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“Ready to do it?” she said.
“Not really,” I said, rising to my feet, my knees popping like those of a man who was far too old for the task that had been given him.
Helen and I approached Mr. Darbonne, who was still sitting in the back of the cruiser. His khakis were starched and clean, his denim shirt freshly ironed. He looked up at us as though we were the bearers of information that somehow could change the events that had just crashed upon his life like an asteroid. I told him we were sorry about his loss, but my words didn’t seem to register.
“Who was your daughter with today, Mr. Darbonne?” I asked.
“She gone over to the university for orientation. She was starting classes this summer,” he replied. Then he realized he hadn’t answered my question. “I ain’t sure who she gone wit’.”
“Was she dating anyone?” I asked.
“Maybe. She always met him in town. She didn’t want to tell me who he was.”
“Has she been depressed or angry or upset about anything?” Helen said.
“She was happy. She was a good girl. She didn’t smoke or drink. She never been in no trouble. I was looking for work today in Jeanerette. If I’d stayed home, me—” His eyes started to water.
“Did she own a pistol?” I asked.
“What she gonna do wit’ a gun? She read books. She wanted to study journalism and history. She wrote in her diary. She was always going to the movies.”
Helen and I looked at each other. “Can you show us her room, sir?” I said.
The wood floors inside the house were scrubbed, the furniture dusted, the kitchen neat, the dishes washed, the beds made. An ancient purple couch was positioned in front of a small television set. Imitation lace doilies had been spread on the arms and headrest of the couch. In the hallway a black-and-white photo yellowed at the corners showed the father at a hunting camp, surrounded by friends in canvas coats and caps and rubber boots and a giant semicircle of dead ducks at their feet. Yvonne’s dresser and shelves were covered with stuffed animals, worn paperback novels, and books on loan from the city library. Among the titles were The Moon and Sixpence and The Scarlet Letter.
“We’d like to take her diary with us, sir. I promise it will be returned to you,” I said.
He hesitated. Then his eyes left mine and looked out the window. Two paramedics were placing a gurney in the back of the ambulance. The body bag that contained the earthly remains of Yvonne Darbonne had been zipped over her face, within seconds erasing the identity she had woken with that morning. The straps and vinyl that held her form against the gurney seemed to have shrunken her size and substance to insignificance. Cesaire Darbonne began to run toward the back door.
“Don’t do that, sir. I give you my word your daughter’s person will be treated with respect,” Helen said, stepping in his way, holding up her palms against the air.
He turned from us and began to weep, his back shaking. “She met this boy in town ’cause she was ’shamed of her house. One night she walked all the way home from the bowling alley, wit’ cars going by her at sixty miles an hour. I couldn’t find work, me. I farmed t’irty acres of cane for forty years, but now I cain’t find no work.”
Before we left, we spoke to the neighbor who had made the “shots fired” call. She was in her late-middle years and was a member of that ill-defined racial group sometimes called “Creoles” or sometimes “people of color.” The term “Creole” originally meant a second-generation colonial whose parentage was either French or Spanish or both. Today, the term indicates someone whose bloodline is probably French, Indian, and Afro-American. This lady’s name was Narcisse Ladrine and she insisted she had not witnessed the shooting or a car or person leaving the scene.
“But you heard a vehicle driving away?” I said.
“I ain’t sure,” she said. She wore a print dress that fit her like a potato sack and was so wash-faded you could see the outline of her undergarments through the fabric.
“Try to remember,” I said. “Was it a sound like a truck? Did it make a lot of noise? Maybe the muffler was rusted out?”
“When you hear a gunshot, you ain’t listening for other t’ings.”
She had a point. “Did you see anyone else on the street?” I asked.
“There was a black man on a bicycle picking up bottles and cans out of the ditch.” Then she thought about what she had just said. “Except that was a lot earlier. No, I ain’t seen nobody else out there.”
We went back up the road and checked with the security office at the sugar mill. No one there had seen any unusual activity near the mill or in the community of frame houses by the bayou. In fact, no one at the security office even knew a homicide had occurred there.
AS WE DROVE BACK toward the department, a rainstorm swept across the wetlands and pounded the cruiser and scattered hailstones like pieces of smoking dry ice on the road. Back at the office, I began the paperwork on the death of Yvonne Darbonne. I had completely forgotten the matter of the dye-marked one-hundred bills in the possession of Trish Klein, the daughter of my murdered gambling friend in Miami. Just before quitting time, Helen opened my door. “We got a hit on those serial numbers,” she said. “The bills came from the robbery of a savings and loan company in Mobile.”
Helen’s announcement wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “I’ll get ahold of the woman tomorrow,” I said.
“It gets better. The bills from the robbery have been showing up in casinos and at racetracks all along the Gulf Coast,” she said.
“The Klein woman says she got hers at a casino in Biloxi.”
“Here’s an interesting footnote. The Treasury guys think the savings and loan company may be a laundry for the Mob. The wiseguys got ripped off by some bank thieves who didn’t get the word. What’s the background on this Klein woman?”
