“That’s her, isn’t it? Right in the middle,” J.J. said.
I pressed the play button and Yvonne Darbonne came to life on the screen. She was barefoot and dressed in a sleeveless blue tank top that exposed her bra straps, and a beige skirt that stretched tight high up on her rump as she raised herself on the balls of her feet and lifted her hands into the air. John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom” was playing in the background.
The lens swept across the crowd but quickly returned to Yvonne Darbonne. She looked absolutely beautiful—sensuous, innocent, filled with joy, in love with the world.
Then the music stopped, the camera swung across the tops of the trees, and for just a moment I heard a popping sound and the ringing of metal against metal, like a flag and chain blowing on an aluminum pole.
I reran the scene three times and wondered if the footage was of any value at all. She was not wearing the clothes she had died in. There was no time or date indicator attached to the footage, and to J.J.’s knowledge none of the guests he could identify was linked personally to Yvonne.
“I was right, huh, waste of time?” he said.
I stared at the image of Yvonne that I had frozen on the screen. Her eyes were closed, her pug nose lifted into the sunlight, her exposed shoulders red with fresh sunburn.
“It’s hard to tell, J.J. Can I keep this?”
“Sure, it was being thrown out.”
“Stay in touch. We’ll entertain the bass one of these days.”
But he didn’t get up from his chair. He picked at his nails, his brow furrowed. “There’s one other thing I didn’t tell you. I’m in premed, just like Tony was.”
“Yeah?”
“Tony had the tests for a bunch of my science classes, including the finals for chemistry. I think he got them from Slim. Tony offered to let me use his copy of an anatomy test. He said it wasn’t cheating. He said the test was just a study guide. But another guy told me Slim paid him to break into a file drawer in a professor’s office.”
“Were Slim and Tony selling the tests?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Okay, partner. Thanks for coming in.” But before he went out the door, I had one more question for him. “Did you use the help on the anatomy exam?”
“No, sir. I made a D on it,” he said, grinning self-effacingly.
I gave him the thumbs-up sign.
A few minutes later I called Koko Hebert at his office. “Was the Darbonne girl sunburned?” I asked.
“Why you want to know?”
“Because that’s my job.”
“No, your job is being a full-time compulsive-obsessive neurotic pain in the ass.”
“If you don’t like the way I do things, take it up with the sheriff or the D.A. I sympathize with your loss of a family member, Koko, but I’m not going to be the target of your anger anymore.”
The receiver was quiet for a long time. “Koko?” I said.
“I heard you. I’m pulling up her file. Yeah, there was a certain degree of erythema on her shoulders and the back of her neck. It probably occurred a few hours before her death.”
“But she was wearing a T-shirt at the time of her death, wasn’t she?”
“Right,” he said.
“Would the burn be more consistent wi
th someone wearing a sleeveless tank top?”
“Probably.”