calm and measured and soothing, an FM disc jockey playing easy listening after midnight. She said, "My client may be the child that your mother gave away. Your sister, Edith. She wants nothing of you, or anyone else in her biological family, except to learn her medical history."
Nodding now. Squinting like all of this was going by very fast and it was difficult to contain. I wondered what Jimmie Ray had told her. I was wondering where he'd gotten the money to buy the Mustang. She said, "I don't know."
Lucy said, "The only way we can be sure that my client is the child that your mother gave away is if both parties submit to the state's adoption registry search so we can see if there's a match. If there is a match, the state will unseal the records and confirm the identity."
Edith Boudreaux was nodding, but I'm not sure the nods meant anything. She said, "You think your client is that baby?"
"We believe she is, yes."
"That's who sent you here? The baby?" She was so nervous she was rocking, swaying back and forth as if in time with a heartbeat.
"My client is thirty-six years old. She's a woman now.
"That was all so long ago."
"She doesn't want anything from you, Mrs. Boudreaux. She simply wants to know the particulars of her medical heritage. Does breast or uterine cancer run in the family? Is the family long-lived? That kind of thing."
"My mother's dead."
"We know. And we know that your father is ill. That's why we came to you. Won't you help us?"
She was still making the little rocking moves, and then she said, "I have to call my husband. I need to speak with him."
She went out through the curtain without looking at us. Lucy blew out a loud sigh and took a cup of water from the cooler. "What's wrong with this picture?"
"Somebody scared her. Probably Jimmie Ray."
Lucy crumpled the cup, didn't see any place to toss it, put it in her pocket. "With what? All we're talking about here is an adoption."
It didn't take long for Edith Boudreaux to talk to her husband, and it didn't take long for him to arrive on the scene. We waited maybe eight or nine minutes, and then the outer bell tinkled and a tall, florid man about Edith's age came through the curtain ahead of her. He was thick across the shoulders and butt, with small eyes and a sun-reddened face and large hands that looked callused and rough. He was wearing a crisp khaki Evangeline Parish sheriff's uniform open at the collar, and he was the same cop I'd seen with Jimmie Ray Rebenack at the crawfish farm.
He said, "My name's Jo-el Boudreaux. I'm the sheriff here in Evangeline Parish. Could I see some identification, please?" As he said it he looked over Lucy and then he looked over me. His eyes stayed with you without blinking. Cop eyes.
Lucy showed her driver's license and gave him a business card. When he looked at my investigator's license he said, "California."
I nodded.
"You carrying?"
I shook my head. "Nope. Not licensed in Louisiana."
"Why don't we see?"
He pointed at the wall and I assumed the position and he patted me down. Lucy Chenier looked surprised and then angry. She said, "There's no need for that. I'm an attorney, this man is a licensed investigator. This is a legitimate inquiry." She was breathing quickly, confused by his manner. Everything had suddenly risen to a level she wasn't used to.
I said, "It's okay."
The sheriff copied some information off the license into a little notepad. After that he flipped back the license, and he didn't much care if I caught it or not. He said, "Yeah, well, we'll check on that. We'll see. Now that we know where we stand, why don't you tell me what you're after." He squared himself off at us, the way he'd front a kid he'd stopped for driving too fast on a back road.
Lucy didn't like it, but she went through it again for Jo-el Boudreaux, telling him about the sealed state documents, about the possibility that our client was the child given away by Pamela Johnson, about our client's desire not to contact her long lost family but simply to establish her medical history.
Jo-el Boudreaux was shaking his head before she finished. "You got any proof that this baby and your client are the same person?"
Lucy said, "No, sir. But they were born on the same day, and they're both female, and