“You figured it out?”
“Maybe.”
“What kind of man would do that to a baby?”
“A sadist and a coward. A guy who doesn’t deserve to live. Maybe a guy who already got what he deserved.”
“What was that last part?”
“They all go down. It’s just a matter of time. That’s all I was saying. It takes a while, but they go down.”
“I can’t figure you out.”
“You want to work for me or not?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I like you. I need the help, too.”
“I know where I saw you before.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, his heart seizing up.
“Remember Boog Powell? He played first base for Baltimore. He used to own a boatyard in the Keys. I used to take a charter out of there to Seven Mile Reef. Boog always said mermaids lived under the reef. He was a big kidder.”
“That was probably it.”
“You’re a piece of work,” she said.
“I’m not sure how to take that.”
“It’s a compliment,” she said. “Sometimes I have to travel. Are you cool with that?”
“No, if you work for me, you work for me.”
She shrugged. “And eBay is killing my antique business, anyway. You got anything to eat? I’m starving.”
BEFORE I LEFT the office to bring in Jesse Leboeuf, Helen told me to bring along a black female deputy named Catin Segura. “What for?” I asked.
“Because she’s about to be promoted to detective, and I want her around a good influence.”
“What’s the real reason?”
“What I said.” When I continued to look at her, she added, “If Jesse Leboeuf gives you trouble, I want a witness.”
Catin Segura was a single mother and had a two-year degree in criminal justice from a community college in New Orleans. Like Helen, she had started her career in law enforcement at the NOPD as a meter maid, then had gone to work for the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department as a 911 dispatcher. She owned a modest home in Jeanerette and lived there with her two children and was a pleasant and decent and humble woman who was conscientious about her job and the care of her family. In the five years she had been a patrolwoman, no complaint of any kind had ever been filed against her. As we headed down to Cypremort Point in her cruiser, I knew that Helen had made a mistake in assigning Catin to accompany me. There is an old lesson a police officer learns soon or learns late: Evil does not rinse itself out of the human soul. Catin Segura had no business around the likes of Jesse Leboeuf.
The rain had stopped, and through the cruiser’s windshield, I could see a waterspout on the bay, its funnel as bright as spun glass, bending and warping in the sunlight. The cypress trees that stood in freshwater ponds on either side of us were turning gold with the season, and there was a smell in the wind like shrimp or trout schooling up in the coves.
“What’s the story on this guy?” Catin asked.
“He’s just an old man. Don’t pay too much attention to what he says or does.”
She took her eyes off the road. “He’s got some racial issues?”
“He’s one of those guys whose head is like a bad neighborhood. It’s better not to go into it.”
She didn’t speak the rest of the way to Jesse’s house. When we pulled into his yard, he was standing by a barbecue pit under a pecan tree, wrapping a sheet of aluminum foil around a large redfish. He had filled the aluminum foil with sauce piquante and sliced onions and lemons and had perforated it with a