The story was a long one, of the kind written by a journalist who has learned the advantages of professional credulity over skepticism:
Henderson -In what authorities believe was an attempted gangland assassination gone awry, a New Orleans city police officer was killed and a murder suspect escaped custody by stealing an unmarked police vehicle and driving it through a hail of gunfire.
Dead upon arrival at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Lafayette was Detective Sergeant James F. Burgoyne. Burgoyne and an Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department detective, David Robicheaux, tried to save the life of the intended victim, John Remeta, a suspect in a New Orleans homicide, investigators on the scene said.
The shooting took place in an 1-10 rest area close by the Atchafalaya River. Remeta was being transported in chains from New Iberia to New Orleans.
Both officers advanced across an open field into sniper fire while Remeta huddled on the backseat of the unmarked police vehicle. When the officers freed Remeta of his handcuffs, Remeta escaped in the confusion and a bullet meant for him struck Burgoyne in the head, according to the crime scene investigator.
Authorities believe Remeta has ties to organized crime and that a contract was placed on his life. A second New Orleans police officer, Lieutenant Don Ritter, is credited with coming to the assistance of Robicheaux and Burgoyne, putting himself in the line of fire.
A St. Martin Parish deputy sheriff on the scene said the behavior of all three officers was the bravest he had seen in his twenty years of police experience.
And on and on.
The sheriff tossed the newspaper on his desk and continued pacing, twisting the stem of his pipe in and out of the bowl.
Then he picked up a fax of the scene investigator's report and reread it and let it drift from his hand on top of the newspaper.
'The dead cop, what's his name, Burgoyne? He still had his piece in his holster. How do you explain that?' the sheriff said.
'Ask the scene investigator.'
'I'm asking you.'
'I'm not sure you want to know.' I looked at a spot on the wall.
'Ritter impressed me as a self-serving asswipe. He had a sudden conversion and ran into incoming fire to help you out?'
'I never saw Ritter. Not until the state police were coming down the ramp.'
'You'd better tell me what happened out there.'
'I made Burgoyne walk in front of me and give Remeta his cuff key. If Remeta hadn't taken off in the unmarked vehicle, the shooter would have nailed us both.'
The sheriff ran one hand through his hair. 'I don't believe this,' he said.
'Ritter fabricated the story to cover himself. I didn't contradict him. If I had, I would have been in custody myself.'
'Did you hold a gun on Burgoyne?'
'Yes.'
'You got a cop killed, Dave.'
'They had that kid staked out like a goat under a tree stand.'
The sheriff was breathing hard through his nostrils. His face was dark, his candy-striped snap-button shirt tight across his chest.
'I can't quite describe how angry this makes me,' he said.
'You wanted the truth.'
'You're damn right I do. Stay right there.'
He went out the door and down the corridor, then came back five minutes later, his blood pressure glowing in his face, the lines around his eyes like white thread.
'I’ve got Don Ritter and an IAD man in New Orleans on the line,' he said, and hit the button on his conference phone.
'What are you doing, skipper?' I said.
He held up his hand for me to be quiet. 'Ritter?' he said, standing erect in the middle of the office.
'What can I do for you, Sheriff?' Ritter's voice said through the speaker.
'Listen and keep your mouth shut. You set up a prisoner from my jail to be murdered and you almost got one of my people killed. You set foot in my parish again and I'm going to find a way to bury your sorry ass on Angola Farm. In the meantime, you'd better pray I don't get my hands on you… Is that IAD man still there?'
There was a pause, then a second voice said through the speaker, 'Yes, sir, I'm right here.'
'If the media want to buy that pig flop you people put out about y'all cleaning up your act, that's their business. But you either get to the bottom of this or I'm going to put an open letter on the Internet and notify every law enforcement agency in the country of the kind of bullshit you pass off as police work. By the way, spell your full name for me,' the sheriff said.
After the sheriff hung up, his throat was blotched with color.
'Hypertension is going to put me in a box,' he said.
'I wish it had worked out different. I never got a clear shot.'
He drank a glass of water and took a deep breath, then his eyes settled on my face.
'Burgoyne's brains splattered on you?' he said.
'Yes.'
'It happened to me in Korea. The guy was a prisoner I was taking back to the rear. I used to get up in the middle of the night and take showers and wash my hair and swim in the ocean and all kinds of crazy stuff. What's the lesson? Better him than me.'
His hand rested on the end of my shoulder and he kept massaging it like a baseball coach working a stiff place out of his pitcher's arm.
That night a fisherman on Calcasieu Lake, over by the Texas border, saw a man park a white automobile by the water's edge and start to walk away. Then the man looked back at the car as though he had forgotten something, or as though he'd had an argument with someone and could not quite bear to leave the other party with the last word. The man gathered an armload of creek wood and dry weeds and yellowed newspaper and sifted it through the windows on the seats, his face averted from the dust. He brushed his hands and shirt clean and took an emergency flare from the glove box and popped it alight. Then he methodically fired the inside of the car and stepped back from his work just before flames curled out over the roof. He tossed the flare hissing into the lake and 'walked down the road.
The next morning, which was Friday, the car was identified as the one stolen from NOPD by Johnny Remeta.
But he had dumped it over on the Texas border, I told myself. Which meant he was probably fleeing Louisiana and did not want to add a federal beef for interstate transportation of stolen property to the charges already pending against him.
Good. I was sick of Johnny Remeta.
I tried to forget that he had a 160 I.Q. That he was just the kind of perp who would burn a stolen car on the state line to let people think he was gone.
The call came at noon.
'Why'd you do that out there in that glade? I mean, walk into all that shooting and cut me loose?' he said.
'It's none of your business why I do anything,' I replied.
'I never saw anybody do anything like that.'
'You're an escaped felon. I'm a police officer. Don't get the wrong idea, Johnny.'
'I called to say thank you. You don't want my thanks, it's on you. But we got a mutual interest, Mr. Robicheaux.'
