'They told me. They made you, Joe. They knew you were there.'
Pike didn't move for a while, but you could tell he didn't like it, or didn't believe it. Finally he made a little shrug. 'Did we learn anything?'
'I think.'
'Is there a way out for the Boudreauxs?'
I stared off at the river, at the steady brown water flowing toward the Gulf, at the great ships headed north, up into the heart of America. I said, 'Yes. Yes, I think there is. They won't like it, but I think there is.' I thought about it for a time, and then I looked back at Joe Pike. 'These are dangerous people, Joe. These are very dangerous people.'
Pike nodded and watched/the river with me. 'Yes,' he said. 'But so are we.'
CHAPTER 29
A hot wind blew in off Lake Pontchartrain. The last of the clouds had vanished, leaving the sky a great azure dome above us, the afternoon sun a disk of white and undeniable heat. We drove with the windows down, the hot air roaring over and around us, smelling not unlike an aquarium that has been too long un-cleaned. We reached Baton Rouge, but we did not stop; we crested the bridge and continued west toward the Evangeline Parish Sheriff's Substation in Eunice, and Jo-el Boudreaux. He wouldn't be happy to see us, but I wasn't so happy about seeing him, either.
It was late afternoon when Pike and I parked in the dappled shade of a black-trunked oak and walked into the substation. A thin African-American woman with very red lips and too much rouge sat at a desk and, behind her, a tall rawboned cop with leathery skin stood at a coffee machine. The cop looked over when we walked in and watched us cross to the receptionist. Staring. I gave the receptionist one of my business cards. 'We'd like to see Sheriff Boudreaux, please. He knows what it's about.'
She looked at the card. 'Do you have an appointment?'
'No, ma'am. But he'll see us.'
The rawboned cop came closer, first looking at Pike and then looking at me, as if we had put in a couple of job applications and he was about to turn us down. 'The sheriff's a busy man. You got a problem, you can talk to me.' His name tag said WILLETS.
'Thanks, but it's business for the sheriff.'
Willets didn't let it go. 'If you're talkin' crime, it's my business, too.' He squinted. 'You boys aren't local, are you?'
Pike said, 'Does it matter?'
Willets clicked the cop eyes on Pike. 'You look familiar. I ever lock you down?'
The receptionist said, 'Oh, relax, Tommy,' and took the card down a short hall.
Willets stood there with his fists on his hips, staring at us. The receptionist came back with Jo-el Boudreaux and returned to her desk. Boudreaux looked nervous. 'I thought you were gone.'
'There's something we need to talk about.'
Willets said, 'They wouldn't talk with me, Jo-el.'
Boudreaux said, 'I've got it now, Tommy. Thanks.'
Willets went back to the coffee machine, but he wasn't happy about it. Boudreaux was holding my business card and bending it back and forth. He looked at Joe. 'Who's that?'
'Joe Pike. He works with me.'
Boudreaux bent the card some more, then came closer and lowered his voice. 'That woman is back and she's been calling my wife. I don't like it.'
'Who?'
He mouthed the words. 'That woman. Jodi Taylor.' He glanced at Willets to make sure he hadn't heard.
'Sheriff, that's just too damn bad. You want to talk out here?'
Willets was still staring at us from the coffee machine. He couldn't hear us, but he didn't like all the talking. He called out, 'Hey, Jo-el, you want me to take care of that?'
'I've got it, Tommy. Thanks.'
Boudreaux took us to his office. Like him, it was simple and functional. Uncluttered desk. Uncluttered cabinet with a little TV. A nice-looking largemouth bass mounted on the wall. Boudreaux was big and his face was red. A hundred years ago he would have looked like the town blacksmith. Now, he looked awkward in his short-sleeved uniform and Sam Browne. He said, 'I want you to know I don't appreciate your coming here like this. I don't like that woman calling my wife. I told you I'd handle my troubles on my own, in my own way, and there's nothing we got to say to each other.'
'I want to report a crime. I can report it to you, or to the clown outside.'
He rocked back when I said it. He was a large-boned, strong man and he'd probably fronted down his share of oilfield drunks, but now he was scared and wondering what to do. I wasn't supposed to be here. I was supposed to have gone away and stayed away. 'What do you mean, 'crime'? What are you talkin' about?'
'I know what Rossier's doing, Sheriff. You're going to have to put a stop to it.'
He put his hand on the doorknob like he was going to show us out. 'I said I'll take care of this.'
'You've been hiding from it for long enough, and now it's gotten larger than you and your wife and your father-in-law.'
He said, 'No,' waving his hand.
'I'm showing you a courtesy here, Boudreaux. Neither your wife nor Jodi Taylor knows about this, though I will tell them. I'm giving it to you first, so that we can do this in private, where you want to keep your fat-ass troubles, or we can do it in front of your duty cops.'
Pike said, 'Fuckin' A.' Pike really knows how to add to a conversation.
Boudreaux stopped the waving.
I said, 'At eleven-thirty last night we saw a man named Donaldo Prima shoot an old man in the head at an abandoned pumping station a mile south of Milt Rossier's crawfish farm. They were bringing in illegal immigrants. Rossier's goons were there when it happened.'
Jo-el Boudreaux stopped all the twitching and waving as completely as if he had thrown a switch. His eyes narrowed briefly, and then he put his palms flat on his desk and wet his lips again. When he spoke I could barely hear him. 'You're reporting a homicide?'
'It's not the first, Jo-el. It's been going on, and it will keep going on until it's stopped.'
'Rossier was there?'
'Prima met LeRoy Bennett at Rossier's bar, the Bayou Lounge. Bennett and LaBorde were at the pumping station, but Rossier's the guy who's in business with Prima.'
His fingers kneaded the way a cat will knead its paws, only without satisfaction. 'Can you prove that?'
'They buried the old man and a little girl. Let's go see them.'
He came around the desk and put on his hat. 'God help you if you're lyin'.'
Tommy Willets was gone when we walked out through the substation and climbed into Jo-el's car.
The sheriff drove. I spoke only to give directions, and a little less than twenty minutes later we turned across the cattle bridge and moved into the marsh and the cane fields. The rain had left the road pocked with puddles, but the ruts from the big trucks were still cut and clear. Everything looked different during the day, brighter and somehow magnified. Egrets with blindingly white feathers took dainty steps near thickets of cattails, and BB-eyed black birds perched atop swaying cane tips.
We parked alongside the pumping station. The sun was cooking off the rain, and, when we left the car, it was like stepping into a cloud of live steam. We moved north along the edge of the waterway for maybe eighty yards until we came to the little grave. The rain had washed away some of the soil, and part of the old man's arm was visible. There was a musty smell like sour milk mixed with fish food, but maybe that was just the swamp.
Jo-el Boudreaux said, 'Oh, my Lord.'
Boudreaux bent down, but did not touch the earth or what was obscured by it. He stood and turned and looked out across the waterway, shaking his head. 'Jesus, ain't this a mess.'
