The guy saw where I was looking. “Now what? You got a problem with people making home movies?”

I’ve never been opposed to sexuality. I’ve celebrated it with gusto when time and companion are right. And I don’t give a tinker’s damn what anyone does in the privacy of their home. But the keyword is private and beaming intimacies out over the internet for the entertainment of thousands of viewers seemed to defeat the word “intimate”. Plus, given the appearances of most who mingled body parts for viewing, the programs were an affront to aesthetics as well.

“Here’s the way it is, star,” I said, tiring of the repartee. “Either get Miz Teasdale, or tell me where I can find her. Elsewise you are gonna find your ass in jail.”

He sneered. “My lawyer will pop me in ten seconds.”

“Indeed, star,” I agreed. “And I’ll happily put your ass in there for free. But your lawyer will charge five hundred bucks to get it out.”

He started to say some smart-ass thing. I was about fed up with star-boy. I waggled a no-no finger with my right hand, said, “Get the lady.”

He scowled but folded, looking to the back of the house. “Vernia!”

“What?”

“A guy wants to talk to you. Some cop.”

A door opened in a back room; bedroom, I assumed. A petite teenaged girl stepped into the shadowed hall wearing a white blouse and short plaid skirt, the kind of dress worn by parochial schoolgirls. She had on blue knee socks and patent-leather loafers. I was about to turn and bust bathrobe boy for statutory rape when the girl stepped into the living-room’s light.

I saw her youth was a façade of make-up, a lie of cosmetology. Squint and she was fourteen, open your eyes and she was forty-something. The effect was freakish, like a mummy with ten coats of pink paint, or something from a Ray Bradbury sideshow.

“I ain’t done nothing wrong,” the girl protested. Her whisky-soaked voice was three hundred years older than her appearance and suggested she’d done plenty wrong, but was pretty sure I wasn’t currently catching her at it.

“LaVernia Teasdale?” I asked, still spooked by the carnival face. “Formerly Bailes?”

“It was Bailes for four fuckin’ months. That was twenny-something years ago. Whadya want?”

“You’re Terry Lee’s Bailes’s mother?”

She lit a cigarette and let the smoke drift from her nose as she talked. “I ain’t seen that chickenshit kid in forever. Two years, mebbe.”

“How long did he live with you?” I figured there wasn’t much to be gleaned here, information-wise, but I tried for a bit of background before I laid the ugly news on her.

She shrugged. “’Til he was fifteen, sixteen? He kept running off, nothing I could do. So one day I just didn’t call the cops to look for him any more.”

“That was the last time you heard from him?” I asked.

She shrugged. “He calls mebbe once a year. He gets his ass in jail for some pissy-ass thing and calls me whining for bail money.”

“You ever give him any?” I asked.

“I don’t steal the shit. Why should I pay his bail?” She grinned. “Terry Lee still got a face like a squished basketball?”

The casualness of her words roiled my stomach. I breathed down anger and let a few seconds pass.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, ma’am,” I said, “but your boy’s dead.”

A look of mild confusion. “You mean like…dead?”

“Yes, that’s the dead I mean.”

She frowned at the news. Stubbed the cigarette dead in the ashtray.

“What am I s’posed to do now?”

“You might ask how he died,” I suggested, feeling my jaw muscles clench. “Or grieve. Or pray for his soul.”

None of my proposals seemed appealing. She looked to Fabio Hair for a second opinion. “What am I s’posed to do, Sweets?”

“Sweets” looked at me, a frown of concern on his broad face. He stepped close for a man-to-man conference. “This thing with Terry Lee,” he asked. “It gonna cost her anything to deal with?”

“He was over twenty-one,” I said, hearing drumbeat thunder in my head. “There’s no paternal obligation, legally. If the State drops Terry Lee into an unmarked hole, it won’t cost a penny. But she might consider a small service, something to honor his life.”

Vernia Teasdale nee Bailes was eavesdropping.

“I ain’t got money for no fancy services and shit,” she brayed. “I got a tough life.”

The drumming in my head ramped into a roar, like an overloaded dynamo. From beside me the coffee table launched from the floor into the smelly little room to the side, taking out the camera and the lights and causing sparks to pop from a junction box on the floor.

The action seemed in slow motion. I remember a lot of yelling, but by the time I walked out, Mrs Teasdale and Sweets were nicely quiet.

When I got in the car Harry looked between me and the house.

“You OK, Cars? You’re kind of red in the face.”

“It was warm in there.”

He raised a curious eyebrow. “But everything went fine, right?”

“Hunky-dory, bro. How ‘bout we get a move on?”

Chapter 17

Harry seemed deep in thought for a few miles, now and then shooting me a glance, as if uncertain about something. He took a deep breath, blew it out, sounding like he was changing gears in his head.

“You hear anything from the Dauphin Island cops on their part in the Noelle case?” he said. “Have they gotten anything from Briscoe?”

“I talked to Jimmy Gentry yesterday. He said Briscoe was all promises, but hadn’t really checked on anything like the ownership of the burned-down house.”

“Racist bastard,” Harry muttered. “How about you check, Carson? Briscoe ain’t gonna do squat for me.”

I sighed, picked up the phone, got the deskman, asked for Sheriff Briscoe. A gruff male voice answered like the mouth was at home watching TV and eating pizza and not in a supposedly professional law-enforcement agency.

“Yeah, what?”

“Briscoe?”

“Speaking. And it’s Sheriff Briscoe.”

“This is Carson Ryder. And it’s Detective Ryder. I’m calling about –”

“I know what you’re calling about, Deee-tective. We ain’t got nothing on harpoon man.”

“Nothing?”

“Like in zero. You ever have one of those cases has nothing to grab hold of? That’s this one. No one lived close to that place, no one heard anything, no one saw any fire. I’m about to close the books.”

“It’s only been a few days since –”

“The place was probably used as a meth lab. Some meth head got pissed at another, jammed a spear in his belly. Still had enough brains left to burn the place down ’fore he ran off. I gotta go. I got work to do.”

“Let someone else sort the mail, Briscoe. I need ten seconds of your twenty-second attention span.”

“What the hell are you –”

“Two things, Briscoe. One, the forensics lab found no residue of the chemicals used to make methedrine, and two, harpoons aren’t used to make meth either. A man was killed in that shack and, like you said, you’re the sheriff. Maybe you recall from your oath of office that the title comes with some expectations.”

The phone clicked dead. I sighed, dialed the county property evaluator’s office. The owner would be listed in tax records, a no-brainer. The woman who answered was one of those personality-free, efficient types I love, answering my question within thirty seconds.

“The residence was owned for fifteen years by a Lewis Johnson. It sold twelve years back for twenty thousand dollars to a…to a…Oh my, I’d better spell it for you.”

I started to take down the name – and kept taking down the name – hoping the lead in my pencil lasted.

“Chakrabandhu Sintapiratpattanasai?”

Harry attempted to pronounce the name, no way of knowing if he was even close. He’d pulled over and parked, the better to devote his attention to the name.