“What was that guy doing here, anyway?” I said.
“Inviting me out. For supper. This evening,” she said. “Thanks for asking.”
Chapter Four
DURING THE NEXT three days I talked with Lucinda Arceneaux’s employer and fellow employees at the catering service in Los Angeles, and her former roommate, and a boy in Westwood who used to go to the public library with her. They all spoke of her good character and gentle disposition. None had an explanation for her disappearance.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice referred me to three correctional officers who had known Hugo Tillinger. Two had no opinion of him; the third, an old-time gunbull, said, “Tillinger? Yeah, I knew that lying son of a bitch. Turn your back on him and he’d gut you from your belly button to your chin. Anything else you want to know?”
On Friday I went into Helen’s office and told her what I had.
“What are your feelings about Tillinger?” she said.
“I don’t see him as a viable suspect in the murder of Lucinda Arceneaux. An escaped convict in a prison uniform would have more on his mind than committing a ritualistic homicide with a cross and a hypodermic needle.”
Helen looked at a legal pad on her desk. “There were break-ins at three fish camps not far from Cypremort Point. A white shirt with blue tabs on it was found half buried by a boathouse. He’s here. The question is why.”
“He jumped on the first freight he could find going out of Texas.”
“What if he had a partner?” she said.
“We’re looking at the wrong guy, Helen.”
“He burned his wife and daughter to death. Don’t tell me he’s the wrong guy.”
“I want to talk to Desmond Cormier and Antoine Butterworth again.”
“You’ve got a bias, Streak. You don’t like Hollywood people.”
“That isn’t true. I don’t like anyone who thinks he’s entitled.”
She twiddled her ballpoint on her desk blotter. “Okay. By the way, you have a new partner.”
“Pardon?”
“Her name is Bailey Ribbons.”
“Who is Bailey Ribbons?”
“I hired her two days ago. She’s twenty-eight years old. She was a middle school teacher in New Orleans and has a graduate degree in psychology. She was a dispatcher with NOPD for eighteen months.”
“That’s her entire experience?”
“What she doesn’t know, you’ll teach her.”
“Is this an affirmative-action situation?” I said.
“I hired her because of her intelligence. I’m going to get a lot of criticism for that. I don’t need it from you. Stay here.”
She left the office and returned three minutes later with a woman who seemed to have walked out of a motion picture that had little connection to the present. She had dark brown hair and clear skin and eyes like light trapped in sherry, and she wore black shoes and a white blouse with a frilly collar buttoned at the throat and a skirt that hung well below the knees. What struck me most were her warm smile and her erect posture. I felt strange, even awkward and boyish, when I took her hand.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Detective Robicheaux,” she said.
“You, too, Miss Bailey,” I said. “Call me Dave.”
“Hi, Dave.”
I started to speak but couldn’t remember what I’d wanted to say.
“Bring Bailey up to date on the Arceneaux investigation,” Helen said.
“Sure,” I said. “Helen?”
“What?”
Again my head went blank. Bailey Ribbons was too young, too inexperienced, too likely to be resented by older members of the department.
“I’ll check out a cruiser,” I said. “If Bailey is free, we can head down to Cypremort Point.”
“She’s free,” Helen said. “Bye, Dave.”
I walked downstairs and out the door with Bailey Ribbons. She smelled like flowers. I felt my palms tingling and a fish bone in my throat.
“Did I say something inappropriate?” she asked.
“No, ma’am, it’s a pleasure to have you aboard.”
“I appreciate your courtesy. I realize some might think I don’t have the qualifications for the job, but I’ll give it my best.”
I looked at her profile, the radiance in her face, and felt my heart beating.
God, don’t let me be an old fool, I prayed.
• • •
WE DROVE DOWN to the southern tip of Cypremort Point and walked along the bib of sand and salt grass and concrete blocks where I had found the tennis shoe. The wind was hot and scudding brown waves up on the sand.
“We had three 911 calls about a woman screaming,” I said. “One caller thought the scream came from a lighted cabin cruiser. The cabin cruisers that are docked here were all accounted for.”
Bailey looked across the long expanse of the water, the humps of greenery and sandspits that resembled swampland rather than a saltwater bay. “This is all disappearing, isn’t it?”
“About sixteen square miles of it a year,” I replied.
“Why are you bothered by the movie director and his friend?”
“It’s the friend, Butterworth, who bothers me more. I think he’s a deviant and a closet sadist.”
“Those aren’t terms you hear a lot anymore,” she said.
“He’s the real deal.”
“Introduce me.”
Her hair was feathering on her cheek. My protective feelings toward her were the same as those I had for my daughter, I told myself. It was only natural for an older man to feel protective of a younger woman. There was nothing wrong with it. Absolutely. Only a closet Jansenist would see design in an inclination that’s inherent in the species.
What a lie.
• • •
I HAD CALLED DESMOND and made an appointment. But that was not all I had done by way of preparation regarding Antoine Butterworth. I had talked with a friend who was captain of the West Hollywood Station of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. Butterworth was almost mythic among the film industry’s subculture. He hired prostitutes he made degrade each other with sexual devices; he also hung them on hooks and beat them with his fists. He returned to Los Angeles from New Orleans in a rage and berated everyone in his office because he had to sleep with an ugly prostitute. He and a co-producer put LSD in the lunch of the co-producer’s Hispanic maid and videotaped her while she stumbled bewildered and frightened around the house; later, they showed the tape at their office. Butterworth lived in the Palisades in a $7 million white stucco home overlooking the ocean; he’d moved a junkie physician into the pool house so he could have a supply of clean dope. The physician had been found floating facedown among the hyacinths, dead from an overdose. Prior to his situation with Butterworth, the physician had been in a twelve-step program.
If Butterworth had a bottom, no one knew what it was.
Desmond opened the door. He took one look at Bailey Ribbons, and the breath left his chest. “Who are you?”
She blushed. “Detective Ribbons.”
“I can’t believe this,” he said.
“I hope we haven’t upset you,” she said.