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In my view, there is an explicit motivation in almost every homicide, even one committed in apparent blind rage. Was the motivation in the death of the two girls sexual? Possibly, but I doubted it. Robert Weingart was in the mix, and I believed the Abelards were, too, and possibly even Layton Blanchet. Sex was not a primary issue in their lives. Money was. When it comes to money, power and sex are secondary issues. Money buys both of them, always.
But what was to be gained financially by the deaths of two innocent girls? Perhaps the answer lay in what I considered a long tradition among people like the Abelards. Historically, they had acquired their wealth off the backs and sweat of others. Nor, when push came to shove, were they above the use of the lash and branding iron and selling off families to different parts of the country. In their journey from the role of newly arrived colonials escaping from Old World despots to a time when they themselves became slave owners, they managed to do considerable damage to the earth as well, burning out the soil by not rotating crops and turning old-growth forests into stump farms.
But how could two teenage girls with no apparent agenda, from poor families, be an obstruction in someone’s monetary scheme to the extent that their lives would become forfeit? It made little sense. I suspected the answer lay in the obvious, perhaps a detail I had missed or already passed over. As an addendum to this reflection, the word “motivation” suggests complexity that is often not there. Ask any detective who has heard the confession of a murderer. When the killer finally explains his rationale for committing the worst act of which human beings are capable, the speciousness and absurdity of his thinking is of such a mind-numbing magnitude that the detective’s response is usually one of silence and blank-faced disbelief. Fortunately, he often has a legal pad and felt pe
n close by, almost like stage props that he can slide across the table to the suspect while he says, simply and quietly, “Write it down.”
At 11:23 A.M. , Helen opened my office door without knocking. “Layton Blanchet and his wife just T-boned a black woman’s car with their Lexus at Burke Street and the drawbridge,” she said.
“So?”
“They’re trying to leave the scene.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“The Blanchets aren’t going to smash up somebody’s car in our parish and drive away like their shit doesn’t stink. I’ll meet you out front.”
The drive to the accident scene was only three blocks down East Main, past The Shadows and the old Evangeline Theater where a street named for a pioneer Irishwoman fed into the drawbridge. Coincidentally, the accident scene was a short distance from the back of the brick building where Clete Purcel kept his office.
Two cruisers had arrived ahead of us. A Mazda had been crushed against a telephone pole, its passenger-side doors driven into the seats. Glass and strips of chrome molding lay in the street. Amazingly, the woman driving it was unharmed; she was sitting in the backseat of a cruiser, talking to a paramedic who kept moving a finger back and forth in front of her face.
If anyone was injured or impaired by the accident, it was Layton Blanchet. While his wife argued with a sheriff’s deputy, Layton sat behind the steering wheel of his Lexus with both the driver’s and passenger’s doors open to let in the breeze. He looked like a man afflicted with a fatal disease. Helen and I parked in front of the domino parlor on Burke Street and walked toward the accident. As soon as Carolyn Blanchet saw me, she disengaged from her argument with the deputy. “Dave, thank God you’re here. Can you do anything for us?” she said.
“Like what?”
“Layton is having a nervous breakdown. I was taking him to Our Lady of Lourdes in Lafayette,” she said.
“He’s having a breakdown but you let him drive the car?” I said.
“It was the only way I could get him out of the house,” she replied.
“So why were you downtown and not on the highway to Lafayette?” I asked. Inside the shade at the back of the brick building, I could see the umbrella on Clete’s office patio ruffling in the breeze. Carolyn’s eyes followed mine, and I knew that whatever information she was about to give me would come a teaspoon at a time and would reveal only enough to ensure that her account was credible.
“He wanted to talk to your friend Clete Purcel. About a business matter of some kind,” she said.
Carolyn had shown no acknowledgment of Helen’s presence.
“Have you met Sheriff Soileau?” I asked.
“Hi,” Carolyn said, and returned her attention to me. “I’ve got to get him to this psychiatrist who’s waiting for us at Lourdes. The black woman ran the stop sign. No one is injured. I don’t want to see her ticketed or hurt financially. We’ll fix our own car. Maybe Layton will even fix hers. But we didn’t cause this, and we don’t have time for a lot of paperwork and stupid questions. Now, are we done here?”
“No, madam, you’re not,” Helen said.
“Then tell me what I can do to make this right so I can take my husband to the hospital.”
“Normally when people try to leave the scene of an accident, it’s not for humanitarian reasons,” Helen said. “Your husband is going to take a Breathalyzer test, and you’re going to file a report at the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department. You’re going to do that now, not later. That means you get in the back of that cruiser by the bridge, of your own volition, and you do it without further discussion. If you say anything more, you’re going to jail in handcuffs.”
“This is ridiculous,” Carolyn said.
“Not to us, it isn’t. Would you like to say something else?” Helen said.
Carolyn Blanchet’s platinum hair looked as bright as a helmet in the sunshine, her contacts as blue as the sky. Her skin made me think of brown tallow. She held her gaze on Helen, never blinking, her expression impossible to read. “I apologize if I seemed abrupt. May I call my attorney?” she said.
“Please do. The reception in the backseat of the cruiser is excellent,” Helen said.
“This is such a lovely little city. The word ‘quaint’ comes to mind. It’s like a place out of a fable. Is it the fable about a big fish in a small pond? Or is that about something else? I’m probably confused,” Carolyn said.
But Helen was already walking away from her, her arms pumped, her attention focused on the black woman and the ruined Mazda and Layton Blanchet sitting slack-jawed behind the wheel of his Lexus. I followed her up onto the sidewalk at the edge of the drawbridge, out of earshot of Carolyn Blanchet.
