Delusion (7 page)

“They had a great relationship.”

Behind her strange glasses, Lee Ann’s eyes narrowed. “Racial tension in the Belle Ville PD has been well documented.”

“It never affected Clay and Bobby,” Nell said. “They were friends.

They coached Pop Warner together.”

“How long were they partners?”

“For years, right up until when Clay first ran for chief.”

“What was Bobby’s reaction to that?”

“To Clay becoming chief? He was happy.”

“No resentments?”

“He raised funds for Clay in the black community,” Nell said.

“What are you getting at?”

D E LU S I O N

43

Lee Ann drove past the zoo, now open again, although one tiger and all the former inhabitants of the reptile house had still not been found, and turned on to North Sunshine Road. “There’s a lot of anger in Lower Town about what went on after Bernardine.”

Nell didn’t say anything. The gates to Magnolia Glade went by on their left, a guard sitting in the booth, face blank.

“Anger directed at the town government in general,” Lee Ann said,

“and the police department in particular.”

Nell knew that. She also knew how hard Clay had worked, forty-eight hours at a stretch, including a frenzied twenty-four straight on the Canal Street sandbag line before the gates, the pumps, everything, finally failed completely and the storm surge flooded in. “The police did their best,” Nell said. “Everybody just got overwhelmed.”

“Not everybody,” said Lee Ann. “Not equally.”

No arguing that. “But I don’t see what this has to do with the tape,” Nell said.

“Some of the anger comes from the fact that the only cop who died in the flood was black.”

“You’re losing me.”

“I’m talking about the motive,” Lee Ann said.

“For what?” said Nell. “Some . . . some conspirators to get together and rig up a tape making DuPree look innocent? How does that do anything for the black community? Bobby was black and DuPree is white.”

Lee Ann came to Parish Street, headed toward the bayou. The old Creole elite had lived on Parish Street until thirty or forty years before, their pastel houses shaded by huge cypress trees, many overhung with Spanish moss. But Bernardine had swept the trees away, and now the houses looked shabby. “There are other interpretations,” Lee Ann said.

Parish Street dead-ended at the bayou. Lee Ann parked by the side of the towpath.

“Like what?” said Nell as they got out of the car.

Lee Ann gazed at her over the roof, the sun glaring off her glasses.

“How about making the whole department look bad?” she said.

“Seems a little far-fetched.”

44

PETER ABRAHAMS

“Maybe to someone like you,” Lee Ann said.

“What does that mean?”

“No offense,” said Lee Ann. “Just the opposite. The world’s full of people very unlike you, people with nasty imaginations and lots of misplaced energy.”

They walked onto the towpath. Nell hadn’t been here in twenty years, accompanied that last time by Clay, Bobby, and an evidence-gathering team. Her memory of that day—of so many days after the murder—was blurred and streaky, like images on a failing screen, but she didn’t think much evidence had been found; certainly not the knife, which never turned up. She stared down into the bayou; the rickety pier was gone, as Lee Ann had said, but she saw other things in there: floating garbage, two or three cars submerged to their roofs, a refrigerator door, oil slicks, trees ripped out by the roots, dead birds, dead fish, a dead dog, dead and eyeless, his collar caught on a root on the far bank.

“This is terrible,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” said Lee Ann. “If it’s too painful, we can—”

“It’s not that,” Nell said. “I’m talking about—” She gestured down at the bayou.

“It’s worse lower down,” Lee Ann said. She took a few steps along the towpath. “I can’t quite make out the old levee from here,” she said. “Is that where you were coming from?”

“Yes.”

“And the assailant was waiting on the pier?”

“Yes.”

“Then what happened?”

Nell told her story, the kind of story Lee Ann must have heard many times: a robbery gone bad.

“So you got a good look at him?”

“There was a full moon.”

“And how long was it before you made the identification?”

“A couple weeks or so. I don’t remember exactly.”

“Was it a photo array or a lineup?”

“Both, I think.”

“Both?”

D E LU S I O N

45

“First came the photos.”

“How many?”

Nell thought back. She’d sat at a desk, Clay on the other side, turning up photos and sliding them toward her, one at a time. “A lot.”

“Like?”

“I’m not sure.” Her clearest memory of the photo-array episode was Clay’s calming presence, and the careful way his hands moved, sympathetic somehow.

“And then they brought DuPree in?”

“I’m not sure. He might have been in custody already, for something else.”

“But you’re certain you picked him out of a lineup as well.”

“Yes.” Nell closed her eyes, tried to summon the memory of standing before the one-way glass. All she could picture was the number card in DuPree’s hands: 3.

“How hard was that?”

“In what way?”

“Did you have doubts, or did it seem like he was the one, right off?”

“He was the one,” Nell said; there was no
seeming
about it.

Lee Ann gazed at her, eyes unreadable behind those intelligence-magnifying lenses.

“Where did you get the glasses?” Nell said.

“You like them?”

Before Nell could answer, a big black car came speeding down Parish Street, braking hard on the other side of the towpath. The car was still rocking on its suspension when a rear door opened and a big man jumped out, followed by a small man and a woman, all of them wearing business suits. Nell knew the big man: Kirk Bastien, Duke’s younger brother, former all-SEC linebacker at Georgia Tech and now mayor of Belle Ville. He strode right past Nell and Lee Ann without a glance—the small man and the woman hurrying after him—and glared down from the edge of the bayou, sunshine glinting on his swept-back hair.

“God damn,” he said, swinging around, “this is a disgrace. Why the hell didn’t I know about it?”

46

PETER ABRAHAMS

The small man and the woman glanced at each other, said nothing.

“You’re fired,” Kirk Bastien said, voice rising. Nell had heard he had a bad temper, had never before seen a demonstration. “The both of you. Get out of my sight.” At that moment, Kirk Bastien noticed her.

“Nell?” he said, lowering his voice and putting on his sunglasses.

His face was bright red.

“Hi, Kirk.”

“What are you doing here?” he said. He turned toward Lee Ann and frowned.

“Hello, Mayor,” Lee Ann said. “We were just out for a spin.”

“Oh, Christ,” Kirk said. “You’re doing a story on this?”

“Looks like a story to me,” Lee Ann said.

“Aw, come on now,” Kirk said. He approached Lee Ann, buttoning his jacket. Nell hadn’t seen him in a while, noticed how much weight he’d put on; hurricane stress had had the opposite effect on Clay, dulling his appetite, reducing him. “How’s that going to help morale?”

Lee Ann looked up at him. “That’s not our job.”

“I know that, Lee Ann. But everyone’s so worn out. How about we make ourselves a deal?”

“What kind of deal?”

“This mess is all cleaned up by nightfall,” Kirk said. “You write a nice story about something else.”

He waited, towering over her. There was no threat or anything like that, but still Nell admired the way Lee Ann stood her ground and waited a long time before saying, “It’s a deal, but I’ll need some pictures just in case.”

“Knock yourself out,” Kirk said, stepping aside.

Lee Ann dug a small camera from her bag, moved closer to the bayou, took pictures from different angles. Then she turned to Nell.

“All set?”

“Bye, Kirk,” Nell said.

“That husband of yours is doing a fabulous job,” Kirk said. “You say hi, now.”

D E LU S I O N

47

Nell and Lee Ann got in the car. They heard Kirk’s voice rising again. “You two familiar with that expression?” he said; the jobless assistants hadn’t moved. “Nightfall?”

“So they’re not fired?” Nell said as Lee Ann did a U-turn and drove back down Parish Street.

“Not till tomorrow,” Lee Ann said. “And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”

Nell laughed. She reached for her latte, took a sip. It was cold.

“That woman staffer has a law degree from Tulane,” Lee Ann said.

“What the hell she’s doing—” Lee Ann’s cell phone rang. She picked it up. “Hello?” Her hand tightened on the receiver; the knuckles went white, almost as though they were piercing her skin. “Got it,” she said, and clicked off. All of a sudden Nell could smell her.

Lee Ann slowed down, glanced over. “I’m not sure what to do about you,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Nell said.

“Drop you off or bring you along.” Lee Ann bit her lip. “Bringing you along might be better, but . . .”

“Bringing me along where?” said Nell.

“To meet Nappy Ferris,” Lee Ann said; then, after a little pause, she stepped on the gas.

C H A P T E R 7

Lee Ann drove fast, hunched over the wheel. She swung north on Stonewall Road, passing the DK Industries yard, where Nell caught a glimpse of Duke Bastien striding somewhere in a hard hat. Then came strip malls, used-car lots, gun shops, the town line, and they crossed into Stonewall County, rural and piney, where all the faces were black.

“Aren’t the police searching for him?” Nell said.

“Looks like I got there first,” said Lee Ann.

“How?”

“Reporter’s weapon numero uno,” Lee Ann said. “Contacts.” She slowed behind a pickup with farmworkers in the back; they gazed down through the windshield of the convertible, eyes expressionless.

“Can I ask you something personal?”

“What if I said no?”

Lee Ann laughed. “Everyone likes you—did you know that?”

“Is that the question?”

Lee Ann laughed again. “No. The question is did Johnny Blanton know you were pregnant?”

No reason that question should have hit Nell so hard, but it did, the long-lost feeling of just starting out came welling up; the feeling of starting out on something new and grand.

Lee Ann’s eyes shifted toward her, looked a little alarmed. “You don’t have to answer.”

D E LU S I O N

49

“No,” Nell said. “I’ll answer. Johnny—” Nell wasn’t a crier, but she felt tears building; and forced them back down. “Johnny knew,”

she said. At that moment, she pictured his face with the clarity found in life, not memory—his exact face, so young and happy—when she told him the news. “We were going to get married.”

“So when he stepped in front of you,” Lee Ann said, “he was actually protecting two people, you and Norah.”

Nell had never considered that before. Lee Ann’s take seemed a little maudlin to her, even sensationalizing, the way material might be hyped by a— “Lee Ann? Are you planning to write a book about this?”

Lee Ann’s eyes shifted. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“My God, you
are
planning a book.” Then it hit her. “Do you know something I don’t?”

“To answer that question, I’d have to know everything you know.”

“Alvin DuPree murdered Johnny. Clay caught him and put him away. Now there’s some crazy talk about a tape, but it won’t add up to anything and DuPree will spend the rest of his life in jail. That’s what I know. So I’ll ask again—do you know more?”

“No,” said Lee Ann.

“End of story,” said Nell.

“One more thing,” Lee Ann said. “When did the romance start?”

“With Johnny?”

Lee Ann shook her head. “With Clay.”

“No precise date,” Nell said. “He called me about a year after . . .

after it was all over. We had coffee.”

“So you hadn’t met him before.”

“Before when?”

“The murder.”

“No, of course not.”

“Did you know the Bastien brothers back then?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

Lee Ann shrugged. “Your husband’s close to them, isn’t he?”

“He’s close to Duke,” Nell said. “I wouldn’t say he’s close to Kirk.

What are you getting at?”

50

PETER ABRAHAMS

“Just accumulating facts,” Lee Ann said. She went by a fireworks stand and slowed down, peering at the woods to her left. After a few hundred yards a narrow road appeared. Lee Ann turned on to it.

“This should be Pond Road,” she said. “Did you catch a sign?”

“No.”

Lee Ann kept going. The road was paved at first, soon full of potholes, and finally gravel. They went up a slope, then down a long curve, the trees—mostly pine and sycamore—growing denser, some pockmarked with bullet holes.

“Watch for a track on the right,” Lee Ann said.

“That might have been one,” said Nell.

“We’re getting to be like a comedy team,” said Lee Ann, backing up. Branches scraped the bodywork. The car bumped up onto the track, two reddish ruts with a strip of stunted brown grass in the middle. A few squashed beer cans passed under them, and then one that still hadn’t been run over. “I think we’re close,” she said.

The track entered a hollow with a small pond in the middle, and came to an end at the edge of the water. Lee Ann looked around. “See anything?”

“What kind of anything?”

“A cabin, maybe. Some sign of people. I can’t stand nature.”

Nell saw trees, a pocket of yellow wildflowers, a sudden rippling in the pond.

“I’m thinking gators,” said Lee Ann. “I’m thinking snakes.”

“Come on,” Nell said. She got out of the car and immediately smelled smoke. “We’ll just follow the smell.”

“What smell?” said Lee Ann.

Nell started walking around the pond, the earth moist and giving under her feet. More of those yellow flowers grew by the bank; a bullfrog croaked, but she couldn’t spot it. The smoky smell seemed stronger. Not far ahead something glinted at the base of a tree. Nell walked over, picked it up: an empty pint of Knob Creek, an expensive bourbon she’d seen in the liquor cabinet on Little Parrot Cay, a surprising find in a place like this. Then she remembered that Nappy Ferris was—or had been until Bernardine—a liquor store owner. She looked down and saw a sneaker footprint, pointing into the woods.