“You listen—” he said, his voice starting to shake. “Think I’m lying? Ask yourself how I know all this stuff. I’m just not that smart.”
He began to curse and threaten me, but the transmission was breaking up and his voice sounded like that of a man trying to shout down an electric storm.
I hung up the receiver and looked out the glass partition in my office at the empty corridor, then began filling out some of the endless paperwork that found its way to my basket on an hourly basis.
I tried to keep my head empty the rest of the afternoon, or to occupy myself with any task that kept my mind off the fate of Letty Labiche or the razor wire I had deliberately wrapped around Johnny Remeta’s soul.
I called the jail in St. Martinville and was told Clete Purcel had thrown his food tray in a hack’s face and had been moved into an isolation cell.
“Has he been arraigned yet?” I asked.
“Arraigned?” the deputy said. “We had to Mace and cuff and leg-chain him to do a body search. You want this prick? We’ll transfer him to Iberia Prison.”
At 4:30 I went outside and walked through St. Peter’s Cemetery. My head was thundering, the veins tightening in my scalp. The sky was like a bronze bowl, and dark, broad-winged birds that made no sound drifted across it. I wanted this day to be over; I wanted to look at the rain-worn grave markers of Eighth and Eighteenth Louisiana Infantry who had fought at Shiloh Church; I wanted to stay in a vacuum until Letty Labiche was executed; I wanted to slay my conscience.
I went back into the department and called Connie Deshotel’s office in Baton Rouge.
“She’s taken a few vacation days, Mr. Robicheaux. What with the demonstrations and all outside,” the secretary said.
“Is she at Lake Fausse Pointe?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not at liberty to say,” the secretary replied.
“Will you call her for me and ask her to call me?”
There was a long pause.
“Her phone is out of order. I’ve reported it to the telephone company,” the secretary said.
“How long has it been out of order?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand why you’re asking me these questions. Is this an emergency?”
I thought about it, then said, “Thanks for your time.”
I walked down to Helen Soileau’s office and opened her door without knocking. She looked up from her paperwork at my face. She was chewing gum and her eyes were bright and focused with a caffeinated intensity on mine. Then one finger pointed at an empty chair by the side of her desk.
A few minutes later she said, “Go through that again. How’d you know Remeta was working for Connie Deshotel?”
“The last time Alafair saw him he was sunburned. He said he’d been out on Lake Fausse Pointe. That’s where Connie’s camp is. Connie was Jim Gable’s partner at NOPD back in the sixties. When Remeta tried to shake her down, she got him to hit Gable.”
“How?”
“He’s a basket case. He’s always looking for the womb.”
“You sure of all this, Dave?”
“No. But Johnny went crazy when I convinced him he’d been betrayed.”
“So you set Connie up?” Before I could reply, she picked up a ballpoint and drew lines on a piece of paper and said, “You’ll never prove she was one of the cops who killed your mother.”
“That’s true.”
“Maybe we should just let things play out,” she said. Her eyes drifted back on mine.
I looked out the window. The sky was the color of brass and smoke, and the wind was gusting in the streets.
“A storm is coming in. I have to get out on the lake,” I said.