He caught me off guard. Bo knew my weakness. But I didn’t care. I knew I wouldn’t get anything else out of him. “Go ahead,” I said.
“I sent people down into the Lower Nine. I sent people into the shelters. They interviewed evacuees who knew your friend. They knew where his church was. They were there when that wall of water came right across the top of the parish. They didn’t have any reason to lie.”
“Get to it, Bo.”
He looked genuinely inept, frustrated by his inability to speak with confidence outside the confines of a locker room or welding shop. “The guy didn’t make it. Almost everybody in that church attic drowned. I don’t know why they didn’t get out when they had a chance. Hundreds of school buses was left parked in a lot till the water was up to their windows. That’s what happens when people don’t take care of themselves.”
But my attention had faded. I don’t know what I had hoped for. Supposedly ancient people placed heavy stones on the burial places of the dead so their spirits would not roam. I believe there is another explanation, too. When we can fasten the dead to the earth and keep them safely in our midst, they cannot obligate us to search for them in our sleep.
“Thanks for the information,” I said.
But he wasn’t finished. Why he made the addendum I will never know. I have always suspected that born-again people such as Bo Wiggins find themselves in a dilemma they do not wish to recognize: If they truly come to believe in the precepts they profess, they can no longer remain who and what they are.
“A bunch of people say they saw lights under the water, like phosphorescent fish swimming around. That’s not what happened. Just after the priest fell off the roof of the church or maybe got pushed, a coast Guard chopper flew over. It was lit up like a Juárez whore-house. What those people saw was the reflection in the water and the downdraft of the chopper stirring up the reflection.”
“If that’s true, why didn’t the chopper pick up the people who were drowning?”
“You’d have to ask them, son.”
His face looked as vacuous as a scarecrow’s.
THAT AFTERNOON, a black patrolwoman by the name of Catin Segura came into my office. She had started off at the department as a 911 dispatcher, then had gotten an associate degree in criminal justice at a community college in New Orleans. Like Helen Soileau, she had worked as a meter maid before becoming a patrolwoman in both Uptown and across the river in Gretna. When Helen decided to increase the number of black female deputies in the department, Catin was the first one she hired.
Catin was a short, compact woman, unassuming, a bit withdrawn, a single mother who lived with her two children in Jeanerette. She was one of those decent, ordinary people you could always depend upon. You gave her the assignment and then forgot about it. I always admired the grace and dignity that seemed to govern her life.
“What’s the haps, catin?” I said.
“I was on my way home last night and saw the aftermath of an accident by the Jeanerette drawbridge. It looked like a hit-and-run.” She pulled a notebook from her shirt pocket and peeled back two pages. “A guy named Ronald Bledsoe claims he was parked on the shoulder using his cell phone when some maniac backed into him and took off. His radiator was split open and all the antifreeze was draining on the road surface. There was also debris from both vehicles all over the road. Bledsoe was driving a Rolls-Royce. You know this guy, Dave?”
“He’s bad news. He may have broken into my house.”
She gave me a look. “Anyway, he said he was waiting for a tow. But he never called nine-one-one. When I asked him why, he said he figured it was a waste of time. I told him his insurance company would want a police report. He said he hadn’t thought of that. The guy looks like he escaped from a freak show.”
“That’s part of his charm.”
“Here’s where it gets weird. Otis Baylor came out in his yard and was watching me and Bledsoe. I asked him if he had seen the hit-and-run and he said he had not. I asked him if anybody in his house had. He said no. I thought he would just go back inside but he didn’t.”
“So what happened?”
“I got my push broom out of the trunk and starting sweeping all the glass and broken metal onto the shoulder. That’s when I saw the license tag in the grass. Baylor must have seen it, too. When the tow truck came and was hooking up the rolls, he walked out on the road and looked down at the tag. Then he walked back to his house. I could see him pretty clear in the porch lamp. I’d swear he took a pen out of his pocket and wrote something on his hand.”
“The tag number?”
“You tell me. I just ran it. It’s registered to an Elizabeth Crochet in Loreauville. Mean anything?”
“No, but give me the address.”
She wrote it in her notebook, then tore the page out and handed it to me. “I know Baylor is out on bail, so I thought I should tell you about all this.”
“You did the right thing.”
“Baylor shot some black kids in Uptown?”
“That’s what everybody says.”
“It must be hard on his wife.”
“How’s that?”