“Miss Lucinda works for the Innocence Project?” I said.
“She used to. She got a job in California.”
“Doing what, sir?”
“What they call organic catering. She always loved cooking and messing with food. She’s been working for a caterer about three months.”
“How long was she with the Innocence Project?”
“Two years. It was mostly volunteer work. She’d visit men in the penitentiary and interview them and help their lawyers.”
“Over in Texas?”
“Yes, suh. Sometimes. Other times in Angola.”
“Do you recognize the name Hugo Tillinger?”
“No, suh. Who is he?”
“A man we’d like to find.”
He was sitting on a faded couch printed with roses. The coffee table in front of him was stacked with National Geographic and People and Sierra magazines. “I called the airline. They wouldn’t give me any information. I called a friend she worked with in Los Angeles. Nobody at her workplace knows where she is.”
“Is your wife here, sir?”
“She passed nine years ago. We adopted Lucinda when she was t’ree. She never went off anywhere without telling me. Not once.”
“Do you have a photograph?”
He went into a short hallway that led to a bath and a pair of bedrooms, and returned with a framed photo he took from the wall. He put it in my hand and sat down. I glanced at the young woman in the picture. She was standing next to the reverend, a beach and a mountain behind her. She was smiling. A wreath of flowers hung from her neck. I felt the blood in my chest drain into my stomach.
“That was taken in Hawaii two years ago,” he said. “We went on a tour with our church.” He paused. “You’ve seen my daughter before, haven’t you?”
“Sir, I need you to go with me to Iberia General.”
He held his gaze on me, then took a short breath. “That’s where Lucinda is?”
“We found a young woman in Weeks Bay.”
“Lucinda wouldn’t have any reason to be out there.”
“Is there someone who should come with us?” I asked.
“It’s just me and her here. That’s the way it’s always been. She was always the sweetest li’l girl on earth.”
His eyes would not leave mine. There were moments when I hated not just my job but the human race. I had no adequate words for him.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked.
“Let’s take care of the identification, sir.”
“Help me up, please. My knees aren’t much good anymore.”
He held on to my arm, weightless as a bird when we walked down the steps to the cruiser. Then he veered away from me as though he could undo our meeting and the message I had brought him. “Who would want to hurt her? She tried to get justice for people nobody cares about. Tell me what they did to her. Tell me right now.”
But any comfort I could have offered him would have been based on a lie.
He sat down sideways on the passenger seat of the cruiser, his feet outside, and wept in his hands. I could hear the bottle tree tinkling in the wind, the pecan leaves ruffling. I wanted to be on the other side of the moon.
Chapter Three
CLETE CALLED ME at the department late the same afternoon and asked me to come to his office. It was located on Main Street in a century-old brick building half a block from the Shadows. The receptionist was gone, and the folding metal chairs were empty except for one where a man with long hair as slick and shiny as black plastic was cleaning his nails with a penknife. The floor was littered with cigarette butts and gum wrappers and an apple core and a banana peel. Clete sat behind his desk in the back room, the door ajar. He waved me in. “Close the door,” he said.
There were printouts and two folders and a legal pad on his desk. Through the window I could see his spool table and umbrella on the concrete pad behind the building, and the drawbridge at Burke Street and the old convent across the bayou.
“What’s up?” I said.
“I made several calls about Hugo Tillinger. It’s a complex case. It also stinks.”
“I talked with Helen about him, Clete. Let us take it from here.”
“Is everything okay? I mean with me not reporting Tillinger right away?”
I avoided his eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Did you ID the body of the girl on the cross?”
“She’s the daughter of a Baptist minister in Cade. Her name is Lucinda Arceneaux. She was a volunteer for the Innocence Project.”
He flinched.
“That doesn’t mean she knew Hugo Tillinger,” I said.
“Stop it.”
He got up from his desk and opened the door. “Come in here, Travis.”
The man with black hair greased straight back folded his knife and dropped it in his slacks. He had the beginnings of a paunch and cheeks that looked like they had been rubbed with chimney soot. He wore his slacks below the belly button; hair protruded from the top of his belt.
“This is Travis Lebeau,” Clete said. “Tell Dave what you know about Hugo Tillinger.”
“While he was being held for trial, I’d bring ice to his cell,” Travis said.
“Ice?” I said.
“That’s what I did in this particular jail. I brought ice from the kitchen and got paid in smokes or whatever.”
Three teardrop tats dripped from his left eye. Two blue stars the size of cigar burns were tattooed on the back of his neck.
“Travis was in the AB,” Clete said. “Now he’s trying to do a few solids to make up for the past.”
“I thought the AB was for life,” I said.
“They sold me to the niggers. The BGF,” he replied. “They claimed I snitched on a guy. I never snitched on anybody in my life.”
“Go ahead about Tillinger,” Clete said.
“We played checkers on the floor, between the bars,” Travis said. “He knew he was gonna get the needle. He said the jury and the judge and cops and his lawyer were working for Satan. I told him they don’t need Satan, they’re working for themselves, that’s bad enough. Can I sit down? I feel like a fireplug that’s about to get pissed on.”
“Sure,” Clete said.
“He went on and on, like all these reborn people, you know, they cain’t shut up talking about it,” Travis said. “He told me he was a drunk, a rage-a-holic or whatever, then he got saved by the Pentecostals at a tent rival. He was a pain in the ass to listen to.”
“You’re going a little fast for me, Travis,” I said.
“I’m saying Tillinger wasn’t a criminal or the kind of guy who burns up his family. He ripped all the posters off his daughter’s walls when he was drunk, and yelled and hollered in the yard, but that was it. I believed him. So did the colored girl who showed up.”
“Which colored girl?” I asked.
“Her name was Lucinda. She started visiting him right after he got sentenced. She said the people at the Innocence Project were taking his case. She said she knew people in the movie business, maybe some of the people who got Hurricane Carter out of prison. It gave him hope. But I thought he was gonna ride the needle from the jump.”