"This time of day our fingerprint man is usually backed up. He probably won't get to it until tomorrow."
"Then he's about to put in for some overtime."
She straightened her shoulders, slung her purse on her shoulder, and walked out the door into the corridor. A deputy with a girth like a hogshead nodded to her deferentially and stepped aside to let her pass.
When I was helping Batist clean up the shop that evening I remembered that I hadn't called Elrod Sykes about his invitation to go fishing out on the salt. Or maybe I had deliberately pushed it out of my mind. I knew that Bootsie was probably right about Elrod. He was one of the walking
wounded, the kind for whom you always felt sympathy, but you knew eventually he'd rake a whole dustpan of broken glass into your head.
I called up to the house and got the telephone number that he had left with Bootsie. While Elrod's phone was ringing, I gazed out the screen window at Alafair and a little black girl playing with Tripod by the edge of a corn garden down the road. Tripod was on his back, rolling in the baked dirt, digging his claws into a deflated football. Even though there was still moisture in the root systems, the corn looked sere and red against the late sun, and when the breeze lifted in the dust the leaves crackled dryly around the scarecrow that was tilted at an angle above the children's heads.
Kelly Drummond answered the phone, then put Elrod on.
"You cain't go?" he said.
"No, I'm afraid not."
"Tomorrow's Saturday. Why don't you take some time off?"
"Saturday's a big day for us at the dock."
"Mr. Robicheaux . . . Dave . . . is there some other problem here? I guess I was pretty fried when I was at your house."
"We were glad to have you all. How about I talk with you later? Maybe we'll go to a meeting, if you like."
"Sure," he said, his voice flat. "That sounds okay."
"I appreciate the invitation. I really do."
&nb
sp; "Sure. Don't mention it. Another time."
"Yes, that might be fine."
"So long, Mr. Robicheaux."
The line went dead, and I was left with the peculiar sensation that I had managed both to be dishonest and to injure the feelings of someone I liked.
Batist and I cleaned the ashes out of the barbecue pit, on which we cooked sausage links and split chickens with a sauce piquante and sold them at noon to fishermen for three-ninety-five a plate; then we seined the dead shiners out of the bait tanks, wiped down the counters, swept the grained floors clean, refilled the beer and soda-pop coolers, poured fresh crushed ice over the bottles, loaded the candy and cigarette machines, put the fried pies, hard-boiled eggs, and pickled hogs' feet in the icebox in case Tripod got into the shop again, folded up the beach umbrellas on the spool tables, slid back the canvas awning that stretched on wires over the dock, emptied water out of all our rental boats, ran a security chain through a welded ring on the housing of all the outboard engines, and finally latched the board flaps over the windows and turned keys in all the locks.
I walked across the road and stopped by the corn garden where Alafair and the black girl were playing. A pickup truck banged over the ruts in the road and dust drifted across the cornstalks. Out in the marsh, a solitary frog croaked, then the entire vault of sky seemed to ache with the reverberation of thousands of other frogs.
"What's Tripod been into today?" I said.
"Tripod's been good. He hasn't been into anything, Dave," Alafair said. She picked Tripod up and thumped him down on his back in her lap. His paws pumped wildly at the air.
"What you got there, Poteet?" I said to the little black girl. Her pigtails were wrapped with rubber bands and her elbows and knees were gray with dust.
"Found it right here in the row," she said, and opened her hand. "What that is, Mr. Dave?"
"I told you. It's a minié ball," Alafair said.
"It don't look like no ball to me," Poteet said.
I picked it out of her hand. It was smooth and cool in my palm, oxidized an off-white, cone-shaped at one end, grooved with three rings, and hollowed at the base. The French contribution to the science of killing people at long distances. It looked almost phallic.
"These were the bullets that were used during the War Between the States, Poteet," I said, and handed it back to her.