“When will they be back?” I asked.
“Tomorrow, I think.”
I decided this was a conversation to exit as soon as possible. I gave her my business card and drove back to Lafayette in a downpour that left hailstones smoking on the highway.
THURSDAY MORNING Helen Soileau called me back into her office. “What I said to you yesterday about departmental resources was straight up. But that doesn’t change the fact Bledsoe is a dangerous man and has no business in our parish.”
I waited.
“Get him in the box. Let’s see what he’s made of,” she said.
“On what grounds?”
“We want to interview and continue our exclusion of him as a suspect in the break-in at your house.”
“I’ve been that route.”
“Tell him the sheriff of Iberia Parish wants to meet him.”
“What if he doesn’t want to come?”
“If he is what you say he is, he’ll come.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he wants to show us he’s smarter than we are.”
Helen knew our clientele. Sociopaths and most mainline recidivists share certain characteristics. They are megalomaniacs, narcissists, and manipulators. No matter how ignorant and uneducated they are, they believe they are more intelligent than law-abiding people. They also believe they can intuit the thoughts of others. It’s not coincidence they often wear a corner-of-the-mouth smirk. I’ve always suspected their behavior and general manner have something to do with the origin of the term “wiseguys.”
I found Ronald Bledsoe sitting in a deck chair in front of his cottage, wearing Bermuda shorts, a short-sleeved shirt printed with green flowers, and dark glasses with big round white frames. He was drinking a glass of iced tea and reading the newspaper, one hairless pink leg crossed on his knee.
“Sheriff Soileau would like for you to come down and talk to her, Mr. Bledsoe,” I said. “It’s purely voluntary. By the way, sorry about that fracas the other night.”
He folded his newspaper and tilted his head, his eyes unreadable behind his glasses. “I’ve heard a lot about your sheriff. I hear she’s an interesting person. I think I’d be delighted to meet her. Can we go in your vehicle?”
I didn’t overtly try to engage him in conversation on our way back to the department. He seemed to enjoy riding in a cruiser, and he kept asking questions about the various pieces of technology on the console and along the dashboard. Then he removed his glasses and I felt his eyes probing the side of my face.
“Know what the de facto definition of a criminal is, Mr. Robicheaux?” he said.
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“A man with a demonstrable record of criminality.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s hard to argue with.”
“You appear to be an educated person, as your daughter does. You ever run across the term ‘solipsism’ in a philosophy course when you were in college?”
“I don’t think I did.” We were still on East Main, headed into the historical district. In less than five minutes we would be at the courthouse parking lot and in all probability Bledsoe would stop speaking on a personal level, something I didn’t want to happen. “What is ‘solipsism,’ exactly?”
“The belief that reality exists only in ourselves and our own perceptions.”
“That’s a new one.”
“Let me ask you the age-old puzzle: if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, has it really fallen? Tell me your opinion on that and I’ll tell you mine.”
“I’d say it had fallen.”
He laughed to himself and watched the blocks of antebellum and Victorian and shotgun homes slip by the window.