Crescent City Connection

about what you done, but I don’t hold it against you. It was God’s will. I know that.”
    Skip felt tears and lifted her chin, knowing that wouldn’t hide them.
    Shellmire said, “Is there someplace we can talk?”
    As if he’d given a signal, the mother and the sister got up. The older woman said, “We go in the kitchen.”
    The school official said, “I better be going now,” and the district officer rose as well. He spoke to Dorise. “You be sure to tell the detective everything you told me. Will you do that for me?” He gave Skip a meaningful look, and Skip in turn glanced at Dorise. The large woman who was Shavonne’s mother slumped in her chair, obviously as miserable as if her daughter were already dead.
    In a moment, she straightened, turning her attention to Skip and Shellmire. “Won’t y’all sit down?”
    “Thanks.”
    “I don’t know what it is with me. I jus’ can’t seem to find me a good man—seems like every man I meet got the devil in him.” She plucked a tissue from a box someone had placed close at hand, and started crying anew.
    Skip and Shellmire glanced at each other, alarmed, not having the least idea what to make of this.
    She was nodding now, over and over again, and rocking her body as well. Cindy Lou had once told Skip that this movement was one people used to induce a mini-trance as a kind of comfort mechanism. “I know who got Shavonne. I know ’zactly who. Only problem, I don’t know his address. Everything my sister said true as the word of the Lord.”
    “You know who kidnapped Shavonne.” Skip thought she sounded like some particularly lame psychologist, repeating what the patient said.
    “Oh, yes’m, I know. I sure do know. He call himself Dashan Jericho and he say he a lawyer come from Monroe, but I bet a year’s salary that ain’t his name and ain’t where he from, and he ain’t no lawyer. Oh, why, oh, why didn’t I listen to my sister?”
    A voice from the kitchen said, “I hear that,” and Skip thought her sister must be a small-minded bitch. She said, “Tell us about him, Dorise.”
    “Oh, he handsome, he slick as shit. He ax me out, and took me for a big ol’ ride. Yes ma’am, my sister say he seem too good to be true, and she be right about that.”
    “What makes you think he kidnapped your daughter?”
    “’Cause he entirely too interested in my little girl. No man I ever met in my life be that interested in my child. I shoulda known. I just shoulda known.”
    Skip and Shellmire were silent.
    “He ax me what school she go to. What her teacher name. What her hobbies.
    “Y’all see what I’m talkin’ about? I didn’t see
nothin’
comin’. Nothin’. I just thought he love chirren. He told me he had a little girl of his own. You know what I really thought? I thought he auditionin’ to be Shavonne daddy. He axed me if I be willin’ to have more chirren—now what you gon’ make out of that?”
    Skip could see exactly what was bothering her—she probably thought he had a mile-long record of child abuse, and maybe he did. Maybe she and the FBI were wrong about this one. She felt the tension in her shoulders let up a little.
    Maybe
, she thought,
this isn’t my fault.
And knew, even as she thought it, she was as crazy as Dorise. If the man was a pedophile, it wasn’t her mother’s fault, and if he were Jacomine’s flunky, it wasn’t hers. But she wondered how healthy a person would have to be not to feel responsible.
    And she also remembered what Jane Storey had said about the car—that it was registered to Jacomine’s late follower. The kidnap had Jacomine written all over it.
    Shellmire said, “How do you know this Dashan Jericho?”
    “I met him at church. Where in God’s name you s’sposed to meet somebody? He walked into that church like he own the place, pick me right out, and ax me for my phone number.”
    “Did he meet Shavonne that day?”
    “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, he sure did meet Shavonne. Then later on, he talk to her while I be gettin’ ready to go out. They talk about what color kitty-cats they like—you ever hear of a grown man doin’ that?”
    Skip said, “Fathers do—and uncles. People interested in kids, sure.” She was nodding, not wanting Dorise to feel any worse than she had to. “Did he ever do anything inappropriate?”
    “What you mean by that?”
    “Did he touch her in an inappropriate way?”
    “Not when I be aroun’ he didn’t. Lemme ax my sister.” She raised her voice.