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"A couple of girls I used to know work the yacht trade here. They say Kale and his wife run an escort service out of Miami. Or at least a guy who sounds a lot like Kale."
"What about Ida?"
"Hit a dead end. I got to be back in New Orleans tomorrow. I'll see you later in the week. Anything happening there?"
I had to wet my lips before I spoke. "I had a slip. But I'm all right now." I cleared my throat and waited for his response, my fingers opening and closing on the receiver.
"You get in any trouble?" he asked.
"I can't remember what I did or where I was. Honoria Chalons is dead. I think maybe I was there when she died. I can't remember and I don't know how to get inside my own head."
In the silence I could hear the waves smacking against a beach, then receding with a sucking sound, like the underpinnings of the earth itself sliding down the continental shelf.
The first person I saw in my office Tuesday morning was Koko Hebert. He may have showered since the previous day, but I couldn't tell it. Twenty seconds after he closed the door behind him, the entirety of the room smelled like testosterone and beer sweat.
He sat on a chair with the posture of a man sitting on a toilet. "The post indicates the Chalons girl wasn't raped, although she did have sexual intercourse with someone in the twenty-four period before she died," he said. "She also had enough cocaine in her to anesthetize the city of New York."
"Anything that could connect her homicide to the Baton Rouge guy?"
"I would have already told you that, wouldn't I?" he said.
"I guess so, Koko," I replied. I tried to be patient and remember that the autopsy had been performed by the forensic pathologist in St. Mary Parish, and that Koko was probably doing the best he could.
"There was an incision at the top of her forehead, just inside the hairline. It was done postmortem, in the shape of a cross," he said.
His eyes were fixed on mine, his nostrils swelling as he breathed.
"The Chalons family coat of arms?" I said.
"You're the detective. I just run the meat lockers."
Don't say anything more, I told myself. "I'll probably regret this, but did I ever do anything to offend you?" I said.
"Let me work up a list and I'll get back to you."
"Thanks for coming by," I said.
I turned my attention back to the paperwork on my desk. I thought he would be gone by the time I looked up again. Instead, he stood in the center of the room, breathing loudly, emanating an odor that was close to eye-watering. "My son by my first marriage was a private first class in the United States Marine Corps. He was killed two months ago outside Baghdad. What was left of his Humvee wouldn't make a bucket of bolts. He was nineteen fucking years old."
He stared into space, as though he were trying to puzzle out the implication of his own words.
At 10:00 a.m., Helen and I and the Jeanerette chief of police and two St. Mary Parish detectives watched the videotape from the surveillance camera that had been mounted on an oak tree in the Chalonses' backyard. The frames from Saturday night showed Honoria Chalons going to and coming from the guesthouse several times. The footage was grainy, the images and sense of movement elliptic, lit intermittently by the electricity in the clouds, the lens sometimes obscured by rain and blowing leaves. At 9:04 p.m. a man wearing an abbreviated rain slicker with a hood entered the guesthouse. What occurred next would remain a matter of conjecture.
The camera had been positioned so that its lens covered most of the yard but only part of the house. Shadows seemed to break across the house's windows, indicating activity inside but little else. At 9:09 the figure in the raincoat left by the French doors and disappeared from the film. There was a momentary glint of light on metal inside the figure's open raincoat, but the reflection could have been from a belt buckle.
Then, at 11:05 p.m., a second figure crossed the yard, tapped on the door, and entered the house. The figure wore a dark hat with a brim wilted by rainwater, and a coat with a hood that hung loosely down the back. At 11:13 the figure left. It was impossible to tell the gender of either visitor. Neither had looked up at the camera. The hand of the second visitor, who had tapped on the door, appeared to be white.
Doogie Dugas, the Jeanerette chief of police, clicked on the overhead light. He was a middle-aged, close-cropped, gray-haired man who affected the dress and manner of a western lawman. The fact that he was wise enough to avoid speaking in front of microphones had allowed him a long administrative career in small-town law enforcement. But now his taciturnity was of no service to him and it was obvious he was having trouble dealing with the magnitude of the case that had been dropped into his lap. It was also obvious he had not talked to his own forensic pathologist.
"Koko Hebert told you the killer cut a cross in Miss Honoria's head?" he said.
"Right," Helen said.
" 'Cause maybe the killer don't like the Chalonses and he put the cross on Miss Honoria 'cause the cross is on Mr. Raphael's family seal?" he said.
"Right," Helen said.
Doogie pursed his mouth and closed and opened his eyes, like a man for whom the world was simply too much. "Cooh," he said, using the favorite Cajun expression for surprise or awe. "Know how many people that might be?"
