder a moment.

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “I just want to look at the lake,” I said.

  It was an odd request, I suspect, but Helen was a tolerant and decent person and had become a survivor because she had always accepted people for what they are. The lake was smoky green, dented with rain, blown with whitecaps. It looked exactly as the Gulf had looked on the day Jimmie and I had found ourselves trapped on the third sandbar off Galveston beach many years ago, the day Ida Durbin saved us from our own recklessness. The horizon was threaded with lightning, the air peppered with the smell of brine, the surf brown and frothy with sand sliding back from the b
each. For just a moment it was 1958 again, and I thought perhaps if I turned my head fast enough I would see the glistening hard-candy surfaces of Chevy Bel Airs and chopped-down ’32 and ’39 Fords with Merc engines roaring down the highway, their Hollywood mufflers throbbing off the asphalt in the rain.

  But it was not 1958 and I was a fool to keep holding on to memories about it. For good or bad, the present and the future lay right up the Mississippi River—a ninety-mile corridor called Toxic Alley. Its smokestacks and settling ponds told their own story. And maybe I had seen the reality of my own future back at central lockup. I had been inches away from a deviant who was arguably a child molester, an appellation that had now been attached to my name. I got back in the cruiser and shut the door.

  “Ready to rock?” Helen said.

  “Pour it on,” I said.

  But I got no peace the rest of the day. Back in New Iberia, the rain swept in sheets across the town and filled the gutters on Main with rivers of black water and dead insects. Molly and I ate supper in the kitchen while our window shutters rattled against their latches and the bayou rose above its banks into the trees.

  “Want to go to the movies?” she said.

  “Not this evening,” I replied.

  “I thought I’d take Miss Ellen. She doesn’t get out much.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll read a bit.”

  “Did something happen today?”

  “No, not at all. Just be a little careful.”

  “About what?”

  “I can’t put my hand on it. It’s like the war. It’s like seeing a guy out there in the elephant grass, then not seeing him,” I said.

  She squeezed my hand. “Don’t scare me, Dave,” she said.

  After Molly picked up the elderly lady from next door and headed for the movie theater, I realized what it was that had bothered me all day. It wasn’t the fact that a serial killer was in our midst or that I couldn’t return to the year 1958 or the fact that Valentine Chalons had bested me at every turn. It was none of those things, even though they laid a certain degree of claim on me. The real problem was my last conversation with Koko Hebert. How had Koko put it? Something to the effect that when Val Chalons and his minions were finished with me, my name wouldn’t be worth warm spit on the sidewalk. Then he had added, “You and your wife will be picking flypaper off your skin the rest of your lives.”