What's the point?
For years I thought of this place as an island untouched by the war in Indochina and disconnected from the cities burning at home. When I was a patrolman in uniform in the New Orleans welfare projects, I used to remember the hot, clean airy smell of the rain falling on those sidewalks in 1965.
Then an ex-Kansas cop we picked up drunk on an interstate fugitive warrant told me the town that existed in my fond recollection was the site of Truman Capote's novel In Cold Blood, the story of two pathological killers who murdered a whole family for thirty-nine dollars and a radio.
You learn soon or you learn late: There are no islands.
It was Monday morning and no one was in custody for the double homicide in St. Martin Parish.
"I'm afraid they're not buying your theory about a black hit man," the sheriff said.
"Why not?"
"There's no evidence the man was black."
"He had a mouthful of gold teeth, just like the guy who did the scriptwriter."
"So what? Maybe Aaron Crown has gold fillings, too."
"I doubt if Aaron ever bought a toothbrush, much less saw a dentist."
"You believe somebody was trying to stop Felton from exposing our governor-elect as a moral troglodyte. Maybe you're right. But for a lot of people it's a big reach."
"Crown didn't do this, Sheriff."
"Look, the St. Martin M.E. says both victims had been smoking heroin before they got it. Felton's condo had a half kee of China white in it. St. Martin thinks maybe the killings are drug related. Robbery's a possible motive, too."
"Robbery?"
"The killer took the girl's purse and Felton's wallet. Felton was flashing a lot of money around earlier in the evening . . ." He stopped and returned my stare. "I haven't convinced you?"
"Where are you trying to go with this, skipper?"
"Nowhere. I don't have to. It's out of our jurisdiction. End of discussion, Dave."
I opened the morning mail in my office, escorted a deranged woman from the men's room, picked up a parole violator in the state betting parlor out by the highway, helped recover a stolen farm tractor, spent my lunch hour and two additional hours waiting to testify at the courthouse, only to learn the defendant had been granted a continuance, and got back to the office with a headache and the feeling I had devoted most of the day to snipping hangnails in a season of plague.
The state police now had primary responsibility for protecting Buford, and Aaron Crown and my problems with the LaRose family were becoming less and less a subject of interest to anybody else.
But one person, besides Clete, had tried to help me, I thought.
The tattooed carnival worker named Arana.
I inserted the cassette Helen and I had made of his deathbed statement in a tape player and listened to it again in its entirety. But only one brief part of it pointed a finger: "The bugarron ride a saddle with flowers cut in it. I seen him at the ranch. You messing everything up for them. They gonna kill you, man . . ."
"Who's this guy?" my voice asked.
And the man called Arana responded, "He ain't got no name. He got a red horse and a silver saddle. He like Indian boys."
I clicked off the tape player and lay the cassette on my desk blotter and looked at it. Puzzle through that, I thought.
Then, just as chance and accident are wont to have their way, I glanced out the window and saw a man blowing his horn at other drivers, forcing his way across two lanes to park in an area designated for the handicapped. His face was as stiff as plaster when he walked across the grass to the front entrance, oblivious to the sprinkler that cut a dark swath across his slacks.
A moment later Wally called me on my extension.
"Dave, we got a real zomboid out here in the waiting room says he wants to see you," he said.
"Yeah, I know. Send him back."