Deaths of Jocasta (32 page)

“If you want. It was decent of you to end the affair.”

“How kind of you to notice,” I remarked caustically.

“I didn’t mean that. I meant…Alex loves Joanne and…”

“And Joanne loves Alex, so you think Micky Knight should keep her fucking hands to herself,” I burst out.

“Don’t tell me what I think,” she retorted angrily.

Count to ten, I caught myself. This woman’s just been arrested for murder.

“I’m sorry,” I said after a pause. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. I was…”

“Don’t tell me about your sex life,” she cut me off.

What was her problem? I thought. “I didn’t have sex last night, goddamn it,” I shot back.

“Of course not,” she replied coolly. “Good-bye, Micky.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, regretting my outburst.

“I know. Good-bye.”

“I am.”

There was a long pause before she replied. “I know. I’m just…not at my best. I need to end this conversation.”

“Okay. I…I’ll talk to you…sometime.”

“Yes, you will. Good-bye, Micky.”

“Good-bye, Cordelia.”

I hung up, feeling more alone than I had when Joanne left. At least Hepplewhite liked me. Or liked being fed.

It was going to be a long, hot weekend.

Monday I went to the clinic, but Cordelia wasn’t there. Part of her bail arrangement was agreeing not to see patients. Bernie was busy canceling and rescheduling. Bowen and Goldstein would cover as best they could.

Better air-conditioning than mine, I told myself when I wondered what the hell I was doing here. I roamed about for a while, upstairs, downstairs. I avoided the back door and sight of the overgrown lot, until I realized I was avoiding it and made myself walk out to it to at least within a few feet (okay, yards) of the tangled and now trampled edge.

“Smelling the roses again, Miss Knight?” The ever-vigilant O’Connor.

“Wishing for a horrible head cold,” I retorted.

“I have some bad news for you. From your point of view.”

“Then don’t tell me.”

“Autopsy report on Faye Zimmer. Fifteen years old.”

“I know.”

“Sergeant Ranson?”

I nodded and he continued.

“She didn’t need an abortion. She wasn’t pregnant.”

“What?” I exclaimed.

“Faye Zimmer was murdered. Someone put something sharp up her and killed her.”

“Jocasta,” I said, my brain making one of those dazed connections.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I mumbled.

“Jocasta?” he repeated.

“
Oedipus Rex.
Sophocles wrote the most well-known version. Oedipus unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. When he discovered what he’d done, he blinded himself. But his mother, Jocasta, commits suicide. In one version, a later Roman one, she kills herself by forcing a knife into her womb,” I finished disconcertedly, wondering what O’Connor thought of my jumbled thought patterns.

He grunted, then said, “I thought you might want to know.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“It’s like this, Miss Knight,” he told me. “I make piles. First pile is evidence, what’ll go in court. Next is what I’m sure of, but can’t prove yet. Last pile is what people tell me, she says, he says. Question marks. For a while you were a real big question mark. But you wouldn’t have pointed out that body if you were in it with her. That I’m sure of.”

“Cordelia didn’t kill anyone.”

“You’re so sure of that. Why?”

“She wouldn’t do it.”

“So you say.”

“Look, you’ve questioned her. She’s not stupid enough to dump a body a hundred yards from her back door while being the prime suspect of another murder.”

“Not stupid. Maybe arrogant.”

“No,” I said firmly.

“I don’t like fumble-fingered doctors who leave people dead, but anyone who would kill a fifteen-year-old girl that way makes me sick,” he said harshly.

“Then find the person who really did it,” I retorted.

“Look, this is what we know. All the victims have been patients at this clinic. Even Millie Donnalto and Elly Harrison had to admit that Dr. James treated some of these women. For Alice Tresoe, I have two witnesses that said she was six weeks pregnant and on her way here. And that was the last time anyone saw her alive. We got paperwork on all the rest proving they were here. Give me another suspect besides Dr. James.”

“Someone’s setting her up.”

“And who might that be?” he asked sarcastically.

“I don’t know. But as soon as I find out, you’ll be one of the first to know.”

“You do that. Just don’t be selective in what you find out.” He turned on his heel and headed back across the lawn.

“I won’t if you won’t,” I called after him.

He grunted in reply. I waited until he was out of sight, then I went back into the cool of the building.

Sister Ann beckoned to me as I stood indecisively in the main hallway. “I got another letter. I thought you might like to see it,” she said as I approached.

I nodded and she led the way back to her office.

“Coffee, or is it too warm?” she asked as she handed me the letter.

“Yes, please,” I replied. Caffeine might help. I looked at the letter. Same printing, same ugly speculations.

Sister Ann came back and put a mug of coffee in front of me, then sat down with her own cup.

“Who’s Beatrice Jackson?” I asked.

“Me. A long time ago. Before I entered the convent.”

I nodded, glancing again at the section of the letter that detailed Beatrice Jackson’s lascivious behavior.

“Who would know that?” I asked.

“Oh, dear, let me think…that name is a rather distant memory.”

“Who around here?”

“No one, I should think. Perhaps Sister Fatima. I guess the people who would know I used to be Beatrice Jackson would be the ones who knew Beatrice Jackson.”

“Did you show this to the police?” I asked.

“Yes. They’re rather busy these days.” Then there was a pause. Sister Ann continued, “I gather Dr. James is having a rough time of it.”

“Yes, she is,” I replied, wanting to say she didn’t do it, but beginning to feel like a broken record. “I hope they catch the real criminal sometime soon,” I had to add.

“Indeed,” Sister Ann offered noncommittally. Then out of the blue, “Is she your lover?”

“Who?” I asked inanely.

“Cordelia.”

“No, of course not,” I quickly replied. “Not my type.”

“Oh?”

“Too rich, too white for me,” I answered. “Bayou trash and high society don’t mix.”

Sister Ann looked oddly at me. Then replied, “That sounds like something your aunt might say.”

“Goddamn her,” I burst out. Then remembered where I was. “I’m sorry. I’m…profoundly embarrassed. I forgot you were a nun.”

“I hope I’ve gotten beyond the stage where I’m offended by mere words.”

It was my turn to look at Sister Ann oddly. “Besides,” I continued, “I doubt Cordelia prefers the company of women.” I didn’t think she would like me coming out for her, particularly to a nun.

“I was under the impression she did.”

“What gave you that impression?”

“She did.”

“Oh…well, we’re not lovers.”

“I don’t mean to pry. I just noticed a connection between the two of you and assumed that that was it.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You don’t approve of that kind of stuff anyway.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Perversion. Deviant sexual behavior. Don’t we go to hell for that?”

“I’ve always believed,” she replied, “that if God is going to be strict about anything, that He will be strict about the rules concerning hate, not love. And if two people love each other, that has to be better than two people hating each other. Beyond that, it’s for God to sort out. I’m too frail to be such a judge.”

I had always viewed religion as a monolith bent on crushing all who deviated from its doctrine. And I had been quite a deviant.

“That’s it?” I questioned, not sure if her tolerance was to be believed, thinking it perhaps the ephemera of a hot afternoon, or worse, a trick to catch my trust.

“That’s it,” she calmly replied.

“Well, maybe I’ll have to re-think religion,” I finally answered.

“Please do.”

“It’ll take a while.”

“I imagine. Don’t worry. I’ll not make it my personal task to convert you to Catholicism. I doubt I could undo the damage your aunt has done.”

I shrugged noncommittally, wondering if anything could undo what Aunt Greta had done.

“But do feel free,” Sister Ann continued, “to come by and see me even after this is over. You needn’t be worried that I will be frightened off by unsavory language.”

“I might do that,” I replied. “Visit, not try to frighten you with my vocabulary.”

I took our coffee mugs back to the kitchen and washed them out. Sister Fatima was there. She told me I looked familiar and asked if I had a brother. I told her I was from a large family and that we all looked alike.

I headed back to the clinic, but without Cordelia, it was both busy and disorganized. I left Bernie my phone number and told her to call if anything happened. She nodded, but she was on the phone again so we didn’t talk.

Not that there was much to say. I went home and had a late lunch.

I spent the next day doing a title search for another client. Boring, but safe and profitable. I also tracked down a possible word processing poison pen perpetrator. He was in prison in Angola and wouldn’t be back online for a long time. I drove by the clinic in the evening, but no lights were on. I kept driving.

I continued title-pursuing in the morning and waiting for the phone to ring in the afternoon. I couldn’t call Danny and risk talking to Cordelia again. I wouldn’t call Joanne until she called me. She was probably busy with Alex, not to mention the rest of her life.

They didn’t call. O’Connor did.

“More bad news, Miss Knight,” he greeted me.

“You’re moving to my neighborhood?”

“We got a look at your precious Dr. James’s files.”

“Legally?” I interjected.

“By the book.”

“Coloring?” He ignored me.

“We found a file for Vicky Edith Williams. You remember her?”

I did. The woman in the woods at Emma’s.

“Seems she was a patient of Dr. James’s,” O’Connor continued. “You think it’s just coincidence her body got dumped in the woods and Dr. James shows up there at the same time?”

“Not coincidence.”

“You want to tell me what you know?”

“I know Cordelia didn’t leave that body in the woods.”

“You know a lot of things your girlfriend didn’t do,” he baited me.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I retorted.

“I thought you were friends,” he countered.

“I thought you meant, like a boyfriend,” I stumbled, wondering if I had given O’Connor something he hadn’t suspected before.

“No, no such thought,” he commented.

“I think she’s getting married,” I lied.

“She was engaged, but she broke it off a few months ago.” O’Connor certainly did his homework.

“So what do you want? Me to congratulate you on your agile detection? You’ve looked through those files before. How come you never noticed it?”

“It was misfiled, under
V,
not
W.
Or else it wasn’t there when we looked the first time,” he added almost as an afterthought.

“So either it wasn’t there or you guys are incompetent assholes and missed it the first time,” I countered.

“Interesting possibility, isn’t it?” he said, ignoring my taunt.

“Why are you mentioning this to me?”

“It makes me curious, that’s all. I have to look at all the angles.”

“About time.”

“I thought I was tracking a fumble-fingered doctor. But Faye Zimmer told me different. I want who murdered that kid.”

“So do I.”

“I hope you mean that,” he said, then hung up.

I sat for a while going over in my head what I knew, what was possible. Someone was setting up Cordelia. And doing a very good job of it.

I got in my car and drove to the clinic, really just to be doing something. It was a few minutes after five when I arrived.

“No one’s here,” Bernie told the ringing phone as she breezed out the door, intent on making her escape. She plowed into me, then jumped back in embarrassment and confusion at the physical contact.

“Hi, Bern,” I said, thinking to myself, definitely a baby dykling. “Anything going on?”

“Oh, the usual. Well, the unusual, but nothing terribly exciting.”