"That's all. He had a sucking chest wound and couldn't speak. It was probably like drowning while somebody watched. So he tried to beg with his hand. He must have been a bad judge of character."
"How's that?" I asked.
"Whoever did this poor bastard wanted him to go out as hard as possible," Mack said.
Helen and I and a uniformed deputy searched along the edges of the road by the drawbridge, looking for the object the hobo said he had seen thrown from the fleeing pickup truck. But we found nothing of consequence. Helen dropped me at my house and I shaved and showered and drove to the office. At 9:15 a.m. I called the office of Dr. Parks. The receptionist said he would not be in. I called his home.
"What do you want, Mr. Robicheaux?" he said.
"How did you know it was "
"Caller ID. What's the problem now?"
"I'd like to come out to your house a few minutes."
"You're not welcome at my house."
"Sorry to hear you say that," I replied.
I drove up Loreauville Road, through horse-farm country and fields bursting with mature sugarcane, under a hard blue sky you could have scratched with a nail. The air was cool and sweet smelling, like cinnamon burned on a woodstove, and through the cypress and oak trees that lined the Teche the sunlight glittered like goldleaf on the water's surface.
But when I turned into Dr. Parks's driveway I seemed to enter a separate reality. His house was covered with shadow, the air cold, the birdbaths and empty fishpond and flagstone walkways moss stained and smelling of night-damp. The back end of a battered beige pickup truck stuck out of a shed in the rear of the house. Next to it was a stack of hay bales with a plastic bull's-eye pinned to them and a dozen arrows embedded in the straw. I had to ring the bell twice before he answered the door.
He was unshaved, the whites of his eyes shiny with a yellow cast, as though he had jaundice, a sour odor emanating from his clothes.
"Say it," he said.
"May I come in?" I asked.
"Suit yourself," he said, and walked deeper into the house.
We entered a large, cheerless room with an unlit gas log fireplace and dark paneling on the walls and windows covered by thick velvet curtains. Track lights on the ceiling were focused on a huge gun case that was filled with both modern and antique firearms.
"That's quite a collection," I said.
"Get to it, Detective," he said.
"Somebody waxed Leon Hebert last night. Somebody who really had it in for him."
"That breaks me up."
"You own a .38 or a nine-Mike?"
"A what?"
"A nine-millimeter."
"Yeah, a half dozen of them."
"You drive your pickup truck last night?"
"No."
"Where were you last night?"
"Home, with Mrs. Parks. And that's the last question I'm answering without my attorney being present."
We were standing no more than one foot apart. I could see the fatigue in his face, the sag in his skin, the manic shine of grief and anger in his eyes.