“Don't worry about it,” I said.
Wally looked at the sheriff.
“It's not your fault, Wally. Thanks for your help,” the sheriff said.
A moment later he said to me, “What are these guys after?”
“They don't know that Marsallus gave me his notebook. But I bet they think we found a copy of it that they missed in Delia Landry's house.”
“What's in it, though? You said it reads like St. Augustine's Confessions among the banana trees.”
“You got me. But it must be information they need rather than information they're trying to keep from us. You follow me?”
“No.”
“If we have it, they know we've read it, maybe made copies of it ourselves. So that means the notebook contains something indispensable to them that makes sense only to themselves.”
“This guy you met jogging yesterday, you think he's this mercenary, what's his name, Pogue?”
“He knew the year I was in Vietnam. He even knew how many times I'd been wounded.”
The sheriff looked at the blowing rain and a mimosa branch flattening against the window.
“I see only one way through this,” he said. “We find Marsallus again and charge him with shooting the man in front of your house. Then he can talk to us or take up soybean farming at Angola.”
“We don't have a shooting victim.”
“Find him.”
“I need a warrant on Sweet Pea's Cadillac.”
“You're not going to get it. Why aren't you sweating that black woman out at the Bertrand plantation on this?”
“That's a hard word,” I said.
“She's involved, she's dirty. Sorry to offend your sensibilities.”
“It's the way we've always done it,” I said.
“Sir?”
The air-conditioning was turned up high, but the room was humid and close, like a wet cotton glove on the skin.
“Rounding up people who're vulnerable and turning dials on them. Should we kick a board up Moleen Bertrand's butt while we're at it? I think he's dirty, too. I just don't know how,” I said.
“Do whatever you have to,” the sheriff said. He stood up and straightened his back, his eyes empty.
But no urgency about Moleen, I thought.
He read it in my face.
“We have two open murder cases, one involving a victim kidnapped from our own jail,” he said. “In part we have shit smeared on our faces because you and Purcel acted on your own and queered a solid investigative lead. Your remarks are genuinely testing my level of tolerance.”
“If you want to stick it to Moleen, there's a way to do it,” I said.
The sheriff waited, his face narrow and cheerless. “Create some serious man-hours and reactivate the vehicular homicide file on his wife.”
“You'd do that?” he asked.