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“You don’t have to tell me about Herman Stanga.”
“This isn’t about Herman Stanga. It’s about the two girls in the video.”
“I’m off the clock. Bring them by the department.”
“No, this is between you and me. No histrionics. No throwing coffee in my face. Look at the pictures, Emma.”
“No.”
I spread the printouts on the bar right by her glass. “I need to know where that place is. Look at it.”
“No.”
“You stopped Robert Weingart from harming the girl named Tee Jolie. Your conscience is eating your lunch, Emma. You have to help me on this. It’s not up for discussion.”
Her eyes dropped to the first photo. She drank from her tumbler, the ice rattling against the glass, the whiskey clotting in her throat. “I don’t know what that is. I’ve never seen that before.”
“What do you mean by that? What is that? The terror in their faces? The collars on their throats? The ooze coming out of the wall?”
“Whatever that place is. Whatever is going on there. I don’t know what any of that is.”
“Yes, you do. You warned me that I was in danger. You were right. A Mississippi gunbull by the name of Jimmy Darl Thigpin tried to clip me. He was hired by somebody you know. The same person or persons who murdered these girls.”
She was shaking her head. “You’re all wrong. I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Tell me where the girls were held.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why you’re showing me this. I don’t know that place. The rocks in the walls look like pineapples. I think that photo is a fake. Why are you doing this to me?”
“Is everything all right here?” the bartender asked.
“Sheriff’s detective,” I said, reaching for my badge holder.
“What?” he said.
“Get out of here,” I said.
Emma was holding her tumbler in both hands now, staring down into the whiskey as though reading words in the ice melt. “You said this gunbull tried to clip you. If that’s true, where is he?”
“Put it this way: A guy who’s been abusing convicts for forty years doesn’t want to go inside. A guy like that cuts any deal he can. At anybody’s expense.”
“You’ve got a cooperative witness?”
“What do you think I’m saying to you, Emma? Wake up. You want to do these people’s time? Haven’t you been hurt enough? They made their money off the backs of the blacks and poor whites. They repair their own lives by destroying the lives of others. How bad do you have to get hurt before you get the message?”
She stared down at the photos. Then she covered them with her forearm, staring rigidly in the mirror. “I did what I was told. I didn’t know anything about this. But no matter how it plays out, I’m the one who loses.”
“No, these girls lost. You still have your life. You still have choices. These girls didn’t have any.”
Her eyes looked feverish, her lower lip sagging. “Fuck you, Dave.” She finished her drink and raised her glass toward the bartender. “Hit me again. And a beer back.”
CHAPTER
24
DEATH COMES IN many forms. But it always comes. And for that reason, “inevitability” may be the worst word in the English language.
These were not thoughts I wanted to brood upon as I sat beside the bayou that evening, the water swollen above the roots of the cypress trees, the sun little more than a cinder among the rain clouds in the west. Spring had come and gone and been replaced by the heavy and languid ennui of the Louisiana summer, a season that, at the end of day, clings to your skin like a sour vapor.
