Crescent City Connection (34 page)

That was the last thing she’d expected to hear. It stopped her in her tracks.

Jane said, “What’s happening today? Is it the heat or what?”

“Big news day, huh?” This was New Orleans—you didn’t get away without small talk.

“Listen, you know that Maple Street thing? That guy you shot? I know him.”

He had been tentatively identified as Darnell Roberts, twenty-eight, no known address. That was all they had. Skip said, “You know him?”

“Yeah. From a long time ago—when I did the story on Blood of the Lamb.” The name of Jacomine’s flock.

“He was a member?”

Jane nodded. “Fanatic’s more like it; he was the press liaison or something. Called me up and more or less made a threat. Course he said later he never said it. So what do you think? Was that juice bar thing connected with Jacomine? Is our favorite bogeyman surfacing again?”

Skip rolled her eyes. “No comment, Janie.”

“Well, let me tell
you
something. You know who the getaway car is registered to?”

“What getaway car?’

“This one. The one in the McDonogh forty-three kidnapping.”

“No comment, Janie.” She didn’t even know someone had gotten the plate.

“I do. Darnell Roberts. You think these two things are connected?”

Abasolo said, “Holy shit.”

“I’ll take that for a yes. What do you think the asshole’s up to?”

“What do
you
think?”

The reporter rolled her own eyes, “No comment, Skippy.”

Skip and Abasolo went to find Shellmire, who had just talked to the principal. He was sporting two kinds of forehead cleavage, horizontal and vertical. “Skip, this is nasty.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s about you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But what he wants, I don’t know.”

“I do. He wants me dead, but he wants to torture me first.”

“You know what? In any other situation, I’d call for a shrink. But I have a bad feeling you’re right.”

Skip was so used to the idea that hearing it put so baldly didn’t even give her goose bumps. She said, “Has anyone talked to Dorise?”

“The mother? Let’s do it now.” He gave her a hard stare. “You know what, Langdon? I like your sangfroid.”

“It’s an act. I’m shaking on the inside. Have been for weeks.”

“That’s a good thing. Otherwise I’d worry.” And for a second, he rested a hand on her shoulder. “Listen, maybe I should go alone. You shot this woman’s husband, didn’t you? She might not see you.”

“You know damn well I did. But I’d like to try. Let me tell Abasolo.”

She caught up with the sergeant. “AA, I want to go with Shellmire to talk to the mother. How about if you stay here and pick up what you can?”

“You got it. I’m sure she doesn’t want to see both of us.” He’d been with her when she shot Delavon.

As Shellmire maneuvered out of his parking place, Skip said, “She lives in Gentilly. Moved away from the East. Too many memories, I guess.”

He said, “I know that—I got her address from the school. But how do you know that?”

“I’ve kept up with the family. But—you know—I’ve been pretty private about it.” She stared out the window, thinking.

“Meaning, how did Jacomine know kidnapping this kid was going to get to you?”

“Yeah. He’s got to have sources within the department.”

“Have you actually been to visit?”

“Not exactly.”

He turned to her and raised an eyebrow.

“Watch your driving, will you? I… uh … leave little trinkets sometimes. For Shavonne.”

“Uh-huh. Well, maybe The Jury’s been watching you.”

That one did give her goose bumps. She was silent for the rest of the trip.

They found Dorise with a district officer, a school official, her mother, and her sister. She’d apparently gotten over having hysterics and was now sitting pitifully on an old gold-covered sofa, tearing tissues into shreds.

Shellmire displayed his shield. “Agent Turner Shellmire, FBI. This is Detective Langdon.”

Dorise nodded, turning to Skip. “I know Detective Langdon. You my secret admirer.”

“Pardon me?”

“That jus’ a little joke I tell myself. You leave little presents for Sh—” Apparently, she couldn’t say the name. “For my daughter.”

“I do, yes.”

“Well, that’s real nice of you. I know you feel bad about what you done, but I don’t hold it against you. It was God’s will. I know that.”

Skip felt tears and lifted her chin, knowing that wouldn’t hide them.

Shellmire said, “Is there someplace we can talk?”

As if he’d given a signal, the mother and the sister got up. The older woman said, “We go in the kitchen.”

The school official said, “I better be going now,” and the district officer rose as well. He spoke to Dorise. “You be sure to tell the detective everything you told me. Will you do that for me?” He gave Skip a meaningful look, and Skip in turn glanced at Dorise. The large woman who was Shavonne’s mother slumped in her chair, obviously as miserable as if her daughter were already dead.

In a moment, she straightened, turning her attention to Skip and Shellmire. “Won’t y’all sit down?”

“Thanks.”

“I don’t know what it is with me. I jus’ can’t seem to find me a good man—seems like every man I meet got the devil in him.” She plucked a tissue from a box someone had placed close at hand, and started crying anew.

Skip and Shellmire glanced at each other, alarmed, not having the least idea what to make of this.

She was nodding now, over and over again, and rocking her body as well. Cindy Lou had once told Skip that this movement was one people used to induce a mini-trance as a kind of comfort mechanism. “I know who got Shavonne. I know ’zactly who. Only problem, I don’t know his address. Everything my sister said true as the word of the Lord.”

“You know who kidnapped Shavonne.” Skip thought she sounded like some particularly lame psychologist, repeating what the patient said.

“Oh, yes’m, I know. I sure do know. He call himself Dashan Jericho and he say he a lawyer come from Monroe, but I bet a year’s salary that ain’t his name and ain’t where he from, and he ain’t no lawyer. Oh, why, oh, why didn’t I listen to my sister?”

A voice from the kitchen said, “I hear that,” and Skip thought her sister must be a small-minded bitch. She said, “Tell us about him, Dorise.”

“Oh, he handsome, he slick as shit. He ax me out, and took me for a big ol’ ride. Yes ma’am, my sister say he seem too good to be true, and she be right about that.”

“What makes you think he kidnapped your daughter?”

“’Cause he entirely too interested in my little girl. No man I ever met in my life be that interested in my child. I shoulda known. I just shoulda known.”

Skip and Shellmire were silent.

“He ax me what school she go to. What her teacher name. What her hobbies.

“Y’all see what I’m talkin’ about? I didn’t see
nothin’
comin’. Nothin’. I just thought he love chirren. He told me he had a little girl of his own. You know what I really thought? I thought he auditionin’ to be Shavonne daddy. He axed me if I be willin’ to have more chirren—now what you gon’ make out of that?”

Skip could see exactly what was bothering her—she probably thought he had a mile-long record of child abuse, and maybe he did. Maybe she and the FBI were wrong about this one. She felt the tension in her shoulders let up a little.

Maybe
, she thought,
this isn’t my fault.
And knew, even as she thought it, she was as crazy as Dorise. If the man was a pedophile, it wasn’t her mother’s fault, and if he were Jacomine’s flunky, it wasn’t hers. But she wondered how healthy a person would have to be not to feel responsible.

And she also remembered what Jane Storey had said about the car—that it was registered to Jacomine’s late follower. The kidnap had Jacomine written all over it.

Shellmire said, “How do you know this Dashan Jericho?”

“I met him at church. Where in God’s name you s’sposed to meet somebody? He walked into that church like he own the place, pick me right out, and ax me for my phone number.”

“Did he meet Shavonne that day?”

“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, he sure did meet Shavonne. Then later on, he talk to her while I be gettin’ ready to go out. They talk about what color kitty-cats they like—you ever hear of a grown man doin’ that?”

Skip said, “Fathers do—and uncles. People interested in kids, sure.” She was nodding, not wanting Dorise to feel any worse than she had to. “Did he ever do anything inappropriate?”

“What you mean by that?”

“Did he touch her in an inappropriate way?”

“Not when I be aroun’ he didn’t. Lemme ax my sister.” She raised her voice. “Sister! Sister, lemme ax you somethin’.”

The sister came back to the living room, a shorts-clad, slightly messier version of Dorise, heavy though still in her twenties. “You ever see Dashan touch Shavonne?”

“No. He be real careful ’bout that. Never got nowhere near her. He watch her though. Mmm-mmm. He shore did watch her.”

Shellmire said, “Mrs. Bourgeois, did he ever say where he lived?”

“Well, I don’t know why—I never did ax. I thought he just be a gentleman, not tryin’ nothin’, you know—tryin’ to get me over there.”

“Do you have a phone number?”

“No. He always call me—I thought he be so nice. Always call me.”

“Do you have anything—anything at all—he might have touched?”

“What you mean?”

“A glass or something. For fingerprints.”

“He didn’t touch nothin’ far as I can remember.”

“Okay. What about a description?”

“Tall, light-skinned brother. Powerful man; good-lookin’! Yeah, he sure good-lookin’.”

“He’s a black man?”

Dorise looked at her as if she were crazy. “Course, he black. You think some white man’s gon’ want a great big ass like mine?”

“Ms. Bourgeois, the kidnapper was white.” She felt slightly guilty about withholding this salient fact even as long as she had. But she had wanted Dorise as upset as possible to keep her talking.

“He
white?
The kidnapper white? Oh, thank you, Jesus! I didn’t kill my little girl. Oh, Lord, I didn’t do it!”

Skip thought,
Don’t be too sure
.

She and Shellmire got a more detailed description and the name of the church where Dorise had met Jericho.

It came as no surprise that the pastor didn’t know him, and didn’t know who did. Jericho had attended church only the once, had cut a wide swath of admiration through the female congregation, and had never been seen again.

He wasn’t listed in the New Orleans phone book or in the Monroe book, he had no criminal record and no Social Security number—in short, he appeared to have sprung from nowhere for the sole purpose of helping Jacomine snatch a little girl away from her mother.

Skip felt her shoulders tighten again.

She and Shellmire were working out of FBI headquarters. Abasolo joined them to report on the scene at the school. He had only one piece of pertinent information. “There was a driver, and the witness thinks it was a male. But she couldn’t say for sure if he was black or white. Or even, for that matter, that he was definitely male. Too busy getting the plate.”

Skip said, “Bless her for that. The address on the registration didn’t check out, I presume?”

“You presume correctly.”

She turned to Shellmire. “Do you guys have someone watching Isaac’s house?”

Shellmire shrugged. “Shore, honey. We’re the FBI. Doesn’t mean we got diddly, though.”

TAKING THE PRECAUTION of leaving his scooter around the corner, The Monk hesitated, not able to make a decision to return to his house.

He thought of walking by and checking out all the parked cars, but what if the cops knew what he looked like now? Maybe they’d talked to the neighbors—maybe Pamela had told them.

Actually, he was pretty sure Pamela wouldn’t tell them anything.

But then again she might if they told her he was in danger. Or if she suspected he’d killed someone.

Did she suspect? Did other people suspect? Did he look as if he’d killed someone, or was it all internal?

The Monk felt even more undecided and unable to think, and vulnerable to odd ideas than usual.
I know
, he thought.
Actually, I really know. I know I didn’t kill anybody, but how can I be sure ? Maybe I did.

The thought disappeared almost as soon as it surfaced. At the moment he had more immediate pressures, and he’d noticed that when he needed to focus on something, the crazy thoughts went away and he was better able to think with his real mind. He thought of it that way—he had a real mind and a crazy one. It was just that the crazy one took over so often.

He suddenly had a thought:
I could just call Pamela. I know her last name. Why not give her a call? She might know something.

He got his scooter, went to the Cafe Marigny, looked Pamela up, and dialed before he had time to think about it.

“Pamela? Hey. This is Isaac next door.”

“Isaac?” She sounded utterly mystified.

“The White Monk.”

“You’re not The Monk. The Monk don’t talk.” Now she was mad.

“Pamela, it’s me, honest—please don’t hang up. I talk if I have to. It’s been kind of a weird day—I need to ask you something.”

“Where you callin’ from?”

“Cafe Marigny. Why?”

“Walkin’ or what?”

“I’ve got my scooter.”

At the word “scooter,” there was a change in her voice. “Well, maybe you are The Monk. I’m gon’ take a little ride. Meet me by Hubig’s Pies.”

The Monk didn’t like this at all—Pamela almost never left her house. She hated to drive almost as much as he hated to speak. What in hell was she doing?

It would take her longer to get to the meeting place than it would him. He decided to go right away and do what he’d been doing for days, it seemed like—hide and watch.

But sure enough, along she came in her ancient Ford Fiesta, alone as advertised, making the car look like a toy. No wonder she hated to drive; it must be hideously uncomfortable, given the miniature car and the oversized body.

He tapped on the window and slipped in beside her.
“Darlin’, when I get rich, I’m gon’ buy you a Cadillac.”