He shook his head and smiled to himself.
“What’s the joke?” I asked.
“We’re going out to see where Sweet Pea Chaisson got turned into a human candle.”
“Yeah?”
“Are we on somebody’s clock? Am I a dumb shit who’s missed something?”
“You want to go back?”
He set his coffee cup in a wire ring that was attached to his dashboard and tried to put on his porkpie hat without losing it in the wind.
“You think they’re wiping the slate clean?” he said.
“Their object lessons tend to be in Technicolor.”
“Why the black woman?”
“Wrong place, wrong time, maybe. Unless the dead woman is Ruthie Jean Fontenot.”
“I don’t get it. Black people keep showing up in the middle of all this bullshit. Let’s face it, mon. Ripping off the food stamp brigade isn’t exactly the big score for these guys.”
“It’s land.”
“For what?”
I didn’t have an answer.
We drove down a gravel road through sugar and cattle acreage, then turned into an empty field where a section of barbed wire fence had been knocked flat. The weeds in the field were crisscrossed with tire tracks, and in the distance I could see the oak grove and a bright yellow strand of crime scene tape jittering in the wind.
Clete parked by the trees and we got out and walked into the shade. The fire-gutted, lopsided shell of Sweet Pea’s convertible was covered with magpies. I picked up a rock and sailed it into the frame; they rose in an angry clatter through the leafless branches overhead.
Clete fanned the air in front of his face.
“I don’t think the ME got everything off the springs,” he said.
“Look at this,” I said. “There’s glass blown into the backseat and a partial pattern on top of the door.” I inserted my little finger into a ragged hole at the top of the passenger door, then looked at the ground for empty shell casings. There weren’t any.
“What a way to get it,” Clete said.
“You can see the angle of fire,” I said. “Look at the holes in the paneling just behind the driver’s seat.” I aimed over the top of my extended arm and stepped backward several feet. “Somebody stood just about where I’m standing now and fired right into their faces.”
“I don’t see Sweet Pea letting himself get set up like this,” Clete said.
“Somebody he trusted got in the backseat. Another car followed. Then the dice were out of the cup.”
“I got to get out of this smell,” Clete said. He walked back into the sunlight, spit in the weeds, and wiped his eyes on his forearm.
“You all right?” I said.
“In “Nam I saw a tank burn. The guys inside couldn’t get out. I don’t like remembering it, that’s all.”
I nodded.
“So I probably signed Sweet Pea’s death warrant when I put him in the trunk of my car,” he said. “But that’s the breaks, right? One more piece of shit scrubbed off the planet.” With his shoe he rubbed the place where he had spit.
“You blaming yourself for the woman?” I asked.
He didn’t have time to answer. We heard a car on the gravel road. It slowed, then turned through the downed fence and rolled across the field, the weeds rattling and flattening under the bumper.
“I know that guy, what’s his name, he thinks we should be buddies because we were both in the Crotch,” Clete said.
“Rufus Arceneaux,” I said.
“Oh, oh, he doesn’t look like he wants to be friends anymore.”
Rufus cut the engine and got out of the car. He wore tight blue jeans and a faded yellow polo shirt and his pilot’s sunglasses, with his badge and holster clipped on a western belt. A small black boy of about ten, in an Astros baseball cap and oversize T-shirt, sat in the backseat. The windows were rolled up to keep the air-conditioning inside the car. But the engine was off now and the doors were shut.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Rufus said.
“The sheriff called me this morning,” I said.
“He told you to come out here?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then you’d better get out of here.”
“Did y’all find out who the broad was?” Clete said.
“It’s not your business, pal,” Rufus said.
“Pal. Terrific,” Clete said. “Who’s the kid? He looks like he’s about to melt.”
“Did y’all find any shell casings?” I said, and opened the back door to Rufus’s car and brought the little boy outside. There was a dark, inverted V in his blue jeans where he had wet his pants.
“I don’t know what it is with you, Robicheaux,” Rufus said. “But, to be honest, I’d like to beat the living shit out of you.”
“What are you doing with the boy?” I said.
“His mother didn’t come home. I’m taking him to the shelter. Now, y’all get the fuck out of here.”
I squatted down on my haunches and looked into the little boy’s face.
His upper lip was beaded with sweat.
“Where do you live, podna?” I asked.
“In the trailer, up yonder on the road.”
“What’s your mama’s name?”
“Gloria Dumaine. They call her “Glo’ where she work.”
“Does she work at the juke?” I said.
“Yes, suh. That’s where she gone last night. She ain’t been back.”
I stood erect and put my fingers lightly on Rufus’s arm, turned him toward the trees. I saw the skin stretch tight at the corners of his eyes.
“Walk over here with me,” I said.
“What...”
“I know his mother,” I said. “She knew something about the decapitated floater we pulled out of the slough in Vermilion Parish. I think she was in the car with Sweet Pea.”
He removed his sunglasses, his eyes looking from the burned Caddy to the little boy. His mouth was a tight seam, hooked downward at the corners, his expression wary, as though a trap were being set for him.
“Take the little boy to the shelter. I’ll call the sheriff and tell him what I told you,” I said.
“I’ll handle it from here,” he said.
I walked over to Clete’s convertible and got inside.
“Let’s hit it,” I said.
As we drove across the field toward the gravel road, I looked back toward the oak grove. Rufus was squatting on his haunches, smoking a cigarette, staring at the scorched hulk in the trees, a man whose keen vision could snap the twine off Gordian knots. The little boy stood unnoticed and unattended in the sunlight, like a black peg tamped into the weeds, one hand trying to hide the wetness in his jeans.
They had killed Sweet Pea and Gloria. Who was next? I didn’t want to think about it.
I drove to the office on Main with Clete, then walked down to Moleen Bertrand’s law offices across from the Shadows. His secretary told me he had gone home for lunch. I drove across the drawbridge, past the old gray stone convent, which was now closed and awaiting the wrecking ball, and followed the winding drive through City Park to Moleen’s deep, oak-shaded lawn and rambling white house on Bayou Teche.
Julia was spading weeds out of a rose bed by the driveway, a conical straw hat on her head. She looked up and smiled at me as I drove by.
Her shoulders were tan and covered with freckles and the skin above her halter looked dry and coarse in the sunlight. Behind her, balanced in the St. Augustine grass, was a tall highball glass wrapped with a napkin and rubber band.
Moleen was eating a tuna fish sandwich on a paper plate inside the Plexiglas-enclosed back porch. He looked rested, composed, his eyes clear, almost serene. Outside, blue hydrangeas bloomed as big as cantaloupes against the glass.
“I’m sorry to bother you at home,” I said.
“It’s no bother. Sit down. What can I do for you? You want something to eat?”