Lousiana Hotshot

native, and actually got a laugh out of him.
    The neighborhood was on the lake and nicely appointed with a golf course, but by nineties standards it was really pretty modest— a tasteful collection of ranch-style brick homes, nearly fifty years old by the looks of them.
    Aziza Scott’s was no different, being well-kept and sedate, though the Mercedes in front was one of the better cars on the street. The inside, by contrast, was mildly chaotic.
    Scott had had time to change into khakis and a T-shirt, but her makeup hadn’t had an update for hours. “Would you like to talk in the living room?” she asked, and Eddie shook his head, perhaps thinking the room too formal. That it was, but it needed a good dusting.
    Scott said, “Cassandra’s watching TV,” and started toward the back of the house.
    The dining room table was piled high with papers and files— work stuff, probably the mom’s or dad’s, and they’d spilled over onto a buffet with a silver tea service pushed to one side.
    Eddie asked “Is your husband home?” and Scott said “I’m divorced.” She tried out a wry smile, but it never really took off.
    Talba glanced off to the right and saw that the kitchen looked, as Miz Clara used to say, like a cyclone had struck it. A whiff of garbage that needed emptying drifted out of it.
    Scott waved at it. “The cleaners come tomorrow.”
    Teenage girls contemplating pregnancy should be forced to visit,
Talba thought. The house was a powerful argument against single parenthood.
    The family room where they ended up, by contrast looked a little better. Scott must have admonished her daughter to clear out discarded socks and leftover pizza before the visitors arrived.
    The moment Talba saw the girl she had a bad feeling. Cassandra was a tall drink of water well on her way to babehood, clearly with little else on her mind. Her skin was a luscious golden color, lighter than her mother’s, and her hair was curlier. She had pulled it through a rubber band somewhere near the top of her head so that it formed an exuberant pouf while exposing a graceful neck. Spidery arms protruded from a sleeveless shirt that failed to cover her navel and skinny legs from a pair of abbreviated shorts. Her bare feet revealed green-painted toenails. Sullenness enveloped her like a thick, sticky cloud.
    For the first time, Talba’s confidence faltered.
I don’t know if I can do this,
she thought. The girl was clearly a bird with a broken wing, but not only from the rape, Talba thought. The wounds didn’t seem fresh.
    She and Eddie sat down while Scott turned off the television. Talba caught the way the girl looked at her mother, something nasty flashing suddenly from her eyes, and then turned away from her, toward Talba, her mouth hanging slightly open, giving her a somewhat retarded look and showing a mouthful of hardware. Perhaps the braces made it hard for her to close her mouth, Talba thought, and felt a twinge of sympathy for her. Pretty as she was, she was profoundly awkward; and so deeply unhappy you could see it from ten paces.
    I know this girl,
Talba thought.
I’ve been there. Being fourteen is like a prison sentence.
    Aziza, the mother, was trying to help her out. “Ms. Wallis is a poet, Cassandra.” Darryl must have told her.
“And
a detective. How’s that for a combo?”
    Talba smiled at the girl. “Poetry doesn’t really pay the bills. I’m a pretty good computer jockey too. You on the Internet?” She was trying to get down to it right away, find out if the girl had met her attacker on the net.
    Cassandra shook her head, not deigning to speak, her mouth still hanging open and hatred coming out of her pores.
    Another shrug.
    “She sings in a choir,” Aziza said.
    Talba tried to sound enthusiastic. “No kidding!”
    The girl flared. “I don’t see what you’re trying to get at.”
    Eddie ignored her. “My little grandson’s into hip-hop. Ya know what? Some of that stuff’s pretty good. Ya like tigers?”
    Talba could see that the girl was getting ready to shrug again, and fairly nastily, but she stopped in mid-motion, apparently taken aback by Eddie’s non sequitur. “There’s a band named Tigers?”
    “No, I mean tigers like at the zoo. I was askin’ ‘cause my grandson volunteers over at Audubon Park, and they’ve got this new baby tiger he was telling me about.”
    For the first time, the girl seemed actually interested. “Oh, wow, really?”
    “He said it’s just like a real big