"No, he wouldn't have been the supervising officer. He wouldn't have had the opportunity."
"What's my status this morning?"
He brushed at a nostril with one knuckle.
"I don't know how to say this," he said. "We messed up. No, I messed up."
I waited.
"I did wrong by you, Dave," he said.
"People make mistakes. Maybe you made the best decision you could at the time."
He held out his hands, palms front.
"Nope, none of that," he said. "I learned in Korea a good officer takes care of his men. I didn't get this ulcer over Rufus Arceneaux's stupidity. I got it because I was listening to some local guys I should have told to butt out of sheriff's department business."
"Nobody's supposed to bat a thousand, sheriff."
"I want you back at work today. I'll talk to Rufus about his new status. That old black woman is part my responsibility. I don't know why I made that guy plainclothes. You don't send a warthog to a beauty contest."
I shook hands with him, walked across the street to a barbecue stand in a grove of live oaks, ate a plate filled with dirty rice, pork ribs, and red beans, then strolled back to the office, sipping an ice-cold can of Dr Pepper. Rufus Arceneaux was gone. I clipped my badge on my belt, sat in the swivel chair behind my desk, turned the air-conditioner vents into my face, and opened my mail.
ROSIE WAS BEAMING WHEN SHE CAME THROUGH THE OFFICE door an hour later.
"What's that I see?" she said. "With a haircut and a shoe shine, too."
"How's my favorite Fed?"
"Dave, you look wonderful!"
"Thanks, Rosie."
"I can't tell you how fine it is to have you back."
Her face was genuinely happy, to such an extent that I felt vaguely ill at ease.
"I owe you and Lou Girard a lot on this one," I said.
"Have you had lunch yet?"
"Yeah, I did."
"Too bad. Tomorrow I'm taking you out, though. Okay?"
"Yeah, that'd be swell."
She sat down behind her desk. Her neck was flushed and her breasts rose against her blouse when she breathed. "I got a call this morning from an old Frenchman who runs a general store on Highway 35 down in Vermilion Parish. You know what he said? 'Hey, y'all catch the man put dat young girl in dat barrel?' "
I filled a water glass for her and put it on her desk.
"He knows something?" I said.
"Better than that. I think he saw the guy who did it. He said he remembers a month or so ago a blond girl coming in his store at night in the rain. He said he became worried about her because of the way a man in the store was watching her." She opened her notebook pad and looked at it. "These are the old fellow's words: 'You didn't need but look at that man's face to know he had a dirty mind.' He said the girl had a canvas backpack and she went back out in the rain to the highway with it. The man followed her, then he came back in a few minutes and asked the old fellow if he had any red balloons for sale."
"Balloons?"
"If you think that sounds weird, how about this? When the old fellow said no, the man found an old box of Valentine candy on the back shelf and said he wanted that instead."