The Tin Roof Blowdown (Dave Robicheaux 16)

I got back in my truck without saying good-bye and drove away. In my rearview mirror I saw her toe at the grass, her thumbs still hooked in her jeans, like a teenage girl who had just lost something of value.

ALAFAIR CAME HOME at noon, blowing out her breath as she came through the door, a drawstring bag slung over her shoulder. I wanted her to tell me her overnight stay in Lafayette had been uneventful, that somehow my concerns were inflated. But I knew better, even before she spoke.

“I think I saw Ronald Bledsoe this morning,” she said. “We were eating breakfast in a café by the university. He was parked in a blue car under a tree. We went to the mall and I saw him again.”

“Why didn’t you call me, Alf?”

“Because I wasn’t sure the man in the blue car was Bledsoe. At the mall I was. Are you going to arrest him because he goes to the same mall I do?”

“If there’s a pattern, we can get a restraining order.”

“With Bledsoe, that’s like writing a traffic citation on the guys who flew planes into the Towers.”

She was right. To make matters worse, we were now arguing among ourselves about a degenerate.

“Stay close today, will you, kiddo?”

“I’m not a child, Dave. Don’t treat me like one,” she replied.

Clete Purcel had always said “Bust them or dust them.” But what do you do with those who have probably been looking for an executioner all their lives, perhaps ensuring their evil lives on in the rest of us long after they are gone? What do you do when those you love most become angry when you try to protect them?

Maybe there was another way to deal with Ronald Bledsoe.

I WENT TO CITY PARK and used my cell phone to call Sidney Kovick’s flower shop. His wife answered the phone.

“It’s Dave Robicheaux, Eunice. I need to talk to Sidney.”

“He’s not here.”

“On Saturday?”

“No, he’s not here,” she repeated. But she didn’t tell me where he was.

“This isn’t a courtesy call. Marco Scarlotti and Charlie Weiss are in New Iberia. I think I know why they’re here, too. Sidney needs to talk with me.”

“Give me your number.”

I gave her both my cell and home numbers. I thought the conversation was over, but it wasn’t.

“Dave, you don’t know what’s going on. Years ago, Sidney committed a terrible deed. It never allowed him any peace. But he met Father Jude LeBlanc through Natalia Ramos, the El Salvadoran girl he hired to clean his office. You remember my mentioning her to you?”

“Yeah, I do,” I replied, my attention starting to wane.

“Father Jude talked to Sidney about changing his life and making up for what he did. Sidney is trying hard to be the best man he can. He’s not always successful, but he’s trying. Be patient with him, will you?”

Patient with Sidney Kovick? Sidney as victim was a hard act to buy into. “

He’s in New Iberia, isn’t he?”

“I’m not sure.”

Yeah, you are, Eunice, I thought. But I let it go. “I look forward to hearing from him,” I said, and closed my cell phone.

Actually, at this point I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to talk with Sidney or not. Was Sidney actually trying to change or just feeding Eunice’s illusions? I was tempted to turn my cell phone off. But as I sat in the picnic shelter on the bayou’s edge, I could look across the water and see the shadows in my backyard and the caladiums rippling around the trunks of the trees and the lighted kitchen where Molly and Alafair were preparing an early supper so we could go to Saturday afternoon Mass in Loreauville.

Somewhere out there in the larger world, William Blake’s tiger waited to take it all from me.

Which was more important, protecting one’s family or worrying about the redemption of a man who had put on a raincoat and rubber boots before entering a basement with a chain saw? In my mind’s eye I saw his victim—in handcuffs, probably bound at the ankles, his mouth taped, his eyes popping with terror. What kind of human being could do something like that to his fellow man?