The Tin Roof Blowdown (Dave Robicheaux 16)

“I like the food real good, Molly. I can’t get all those dead people off my mind. I think about them and I want to kill somebody. That’s just the way it is.”

I heard the front door shut behind her. Through the side window I could see my neighbor’s rotund, feminine, middle-aged son up-ending a longneck beer in his backyard, his throat working smoothly, a band of late sunlight sparkling inside the bottle.

Fifteen minutes later, a tan Honda stopped at the curb. Alafair got out and thanked the young woman driving, then came inside. “Where’s Molly?” she said.

“Taking a walk. Who was that?”

“Thelma Baylor. She’s helping out at the shelter.”

“Really?” I said.

“She says you were out to her house.”

“That’s right.”

“She says you think her dad shot some black guys.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“I don’t think Mr. Baylor is that kind of man.”

“Maybe he’s not, Alf.”

“Don’t call me that stupid name.”

“Mr. Baylor’s daughter was raped and sodomized and burned with cigarettes by three black degenerates. If that happened to you, maybe I would not be the same kind of person you think I am.”

“Don’t talk like that, Dave.”

“I don’t want to tell you whom to associate with, but I’d lose the connection with Thelma Baylor.”

“That’s as judgmental as it is unfair.”

“So is killing people.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Like you said, Mr. Baylor doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who gets off dumping a seventeen-year-old kid’s brainpan into the water. But how about his daughter? You think she might be a candidate?”

“I come home from the shelter and I feel like I just walked through cobweb.”

“Did you eat yet?”

“God!” she said.

I walked across the railroad tracks in the drone of cicadas to an AA meeting that was held twice a week in a cottage opposite the old high school I attended many years ago. After the meeting, I walked to the office and began sorting out the piles of paperwork in my intake basket. At 10:14 p.m. My cell phone rang.

“You Mr. Robicheaux?” a voice said.

“I am.”

“These motherfuckers in Baton Rouge ain’t gonna do nothing ’bout my brother.”

“Would you watch your language?”

“What, my brother been kidnapped and you bothered ’bout my motherfucking language?”

“I’m going to take a guess. You’re Bertrand Melancon.”