Читать книгу The Bird Boys - Lisa Sandlin - Страница 10

II

THE HITCH FROM the wound’s incision made her feel like she had a hook in her, from belly button to backbone. Her stomach was tight, sore.

But at the sight of Miles Blankenship’s magazine suit and easy carriage, Delpha Wade’s knees unlocked. Her head went feverishly light. Had not had a lawyer who’d walked like that—like wherever he went, the street beneath his feet welcomed him. Wearing a suit that looked like somebody’d sewed it only for him. Spoke naturally, courteous, to the police chief, and she could tell he never once wondered would he get spoken back to or how. Miles Blankenship was equipped for How, he belonged here, in the station, belonged behind the nice oak desk he was sure to have, in a restaurant with velvet curtains, in a forward pew. And here he was, on her side. Speaking for her, god-almighty, throwing the protection of the law over her like a coat and not a net. Here was the difference between fourteen years and walking around free. She widened her stance to keep steady, in case gold sequins broke out before her eyes.

Detectives Abels and Tucker took hold of the chairs across from where she and the lawyer were standing. The wall to her right was being held up by Joe Ford, Delpha’s parole officer, six foot five and glum as a buzzard. One of Joe Ford’s many instructions during their first meeting: The parolee must not own any knife with a blade longer than two inches, except for a kitchen knife, and only if their parole agent says so.

Joe caught her eye, his gaze flickering. He probably didn’t favor being called to this room over a parolee of his, with police chief and lawyer, maybe any minute the D.A., men far above his pay grade. Mr. Ford, I didn’t have a two-inch knife. Or a ten-inch one. Just a whiskey bottle resting in a bottom drawer. Doesn’t signify, not a plug nickel, because it come down to me or him.

Pug-nosed Tucker took the first chair, head drifting back, eyes squeezing shut, and produced a misty sneeze. He patted his pockets, fished out a handkerchief. Mr. Blankenship pulled out the chair across from Tucker for Delpha, inclined his head at it. She sat. Unexpectedly, he ushered the chair—with her suddenly unbalanced in it—to the table. He took his place next to her. Abels, the detective with the mustache and sideburns, slid off his hounds-tooth jacket and hung it on the back of his chair. He plopped down a white tablet and sat heavily. Scraped the chair forward, uncapped a pen.

“OK, Delpha. On the afternoon of August 15, 1973, where were you?” A bulldog wearing a drill sergeant’s hat glowered from his forearm.

“Office of Phelan Investigations, downtown on Orleans Street.”

“Was anyone with you?”

“No.”

“Where was your employer?”

“Out on a case.”

“When the…deceased came to the door, you invited him in?”

“He walked in.”

“Door wasn’t locked?”

“No.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Asked how I could help him.”

“OK. What did he say?”

“Said a girl said she left a book for him outside the door, but it wasn’t there.”

Abels waited for her to continue and when she didn’t, said, “What did you say?”

“Told him I brought it in and I’d get it for him and he could go.”

“You were in a hurry to get rid of him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why was that?”

“He wanted to know if my boss was gone. Looking around to make sure I was by myself.”

“Maybe he was just looking at his surroundings,” Abels said, maintaining the neutral-cop tone.

Delpha’s eyes flicked to Tucker’s then settled back on Abels’. She answered nothing.

“You believed he intended to harm you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Without him making any kind of threat?”

She nodded.

“How’d you come to think that?”

“Front of his pants was standin’ up.”

And so on, slow and methodical, through the moment her attacker had pulled a knife, and the events that followed. Then, a detailed recapitulation of those events. It was eighty-nine minutes before Abels switched gears and the lawyer sitting next to her meaningfully shifted his posture forward.

“OK, Delpha. In April of this year, you were released from Gatesville Women’s Prison?”

“I was.”

“You were incarcerated for what charge?”

“Voluntary manslaughter.”

“Your victim was—”

Miles Blankenship finished the sentence. “A rapist, Detective. That’s enough of those questions. They’re irrelevant to the matter at hand. We all know Miss Wade happens to be on parole. And we all know that what we have here is justified self-defense. An individual with more than a reasonable belief that the use of force was necessary, defending her life against a depraved and aggressive predator. As any man in this room would have done without a second thought. Let me emphasize that. Without a second thought. Any man.” He scanned the faces in the room, skipping Delpha’s.

“There is no crime here, gentlemen. Miss Wade was carrying no weapon, so there is not even a parole violation. Not even that. This interview is a formality, the necessity of which we all understand. But let’s get this formality over with. Keep in mind that you’ve removed my client from a hospital bed.”

Whereas the cops gazed flat-faced at Miles, Delpha noticed that her parole officer Joe Ford straightened up against the wall. He had unfolded the long arms he had barricaded in front of his chest and slipped his hands in his pockets. No violations, no way he could be faulted.

Abels, brow raised, cut his eyes toward the Chief, who hiked his chin a quarter inch.

The detective’s gaze sank back to hers. He jerked his neck to the side and back, getting his head on tighter. “All right, say again for the record, you were alone when the deceased came to the office?”

“Yeah.”

“You invited him in?”

“He walked in.”

“OK. Did you talk with him?”

Their verbal exchange was repeated for a third time. Delpha told the same story, reiterated that No, she had not met the man prior to this time nor seen him. Yes, she had heard of him from her boss, Mr. Phelan.

“And what was it your boss told you?”

“That he was preying on boys.”

“You knew that for a true fact?”

“Know for a fact Mr. Phelan believed that.”

Abels’ mouth screwed to the side. Irritation sparked in his eyes. For only a second—then his tone traded its dogged neutrality for a mild, false curiosity. “Why’nt you just run, Delpha?”

“’Cause he was hopin’ I would.”

Without unfolding his arms, Chief Guidry spoke up. “You read his mind?”

“Read the way he waved the knife.”

“What waving technique was that?” Fake confusion from Abels.

“Invitin’ me to make a break for it.”

Tucker sawed at his nose with a horizontal finger. “You coulda hollered for help.”

She nodded agreeably. “He woulda liked that.”

“How would you know? Explain that for us.” Tucker sniffed.

“No, sir. You hadn’t been in a knife fight, I cain’t tell you. Ruther you asked me a specific question.”

The eraser of the lawyer’s pencil bounced on the yellow legal pad he was smiling down on.

Abels balefully resumed the lead. “So you had no hesitation before you killed him?”

“Not after he stabbed me.”

Pause in the interrogation as, possibly, Abels regrouped and the other men measured themselves against this answer.

“All right, then. Delpha. Just for a minute setting aside what we know now, that your assailant is also the chief suspect in six murders…on the afternoon in question, you didn’t know that—”

Her lips parted. She stared straight-on at Abels and his coarse mustache with a few gray hairs in it. He would’ve been on that site, she knew it. At his rank. Case like this. Abels’d have pictures in his head of whatever was left of those young bodies in dirty plastic, he’d have putrefaction fresh in his nose.

“Nobody sets six dead boys off to the side,” she said. “You don’t.”

Abels’ head twitched like there was a bone inside he had to pop straight. There was silence. Breathing. Then, “I do not. No, ma’am.”

Ma’am. Purely a figure of speech, but there it was. First shred of respect.

As though a buzzer had sounded, Miles Blankenship checked his silver watch and glided to his feet. “I believe we’re finished here, officers,” he said pleasantly.

He turned his head and addressed the chief. “If there are further questions, sir, please direct them to me. Miss Wade, I’ll be at your disposal.”

He tilted toward her and began to ease back her chair.

Delpha grabbed the sides of the seat.

She craned back at Mr. Blankenship, who smiled kindly, murmuring Allow me. She then let go of the chair, let it be guided back from the table, but feeling embattled still, rose and scanned each in turn: met the weighing eyes of the chief, angled toward Joe Ford’s familiar bony face, then the two detectives facing her. Abels blew out a short sigh, coughed to cover it. Either Tucker winked at her, or he was afflicted by an allergic tic.

Out in the hall, some uniforms were gathered, spilling out toward the squad room. Some of them had surely seen the bodies dug up. A couple of them nodded deliberately as if in support of the woman in the bloody shirt, others gawked as at a spectacle. Delpha passed by the badged chests into the open squad room, beginning to feel a sharp pain between her shoulder blades from holding herself upright. Feeling, in a rush, her exhaustion, the twanging ache of her incision, the barb in the middle of herself, as she neared the station’s waiting room. Behind her, low conversations were commencing.

“Fuckin’ A right,” she heard, along with steak knife, motherfucker, and bite-size pieces. Somebody sniggered.

Keys jingled. Joe Ford mumbled, “See you,” and excused himself by.

Yeah, she’d see him in the parole office. Wouldn’t that be a session.

Around three p.m., Fontenot slid behind the desk again, blue eyes snapping.

“Tole you,” he sang, and Phelan knew they were cutting her loose.

His friend Joe Ford appeared first, passing Phelan with a widening of the eyes and a simultaneous twist of the jaw. Then Miles. They weren’t charging her. Likely result: finding of self-defense to be forwarded to the D.A. Miles couldn’t stick around. He was off to mediate between a feuding couple, bone of contention: an aged beagle named Betty.

“Send me your bill,” Phelan said.

“Have to, Tom. I’m on the partners’ clock.” Miles smiled wryly. “She’d’ve done OK without me. Good to finally lay eyes on you again, buddy.” He shook Phelan’s hand and strode out.

“Give you a ride,” Phelan said to Delpha when she and Abels walked out past Fontenot’s front desk. “Back to the hospital? Or home?”

“Home.”

Once in the car, Phelan asked her if she wanted a clean shirt. “Yeah, thanks,” she said, “ruther not scandalize the Rosemont.” He stopped at Gus Meyer, pulled a woman’s white shirt off a rack. In the car she put it on, leaving him with an image of a tender-looking red track across a rib, a rust-spotted cotton bra, and the curve of her breasts.

He escorted her back into the New Rosemont, through the wide lobby furnished in sheenless blue velour, floral-print chintz, fringed lamps, scratched-up side tables with aluminum ashtrays. Couches and chairs grouped for cozy conversation were at that moment occupied by elderly clientele imitating arthritic marble statues. At the foot of the stairs, they stopped. Her boss looked at her a little while, like he wanted to say a thing, or say several things, his face pained. Finally just said, “Get well, hear?”

Delpha whispered thanks and went up. She found she needed to hold to the rail.

A night nurse who’d woken her to measure temperature and blood pressure had mentioned Mr. Phelan. That your husband or your boyfriend? she’d wanted to know. He’s not wearing a ring. I like the ones with no belly fat. You let me know if he’s not your boyfriend.

He’d come to see her those days after the surgery, even during the week-long haze when she was mostly sleeping off an infection. He sat by the bed during the after-work hour, not saying much. The August sunlight through the window had picked out auburn glints in his dark hair. Getting long. His blue shirt usually looked like a chicken had ironed it. He’d been noncommittal about any new jobs, and she’d guessed there were none. She was afraid she’d ruined his business. Mr. Thomas Phelan, ex-roughneck, Worker’s Comp recipient for a lost finger, new private investigator. Employer of Delpha Wade when not another soul in Beaumont, Texas, would accept that title.