I went back into the department and called Connie Deshotel's office in Baton Rouge.
"She's taken a few vacation days, Mr. Robicheaux. What with the demonstrations and all outside," the secretary said.
"Is she at Lake Fausse Pointe?"
"I'm sorry. I'm not at liberty to say," the secretary replied.
"Will you call her for me and ask her to call me?"
There was a long pause.
"Her phone is out of order. I've reported it to the telephone company," the secretary said.
"How long has it been out of order?"
"I don't know. I don't understand why you're asking me these questions. Is this an emergency?"
I thought about it, then said, "Thanks for your time."
I walked down to Helen Soileau's office and opened her door without knocking. She looked up from her paperwork at my face. She was chewing gum and her eyes were bright and focused with a caffeinated intensity on mine. Then one finger pointed at an empty chair by the side of her desk.
A few minutes later she said, "Go through that again. How'd you know Remeta was working for Connie Deshotel?"
"The last time Alafair saw him he was sunburned. He said he'd been out on Lake Fausse Pointe. That's where Connie's camp is. Connie was Jim Gable's partner at NOPD back in the sixties. When Remeta tried to shake her down, she got him to hit Gable."
"How?"
"He's a basket case. He's always looking for the womb."
"You sure of all this, Dave?"
"No. But Johnny went crazy when I convinced him he'd been betrayed."
"So you set Connie up?" Before I could reply, she picked up a ballpoint and drew lines on a piece of paper and said, "You'll never prove she was one of the cops who killed your mother."
"That's true."
"Maybe we should just let things play out," she said. Her eyes drifted back on mine.
I looked out the window. The sky was the color of brass and smoke, and the wind was gusting in the streets.
"A storm is coming in. I have to get out on the lake," I said.
Helen remained seated in her chair.
"You didn't do Gable. You want to nail Connie Deshotel yourself," she said.
"The other side always deals the play. You coming or not?"
"Let me be honest with you, bwana. I had a bad night last night. I couldn't get Letty Labiche out of my mind. I guess it's because I was molested myself. So lose the attitude."
Wally, the dispatcher, stopped us on the way out of the office. He had a pink memo slip in his hand.
"You wasn't in your office. I was fixing to put this in your pigeonhole," he said to me.
"What is it?"
"A cop in St. Martinville said Clete Purcel wants to talk to you. It's suppose to be important," Wally said.
"I'll take care of it later," I said.
Wally shrugged and let the memo slip float from his fingers into my box.
Helen and I towed a department outboard on the back of my truck to Loreauville, a few miles up the Teche, then drove through the sugarcane fields to the landing at Lake Fausse Pointe. The wind was blowing hard now, and I could see waves capping out on the lake and red leaves rising in the air against a golden sun.
Helen laced on a life preserver and sat down in the bow of the boat, and I handed her a department-issue cut-down twelve-gauge pump loaded with double-ought buckshot. She kept studying my face, as though she were taking the measure of a man she didn't know.
"You've got to tell me, Dave," she said.
"What?" I smiled good-naturedly.
"Don't shine me on."
"If Remeta's there, we call in backup and take him down."
"That's it?"
"She's the attorney general of Louisiana. What do you think I'm going to do, kill her in cold blood?"
"I know you, Dave. You figure, out ways to make things happen."
"Really?" I said.
"Let's get something straight. I don't like that snooty cunt. I said she was dirty from the get-go. But don't jerk me around."
I started to say something, then let it go and started the engine. We headed down the canal bordered by cypress and willow and gum trees, then entered the vast lily-dotted expanse of the lake itself.
It was a strange evening. In the east and south the sky was like a black ink wash, but the clouds overhead were suffused with a sulfurous yellow light. In the distance I could see the grassy slope of the levee and the live oaks that shadowed Connie Deshotel's stilt house and the waves from the lake sliding up into the grass and the wildflowers at the foot of her property. An outboard was tied to her dock, straining against its painter, knocking against one of the pilings. Helen sat hunched forward, the barrel of her shotgun tilted away from the spray of water off the bow.
I cut the engine and we drifted on our wake into the shallows, then I speared the bottom with the boat paddle and the hull snugged onto the bank.
The lights were on inside the house and I could hear music playing on a radio. A shadow crossed a screen window. Helen stepped out into the shallows and waded out to the moored boat and placed her hand on the engine's housing.
"It's still warm," she said, walking toward me, the twelve-gauge in both hands. She studied the house, the skin twitching slightly below her left eye.
"You want to call for backup?" I asked.
"It doesn't feel right," she said.
"You call it, Helen."
She thought about it. "Fuck it," she said, and pumped a round into the chamber, then inserted a replacement round into the magazine with her thumb.
But she was wired. She had killed three perpetrators on the job, all three of them in situations in which she had unexpectedly walked into hostile fire.
We walked up the slope in the shadows of the live oaks. The air was cool and tannic with the autumnal smell of flooded woods, the windows of the house gold with the western light. I took out my.45 and we mounted the steps and stood on each side of the door.
" Iberia Sheriff's Department, Ms. Deshotel. Please step out on the gallery," I said.
There was no response. I could hear shower water running in the back. I pulled open the screen, and Helen and I stepped inside, crossed the small living room, and looked in the kitchen and on the back porch. Then Helen moved into the hallway and the back bedroom. I saw her stop and lift the shotgun barrel so that it was pointed toward the ceiling.
"You better come in here, Dave. Watch where you step," she said.
Johnny Remeta lay on top of a white throw rug in his Jockey undershorts, his chest, one cheek, and his arm peppered with five entry wounds. A cut-down Remington twelve-gauge was propped in the corner. It was the same pump shotgun he had been carrying when he first visited my dock. He had not gone down all at once. The blood splatter was on the walls, the floor, and the bed sheets, and he had torn one of the curtains on the doors that gave onto a roofed deck.
The doors were open and I could see a redwood table on the deck, and on top of it a green bottle of wine, a platter of sandwiches, a package of filter-tipped cigarettes, Connie's gold-and-leather-encased lighter, and a big box of kitchen matches with a Glock automatic lying across it. The spent shell casings from the Glock were aluminum reloads and glinted on the deck like fat silver teeth.
I heard a faucet squeak in the bathroom, then the sound of the shower water died inside the stall. Helen pushed open the bathroom door and I saw her eyes go up and down the form of someone inside.
"Put a robe on and get out here, ma'am," she said.
"Don't worry. I heard you long before you started banging around inside. Call in the report for me, please. My phone's out of order," Connie Deshotel's voice said.
Helen picked up a pink robe off the toilet tank and flung it at Connie.
"Get your ass out here, ma'am," she said.