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“How’d you know?” I asked.
“I called your office this morning. But you’d already left. The sheriff told me about your problem. I had him fax the latents to the pod. The ID should be on your desk when you get back to New Iberia,” she said.
The confrontation I had been expecting was suddenly gone. I looked at her in dismay.
“You did it,” I said.
“I’m glad my office could help. I’m only sorry I couldn’t get back to you earlier. Would you like to join us? This is Don Ritter. He’s at the First District in New Orleans,” she said.
Ritter put out his hand and I took it, in the way you do when you suppress your feelings and know that later you’ll wish you hadn’t.
“I already know Helen. You used to be a meter maid at NOPD,” he said.
“Yeah, you were tight with Jim Gable,” she said, smiling.
I turned and looked directly into Helen’s face. But she didn’t allow herself to see my expression.
“Jim’s working liaison with the mayor’s office,” Ritter said.
“How about that Zipper Clum getting wasted? Remember him? You and Jim used to leave him hooked up in the cage,” Helen said.
“A tragic event. Everybody laughed for five minutes at roll call the other day,” Ritter said.
“We have to go. Thanks for your help, Ms. Deshotel,” I said.
“Anytime, Mr. Robicheaux,” she replied. She looked lovely in her white suit, her olive skin dark with tan, the tips of her hair burned by the sun. The silver angel pinned on her lapel swam with light. “Come see us again.”
I waited until we were in the parking lot before I turned my anger on Helen.
“That was inexcusable,” I said.
“You’ve got to make them wince sometimes,” she said.
“That’s not your call, Helen.”
“I’m your partner, not your driver. We’re working the same case, Dave.”
The air rising from the cement was hot and dense with humidity and hard to breathe. Helen squeezed my upper arm.
“In your mind you’re working your mother’s case and you think nobody’s going to help you. It’s not true, bwana. We’re a team. You and I are going to make them religious on this one,” she said.
If indeed the man who had broken into Little Face’s cabin was the same man who murdered Zipper Clum, the jigger named Steve Andropolis had been halfway right about his identity. The National Crime Information Center said the print we had sent through AFIS belonged to one Johnny O’Roarke, who had graduated from a Detroit high school but had grown up in Letcher County, Kentucky. His mother’s maiden name was Remeta. At age twenty he had been sentenced to two years in the Florida State Penitentiary at Raiford for robbery and possession of burglar tools and stolen property.
While in prison he was the suspect in the murder of a six-and-one-half-foot, 280-pound recidivist named Jeremiah Boone, who systematically raped every fish, or new inmate, in his unit.
Helen sat with one haunch on the corner of my desk, reading from the sheets that had been faxed to us by the Florida Department of Corrections in Tallahassee.
“The rapist, this guy Boone? He was Molotoved in his cell. The prison psychologist says O’Roarke, or Remeta, was the regular punch for eight or nine guys till somebody turned Boone into a candle. Remeta must have made his bones by torching Boone,” she said, then waited. “You listening?”
“Yeah, sure,” I replied. But I wasn’t. “Connie Deshotel seemed to be on the square. Why’s she hanging around with a wrong cop, the gel head, what’s his name, Ritter?”
“Maybe they just ran into each other. She started her career at NOPD.”
“She stonewalled us, then fell over backwards to look right,” I said.
“She got us the ID. Forget it. What do you want to do about Remeta, or O’Roarke, or whatever he calls himself?” Helen said.
“He probably got front money on the Little Face hit. Somebody besides us isn’t happy with him right now. Maybe it’s a good time to start jacking up the other side.”
