“I won’t say this publicly. I won’t be an embarrassment to you, if that’s the problem.”
“That is not the problem,” I said.
“Then what is?”
I didn’t answer. We passed a small cemetery full of half-sunken crypts set back in a grove of gum and persimmon trees, then drove through the immaculately maintained cane fields owned by LSU. Up ahead I saw the self-help center run by Catholic nuns who had come to South Louisiana to unionize the field workers in the cane fields. Take a guess how that worked out.
“You and Elizabeth will like these ladies,” I said.
“He’s out there,” Leslie said.
“Who’s out there?” I asked.
“The man named Gideon. He’s come for me.”
“I don’t want to hear that.”
“You shouldn’t have attacked Adonis.”
I parked in front of the self-help center. It was located inside a lovely old gingerbread house with a wide gallery, surrounded by trees and a velvet-green landscape. “This craziness ends here,” I said.
She closed her eyes and hung her head on her chest. “I feel very tired. I have to sleep.”
“Take a nap,” I said. “I’ll go inside. We’ll all feel better later. Okay?” I could not hide my irritability.
This time it was she who didn’t answer. The only person I wanted to talk to now was Clete Purcel. No one else would understand the madness that had come into our lives, and no one else would have the courage to deal with it. I wondered if I had bought in to folly and superstition or the manipulations of Mark Shondell. Worse, I wondered if the medieval world wasn’t indeed much more than a decaying memory—in reality, perhaps it still defined us and had opened its maw and was about to ingest us.
I knocked on the door of the gingerbread house. But the nuns did not answer. Father Julian Hebert did. “Are you here about Marcel LaForchette?” he said, his voice quavering as though he did not want to hear the answer to his own question.
Chapter Twenty-three
I STEPPED INSIDE. “WHAT happened?”
“Marcel went crazy and came through the door and terrified all the personnel,” Julian said. “The sisters called me and thought I could settle him down. Fat chance.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Gone. The sisters went after him. But I don’t think there’s an answer for Marcel. At least I don’t have one.”
“Bad message from a man of the cloth,” I said.
“He’s either afflicted, or what he told the sisters and me is true.”
“Told y’all what?” I said.
“This man Gideon gave him a thousand dollars to leave New Iberia. Marcel tried to give the money to the Center. He’s afraid of it.”
“How did Gideon know Marcel needed to get out of town?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The implications of all this business about a green man in a cowl are more than I want to deal with.”
“What’s our choice?” I said.
“The biggest frailty in our makeup is our willingness to engage evil, Dave. It’s always a trap. When you engage it, it becomes part of you. That’s the only way I can think about this.”
“How do you not engage it?” I said. “Heinrich Himmler viewed the inmates in the camps before they were sent to the gas chamber. They had to look into his face through the wire. I can’t imagine what that would be like.” I saw the hurt in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Julian.”