into the shade of the oak trees that grew in front of the ruined house. The security guard from the set, Murphy Doucet, was behind the wheel, and Elrod sat in the passenger's seat, his tanned arm balanced on the window ledge, a can of Coca-Cola in his hand.
'How you doing today, Detective Robicheaux?' Doucet said.
'Fine. How are you?'
'Like they say, we all chop cotton for the white man one way or another, you know what I mean?' he said, and winked.
He rubbed the white scar that was embossed like a chicken's foot on his throat and opened a newspaper on the steering wheel. Elrod came around the side of the Cadillac in blue swimming shorts, a beige polo shirt, and brand-new Nike running shoes.
He drank from his Coca-Cola can, set it on the hood of the car, then put a breath mint in his mouth. His eyes wandered around the clearing, then focused wanly on the sunlight winking off the bayou beyond the willow trees.
'Would you like to continue our conversation?' I said.
'You think I was out of line or something?'
'What did you want to tell me, Elrod?'
'Take a walk with me out yonder in those trees and I'll show you something.'
'The old cemetery?'
'That isn't it. Something you probably don't know about.'
We walked through a thicket of stunted oaks and hack-berry trees, briars and dead morning-glory vines, to a small cemetery with a rusted and sagging piked iron fence around it. Pines with deep-green needles grew out of the graves. A solitary brick crypt had long ago collapsed in upon itself and become overgrown with wild roses and showers of four o'-clocks.
Elrod stood beside me, and I could smell the scent of bourbon and spearmint on his breath. He looked out into the dazzling sunlight but his eyes didn't squint. They had a peculiar look in them, what we used to call in Vietnam the thousand-yard stare.
'There,' he said, 'in the shade, right on the edge of those hackberry trees. You see those depressions?'
'No.'
He squeezed my arm hard and pointed.
'Right where the ground slopes down to the bayou,' he said, and walked ahead of me toward the rear of the property. He pointed down at the ground. 'There's four of them. You stick a shovel in here and you'll bring up bone.'
In a damp area, where rainwater drained off the incline into a narrow coulee, there was a series of indentations that were covered with mushrooms.
'What's the point of all this?' I said.
'They were cooking mush in an iron pot and an artillery shell got all four of them. The general put wood crosses on their graves, but they rotted away a long time ago. He was a hell of an officer, Mr. Robicheaux.'
'I'll be going now,' I said. 'I'd like to help you, Elrod, but I think you've marked your own course.'
'I've been with these guys. I know what they went through. They had courage, by God. They made soup out of their shoes and rifle balls out of melted nails and wagonwheel rims. There was no way in hell they were going to quit.'
I turned and began walking back to my truck. Through the shade I could see the security guard urinating by the open door of the Cadillac. Elrod caught up with me. His hand clenched on my arm again.
'You want to write me off as a wet-brain, that's your business,' he said. 'You don't care about what these guys went through, that's your business, too. I didn't bring you out here for this, anyway.'
'Then why am I here?'
He turned me toward him with his hand.
'Because I don't like somebody carrying my oil can,' he said.
'What?'
'That's a Texas expression. It means I don't want somebody else toting my load. You've convinced yourself the guy who killed Kelly thought he had you in his sights. That's right, isn't it?'
'Maybe.'
'What makes you so goddamn important?'
I continued to walk toward my truck. He caught up with me again.
'You listen to me,' he said. 'Before she was killed I had a blowout with Mikey. I told him the script stinks, the screenwriters he's hired couldn't get jobs writing tampon ads, he's nickel-and-dimeing the whole project to death, and I'm walking off the set unless he gets his head on straight. The greaseballs heard me.'
'Which greaseballs?'
'Balboni's people. They're all over the set. They killed Kelly to keep me in line.'
His facial skin high up on one cheek crinkled and seemed almost to vibrate.
'Take it easy, El.'
'They made her an object lesson, Mr. Robicheaux.'
I touched his arm with my hand.
'Maybe Julie's involved, maybe not,' I said. 'But if he is, it's not because of you. You've got to trust me on this one.'
He turned his face away and pushed at one eye with the heel of his hand.
'When Julie and his kind create object lessons, they go right to the source of their problem,' I said. 'They don't select out innocuous people. It causes them too many problems.'
I heard his breath in his throat.
'I made them keep the casket closed,' he said. 'I told the funeral director in Kentucky, if he let her parents see her like that, I'd be back, I'd-'
I put my arm over his shoulder and walked back through the cemetery with him.
'Let's go back to town and have something to eat,' I said. 'Like somebody said to me this morning, it's no good to kick ourselves around the block, is it? What do you think?'
'She's dead. I cain't see her, either. It's not right.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'I see those soldiers but I cain't see her. Why's that? It doesn't make any sense.'
'I'll be honest with you, partner. I think you're floating on the edge of delirium tremens. Put the cork in the jug before you get there, El. Believe me, you don't have to die to go to hell.'
'You figure me for plumb down the road and around the bend, don't you? I don't blame you. I got my doubts about what I see myself.'
'Maybe that's not a bad sign.'
'When we were driving through that canebrake, I said to Murph, the security guy, 'Who's that standing behind Mr. Robicheaux?' Then I looked again and I knew who it was. Except I've never seen him in daylight before. When I looked again, he was gone. Which isn't the way he does things.'
'I'm going to an A A meeting tonight. You want to come?'
'Yeah, why not? It cain't be worse than having dinner with Mikey and the greaseballs.'
'You might be a little careful about your vocabulary when you're around those guys.'
'Boy, I wonder what my grandpa would say if he saw me working with the likes of that bunch. I told you he was a Texas ranger, didn't I?'
'You surely did.'
'You know what he once told me about Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow? He said-'
'I have to get back to the office. How about I pick you up at your place at seven-thirty?'
'Sure. Thanks for coming out, Mr. Robicheaux. I'm sorry about my bad manners on the phone. I'm not given to using profanity like that. I don't know what got into me.' He picked up his soda can off the hood of his Cadillac and started to drink out of it. 'It's just Coca-Cola. That's a fact.'
'You'd better drink it then.'
He smiled at me.
'It rots your teeth,' he said, and emptied the can into the dirt.
