Close up, the report of a .22 Magnum is almost as loud as a .45 auto. It’s deafening. The round drove up through the roof of his mouth and into the brain, splattering my face with his blood. He collapsed under his hat and slicker as though he were dissolving into a pool of black ink, one hand locked on my shoe.
Chapter Twenty-four
THE CORONER, PARAMEDICS, uniformed deputies, and Carroll LeBlanc and another detective did not finish their work until almost two A.M. Most of the time I sat in the kitchen, watching each person methodically do his job so there would be no doubt about the integrity of the investigation. The blood on my hair and face was photographed before I was allowed to wash it off. I also had to give up my shirt in case it contained powder burns. I knew the questions that would be asked of me, but I did not fear them. The questions I had to ask myself were another matter.
Could I have twisted the pistol from Marcel’s hand when he pressed the muzzle under his chin? Maybe. What if I had distracted him and lied and told him my father had spoken fondly of him? What if I had told him I had some juice in Baton Rouge and could get him a pardon so he could work as a PI?
But the greater concern I had, the one that left me feeling empty and weak at heart and unable to think, was my attitude when I’d visited Marcel in Huntsville Prison. I’d treated him as I would have a gerbil, a genetic accident, a slug lifted from under a rock, at best a spiritually impaired man whose soul had been stolen at age seventeen. I’d treated him with the dignity I would have shown a germ.
How is it I never thought he could be my half brother? Did I deliberately ignore the possibility because I didn’t want to share my father, who was the only person in my life after my mother deserted us? The answer was probably yes.
“We’re pretty much done here,” LeBlanc said. He was wearing a sport coat and slacks and a tie. He screwed a filter-tip cigarette in his mouth. “Mind if I light up?”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“No problem.” He dropped his cigarette back in the pack, then scratched his cheek. “LaForchette had his piece inside the raincoat?”
“Yep.”
“You thought he was gonna smoke you?”
“For a moment or two.”
“What’d he say before he went out?”
“He said ‘I ain’t.’?”
“I ain’t what?”
“When I visited him in Huntsville, he said he’d like to be a PI in New Iberia. I made a joke about him working at a car wash. Then I told him I was only kidding. So now he was proving he didn’t kid. Big triumph, huh?”
“Then he shot himself? For no reason you know about?”
“The guy had a miserable life.”
LeBlanc wrote in his notepad. “Took his secrets to the grave?” he said, not looking up. “Why is it I don’t believe you, Robo?”
/> “He said there was an open hit on him.”
“Ordered by who?”
“Probably Mark Shondell or Adonis Balangie or both of them,” I said.
“You have evidence of that?”
“No.”
LeBlanc huffed something out of his nose, his eyes receded deep inside the thickness of his skin as though he lived inside a husk. “You keep giving me about half the story, Robo. I can’t say as I like it.”
“The man came here and killed himself in my living room. I’ll live with this the rest of my life. Now get off my back, Carroll.”
“Has this got something to do with the voodoo guy or whatever he is at Henderson Swamp?”
“Could be.”
He closed his notebook. “I was afraid you’d say that. Here’s what’s going in my report: LaForchette was born to lose and wanted an audience when he shuffled off to wherever guys like him go. Merry Christmas.”
“He thought I was his half brother and I got all the breaks.”