wondered if his grandmother’s soup had grown cold. He wondered if his auntie and grandmother had any idea of the crimes he had committed. He wondered if his mother was still alive someplace and if she ever thought about him or Eddy. He wondered why every event that had transpired in his life was not what he had planned.
How could that be? he asked himself. For just a moment, he wondered if the priest he had killed could give him an answer. That thought set his stomach on fire and caused him to spit blood in his auntie’s yard.
Chapter 29
THE PROBLEM WITH an adrenaline high, unlike one driven by booze, is that you cannot sustain it. When the heart-thundering rush subsides, when the clean smell of ignited cordite is blown away by the wind, you find yourself in the same kind of dead zone that a drunkard lives in. You wake in the morning to white noise that is like a television set turned up full volume on an empty screen. The streets seem empty, the sky brittle, the air stained with industrial odors you do not associate with morning. The sun is white overhead, the way a flashbulb is white, and the trees offer neither birdsong nor shade. Whatever you touch has a sharp edge to it, and ineptitude and remorse seem to wrap themselves around all your thoughts. The world has become an unforgiving prison where the images from a mistaken moment have not disappeared with sleep and instead pursue you wherever you go. You spend your time rationalizing and justifying and eventually you take on the persona of someone you don’t recognize. It’s like stepping around a corner onto a street on which there are no other people. It’s not an experience you come back from easily.
Monday morning Helen came into my office and sat down across from me. “You feeling okay, bwana?”
“Right as rain,” I replied.
I could hear her chewing gum, her jaws working steadily.
“Why do you figure Bobby Mack Rydel came after you?”
“Bledsoe was behind it. He played Rydel just like he plays everybody.”
“You’re sure you didn’t see Bledsoe in the Humvee up on the levee?”
I knew what she wanted me to say.
“I didn’t see the guy in the Humvee,” I said.
“Too bad. Look, you’re supposed to be on the desk till IA clears the shoot, but we should have that out of the way by close of business. We need Bledsoe in a cage. I’m with you on this one, Streak. I don’t care how we do it. This creep has spit on us again and again and gotten away with it. Let’s run at it from a different angle.”
“How?”
“Who was it who said, ‘When people say this is not about money, it’s about money’?”
“H. L. Mencken.”
“This is about those blood stones or whatever. Put all the scorpions in a matchbox and shake it up.”
“With Bledsoe it’s personal. He enjoys it. If someone didn’t pay him to hurt other people, he’d pay to do it.”
“Start over again. Go after Otis Baylor,” she said.
“Waste of time.”
“Really? I wonder why he’s downstairs,” she replied.
I BUZZED WALLY and asked him to send Otis Baylor up. I expected Wally to make a wisecrack. But he surprised me. “Glad you and your family are okay, Dave. I’m glad you capped that dude, too. That was a righteous shoot. Everybody here knows that. You hearing me?”
“Yeah, I do, Wally. Thanks,” I said.
Two minutes later Otis knocked on my glass pane and I waved him inside. He was wearing a navy blue suit and white shirt and tie, and his shoes were brushed to a soft luster. He put a piece of lined notebook paper on my desk. “That’s Bertrand Melancon’s address in the Ninth Ward. If you want him, he’s yours.”
“Sit down, Mr. Baylor.”
He didn’t argue. He took a chair in front of my desk and gazed around my office.
“I’ll pass this information on to NOPD. I’ll also pass it on to the FBI in Baton Rouge. Maybe they’ll get around to picking him up one day, but I don’t believe that’s going to happen soon. I think others will get their hands on Bertrand first, and when they do, they’ll boil the meat off his bones.”
“Then it’s on y’all. My family and I are finished with him.”
“I have a feeling something happened since I last saw you. Want to tell me about it?”
He did just that, in detail, leaving nothing out, describing his temptation to tear Bertrand Melancon into pieces in front of his auntie and the act of intervention and mercy on his daughter’s part.
“I admire what you’ve done, sir, but yesterday I shot and killed a man by the name of Bobby Mack Rydel. I killed him because he tried to kill my daughter, my wife, and me. He did this because Ronald Bledsoe put him up to it. Are you aware of all this? Because you don’t seem to be.”
“No, I wasn’t aware. We got back from New Orleans late last night. I didn’t watch the news or read the paper this morning. I came straight to your office. I’m sorry to hear about your trouble.”
I thought it was time to use the information Deputy Catin Segura had given me regarding Otis Baylor’s wife.
“You didn’t shoot those looters, Mr. Baylor. I think your wife did. I think before you two met, she was sexually abused, probably by someone with sadistic tendencies, maybe someone addicted to sado-porn. I think she saw the looters approaching your house and got frightened and opened up on them.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Who told you this stuff about Mrs. Baylor?”
“Who cares? Your wife picked up the Springfield and probably fired it out the front door. She was probably scared. Who wouldn’t be? A jury should be able to understand that. I think it’s pretty dumb to protect someone who perhaps doesn’t need protecting.”
His eyes stayed on mine and I knew he was thinking about the statement I had just made. I had said a jury “should understand.” Like most intelligent people, Otis knew equivocation and nuance in language when he heard it. He also knew that a prosecutor would emphasize to the jury that the shooter had been deadly accurate and had managed to take down not just one but two looters with a single shot. It was obvious the shooter had not fired simply to frighten them away.
But right now I was no longer interested in whether or not Otis worked out his family problems.
“Bertrand told me he tried to make amends to you. I think he tried to give you part or all of the blood diamonds stolen from Sidney Kovick’s house. I need to know where they are.”
“We have nothing to do with that.”
“Does you wife know where they are?”
“No.”
I remained silent, turning a pencil in a circle on my blotter with my finger, leaving the burden of evidence on him.
“Look, Melancon brought a letter to the house,” he said. “He had handwritten an apology to our family and tried to read it to her. He told my wife the location of the diamonds was on the bottom of the letter. But she threw it in his face. I found the letter in the yard. It was written on a paper hand towel. The ink had dissolved in the water. It’s unreadable.”
“Where is it now?”
“Probably still in the can I use for yard cleanup.”
“With your permission, I’m going to send someone out there to pick it up,” I said.
“Do whatever you want,” he replied.
I got the exact location of the trash can from him and called the Acadiana Crime Lab. After I got off the phone, I looked at Otis for a long time. “I wish you had told me this before,” I said. “Your lack of cooperation hasn’t been good for any of us, Mr. Baylor, least of all for yourself. If I can share a little bit of police wisdom with you, it’s a fool’s errand to take other people’s weight.”
“I’m not up on police terminology. You want to rephrase that?”
“When we allow others to victimize us in order to prove our own worth, we invite a cancer into our
