“You’ve come where?”
“I rode a boxcar to New Iberia. I ain’t had no sleep.”
“You’re in New Iberia?”
“Yeah, I cain’t take it anymore.”
“You can’t take what anymore?”
“Everything. People hunting me. People treating me like I’m the stink on shit. Kovick fixed it so everybody in the FEMA camps know who I am. I ain’t got no place to hide. I was gonna cap him. Or I was gonna cap his wife. But I couldn’t do nothing except stand there shaking.”
“You tried to clip Sidney Kovick?”
“I ain’t no killer. I learned that Saturday. I might be a coward, but I ain’t no killer.”
He described the scene in the flower shop, the fear that fed like weevil worms at his heart, the bitch slaps across the face, the .38 cartridges poured on his genitals, the vicious kick that drew blood from his rectum. His self-pity and victimhood were hard to listen to. But I didn’t doubt the level of his emotional pain. I suspected that, under it all, Bertrand Melancon was probably about seven years old.
“Give me your location.”
There was a beat. “That ain’t why I called. You got to explain something. I went to the evacuee shelter in the park ’cause I ain’t had nothing to eat since yesterday. The white girl I seen in the car wit’ the dead batt’ry by the Desire was there.”
“You mean the white girl you raped?”
“Yeah, that one, she was there, man, serving meals at the shelter. I tole myself that wasn’t possible. I axed a guy who she was and he said she was from New Orleans, her name is Thelma Baylor. That’s the name of the people in the house where the shot come from, the one that hit Eddy and killed Kevin.”
I realized what had happened. Thelma had probably gone to the shelter with Alafair to help out, and Bertrand had blundered inside and had seen her. I tried to concentrate, to prevent his accidental discovery from becoming a catalyst for events I didn’t even want to think about.
“She lost weight, she look a lI’l older, but it’s her, ain’t it?”
The idea that he was taking the physical inventory of a young woman he had assaulted and asking me to confirm it seemed to invade the moral senses on more levels than I could count. “She’s not your
business, partner.”
“I got to make it right.”
“You stay away from the Baylors.”
“I got a plan. I’ll get back to you.”
He broke the connection.
I checked out a cruiser and drove to the recreation building in City Park. Alafair was stacking the cots of a family that was relocating to Dallas. She seemed preoccupied, not quite focused. A kid was dribbling a basketball in the background, smacking it loudly on the floor.
“Where’s Thelma?” I asked.
“Her father picked her up. I think they were going home,” she replied. She hefted a load of folded bedclothes and looked at me.
“Was a black guy in his early twenties hanging around? Somebody you haven’t seen before?”
“If he was, I didn’t notice.”
“His name is Bertrand Melancon. He’s one of the guys who raped Thelma.”
“Why is he here?”
“Guilt, fear, opportunism. I doubt if even he knows. Maybe he’s nuts.”
“Is this related to Ronald Bledsoe?”