The connotations of his dream made something drop in my chest, like a stone tumbling down a well.
“What do you think it means?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Dreams are just dreams.”
“No, we missed something. I stepped on a grave and didn’t see it. We’ve been chasing blood diamonds and street pukes and dealing with Dagwood and Blondie while Ronald Bledsoe wipes his ass on the drapes. Bledsoe is the key. How could a guy like that go this long without getting busted somewhere for something? There’s another story to this, Streak.”
We pulled into my driveway. I opened the front door of the house, then checked all the locks and the windows. I went into the backyard and checked on Snuggs and Tripod. I even squatted down and looked under the house for wires or a device or a package that didn’t belong there. That’s what the inculcation of fear does. Without leaving his home, your enemy makes you his prisoner and controls every minute of your day.
Clete was waiting for me in the kitchen when I came back into the house.
“When I told you about the dream? About you walking into the water? I saw a look on your face. Why’d you look like that, Dave?”
“I don’t remember,” I replied, avoiding his eyes. “Let’s fix lunch. I have to get back to work.”
THAT AFTERNOON Wally came up to my office, wheezing from the effort of climbing the stairs. He had a folded sheet of lined paper in his hand. “This come over from lockup. It’s for you,” he said.
I unfolded the letter and looked at the flowing calligraphy and the name at the bottom. “Thanks, Wally.”
After he had gone, I sat down and read the letter. No one is exactly sure of the engines that drive the alcoholic. AA literature makes use of terms like “self-centered fear” and “self-will run riot” and “moral and psychological insanity.” Some people consider it a deep-seated neurosis and personality disorder. But regardless of its origins, pride is high up on the list of its attributes.
To Detective Robicheaux,
I want to clarify my statement in your office earlier today. I shot into the darkness in order to dissuade the looters from entering our home. Now I must be accountable for that, even though I think one of the looters positioned himself in the path of the bullet, probably because of the self-destructive nature of his kind, although I cannot say that for certain.
I confessed to my “crime” because you harassed my husband and daughter and would give our family no peace. I have been told by members of my aerobics class you have a history as a drunkard and your meddlesome ways are your means to avoid not being drunk all the time.
If you want the truth about what happened that terrible night, I will now tell you and you can attach it to my earlier statement. We were at the mercy of depraved animals. The next-door neighbor and his friends said they would protect us. But the next-door neighbor, with his supposed military training and background as a “Southern gentleman,” is a poseur and a blowhard as well as a drunkard like yourself, and after my husband fell asleep from exhaustion, I had to take charge of things and fire blindly into the darkness before the looters who were also the ones who raped our daughter broke down our doors.
I forgive you for what you did. Your ineptitude and low intelligence are probably not your fault, but your alcoholic personality is. If I were you, I would do something about it, if not for your own sake, then for the sake of those who have to live around you.
Sincerely,
Melanie Baylor
I made a Xerox copy of the letter and sent the original to the district attorney’s office, hoping I never heard the name of Melanie Baylor again.
Chapter 31
LATER, I CALLED Betsy Mossbacher at the FBI office in Baton Rouge. I had left her a message after I had found out Bertrand Melancon was in the Ninth Ward. I had also called her after Bobby Mack Rydel had tried to kill my family. But she had not returned my calls. This time she picked up.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“All over the state. What’s this about?”
“I left you a message about Bertrand Melancon. Otis Baylor found him. Melancon is at his aunt’s house in the Ninth Ward. I also left you a message about Bobby Mack Rydel.”
“Yeah, I was sorry to hear about that. I’m glad you’re okay.”
I waited for her to go on, but she didn’t.
“Y’all been pretty busy?” I said.
“Give me Melancon’s address. I’ll see what we can do.”
I could feel my energies draining. We had been called into a jurisdiction not our own and asked to do scut work that was the responsibility of other agencies. Now I was getting the inference, I had become an annoyance. I gave her the address of Melancon’s aunt in the Ninth Ward.
“Melanie Baylor confessed this morning to shooting the looters. Her husband was covering for her.”
“Sheriff Soileau faxed us that info an hour ago.”
“Melancon wrote a letter of amends to the Baylor family. He gave them directions to the blood diamonds. Except the letter got water-soaked and so far hasn’t been of much value to us. In the meantime, two of Sidney Kovick’s guys got whacked in the Atchafalaya Basin.”
“Yeah, we got that.”
“Betsy, I’m supposed to share information with you. If you don’t want me to do that, tell me to get lost.”
“We’re buried alive in work. Maybe all this will get sorted out one day, but it’s going to be a long time. Do you have any idea how many open homicide cases we have in New Orleans? The city is a giant repository for the dead. I’m not talking about gangbangers, I’m talking about patients who were allowed to drown in nursing homes. Do you realize how many complaints about unjustified police shootings we have to investigate? I can’t even get information about our own people. I think some navy SEALs took out some snipers we don’t know about.”
But I wasn’t concerned with the FBI’s problems. “I’ve got to get a net over Ronald Bledsoe. He’s ruining our lives,” I said.
I heard her breathe air out her nose. But I didn’t allow her to speak and continued to bore in. “Sidney Kovick inasmuch as told me he took the diamonds off some guys from the Mideast. You told me yourself he fancied himself a patriot. Maybe these guys are al Qaeda. You have unlimited electronic access when it comes to Homeland Security matters. Bledsoe is the loose thread on the sweater. We just have to pull on it.”
“Good try, no cigar.”
“So long, Betsy. I think you’re working for the right bunch,” I said, and hung up, coming down hard with the receiver.
WEDNESDAY EVENING was exceptionally beautiful, as though the earth and the heavens had decided to join together and re-create South Louisiana the way it was before Katrina and Rita tore it apart. The sky was a hard blue, the evening star twinkling in the west, a big brown moon rising above the cane fields. The rains had turned the oaks a deeper green and had sent Bayou Teche over its banks, swirling along the edges of our yards. You could smell barbecue fires in the park and the tannic odor of chrysanthemums and a clean, bright odor that perhaps signaled the coming of winter, but not in a bad way. For no demonstrable reason, I felt a sense of peace, as though I had been invited to a war but at the last moment had decided not to attend.
Alafair was returning to the university library to finish the research for her novel and Molly was going to drive her. “You’re sure you won’t come?” Molly said from the doorway.
“I’ll probably just read a bit and take a walk,” I said.
“I think I almost have the words worked out on the bottom of the letter the black guy left at the Baylors’,” Alafair said. “It’s just a matter of finding the right combination, not the letters, but the words themselves, so they form a sensible statement.”
I tried not to show my lack of enthusiasm. “That’s good,” I said.
