Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You (17 page)

“Guys?”

Barker turned and looked at me.

“It's pretty rough in there.”

He gave a tight nod and stretched his shoulders again.

I watched them move slowly through the door, taking pictures, bending to the ground, studying the door frame, in no hurry to get to the body. It wasn't going anywhere, and the first evidence trail walk was important, told them things I would have missed. Cowan kept up a running commentary that served no purpose except to focus him. Several minutes later I heard one of them say “Holy shit,” but couldn't tell whether it was Barker or Cowan. I hoped it was Cowan's stomach turning. Divorced indeed, like about five times.

Within twenty minutes the porch and driveway had filled with uniforms and plainclothes. There was the occasional flash of light as Watson and Kirk with CSD, Crime Scene Division, took the requisite pictures.

I was sitting in the driver's side of Jeannette's maroon Toyota with the door open when Sergeant Mosher arrived.

“Your hat, Jeffries.”

“Yes, sir.” Always with the hat thing. I've never figured out how a hat makes you a better cop, but the brass sure seemed to like them.

“Anything in there?”

I assumed he meant the car and not the house. “Couple of Rolling Stones tapes and one of Beausoleil. Two romance novels and a photography book checked out,” I flipped to the back, “five days ago from Goodwood Library.”

“Set 'em aside for the detectives. Inventory the car while you're at it.”

“Yes, sir.” I hated inventorying cars. I hated anything that involved a lot of paperwork. Hell, I really hated doing anything that someone else told me I had to do.

There wasn't much more of interest in Jeannette's car. Some gum,
two movie stubs from a week past, loose change. A couple of rolls of film CSD would get developed; no telling where your leads could come from. A pay stub from a refinery over in Plaquemine. The car was registered in her name. Unfortunately, no signed note that said “I killed Jeannette.” Not that I expected any such thing, but it was amazing what perps could overlook in the panic of their crime. One of my favorite cases was solved in five minutes after the victim took us to the alley behind the building where she'd been raped, and there was the asshole's ID lying on the ground. I still enjoyed the memory of his face when I held up his driver's license and said, “Missing anything?”

Tires crunched on the drive, and I looked up to see Tracy Skinner's unit pull in. She was built like a Jeep—all squat rectangles, with an unruly mess of red curls that bobby pins couldn't keep in place—and one of the first women in the department to make sergeant.

I got out of Jeannette's car and went to meet her, pulling the surgical gloves off as I walked.

“Better get your hat, Sarah,” she said. “Lieutenant's on his way.”

I nodded, then jerked my head back toward the house. “Somebody tortured the hell out of her.”

She sighed and pulled her hat down more tightly over her forehead. “Some days I can handle this shit better than others. Today's not one of them.” She readjusted her gun belt. “Any kids?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“There's one small kindness.”

“She didn't die quickly.”

“Been dead long?”

“At least twenty-four hours, I'd say. But the scene's fresh. No sign of a cleanup. CSD might be able to lift some prints.” This was hopeful thinking on my part. There's another thing TV has screwed up for law enforcement, making civilians think lifting prints is like peeling the wrapping off a popsicle.

“Where's Mosher?”

“Just inside. He gave me that look,” I said.

Tracy's lips twitched, and she rested her hands on her gun belt. “What'd you do?”

“Entered through an open window.”

“Open? Or closed but unlocked?”

“Closed but unlocked. There were flies. I could smell it.”

Her jaw jutted forward, and she pursed her lips. “Shit.”

We both looked at the ground. I couldn't exactly disagree with her, but I subscribed to the belief that the sign of a good cop is one who has as many complaints as commendations in the personnel file. If you're doing your job, you're going to be pissing off some people. No doubt Tracy was thinking about the same incident I was, the burglary I'd worked last fall over on Jefferson Highway. That time there was somebody inside. Two somebodies, both very much alive. The apartment manager saw a man entering through a window and called the police; she was adamant that a woman lived there alone. Turned out the apartment manager was right, she just didn't have all the facts: the woman who lived there had a boyfriend who was enacting some sexual fantasy they both harbored. They were not happy when I came busting into her bedroom hollering, “Police!” The Lieutenant like to fried my ass over that one, but Tracy and Mosher did some dancing overtime for me, and all I got was a letter in my file suggesting I consider other alternatives in the future. I liked holding on to that word
consider
; it held a vastly different meaning than
use
.

“Look,” I put a hand out to stop Tracy as she started up the drive. “I think the group should do this one.”

She stared up at the house then off to the trees on both sides of the house before she looked back at the road. “There's an old woman down the street asking what's going on.”

“That'll be the complainant. She called it in.”

“We don't need nosy neighbors.”

“Yeah. I'll take care of it.”

 

For all the action going on at Jeannette's house, I couldn't hear a thing except mockingbirds, cardinals, and the occasional squirrel chatter up in the trees on the walk back to the complainant's house. A barely there breeze kept the leaves whispering, a soothing barrier between where I'd come from and where I was headed. I stopped about halfway and turned around to look in the direction of Jeannette's house. Couldn't see a thing either. I wondered what it
looked like at night. No streetlights to worry about this far out from town.

The sun had hit its full stride, and by the time I reached the complainant's rutted driveway, I'd worked up a good sweat. I cursed, for the bazillionth time, our Chief's move last year to blue, wool-blend uniforms. The previous black-and-gray polyester-knit uniforms weren't as stylish, but they weren't wool. Wool in Louisiana. Even cops in backwater towns like Amite and Breaux Bridge didn't wear wool-blend uniforms. And the brass wondered why they were having such a hard time persuading officers to wear their bulletproof vests. I'd like to see one of them work a wreck on Interstate 10 in the middle of a July day wearing a hat, bulletproof vest, fifteen pounds of gun belt around their waist and those goddamn wool-blend uniforms. Throw in the first day of menstrual cramps for good measure, and the average man would faint after five minutes.

The neighbor woman stood up from the folding chair she'd placed in the middle of her driveway near the road when she saw me round the corner. I hated this part of my job almost as much as I hated paperwork and listening to the Lieutenant. I always felt inadequate.

“You bringin' bad news, ain't you?” she said.

“Yes, ma'am.” I figured she was the type who would prefer straightforward. “I'm sorry. Jeannette's dead.”

Her whole body sagged, like all the bones in her shoulders, arms, and knees had dissolved, and for a second I thought she might collapse. I took a step forward, my hand coming up to catch her, but she pulled herself upright, turning her head slightly away from me, her chin tucked into her shoulder, lips curled over her teeth in a tight line. I reached out, lightly touched her shoulder, and felt it flinch.

She stepped away. “Yup,” she said. “That sumabitch.”

“The husband?”

“Yup.”

“Last time he was here was three nights ago, Friday night?”

“That sumabitch,” she said, still working her lips together. I took this to be a yes and decided I liked this woman. She must have been a hell of a teacher. I was never any good at math, but I'll bet she would've whipped me into line.

“You hear his truck leave, Mrs. Whitehead?” I took a small brown spiral notebook out of my shirt pocket and flipped it open.

“I ain't married. Doris is good enough for me.” Her tone was terse and unyielding.

I blinked once, tried to get my mouth around calling her Doris, and settled for a “Yes, ma'am.”

She gave a short laugh that carried little humor and shook her head. I stood there for a few minutes, the sun beating hard on the back of my neck, watching her stare at the ground. Finally, I said, “His truck? Did you hear it leave?”

She looked up at me as though I were slowly coming back into focus. “I can't recollect for sure. My window units get noisy. But his rig was gone by six Saturday morning when I came down for the paper.”

“And the last time you saw Jeannette was Thursday?”

“Thursday evening, right around supper time, 'bout six or so. She dropped off a book she'd gotten at the library, one on insects for my garden. I didn't ask for it, she just brought it.” Doris Whitehead finally sat back down in her chair. “That's the type of person she was.”

“She sounds like a good woman.”

Doris Whitehead glared up at me, and for a moment I felt like a fifth-grader who'd messed up on long division. Again.

“She was a ninny for not leaving him. I told her a passel of times, but she wouldn't listen. Said he didn't mean it, said he was sweet most the time. I never saw no sweet in that man.”

“He beat her frequently?”

“Yup.” Lips curled back over her teeth into a tight slash.

“Police ever been out here?”

“Once. Last winter. I called y'all out, but you didn't do nuthin' about it,” she said. I cursed inwardly when my eyes shifted, almost on their own accord, from hers.

“It would have been up to Jeannette,” I said softly.

“She was a nice woman, and he was no good,” she said somewhat fiercely. “She helped me out around here, regular like. Climbed up to the roof and cleaned my gutters this spring, held the stakes two weeks ago when I tied up my tomato plants. Liked to sing a lot. That
rock-and-roll stuff. Don't know any of the names, but I'd hear her sometimes at night. She didn't sing when he was home.” Doris Whitehead's hands kept gripping her skirt and bunching it into her fists.

“She got any family you know of?”

She paused, looked off toward Jeannette's house. “A mother over in Slidell. Last name of Richardson. But they weren't close.”

I studied her profile. There was something she wasn't telling me, something she was holding back. It could simply be shock or grief, perhaps regret. Still, if I'd learned anything over the years working this job, it was that everyone had their secrets, a part of themselves they rarely, if ever, showed anyone else. We all told lies, to others, to ourselves. None of us were who we seemed. And that was as much a fact as the dead body in the house next door.

I heard a car go by, then a second later the crunch of tires on shell, and decided not to probe any further. “I'm sorry, ma'am. Truly I am. The detectives will be over here in a bit. I'll let them know what you told me, but they'll be working the case, so they'll want to talk to you. See if you can think of anything else that might be relevant. Never know what might help.”

“He's got a fellow he hangs around some with. Never met him. Ralph, Roger, Robert, Ray, Ronald—something like that starting with an
R
. Lives in Denham Springs, Greenwell Springs, one of them Springs towns. Jeannette didn't like him much.”

I nodded, jotted it down in my notebook. “We'll start trying to track Vince down today.”

“Sumabitch better not come back round here,” she muttered.

Something in her tone made me look at her hard. “You own a gun, ma'am?”

“Yup.”

“Ever used it?”

“Killed a moccasin out back two springs ago.”

We stared at each for at least five seconds with her chin getting higher the longer our eyes held the other's gaze. And I knew, even as I spoke my next words, that Doris Whitehead would do exactly what she wanted and nothing less.

“You best give us a call you see any sign of him, understand?” I
gave her my toughest voice and underscored it with looping my thumbs through my gun belt. I could have been talking to a tree for the effect it had on her.

“Lemme ask you sumpthin before you go,” she said.

“Ma'am?”

“How d'you do this?”

“Ma'am?”

She rubbed her hand up against her ear, like when she'd told me about the flies. “All this with the dead bodies and guns and no-good sumabitches. How d'you do it?”

I stared at her. A number of images came to mind—my boyfriend's hands, a fifth of bourbon, women standing in a circle, the backboard on a tennis court—as I groped for something to say. None seemed right to share without an explanation, and I wasn't up to explaining anything, so I settled for what I tried for most.

“Gently,” I said.

She nodded slowly and shifted in her chair. “That's sumpthin.” For the first time since I'd met her, her lips relaxed.

“Ma'am.” I turned away, wishing for once I was wearing my hat so I could tip it at her. She'd had that kind of effect on me.

It was only a little past 8:00 in the morning, and already it had been much too long of a day. Somewhere, children shifted restlessly in their desks trying to focus on the intricacies of long division, people settled into work without fear of injury or loss of life, teenagers started the delicate nonverbal dance of desire, babies swooshed into this world tasting their first hungry breath of the same air their parents breathed, fish darted hard against the current in search of food, and some sumabitch somewhere had Jeannette's blood soaked into his pores.