'If that's his name. You can tell them I didn't have nothing to do with hurting that woman.'
'Tell them yourself.'
'All this trouble we been having? It can end in one of two ways. That black boy, Broussard, don't testify against the dagos in New Orleans and some people gets paid back the money they're owed.
'The other way it ends is I get complete immunity as a government witness, all my real estate is sold and the proceeds are put in bearer bonds. Not one dollar of it gets touched by the IRS. Then I retire down in Guatemala. Y'all decide.'
'Who the hell do you think you are?' I said.
A black man brought a bottle of Dixie beer on a metal tray to the table. Scruggs tipped him a quarter and wiped the lip of the bottle with his palm.
'I'm the man got something you want, son. Or you wouldn't be sitting here,' he replied.
'You took money from Ricky Scarlotti, then fucked up everything you touched. Now you've got both the Mob and a crazoid like Boxleiter on your case,' I said.
He drank out of the beer and looked into the pine trees, sucking his false teeth, his expression flat. But I saw the muted change in his eyes, the way heat glows when the wind puffs ash off a coal.
'You ain't so different from me,' he said. 'You want to bring them rich people down. I can smell it in you, boy. A poor man's got hate in his glands. It don't wash out. That's why nigras stink the way they do.'
'You've caused a lot of trouble and pain for people around here. So we've decided in your case it should be a two-way street. I'd hoped you'd provoke a situation here.'
'You got a hideaway on your ankle?'
'My partner has your face in the crosshairs of a scoped.30-06. She'd looked forward to this evening with great anticipation, sir. Enjoy your beer. We'll catch you down the road.'
I walked out to the parking lot and waited for Helen to pull my truck around from the other side of the motel. I didn't look behind me, but I could feel his eyes on my back, watching. When Helen drew to a stop in front of me, the scoped, bolt-action rifle on the gun rack, the dust drifting off the tires, she cocked one finger like a pistol and aimed it out the window at Harpo Scruggs.
TUESDAY MORNING THE SHERIFF called me into his office.
'I just got the surveillance report on Scruggs,' he said. 'He took the Amtrak to Houston, spent the night in a Mexican hot pillow joint, then flew to Trinidad, Colorado.'
'He'll be back.'
'I think I finally figured out something about wars. A few people start them and the rest of us fight them. I'm talking about all these people who use our area for a bidet. I think this state is becoming a mental asylum, I really do.' Something outside the window caught his attention. 'Ah, my morning wouldn't be complete without it. Cisco Flynn just walked in the front door.'
FIVE MINUTES LATER CISCO sat down in front of my desk.
'You got anything on these guys who attacked Megan?' he asked.
'Yeah. One of them is dead.'
'Did you clear Swede on that deal?'
'You mean did I check out his alibi? He created a memorable moment at the theater. Water flowed out of the men's room into the lobby. At about five in the afternoon.'
'From what I understand, that should put him home free.'
'It might.'
I watched his face. His reddish-brown eyes smiled at nothing.
'Megan felt bad that maybe she made a suspect out of Swede,' he said.
'You can pretend otherwise, but he's a dangerous man, Cisco.'
'How about the cowboy who went out the window? Would you call him a dangerous man?'
I didn't answer. We stared at each other across the desk. Then his eyes broke.
'Good seeing you, Dave. Thanks for giving Megan the gun,' he said.
I watched silently as he opened the office door and went out into the hall.
I propped my forehead on my fingers and stared at the empty green surface of my desk blotter. Why hadn't I seen it? I had even used the term 'aerialist' to the San Antonio homicide investigator.
I went out the side door of the building and caught Cisco at his car. The day was beautiful, and his suntanned face looked gold and handsome in the cool light.
'You called the dead man a cowboy,' I said.
He grinned, bemused. 'What's the big deal?' he said.
'Who said anything about how the guy was dressed?'
'I mean 'cowboy' like 'hit man.' That's what contract killers are called, aren't they?'
'You and Boxleiter worked this scam together, didn't you?'
He laughed and shook his head and got in his car and drove out of the lot, then waved from the window just before he disappeared in the traffic.
THE FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST CALLED me that afternoon.
'I can give it to you over the phone or talk in person. I'd rather do it in person,' he said.
'Why's that?'
'Because autopsies can tell us things about human behavior I don't like to know about,' he replied.
An hour later I walked into his office.
'Let's go outside and sit under the trees. You'll have to excuse my mood. My own work depresses the hell out of me sometimes,' he said.
We sat in metal chairs behind the white-painted brick building that housed his office. The hard-packed earth stayed in shade almost year-round and was green with mold and sloped down to a ragged patch of bamboo on the bayou. Out in the sunlight an empty pirogue that had pulled loose from its mooring turned aimlessly in the current.
'There're abrasions on the back of her head and scrape marks on her shoulder, like trauma from a fall rather than a direct blow,' he said. 'Of course, you're more interested in cause of death.'
'I'm interested in all of it.'
'I mean, the abrasions on her skin could have been unrelated to her death. Didn't you say her husband knocked her around before she fled the home?'
'Yes.'
'I found evidence of water in the lungs. It's a bit complicated, but there's no question about its presence at the time she died.'
'So she was alive when she went into the marsh?'
'Hear me out. The water came out of a tap, not a swamp or marsh or brackish bay, not unless the latter contains the same chemicals you find in a city water supply.'
'A faucet?'
'But that's not what killed her.' He wore an immaculate white shirt, and his red suspenders hung loosely on his concave chest. He snuffed down in his nose and fixed his glasses. 'It was heart failure, maybe brought on by suffocation.'
'I'm not putting it together, Clois.'
'You were in Vietnam. What'd the South Vietnamese do when they got their hands on the Vietcong?'
'Water poured on a towel?'
'I think in this case we're talking about a wet towel held down on the face. Maybe she fell, then somebody finished the job. But I'm in a speculative area now.'
The image he had called up out of memory was not one I wanted to think about. I looked at the fractured light on the bayou, a garden blooming with blue and pink hydrangeas on the far bank. But he wasn't finished.
'She was pregnant. Maybe two months. Does that mean anything?' he said.
'Yeah, it sure does.'
'You don't look too good.'
