Crescent City Connection (15 page)

“If you kept tabs on him, what do you know?”

“We know he used to work at a juice bar. Juicy’s Juice.” Errol Jacomine smiled, and in the smile there was something of the wolf. Daniel got the feeling his father enjoyed watching him run in circles.

He looked up Juicy’s Juice, and it wasn’t there either.

His father shrugged. “He just sort of disappeared.”

Daniel sat down, aware that something felt funny in his chest, but not knowing exactly how to talk about it. “Well, Daddy, he’s your son. And I’m your son, right?”

Jacomine nodded. “What are you getting at?”

“This is making me feel kind of funny.”

Jacomine laughed and reached across the desk to give Daniel an affectionate cuff, something he’d never done before. “I didn’t follow you to the wilds of Idaho, did I? Didn’t mean I didn’t love you. If a son wants to disappear, he’s got a right.”

“That’s what he wanted? You think that’s what’s going on?”

This time his father made his smile sheepish. “I think I embarrassed him a little. Anyway, Isaac’s got problems.”

“Hell, Daddy, we all got problems.”

“Not like Isaac has.”

“What do you mean?” Daniel felt a thrill of alarm. Though he hadn’t communicated with him in years, Isaac was still his baby brother. He thought it odd that he felt frightened on his behalf.

“He’s got demons. The boy’s got demons.”

He hoped his father didn’t mean his brother would harm Lovelace. “I’m going back to New Orleans.”

It was a short drive from Baton Rouge, but once there, he hardly knew what to do. For want of a better idea, he went to the registrar of voters—and found no Isaac Jacomine.

Daniel sat in his car, gripping the steering wheel. It shocked him that he knew almost nothing about his brother, had no idea of his interests, marital status, even his educational level; hadn’t thought of him in years. But then there was so much difference in their ages.

And we were never a close family,
he thought.

Isaac had been a child preacher, coached by his mom and dad; but then he’d had something else as well. Not faith, exactly—all kids believed in God and Santa Claus. More like a radiance. Some kind of thing that actually made you believe.

For the first time in memory, Daniel felt moisture in his eyes. Isaac had been a damn cute little boy.

What a weird thing to remember. What’s wrong with me?

* * *

The FBI would have got to Skip sooner or later if she hadn’t acted first—Jacomine or not, she was a pretty key witness. She hoped this way they’d take her more seriously, be more inclined to include her in their investigation.

Working with the feds had advantages—like better equipment, more and better manpower. For instance, they already had data on the other letters The Jury had sent. Each one had been mailed in the city to which it was addressed, or one close by, but big deal—one person with relatives and friends could have done it. It wouldn’t take an army of fanatics.

Another good thing about the feds—they had the means to get to the wife, the one in Central America. Within a day, they’d subpoenaed the pertinent records from the Christian Community, figured out where she was, and talked to her. Naturally, she said she didn’t know anything, but there’d be follow-ups.

The other thing was, Skip needed all the help she could get in any form she could get it. The brass was so desperate for a sucker for their new heater case that she was assigned to work full time on it, with Abasolo detailed to help her as she needed him. Skip asked for a task force and was almost laughed out of the captain’s office: “Wait a minute, Langdon. Things moving too fast for you here? This isn’t the chief’s murderer we’re looking for—we’re trying to find the guy who shot the chief’s murderer. You unclear on the concept or something? Listen, don’t knock yourself out on this one—you don’t solve it, nobody’s gonna get bent out of shape. Just make it look good.”

Skip was so mad she could feel the blood rush to her face. She literally couldn’t remember feeling this angry. She spoke without watching her tongue: “Unclear on the concept! Captain, please. The Jury is a huge national case. The whole country’s eyes are on us.”

The captain leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know, I kind of like these creeps. Makin’ our job easier, aren’t they?”

“He was just blustering,” Tarantino said as they walked back to Homicide. “He’s what I call a ‘goat-getter’—baits people for no reason.”

She was still smoldering: “He didn’t give me the task force.”

“Skip, you’re got to look at it from the point of view of the department. If you hadn’t caught that asshole Bazemore, you’d have your task force right now. Because he got us where we live. We can’t afford to expend a lot of manpower on what’s really just … a principle.”

“Surely you don’t believe that.”

Tarantino shrugged, apologetically, she hoped.

In a way, she could see it. If Jacomine weren’t involved she wasn’t so sure she’d give that much of a damn herself.

Cindy Lou was waiting in her office. “Come on, girl, let’s go to lunch.”

Skip looked at her watch. “I don’t know if I can take the time.”

“Come on, now. We’ve got business. And let’s get that good-looking pal of yours, too.”

Abasolo was two cubicles over, and listening. “You must mean me,” he said.

They went for pasta at Semolina. “Look,” said Cindy Lou when they’d ordered about three times as much as they’d ever be able to eat. “Jacomine’s a paranoid. All these half-baked gurus are the same.”

Abasolo said, “I just love a psychologist with tempered and cautious views.”

“Well, look—they are. The way cults work is pretty much the way police departments work—on the us-and-them principle.”

Skip started to protest, but Abasolo held up a hand and mouthed something at her. It could have been, “Humor her,” she wasn’t sure.

“If you’re in the cult, you’re on the side of righteousness against the forces of evil. If you’re not, you
are
the forces of evil. When things are that black and that white, you get a very volatile situation.

“These guys operate on fear. Even their former followers can’t get over it—it’s hell getting them to come forward.”

“Hey,” said Abasolo. “I just got an idea. Why don’t we set up a tip line. Ideal for the faint of heart.”

“More to the point, for the scared shitless.”

“O Bodhisattva of Compassion, forgive my callousness.”

Cindy Lou never, but never, took crap from anybody. Skip adored Abasolo, but all the same looked forward to her deliciously acidic retort. Instead, Lou-Lou gave Abasolo a look that Skip could only describe as appraising. All she said was, “I’m no bodhisattva, baby.”

It was almost as if they were flirting, but it couldn’t be—Cindy Lou would never waste her time on so solid a citizen as Abasolo, despite the fact that he also happened to be the owner of black hair, blue eyes, and a long, wiry body. Skip had always thought he looked a little like a thug and a little like a movie star—something for everyone. In addition, he was a longtime member of AA, which might mean he’d achieved some measure of spiritual growth. Lou-Lou, however, was famous for her execrable taste in men.

Could this be happening?
Skip thought.
Well, hell. Maybe it is. I’ll give ’em a break.

She said, “I’m going to go see about that tip line.”

It was easy enough to fix it—the Times-Picayune was voracious for news, and this was all she’d had for them in two days.

She called Special Agent Shellmire. “Think of the devil,” he said. “I’ve got a little present for you. Jacomine’s ex-wife’s flying in tomorrow. From Honduras.”

Skip and Shellmire flew to Atlanta together. The Christian Community, having finally seen the handwriting on the wall, had decided to bring Mrs. Jacomine in from the field. She’d agreed to be interviewed at church headquarters.

* * *

Tourmaline Jacomine was a tall, almost colorless woman, with slightly fuzzy blond hair—poorly permed, probably. She had once been slender and rather stately, Skip imagined, but she was now a bit lumpy and stooped over. Her hair and skin were beige on beige and her dress was tan. She looked tired, and it wasn’t only her eyes and body—there was something about her that bespoke a spiritual tiredness, a need to escape even farther than Honduras and just lie down for a while.

But she also had a jumpy feel to her, as if she expected something to spring from the bushes and bite her.

“Mrs. Jacomine?”

“Yes?” Her mouth pulled tighter as she admitted it. “Call me Irene,” she said.

“I thought it was Tourmaline.”

“He gave me that name. I always hated it.”

Skip and Shellmire identified themselves.

Irene nodded. “I’ll be very glad to do what I can. I had no idea all this was happening. I’m afraid the church was protecting me.”

“We’d be grateful for anything you can tell us about your husband’s activities.”

“I don’t know anything about his activities and I don’t want to know. I really don’t know anything about him at all except what I read in the paper. You know what happened with the church, of course.”

Skip and Shellmire nodded. “There was a scandal,” Shellmire said, “involving women.”

She lowered her head as if he’d said, “Take that, Irene!”

“I’d been married to a stranger,” she said. “I had to learn to live with that.”

“You didn’t have any clue as to what he really was?”

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I did. But I just didn’t know I did. In retrospect I see what a perfect fool I was, but there was no understanding it at the time. Not when I was married to a man of God.” She paused. “He used to beat my children and me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Shellmire.

“Now just why did I think that was all right?” She looked at her lap again. Skip could see why she’d requested the missionary outpost as soon as news of her ex-husband’s criminal activities became public. She was a wreck and must have been worse then. “I was married to a psychopath and I didn’t even know it.”

“Why do you say he’s a psychopath?”

She lifted her chin and stared at a place far outside the office. “A million little lies. Two million cruelties without meaning—except to him, I suppose. That’s what I know about him. But what’s he doing now? I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t spoken to him since the thing broke in Atlanta. We have a child together, you know.”

“I thought you said ‘children.’”

“Did I? Daniel was his son by a first wife, but I guess I think of him as mine.”

“Odd—he wasn’t mentioned in the church records.”

“What records? Oh, I know—we filled out insurance forms. He hasn’t been a dependent in—oh, twenty-five or -six years I guess—he’s much older than Isaac.”

Skip said nothing, hoping she’d expand without prompting on Jacomine’s life story. When the silence had gotten too long for comfort, Irene Jacomine said, “It was rather ironic. That first wife is probably the only human being who ever got the best of him. Maybe it’s part of the reason he’s the way he is.”

Irene spoke very precisely, almost formally, as if expecting to be judged. She was a timid woman, Skip thought. She spoke kindly. “We really don’t know much about his background. Maybe you can fill in some of the blanks.”

“Evidently I didn’t know enough myself. I think there’s a lot I still don’t know.” She took a deep breath. “But I do know how Daniel came to be. Errol got a girl pregnant when he was fifteen, and married her. He was married at fifteen—I can’t even imagine that. Can you? They ran away together, those two, and in two years Errol was back—without Rosemarie. He told me that she left him, he didn’t leave her. If she did—” Skip thought she saw admiration on Irene’s face, but the older woman quickly remembered she was a church lady. “She probably didn’t. Errol is an inveterate liar. However, what seems certain is that she arrived back in Savannah some five years after that, bringing the child, whom she dumped on Errol. I married a criminal, I know that, but sometimes—I don’t know, sometimes I think he might have, too.”

For a second Skip wondered if she meant herself, but she said, “The first time around.”

“Imagine that—abandoning your husband and then your child.” She shook her head. “Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.

“And then he left Savannah. I guess he didn’t want to be found after that.” She tried out what was meant to pass for a chuckle. “He was preaching even then. And finally he got a church from the Community and then another one, until he got the big one in Atlanta. We met in a small town in Alabama, where he had a church at the time. I was younger than he was, and flattered when the preacher took a shine to me. I guess he dazzled me.”

Skip kept a poker face but she wondered, as she often had, why Jacomine’s particular charisma was invisible to her. She supposed she had an overdeveloped bullshit-detector.

“I guess I thought he must have an interesting past, this preacher man with a teenage boy—I met him seven years after Rosemarie came back. Daniel was fourteen then, and so shy he couldn’t look at anything but the floor. If ever a boy needed a mother, it was that one.”

“And so you married his father.”

She looked astonished. “Well, that wasn’t why. I was in love with him.”

Skip thought perhaps she hadn’t managed to keep the perplexity off her face, because Irene seemed to have a need to justify herself. “He seemed such a principled man.” For a moment her features captured that early passion, and then gave way to irony. “Seemed is right. I guess I fell into the trap of listening to what he said rather than seeing what he did.”

“What did he do?”

“Oh, he was horrible to the boy. He beat him, but I didn’t even know about that. I did see him speak harshly to Daniel, and humiliate him.” She shook her head again. “I just don’t know why I thought it was all right. He said the boy was a behavior problem, and it hurt him a lot to do that, but he had to, a psychologist had told him to; and he said the school counselors were always telling him he was too lenient. I thought if they said to do it… now I know. Now I know.”

Skip said, “I beg your pardon?”

“Well, I’m sure they said something. Errol just had a habit of interpreting things his own way. I mean, one thing I know happened. A neighbor’s cat died mysteriously. After that, maybe they said something like Daniel really needed some attention, or guidance, maybe—something like that.” She shrugged. “What they meant was, a kind word, maybe—or a few sessions with a shrink. Errol read it as ‘punishment.’