“That’s why I said it don’t make sense. I own this house, but it ain’t wort’ a lot. Bernadette inherited seven arpents of land from her father. It’s part of a rice field down sout’ of us. Maybe somebody wanted to buy it a while back, but I don’t remember. She wasn’t gonna sell
it, though. She said she was gonna save the bears.”
“The bears?”
“That’s the way Bernadette talked. She was always dreaming about saving t’ings, being a part of some kind of movement, being different from everybody else. I tole her them seven arpents was for her to go to colletch. She said she didn’t need no money to go to colletch. She’d won a scholarship to UL in Lafayette. She was gonna be a nurse.”
I talked to the grandmother for another fifteen minutes but got nowhere. The grandmother was not only afflicted with emphysema but was on kidney dialysis. Her life had been one of privation and hardship and loss, to the degree that she seemed to think of suffering as the natural state of humankind. The one bright prospect in her life had been taken from her. I have never agreed with the institution of capital punishment, primarily because its application is arbitrary and selective, but that morning I had to concede that the killer or killers of Bernadette Latiolais belonged in a special category, one that can cause a person to wonder if his humanity was misplaced.
THAT EVENING I hooked my boat trailer to my truck and picked up Clete Purcel at his motor court, and in the sunset drove the two of us up Bayou Teche to Henderson Swamp. The water in the swamp was high and flat, the islands of willow and cypress trees backlit by a molten sun, the carpets of floating hyacinths undisturbed by any fish that would normally be feeding at the end of day. No other boats were on the water. In the silence we could hear the rain ticking out of the trees and the whirring sound of automobile tires on the elevated highway that traversed the swamp. Up on the levee, which was covered with buttercups, the flood lamps of a bait shop and seafood restaurant went on, and I could see small waves from our wake sliding through the pilings into the shadows. When I cut the engine and let our boat drift between two willow islands that had turned dark against the sun, I felt that Clete and I were the only two people on the planet.
I doubted we would catch any fish that evening, but if possible, I wanted to get Clete out of his funk and his conviction that he was going to prison. The problem was, I thought that perhaps this time his perceptions were correct. I told him of my visit to the home of Bernadette Latiolais’s grandmother. I also told him she had recognized the photo of Robert Weingart and that she had seen him with a black man who had a small mustache and wore a suit and a pink tie.
Clete flung a small spinner baited with a wriggler on the edge of the lily pads, his skin rosy in the waning light. “You think the black dude was Herman Stanga?”
“The grandmother said he looked like a ‘downtown man.’ She even said his mustache looked like a little black bird under his nose.”
“What’s this stuff about seven arpents of land?”
“It sounds like part of an undivided estate of some kind. Clete, maybe the Latiolais girl was just randomly abducted. Maybe her death doesn’t have anything to do with Stanga or Robert Weingart. She was walking past a bar in broad daylight, and then she was gone. Maybe the wrong guy came out of the bar at the wrong time and offered her a ride. Maybe Bernadette Latiolais’s death doesn’t have anything to do with the deaths of the other victims.”
“My money is still on Stanga,” he said.
“Maybe he’s involved, but I don’t think he’s the chief perpetrator.”
“Because Stanga is kind to animals?”
“Because he has ice water in his veins. Stanga doesn’t do anything unless it’s of direct benefit to him. There is no known connection between him and the girl.”
“On some level, Stanga is dirty. I just don’t know how or why. Before this is over, I’m going to take him off the board.” Clete retrieved his spinner and flipped it out again, his face empty.
I didn’t want to hear what he had just said. “We’ll get out of this one way or another, Clete. I promise. Your friends aren’t going to let you down.”
“I’m not going to do time. Before I go inside, I’ll put a few guys in body bags or eat my gun.”
“Not a good way to think.”
“So I’ll skip the country instead.”
“How’s your love life?” I said, changing the subject.
“I don’t have one.”
“You need to find a new girlfriend. This time get one your own age.”
“Who wants a girlfriend my age?”
For the first time that evening we both laughed out loud, violating the stillness, as though three decades had not passed and we were both cops in uniform again, walking a beat with batons on Esplanade or Rampart. Then I saw the humor go out of Clete’s face.
“What are you looking at?” I said.
“That boat out in the channel. Somebody is using binoculars on us. There. See the light glint on the lenses?”
I looked back toward the landing. In the gloom I could barely make out a male figure seated in the stern of a speedboat. Then I saw him lean over and dip his hand into the water and begin retrieving his anchor from the mud. Across the water, we could hear the dull thunk of the anchor clank in the bottom of the boat, then the buzzing sound of the electric starter turning over. The man in the speedboat pointed the bow directly toward us and opened the throttle, a frothy yellow wake fanning out behind him.
Clete reeled in his spinner and set down his rod on the gunwale. He took a po’boy sandwich from the ice chest, unwrapped the waxed paper, and bit into the French bread and fried shrimp and sauce piquant and sliced tomatoes and onions inside it, pushing the food back into his mouth with his wrist, his eyes never leaving the speedboat.
The driver made a wide circle and approached us so the sun was at his back and shining directly into our eyes. Clete shifted around in his seat, watching the speedboat, wiping mayonnaise off his mouth with his fingers. He pulled his right trouser leg up over his sock, exposing the hideaway .25 that was Velcro-strapped to his ankle.