'Judy made me look at something I didn't want to see. I was often angry when you were protective of someone else. You beat up Gable because you thought he was treating me disrespectfully in public. Then I lectured you about your violent feelings toward Remeta.'
'You weren't wrong,' I said.
'What?'
'I set Remeta up the other night. I was going to dust him and take him out of Alafair's life.'
She was quiet a long time, staring into space, her cheeks spotted with color. Her mouth was parted slightly and I kept waiting for her to speak.
'Boots?' I said.
'You were actually going to kill him?'
'Yes.'
I could see the anger climbing into her face. 'In front of our home, just blow him away?' she said.
'I couldn't do it. So he'll be back. We can count on it.'
I could hear the wall clock in the silence. Her face was covered with shadow and I couldn't see her expression. I waited a moment longer, then rinsed out my glass and dried it and put it in the cupboard and went out on the front gallery. The screen opened behind me.
'He's coming back?' she said.
I didn't answer.
'I wish you had killed him. That's what I really feel. I wish Johnny Remeta was dead. If he comes around Alafair again, I'll do it myself. Get either in or out of the game, Streak,' she said.
'Your sponsor would call that rigorous honesty,' I said.
She tried to hold the anger in her face, then mashed her foot on top of mine.
The bedroom was filled with shadows and the curtains twisted and popped in the wind when Bootsie sat on my thighs and lowered her hand, then raised herself and placed me inside her. A few minutes later her mouth opened silently and her eyes became unfocused, her hair hanging in her face, and she began to say something that broke and dissolved in her throat; then I felt myself joining her, my hands slipping off her breasts onto her back, and in my mind's eye I saw a waterfall cascading over pink rocks and a marbled boulder tearing loose from its moorings, rolling heavily, faster and faster in the current, its weight pressing deeply into the soft pebbly bottom of the stream.
She kissed me and cupped her hand on my forehead as though she were checking to see if I had a fever, then pushed my hair up on my head.
'Alafair will be home soon. Let's take her to dinner at the Patio. We can afford an extra night out, can't we?' she said.
'Sure.'
I watched her as she put on her panties and bra; her back was firm with muscle, her skin as free of wrinkles as a young woman's. She was reaching for her shirt on the chair when an odor like scorched hair and burning garbage struck her face.
'Good Lord, what is that?' she said.
I put on my khakis and the two of us went into the kitchen and looked through the window into the backyard. The sun had dropped below the horizon, but the light had not gone out of the sky, and the full moon hung like a sliver of partially melted ice above my neighbor's cane. Batist flung a bucket filled with hog's blood onto the trash fire, and a cloud of black smoke with fire inside it billowed up into the wind and drifted back against the house.
'What's Batist doing? Has he lost his mind?' Bootsie said.
I rubbed the small of her back, my fingers touching the line of elastic across the top of her panties.
'It's a primitive form of sacrifice. He believes he saw the
'Sacrifice?'
'It keeps the monster back in the trees.'
'You thinking about Letty Labiche?'
'About all of us, I guess,' I said.
30
THE NEXT DAY was Wednesday. I don't know why, but I woke with a sense of loss and emptiness I hadn't experienced in many years. It was like the feelings I had as a child that I could never explain to priests or nuns or any other adults who tried to help me. But when that strange chemical presence would have its way with my heart, like weevil worms that had invaded my blood, I was convinced the world had become a gray, desolate place without purpose, with no source of heat other than a perpetual winter sun.
I walked down through the mist in the trees to the road and took the newspaper out of the metal cylinder and opened it on the kitchen table.
The lead story had a three-column headline that read: 'Governor Sets Execution for Labiche.'
Unless Belmont Pugh commuted her sentence, Letty had exactly three weeks to live.
I drove to the department in the rain and talked to the sheriff, then went to the prosecutor's office.
The district attorney was out of town and would be gone for a week, and the ADA I caught was Barbara Shanahan, sometimes known as Battering Ram Shanahan. She was over six feet tall and had freckles and wore her light red hair cut short and wore a blue suit with white hose. She worked hard and was a good prosecutor, and I had always wanted to like her. But she seldom smiled and she went about her job with the abrasiveness of a carpenter building coffins with a nail gun.
'Passion Labiche has confessed she participated in the murder of Vachel Carmouche?' she said.
'Yes.'
'Where is it?' she asked.
'Where's what?'
'The statement, the tape, whatever.'
'I didn't take a formal statement from her.'
'So what is it you want from us?' she asked.
'I'm apprising you of the situation.'
'It sounds like you're getting your chain jerked.'
'The weed sickle she used is still under the house.'
'I think you should get out of law enforcement. Become a public defender. Then you can clean up after these people on a regular basis. Talk to the D.A. when he gets back. He's going to tell you the right person is going to be injected three weeks from now. I suggest you learn to live with it,' she said.
It was still raining outside, and through the window I could see the old crypts in St. Peter's Cemetery and the rain dancing on top of the bricks and plaster. 'Passion was telling the truth,' I said.
'Good. Make the case and we'll indict for capital murder. Anything else you want?' she replied, and began sticking files in a cabinet, her back to me.
But Barbara Shanahan surprised me. And so did Connie Deshotel, who rang my phone just before 5 p.m.
'Your ADA called me. She says you have new evidence in the Carmouche case,' she said.
'Both sisters killed him,' I said.
'You know this for a fact?'
'Yes.'
'Put something together. I'll take it to the governor.'
'Why are you doing this?' I asked.
'Because I'm the attorney general of Louisiana. Because I don't want to overlook mitigating circumstances in a capital conviction.'
