“You’ve come where?”
“I rode a boxcar to New Iberia. I ain’t had no sleep.”
“You’re in New Iberia?”
“Yeah, I cain’t take it anymore.”
“You can’t take what anymore?”
“Everything. People hunting me. People treating me like I’m the stink on shit. Kovick fixed it so everybody in the FEMA camps know who I am. I ain’t got no place to hide. I was gonna cap him. Or I was gonna cap his wife. But I couldn’t do nothing except stand there shaking.”
“You tried to clip Sidney Kovick?”
“I ain’t no killer. I learned that Saturday. I might be a coward, but I ain’t no killer.”
He described the scene in the flower shop, the fear that fed like weevil worms at his heart, the bitch slaps across the face, the.38 cartridges poured on his genitals, the vicious kick that drew blood from his rectum. His self-pity and victimhood were hard to listen to. But I didn’t doubt the level of his emotional pain. I suspected that, under it all, Bertrand Melancon was probably about seven years old.
“Give me your location.”
There was a beat. “That ain’t why I called. You got to explain something. I went to the evacuee shelter in the park ’cause I ain’t had nothing to eat since yesterday. The white girl I seen in the car wit’ the dead batt’ry by the Desire was there.”
“You mean the white girl you raped?”
“Yeah, that one, she was there, man, serving meals at the shelter. I tole myself that wasn’t possible. I axed a guy who she was and he said she was from New Orleans, her name is Thelma Baylor. That’s the name of the people in the house where the shot come from, the one that hit Eddy and killed Kevin.”
I realized what had happened. Thelma had probably gone to the shelter with Alafair to help out, and Bertrand had blundered inside and had seen her. I tried to concentrate, to prevent his accidental discovery from becoming a catalyst for events I didn’t even want to think about.
“She lost weight, she look a lI’l older, but it’s her, ain’t it?”
The idea that he was taking the physical inventory of a young woman he had assaulted and asking me to confirm it seemed to invade the moral senses on more levels than I could count. “She’s not your business, partner.”
“I got to make it right.”
“You stay away from the Baylors.”
“I got a plan. I’ll get back to you.”
He broke the connection.
I checked out a cruiser and drove to the recreation building in City Park. Alafair was stacking the cots of a family that was relocating to Dallas. She seemed preoccupied, not quite focused. A kid was dribbling a basketball in the background, smacking it loudly on the floor.
“Where’s Thelma?” I asked.
“Her father picked her up. I think they were going home,” she replied. She hefted a load of folded bedclothes and looked at me.
“Was a black guy in his early twenties hanging around? Somebody you haven’t seen before?”
“If he was, I didn’t notice.”
“His name is Bertrand Melancon. He’s one of the guys who raped Thelma.”
“Why is he here?”
“Guilt, fear, opportunism. I doubt if even he knows. Maybe he’s nuts.”
“Is this related to Ronald Bledsoe?”
“Yeah, it is. It’s related to blood diamonds, too. We need to get Melancon into a cage, for his own good as well as everyone else’s.”
“I’m sick of this.”
“Of what?”
“Ronald Bledsoe was here this morning. He told the room supervisor he’d like to be a volunteer. But his eyes were on me the whole time. He had that sick grin on his face.”
Outside the front door, children were playing on swing sets and seesaws under the oak trees. I could remember when Alafair was their age and doing the same kinds of things. “Have lunch with me,” I said.
“What are we going to do about this asshole, Dave?” she replied.
I returned to the department and knocked on Helen’s door. She wasn’t happy to hear the latest on Bertrand Melancon.
“Tell me if I missed anything? He raped the Baylor girl and another girl in the Lower Nine and tried to kill Sidney Kovick, and he’s in New Iberia, calling you with his problems of conscience.”
“I guess that about says it.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Get ahold of Otis Baylor and his daughter. Tell them Melancon is in the area and that we plan on picking him up. But make sure Baylor understands that Melancon belongs to us.”
“Got it.”
She stood up from the desk and put her hands on her hips. She was wearing western-cut tan slacks and a braided belt and tight shirt. Then unexpectedly she looked me straight-on in the face and her eyes and manner took on that peculiar androgynous cast that had a way of turning her into a lovely mystery, one that was both arousing and unsettling at the same time.
“I should have never sent you back to New Orleans,” she said.
“Why’s that?
“Because the Feds have money to clean up their own messes and we don’t. Because you’re a good cop and you never shut the drawer on your cases. Everybody in your caseload stays in your head. If you weren’t a cop, you’d have a Roman collar on.” Her eyes were violet-colored, warmer than they should have been.
“Can I have a raise?”
She jiggled her fingers at me. “Bwana go now.”
I SKIPPED LUNCH and drove out to Otis Baylor’s house on Old Jeanerette Road. He was in his yard, inside deep shade, a four-gallon tank of insect spray on his back. He worked his way along the side of the house, spraying the flower beds and the foundation. It was cool inside the shade, but the canvas loops of his spray tank had formed sweat rings on his shirt. I had a feeling Otis Baylor was pinching every dollar he could.
I sat on his front steps without invitation, as a neighbor might. Down the long green slope of his property, the bayou wrinkled in the wind and elephant ears grew thickly along the banks. Otis’s nineteenth-century house, with its rusted screens, tin roof, deep shade, and green mold on the foundation, was a humble setting. But inside the trees the air was cool-smelling and filled with the sounds of wind in the bamboo and the drift of pine needles across the roof. It was the kind of place where a man could be at peace with himself and his family and set aside the ambitions that never allow the soul to rest. But I doubted that Otis would ever find that kind of peace, no matter where he chose to live.
“I took your advice,” I said.
“About what?”
“Not to play Ronald Bledsoe’s game.”
He continued to spray along the bottom of the house, as though I hadn’t spoken. “These Formosa termites will flat eat your house up, won’t they?” he said. “If you don’t stay after them, they’ll eat right through the concrete.”
“One of the guys who attacked Thelma is in town,” I said. “He called me on a cell phone. His name is Bertrand Melancon. He’s the brother of the guy who took one through the throat.”
Otis nodded, his eyes flat, his spray wand hissing across the latticework at the base of the gallery. “Why would he call you?”
“He’s scared. I also think he’s remorseful for what he’s done.”
Otis pumped the handle that pressurized his tank, his eyes looking at nothing. “He should be.”
