He went back to his letter. Suddenly the front door of the Baylor home opened, and Thelma and a heavyset man and a blond, sun-browned woman stepped out into their yard, their faces turned up like flowers into the sunlight.
Bertrand was petrified. He had bathed last night in his grandmother’s claw-footed tub, but a vinegary smell rose from his armpits. He wanted to get out of the car, to wave his unfinished letter at them, to make them listen to his offer of restitution. It couldn’t be that hard. Just do it, he told himself.
Then the Baylor family backed out of the driveway, into the road, and drove away as though he were not there.
Bertrand opened his car door and spit on the ground. The wind blew in his face and puffed his shirt, but he knew that once again there would be no respite from his fear and that failure and self-loathing would lay claim to every moment of his day. He wanted to weep.
He got out of his car and wandered down the slope by the bayou, his legs almost caving. The man who had been studying the antebellum home under the oaks roared down the asphalt toward New Iberia, glancing once at Bertrand as he passed.
The man’s face looked exactly like the back of a thumb, a pale white thumb, Bertrand thought. He could not remember ever seeing anyone who looked as strange. Then he sat down in the leaves and put his face in his hands.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON I drove to Bo Wiggins’s office in the old Lafayette Oil Center. Actually it was more than an office. He had purchased the entire building and had placed a sign that read “James Boyd Wiggins Industries” over the front entrance. He was not there and neither was his statuesque secretary with the white-gold hair. The receptionist was talking on the phone. A magazine lay open on her lap and she kept looking down at it while she spoke, shifting her legs so the page wouldn’t flip over and cause her to lose her place. After she hung up, I asked her where I might find Bo and his secretary. She bit on a nail and developed a faraway look in her eyes. “ Houston?” she said.
“You’re asking me?” I said.
“No, it’s Miami. They went on his private jet. With some other guys.”
“Which guys?”
“Some contractors.”
“Which contractors?”
“The ones who’re hauling all that storm junk out of New Orleans?”
She had turned a declarative sentence into a question again.
“When will they be back?” I asked.
“Tomorrow, I think.”
I decided this was a conversation to exit as soon as possible. I gave her my business card and drove back to Lafayette in a downpour that left hailstones smoking on the highway.
THURSDAY MORNING Helen Soileau called me back into her office. “What I said to you yesterday about departmental resources was straight up. But that doesn’t change the fact Bledsoe is a dangerous man and has no business in our parish.”
I waited.
“Get him in the box. Let’s see what he’s made of,” she said.
“On what grounds?”
“We want to interview and continue our exclusion of him as a suspect in the break-in at your house.”
“I’ve been that route.”
“Tell him the sheriff of Iberia Parish wants to meet him.”
“What if he doesn’t want to come?”
“If he is what you say he is, he’ll come.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he wants to show us he’s smarter than we are.”
Helen knew our clientele. Sociopaths and most mainline recidivists share certain characteristics. They are megalomaniacs, narcissists, and manipulators. No matter how ignorant and uneducated they are, they believe they are more intelligent than law-abiding people. They also believe they can intuit the thoughts of others. It’s not coincidence they often wear a corner-of-the-mouth smirk. I’ve always suspected their behavior and general manner have something to do with the origin of the term “wiseguys.”
I found Ronald Bledsoe sitting in a deck chair in front of his cottage, wearing Bermuda shorts, a short-sleeved shirt printed with green flowers, and dark glasses with big round white frames. He was drinking a glass of iced tea and reading the newspaper, one hairless pink leg crossed on his knee.
“Sheriff Soileau would like for you to come down and talk to her, Mr. Bledsoe,” I said. “It’s purely voluntary. By the way, sorry about that fracas the other night.”
He folded his newspaper and tilted his head, his eyes unreadable behind his glasses. “I’ve heard a lot about your sheriff. I hear she’s an interesting person. I think I’d be delighted to meet her. Can we go in your vehicle?”
I didn’t overtly try to engage him in conversation on our way back to the department. He seemed to enjoy riding in a cruiser, and he kept asking questions about the various pieces of technology on the console and along the dashboard. Then he removed his glasses and I felt his eyes probing the side of my face.
“Know what the de facto definition of a criminal is, Mr. Robicheaux?” he said.
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“A man with a demonstrable record of criminality.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s hard to argue with.”
“You appear to be an educated person, as your daughter does. You ever run across the term ‘solipsism’ in a philosophy course when you were in college?”
“I don’t think I did.” We were still on East Main, headed into the historical district. In less than five minutes we would be at the courthouse parking lot and in all probability Bledsoe would stop speaking on a personal level, something I didn’t want to happen. “What is ‘solipsism,’ exactly?”
“The belief that reality exists only in ourselves and our own perceptions.”
“That’s a new one.”
“Let me ask you the age-old puzzle: if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, has it really fallen? Tell me your opinion on that and I’ll tell you mine.”
“I’d say it had fallen.”
He laughed to himself and watched the blocks of antebellum and Victorian and shotgun homes slip by the window.
“So what’s your opinion?” I said.
“I’ve already told you. You just weren’t paying attention.” He punched me in the arm with one finger.
His eyes were merry, a liquid green under his thick, half-moon, Curious George eyebrows and jutting forehead. “Is it true your sheriff is a hermaphrodite?”
We went through the back door of the courthouse and I took him directly to the interview room. Several uniformed cops turned around and looked at us as we passed them in the hallway.
“I’ll tell Sheriff Soileau you’re here. How about some coffee and doughnuts?”
“I like doughnuts.”
“Coming up,” I said.
I left him in the interview room and asked Wally to take him some doughnuts and a cup of Community coffee, then I told Helen that he was here.
“How did he behave coming over?” she said.
“He asked me if I was familiar with solipsism.”
“With what?”
“It’s a philosophical view that the only reality is one our minds generate. Then he asked me the riddle about a tree falling in the forest.”
“If no one hears it, does it really fall?” she said.
