“Can you come out to my house?” she said.
“What is it?”
“Can you come out?”
“Yeah, if you want me to. Are you all right?”
“Hurry up, Dave.”
I could hear her breath against the receiver, heated, dry, suddenly jerking in the back of her throat.
Chapter 9
LIVED ALONE in a racially mixed neighborhood in a one-story frame house with a screened-in gallery that she had inherited from her mother. The house was Spartan and neat, with a new tin roof and a fresh coat of metallic gray paint, the cement steps and pilings whitewashed, the flower beds bursting with pink and blue hydrangeas in the shade of a chinaberry tree.
To my knowledge, she never entertained, joined a club, or attended a church. Once a year she left the area on a vacation; except for the sheriff, she never told anyone where she was going, and no one ever asked. Her only interest, other than law enforcement, seemed to lie in the care of animals.
She wore no makeup when she opened the door. Her eyes went past me, out to the street. Her face looked as hard and shiny as ceramic.
“Come inside,” she said.
Her nine-millimeter automatic was in a checkered leather holster on the couch next to an eight-by-eleven manila envelope. The interior of the house was immaculate, slatted with sunlight, and smelled of burnt toast and coffee that had boiled over on the stove.
“You had me worried a little bit, Helen,” I said.
“I had visitors during the night,” she said. “You mean a break-in?”
“They didn't come inside.” Then her mouth twitched. She turned her face away and curled one finger at me. I followed her through the kitchen and into the backyard, which was shaded by a neighbor's oak whose limbs grew across her fence. At the back of the lawn was a row of elevated screened pens where Helen kept rabbits, possums, armadillos, fighting cocks, or any kind of wounded or sick animal or bird that the humane society or neighborhood children brought her. The tarps were pulled back on top of all the pens. “It was warm with no rain in the forecast last night, so I left them uncovered,” she said.
“When I went out this morning, the tarps were down. That's when I saw that bucket on the ground.” I picked it up and smelled it. The inside was coated with a white powder. My head jerked back involuntarily from the odor, my nasal passages burning, as though a rubber band had snapped behind my eyes. “They sprinkled it through the wire, then pulled the canvas down,” she said. The birds lay in lumps in the bottom of the pens, the way birds look after they've been shot in flight, their feathers puffing in the breeze. But the type of death the birds and animals died alike was more obvious in the stiffened bodies of the possums and coons. Their mouths were wide, their necks and spines twisted from convulsions, their claws extended as though they were defending themselves against invisible enemies. “I'm sorry, Helen. It took a real sonofabitch to do something like this,” I said. “Two of them. Look at the footprints. One of them must wear lead shoes.”
“Why didn't you call this in?” Then on
ce again I saw in her face the adversarial light and lack of faith in people that always characterized her dealings with others. “I need some serious advice,”
she said. I could hear her breathing.
Her right hand opened and closed at her side. There were drops of perspiration on her upper lip. “Go ahead, Helen.”
“I'll show you something that was under my door this morning,” she said, and led the way back into her living room. She sat on her rattan couch and picked up the manila folder. The sunlight through the blinds made bright yellow stripes across her face. “Would you work with a queer?” she asked. “What kind of question is that?”
“Answer it.”
“What other people do in their private lives is none of my business.”
“How about a bull or a switch-hitter?”
“I don't know where you're going with this, but it's not necessary.” Her hand was inserted in the envelope, her teeth biting on the corner of her lip. She pulled a large glossy black-and-white photograph out and handed it to me. “It was taken two nights ago. The grain's bad because he didn't use a flash. From the angle, I'd say it was shot through that side window.” I looked down at the photo and felt my throat color. She kept her eyes on the far wall.
“I don't think that's any big deal,” I said. “Women kiss each other. It's how people show affection.”
“You want to see the others?”
“Don't do this to yourself.”
“Somebody already has.”
“I'm not going to be party to an invasion of your private life, Helen. I respect you for what you are. These photographs don't change anything.”