The Tin Roof Blowdown (Dave Robicheaux 16)

THAT NIGHT I sat in the kitchen and tried to figure out combinations of letters that would give meaning to the illegible remnant of Bertrand Melancon’s statement of amends to the Baylor family. In reality, I didn’t care if anyone ever found the blood diamonds or not. My only interest in them at this point was to find out who had hired Ronald Bledsoe. I still believed he may have worked for Sidney. But if Sidney wasn’t lying, that left only Bo Diddley Wiggins.

“What are you doing?” Alafair asked, looking over my shoulder.

“Probably wasting time,” I replied.

“Is this part of the note you said was in the Baylors’ yard?”

“That’s right.”

She picked up the yellow legal pad on which I had printed the disconnected letters. “Let me try a few combinations on the computer.”

“How’s that going to help?”

“If the words had been typed rather than hand-printed, it would be fairly easy. The problem with a hand-printed version is the absence of uniform spacing. So you have to be imaginative in order to compensate.”

“Really?” I said.

“Lose the sardonic attitude,” she said.

I walked down the slope of the yard to the bayou. The air was damp, the evening sky lit by the fire stacks at the sugar mill. I was more tired than I had ever been. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could almost feel a great weight oppressing the land, a darkness stealing across its surface, a theft of light that seemed to have no origin. Was this just more of the world destruction fantasy that had invaded my childhood dreams and followed me to Vietnam and into bars all over the Orient? Or was William Blake’s tiger much larger than we ever guessed, its time finally come round?

I called Clete on his cell phone. “Where are you?” I said.

“At the motor court.”

“Any sign of Bledsoe?”

“No.”

“Look, I don’t want to leave the house. Come on over.”

“What for?”

“Nothing. That’s it. Nothing is up. And I’m powerless to do anything about any of it.”

“Any of what?”

“I don’t know. That’s it, I don’t know. Sunday, I blew a plug out of a guy’s chest the size of a quarter. I enjoyed it. I had a fantasy about the guy going to Hell.”

“So what?”

“We’ve got blood splatter all over us, Clete.”

“The only time that’s a problem is when it’s ours and not theirs.”

“Wrong,” I said.

“Dangle loose. I’m going to motor on over.”

I had advised Sidney Kovick to develop some clarity in his life. What a joke.

WEDNESDAY MORNING I experienced one of those instances when middle-class people walk into a law enforcement agency and in the next few minutes trustingly consign their lives to a bureaucratic system that operates with all the compassion of dice clattering out of a leather cup.

I happened to glance out the window just as Melanie and Otis and Thelma Baylor entered the building. I believed I knew the nature of their visit and I didn’t want to be part of it. Contrary to popular belief, the lion’s share of police work is administrative or clerical in nature. Occasionally we get to slam the door on people whose convictions represent only a small fraction of their crimes and you take a pleasure in separating them from the rest of us. But sometimes you are forced to sit down with offenders who are little different from yourself. They cannot believe the damage they have done to their lives. Even worse, they cannot deal with the institutional consequences that await them. I had come to believe the Baylors fell into this category and I did not want to aid them in their own dismemberment.

Sure enough, Wally buzzed me on my extension and told me the Baylors wanted to see me.

“Keep them down there,” I said.