Pegasus Descending

Then he upended his bottle of chocolate milk, his eyes smiling at the barb he had inserted under her skin.

Helen slipped her baton so quickly from the ring on her belt, he didn’t even have time to flinch before glass and chocolate milk and blood exploded all over his face. Then Helen dropped her business card on the bar and said, “Have a nice day. Call me again if I can be of any more assistance.” That was Helen Soileau.

I tapped on her office door, then opened it. “Wally says we have a homicide by the mill?” I said.

“The nine-one-one came in about fifteen minutes ago. The coroner should be there now. Where were you?”

“A couple of bills with dye on them showed up at the new truck stop. Who’s the victim?”

She glanced down at a notepad. “Yvo

“Yeah, I think I do. Her daddy used to cane-farm and run a bar up the bayou?”

“Bring the cruiser around and let’s find out,” she replied.

We drove through downtown and crossed the drawbridge over Bayou Teche at Burke Street, then crossed the bayou again and headed up a broken two-lane road that led past an enormous sugar mill that almost blocked out the sky. At night, during the grinding season, the fires and electric lights and the giant white clouds of steam that rose from the stacks could be seen from miles away, not unlike a medieval painting depicting Dante’s vision of the next world.

Hunkered between the mill and bayou was a community of dull green company-constructed houses left over from an earlier time. In the winter, the stench from the mill and the threadlike pieces of carbon floating off the smokestacks blew with a northern breeze directly onto the houses down below. The yards were dirt, packed as hard as brick, strung with wash lines, the broken windows repaired with tape and plastic bags. Several uniformed cops, two forensic chemists from the lab, the coroner, three cruisers, and an ambulance were already at the scene.

“Who called it in?” I asked Helen as we crossed a rain ditch and pulled into a dirt driveway.

“A neighbor heard the shot. She thought it was a firecracker, then she looked out the window and saw the girl on the ground.”

“She didn’t see anyone else?”

“She thought she heard a car drive away, but she saw no one.”

The girl’s father, whose name was Cesaire Darbo

Two cops had to restrain him from rushing to where his daughter lay in the backyard. They walked him back to a cruiser in the driveway and sat him down in the passenger seat, then stood in front of the open door so he couldn’t get out. “That’s my li’l girl back there. Her birt’day was tomorrow. Who done somet’ing like this to that li’l girl? She ain’t but eighteen years old,” he said.

But the answer was probably not one he wanted to hear. His daughter lay in the Johnson grass by a doorless wood garage, her body in the shape of a question mark. She was wearing a beige skirt and te

I squatted down next to her and picked up the revolver by inserting a pencil through the trigger guard. The cylinder looked like one that had been drilled to hold Magnums, and all the chambers other than the one under hammer were loaded and appeared unfired. A cell phone lay in the grass, less than three feet away. Helen handed me a Ziploc evidence bag. “Powder burns?” she said.

“Enough to put out an eye,” I replied.

Helen squatted down next to me, her forearms resting on her knees, her face lowered. “You ever see a woman shoot herself in the face?” she asked.

“Nope, but suicides do weird things,” I replied.

Helen stood up, chewing on a weed stem. The sun went behind a cloud, then the wind came up and we could smell the heaviness of the bayou. “Bag the cell phone and get it to the lab. Find out who she was talking to before she caught the bus. Has the old man got other kids?”

“To my knowledge, Yvo

“Ready to do it?” she said.

“Not really,” I said, rising to my feet, my knees popping like those of a man who was far too old for the task that had been given him.

Helen and I approached Mr. Darbo

“Who was your daughter with today, Mr. Darbo

“She gone over to the university for orientation. She was starting classes this summer,” he replied. Then he realized he hadn’t answered my question. “I ain’t sure who she gone wit’.”

“Was she dating anyone?” I asked.

“Maybe. She always met him in town. She didn’t want to tell me who he was.”

“Has she been depressed or angry or upset about anything?” Helen said.

“She was happy. She was a good girl. She didn’t smoke or drink. She never been in no trouble. I was looking for work today in Jeanerette. If I’d stayed home, me-” His eyes started to water.

“Did she own a pistol?” I asked.

“What she go

Helen and I looked at each other. “Can you show us her room, sir?” I said.

The wood floors inside the house were scrubbed, the furniture dusted, the kitchen neat, the dishes washed, the beds made. An ancient purple couch was positioned in front of a small television set. Imitation lace doilies had been spread on the arms and headrest of the couch. In the hallway a black-and-white photo yellowed at the corners showed the father at a hunting camp, surrounded by friends in canvas coats and caps and rubber boots and a giant semicircle of dead ducks at their feet. Yvo

“We’d like to take her diary with us, sir. I promise it will be returned to you,” I said.

He hesitated. Then his eyes left mine and looked out the window. Two paramedics were placing a gurney in the back of the ambulance. The body bag that contained the earthly remains of Yvo

“Don’t do that, sir. I give you my word your daughter’s person will be treated with respect,” Helen said, stepping in his way, holding up her palms against the air.

He turned from us and began to weep, his back shaking. “She met this boy in town ’cause she was ’shamed of her house. One night she walked all the way home from the bowling alley, wit’ cars going by her at sixty miles an hour. I couldn’t find work, me. I farmed t’irty acres of cane for forty years, but now I cain’t find no work.”

Before we left, we spoke to the neighbor who had made the “shots fired” call. She was in her late-middle years and was a member of that ill-defined racial group sometimes called “Creoles” or sometimes “people of color.” The term “Creole” originally meant a second-generation colonial whose parentage was either French or Spanish or both. Today, the term indicates someone whose bloodline is probably French, Indian, and Afro-American. This lady’s name was Narcisse Ladrine and she insisted she had not witnessed the shooting or a car or person leaving the scene.