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“Or?”
“There’re eight dead women who want justice. Somebody out there doesn’t want that to happen, Miss Sherry.”
“Detective Picard,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. Forget I said anything. I think I really screwed up in a previous incarnation.”
Clete sat down at the table and bit into his sandwich.
Then she was standing behind him. “I’m going to cover your ass as best I can. Take care of Homer and Ms. Ardoin. If you shot me a line on any of this, I’ll be back.”
She dragged a fingernail across the back of his neck as she went out the door. He set down his food and went out on the stoop. He was going to tell her something. He was sure of that. He just didn’t know what it was.
* * *
THAT AFTERNOON HELEN and I met with the prosecutor, Lala Segretti. He was tall and in his mid-fifties and had freckles and thinning light red hair and wore suspenders and always looked wired. When he was a long-distance runner at LSU and a pretty girl would walk by he would say “Ooh-la-la” to hide that he was afraid of girls because he’d grown up in a fundamentalist church Ayatollah Khomeini could have invented. He was a family man and a straight shooter, but he obsessed over things of no consequence and sometimes translated the Old Testament into a political mind-set that precluded compassion, particularly when it came to capital punishment.
We were in the conference room at a long oak table with him at the head of it, pages from my report spaced out in front of him. He was blinking, his jaw tight. He was obviously agitated, but I didn’t know about what. He was one of those men who could eat any kind of food without gaining weight, as though a flame in his stomach burned off the intake the second it came down the pipe.
“Everything all right, sir?” I said.
“We’ve got a shit storm coming down on us because of the Nightingale indictment,” he said. “Plus a lot of criticism about an in-house matter.”
He looked at me to make sure I got the point.
“I’m the in-house matter?” I said.
“We’ll talk about that later,” he replied.
I felt a constriction behind my left eye that caused my eye to water and sent a signal to my brain that has always scared me and that I have never understood.
“Nightingale’s constituency thinks we’re political,” Lala said. “The problem is, to some degree, they’re right. He’s a demagogue and a liar, and I want to put him out of business before he turns the state into a sewer. We can’t let them get away with it.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Helen said. “Get away with what?”
“His hacks and hucksters. He has an army of them. He’s got backers in Vegas. I think they’re grooming him for bigger things.”
“I don’t think this conversation is taking a good turn,” I said.
Lala looked at me again. “Rephrase that so I don’t get the wrong inference.”
“Nightingale is guilty of sexual assault and battery or he isn’t,” I said.
“Dave is right,” Helen said. “We do our job and stay out of the consequences.”
“I don’t think I’ve expressed myself very well,” he said. “Nightingale and his family are associated with criminals. They’ve gotten a free pass for years. Iberia Parish voted down casino gambling. That will always be to our credit. We’re not going to allow this son of a bitch to besmirch us.”
“You’re not alone in your feelings,” Helen said.
Lala wasn’t listening. His attention was fixed on me. “In your report I get a sense of hesitancy,” he said.
“There’s some elements in the case that aren’t clear,” I said. “Why would Rowena delay reporting the rape? Why did she destroy evidence? She’s educated and intelligent. So is her husband.”
“Traumatized people don’t behave rationally,” he said.
“The family physician indicates she may have been a neglected wife,” I said.
“Neglected wives have drinks with another man, or even affairs, but that doesn’t mean they invite rape into their lives,” he said.
