“Probably wasting time,” I replied.
“Is this part of the note you said was in the Baylors’ yard?”
“That’s right.”
She picked up the yellow legal pad on which I had printed the disconnected letters. “Let me try a few combinations on the computer.”
“How’s that going to help?”
“If the words had been typed rather than hand-printed, it would be fairly easy. The problem with a hand- printed version is the absence of uniform spacing. So you have to be imaginative in order to compensate.”
“Really?” I said.
“Lose the sardonic attitude,” she said.
I walked down the slope of the yard to the bayou. The air was damp, the evening sky lit by the fire stacks at the sugar mill. I was more tired than I had ever been. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could almost feel a great weight oppressing the land, a darkness stealing across its surface, a theft of light that seemed to have no origin. Was this just more of the world destruction fantasy that had invaded my childhood dreams and followed me to Vietnam and into bars all over the Orient? Or was William Blake’s tiger much larger than we ever guessed, its time finally come round?
I called Clete on his cell phone. “Where are you?” I said.
“At the motor court.”
“Any sign of Bledsoe?”
“No.”
“Look, I don’t want to leave the house. Come on over.”
“What for?”
“Nothing. That’s it. Nothing is up. And I’m powerless to do anything about any of it.”
“Any of what?”
“I don’t know. That’s it, I don’t know. Sunday, I blew a plug out of a guy’s chest the size of a quarter. I enjoyed it. I had a fantasy about the guy going to Hell.”
“So what?”
“We’ve got blood splatter all over us, Clete.”
“The only time that’s a problem is when it’s ours and not theirs.”
“Wrong,” I said.
“Dangle loose. I’m going to motor on over.”
I had advised Sidney Kovick to develop some clarity in his life. What a joke.
WEDNESDAY MORNING I experienced one of those instances when middle-class people walk into a law enforcement agency and in the next few minutes trustingly consign their lives to a bureaucratic system that operates with all the compassion of dice clattering out of a leather cup.
I happened to glance out the window just as Melanie and Otis and Thelma Baylor entered the building. I believed I knew the nature of their visit and I didn’t want to be part of it. Contrary to popular belief, the lion’s share of police work is administrative or clerical in nature. Occasionally we get to slam the door on people whose convictions represent only a small fraction of their crimes and you take a pleasure in separating them from the rest of us. But sometimes you are forced to sit down with offenders who are little different from yourself. They cannot believe the damage they have done to their lives. Even worse, they cannot deal with the institutional consequences that await them. I had come to believe the Baylors fell into this category and I did not want to aid them in their own dismemberment.
Sure enough, Wally buzzed me on my extension and told me the Baylors wanted to see me.
“Keep them down there,” I said.
“I t’ought you liked Mr. Baylor. I already sent them up.”
“It’s okay, Wally. Don’t worry about it,” I said.
I met them at the door and stopped Otis before he could speak. “I think you need to talk to either the district attorney or Sheriff Soileau.”
“No, we need to talk to you, Mr. Robicheaux. We’ve deceived you and we need to set things right,” Otis said.
Of course, they had no attorney with them.
“I want you to understand this. The Iberia Sheriff’s Department has no direct relationship to the prosecution of your case, Mr. Baylor. We’re liaison people on lend-lease to other agencies. It’s only because of Katrina that we were drawn into your case. Your issue is with the FBI and the Orleans Parish DA’s office. Sir, use your head.”
“Shut up, Mr. Robicheaux,” Melanie Baylor said.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re going to tell us to get a lawyer. We have a lawyer. I let you hound my husband and I have to account for that. I shot the two black men. My husband had nothing to do with it and neither did my stepdaughter.”
There were circles under her eyes, and the smell of whiskey and cigarettes was deep in her lungs. I suspected that in her naivete she believed her sudden admission of guilt would disarm and vanquish all those who had persecuted her and her family, that somehow culpability and accusation would be replaced by the healing balm of martyrdom.
“Would you like to sit down?” I said to her.
“What for?” she replied.
I took a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen from a shelf and dropped them on my desk. “So you can write out an account of what happened the night the two men were shot in front of your house,” I said.
“I don’t see why that’s necessary. I just told you what happened,” she said.
“You’re under arrest, Mrs. Baylor. You can have a lawyer here if you wish. You do not have to talk to me, you do not have to write on that legal pad. Whatever you say here from this moment on can be used against you. You are now formally in custody and in all probability you will not return home today. But you came to my office of your own volition. I think that fact will have a strong influence on the disposition of your case. I wouldn’t mar that gesture by obfuscation and recalcitrance now.”
She looked at her husband and stepdaughter.
“Do what he says, Melanie,” Otis said.
Then her face began to dissolve, just like papier-mache held to a hot light.
Mrs. Baylor was not a likable woman. I believe she sighted on Eddy Melancon’s throat with forethought and intentionally took his life. I also believe his death was entirely avoidable and that he and Kevin Rochon posed no threat to her safety. But in that moment, as she broke down in my office, who would choose to take on her burden by becoming her judge?
I handed her a box of Kleenex and watched the Sunset Limited wobble down the railway tracks while she wrote on my legal pad.
CLETE PICKED ME UP at noon and we drove toward my house in his Caddy, the top down. Molly was at work and Alafair was doing research for her novel at the university library in Lafayette. Ronald Bledsoe still had not returned to his cottage at the motor court. I told Clete about the confession of Melanie Baylor.
“How do you think it’ll play out?” he said.
“Remember that Japanese exchange student who went up a driveway in Baton Rouge on Halloween evening? He asked at the side door for directions to a party?”
“The wife panicked and the husband shot and killed the kid with a forty-four Mag?” he said.
“Yeah, the shooter walked.”
“That’s because the Feds weren’t in on that one. This time they are. Look, Dave, we’ve got one issue here and that’s to bag the guys who tried to kill your family.” He turned onto East Main, a net of light and shadow sliding across his face. “We’ve missed something, I just don’t know what it is. I had a funny dream last night. I was walking in a woods and I could smell fall in the air. There were leaves and mushrooms all over the ground, and air vines were hanging from the trees. When I came out of the woods, you were standing on the edge of a stream with a suitcase by your foot, like you were about to go on a trip. You said, ‘You walked over a grave, Clete. Didn’t you see it?’ Then you waded into the water.”
