Jolie Blon's Bounce (Dave Robicheaux 12)

“She fought. She kicked the barrel. I only had one round. Get the shells,” he said.

“What?” Tee Bobby said.

“Snap out of it. She’s still alive. Get the fucking shells.”

Tee Bobby opened the passenger door and removed the box of twelve-gauge double-oughts from the gunnysack, his hands trembling, and started to give it to Jimmy Dean. But Jimmy Dean was already walking back toward the gum trees, and Tee Bobby, for reasons he would never be able to explain to himself, followed him, without even being commanded. Jimmy Dean stooped and picked up the spent casing he had ejected from his gun, then fished two shells from the box in Tee Bobby’s hands and thumbed them into the gun’s magazine.

“Stand back, ’less you want to get splattered,” Jimmy Dean said.

Amanda’s eyes glanced at Tee Bobby for only a second, but the expression of loss and sadness and betrayal in them would live in his dreams the rest of his life.

He whirled around and ran directly into his sister, who was staring wide-eyed at the scene taking place in the trees. When the shotgun discharged, Rosebud pulled at her clothes and beat at the air with her fists, as though she were being attacked, then ran out into the cane field, keening like a wounded bird.

CHAPTER 28

That afternoon Tee Bobby stood in wrist and leg chains on the levee at Henderson Swamp with me and Helen while two scuba divers went over the side of a state powerboat and began hunting in the darkness twelve feet down. The sky was black, the wind driving hard across the tops of the willow and cypress trees, the air clean smelling and unseasonably cool, peppered with rain off the Gulf. Tee Bobby’s face was wan, his jaw slack. “You call my gran’mama?” he asked.

“That’s not my job, Tee Bobby,” I replied.

One of the scuba divers broke the surface of the water, a dollop of mud on his cheek, the pistol-grip shotgun raised above his head.

“Call my gran’mama and tell her I ain’t gonna be back home for a while, will you? Not till I get my bail re-set, work out some kind of deal wit’ Barbara Shanahan,” Tee Bobby said.

I stared at him. “Bail re-set?” I said.

“Yeah, friend of the court, right? Jimmy Dean gonna be the one to ride the needle. He gonna stay in custody, too. Cain’t hurt us no more. I’m gonna see if I can get in one of them diversion programs, too, you know, like you talked about,” Tee Bobby said.

The diver who had recovered the shotgun waded up on the bank and handed it to me. He had heard what Tee Bobby said.

“Is that guy for real?” he asked.

Later, back at the department, while the thunder banged outside and pieces of newspaper whirled high in the air and a freight train groaned down the tracks that were now shiny with rain, I called Ladice and told her what had happened to Tee Bobby and where she could visit him that evening. I thought I would feel guilt about having deceived her, but in truth I didn’t feel anything. Tee Bobby’s story had left me numb, and had convinced me once again the worst deeds human beings commit are precipitated by a happenstance meeting of individuals and events, who and which, if they were rearranged only slightly, would never leave a bump in our history.

I took off early that afternoon and drove home in a strange green light that seemed to rise from the darkness of the trees and fields into the sky. Just as it began to rain, I took Bootsie and Alafair for supper at the Patio in Loreauville and did not mention the events of the day.

It’s never over. Tuesday morning, while rain flooded the streets, Perry LaSalle parked his Gazelle in a no-parking zone and sprinted up the walk into the courthouse. He didn’t bother to knock when he came into my office, either.

“You entrapped Tee Bobby,” he said.

“It’s good of you to drop by, Perry. I’ll get the sheriff in here and maybe a newspaper reporter or two, so everyone can have the benefit of your observations,” I said.

“Be cute all you want. You didn’t Mirandize my client and you denied him access to his attorney,”

“Wrong and wrong. He was already Mirandized and I told him to call you up before we brought him in. In front of witnesses, including his grandmother.”

I saw the certainty go out of his eyes.

“It doesn’t matter. You tricked a frightened kid,” he said.

“Listen to what Tee Bobby has to say on the videotape. Then come back and tell me how your stomach feels. By the way, he says he came to you for financial help the day of the murder and you blew him off. He says you also told him Legion was his grandfather.”

“So I’m responsible for Amanda Boudreau’s death?”

“No, you’re not a noun, just an adverb, Perry. Maybe that’s reassuring to you,” I said.

“You really know how to say it,” he replied.

“Adios,” I said.