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She rolled her shopper’s guide into a cone and stuck it under her thigh and gazed at the shimmer on the dirt lane. “I’m not part of it anymore.”
“What’s ‘it’?”
“Anyt’ing outside of my job.”
“You told Mr. Abelard of our conversation?”
Her face was as dark and smooth as melted chocolate, her eyes devoid of emotion. The sorrow and contrition she said she had felt about the deaths of Bernadette Latiolais and Fern Michot seemed to have burned away with the morning mist.
“What did your father say when you told him you called me?” I said.
She waited a long time before she spoke. “He axed me to sit down and have dinner wit’ him. He stood up from his wheelchair on a cane and held my chair for me. That’s the first time I ever sat at the table wit’ Mr. Timothy. He tole me it didn’t matter what I did, I was still his daughter.”
“This may be a surprise, but I’m not interested in Mr. Abelard’s spiritual generosity.”
“Don’t talk about him like that, suh.”
“I think he’s an evil man and should be treated as such. I think you’re making a mistake in trusting him.”
“I don’t care what you say.”
“What’s ‘the box,’ Jewel?”
“I don’t know, me.”
“You’re an intelligent woman. Don’t try to hide behind a dialectical disguise.”
“You can go now, Mr. Robicheaux.”
“Think about the faces of those girls in the photographs. You’re a highly trained medical person. You know the pain and despair those girls experienced when they died. They had no one to comfort them, to hold their hand, to tell them they were loved by God and their fellow man. But you called me on your own and stood up for them. Don’t undo a brave and noble deed, Miss Jewel. Don’t rob yourself of your own virtue.”
I saw her lips form a bitter line; she looked like a person making a choice between two evils and deciding upon the one that hurt her the most, as though her self-injury brought with it a degree of forgiveness. “I got to do my wash,” she said.
“Those girls are going to haunt you,” I said. “In your sleep. In a crowd. At Mass. In a movie
theater. Across the table from you at McDonald’s. The dead carry a special kind of passport, and they go anywhere they want.”
She stared into the humidity glistening on the road and at the tin roofs of the other houses. The wind swayed the palms overhead and rattled the Mardi Gras beads that hung from the eaves of her gallery. I walked back to the cruiser, wondering at the harshness of my language, wondering if my oath to protect and serve had not finally drained my heart of pity and left only rage and a thirst for vengeance. Then I heard her voice behind me, muted against the wind and the rustling of the beads. I opened and closed my mouth to clear my ears. Her gaze was fixed strangely on my face, her eyes lit with a bizarre luminosity, her teeth white against the darkness of her tongue, her skin sparkling with moisture.
“I didn’t hear you. Say that over,” I said.
“I’m sorry.”
“About what?”
“About saying it. I didn’t mean to say it. Don’t pay me any mind.”
“Say what?”
“Go back home. Pretend you weren’t here. Keep yourself and your family away from us.”
“Tell me what you said.”
“Don’t make me.”
“You say it, damn you.”
“Somebody is fixing to die at your house.”
