I said, 'It isn't just you and your wife anymore, Boudreaux. Rossier isn't just selling meth to crackers. He's in business with animals, and people are getting hurt. You can't ignore that.'
He wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief. 'Oh, holy Jesus. I didn't know about any of this. I never knew what he was doing. That was the deal, see? I just stayed away. That's all there was to it. I just let him go about his business. I never knew what he was doing out here.'
'This thing is going to end, now, Jo-el. You're going to shut Rossier down.'
He looked confused. 'What do you mean?'
'I mean that I can't walk away and let it go on. If you don't stop it, I'll give you up.'
He blinked hard and looked from me to Joe Pike, then back to me. His face was bright pink in the sun, and slicked with sweat. 'You think I'd let someone get away with this? You think I'd just turn away?'
I pointed at the grave. 'That old man and that little girl are dead because you turned away.'
The pink face went red, and in that moment he wasn't the scared blacksmith; he was the leather-tough farmer he'd had to be when he was fronting down Saturday-night drunks waving broken Budweiser bottles. He said, 'I've got a wife to protect. I had to look out for her goddamned daddy.'
Pike moved to the side, and I stepped into Jo-el Boudreaux's face and said very softly, 'It was almost forty years ago. Edith was a child, forty years ago. You went along because you didn't want anyone to know she'd been with a black man. It's the race thing, isn't it?'
Jo-el Boudreaux threw a fist the size of a canned ham at me with everything he had. It floated down through the thick air and I slapped it past, stepping to the outside. He threw the other hand, this time crossing his body and making a big grunt with the effort. I slapped it past the same way and stepped under. He was big and heavy and out of shape. Two punches and he was breathing hard. Pike shook his head and looked away. Boudreaux lunged forward, trying to wrap me up with the big arms, and I stepped to the side and swept his feet out from under him. He rolled sideways in the air, flaying at nothing, and hit the muddy ground. He stayed there, crying, hurting for himself but maybe hurting for the old man and the little girl, too. I thought Jodi Taylor was right. I thought that he was a good man, just stupid and scared, the way good men sometimes are. Somewhere nearby a fish jumped, and tiny gnats swarmed around us in great rolling clouds. Boudreaux got control of himself and climbed to his feet. He said, 'I'm sorry about that.'
I nodded. 'Forget it.'
He looked down at his pants. 'Jesus, I look like I wet myself.'
Pike handed Boudreaux a handkerchief.
Boudreaux wiped at his hands and his face, then blew his nose. 'I ain't cried like that since I was a kid. I'm ashamed of myself.'
I said, 'You ready to talk about this?'
He offered the handkerchief back to Pike but Pike shook his head. Boudreaux shrugged. 'Jesus, I don't know what to do. If I knew what to do, I wouldn't be in this fix.' He blew his nose into the handkerchief again, then put it into his pocket. 'I gotta talk with Edie.'
'Your choices are limited, Jo-el. The one choice you do not have is inaction. Inaction has led to this, and I will not allow this to continue.'
He nodded and looked at the water. It was muddy and still and probably didn't offer much in the way of advice to him. He said, 'Man, isn't this a mess. Isn't this a goddamned mess.' He looked at the shallow grave and what was in it. 'Shit.'
Pike said, 'There's a way to survive this.'
When he said it something cold washed down my spine. I said, 'Joe.'
Jo-el Boudreaux squinted at Pike, his eyes curious and hopeful. 'What?'
Pike said, 'Prima's at war with another coyote named Frank Escobar. Escobar's been trying to take out Prima because Prima's cutting into his trade. If he knew that Rossier was in business with Prima, and he knew how to get to them, he might take them out.'
Jo-el Boudreaux's left eye began ticking. He stared at Pike, and then he looked at me. 'That's murder.'
I said, 'I don't know if this is helping, Joe.'
Pike said, 'We could make it happen. Rossier's gone. Prima's gone. You bust Escobar.' He cocked his head, and the hot Louisiana sun gleamed off his glasses. 'No one ever has to know what Rossier knows.' He cocked his head the other way. 'You see?' The world according to Pike.
Jo-el Boudreaux wet his lips and looked shaken. 'Jesus Christ, I don't know.'
I said, 'There are a couple of ways to go with this, but what you can't do is nothing. Doing nothing is why those people died.' I pointed at the little grave. 'If Jodi Taylor's back, I'll have to see her. I have to see Lucy Chenier. You have until tomorrow, Jo-el. Talk about all of this with Edith and decide. We'll call you tomorrow.'
He was nodding again. 'Okay. Yeah. Sure. Tomorrow.' He wet his lips again, then looked again at the little grave and shook his head. He said, 'Those poor folks. Those poor folks.' He started back toward the highway car.
'Where are you going?'
He answered without looking back at me. 'Gotta get the coroner's people out here and recover these bodies. Can't just let these folks stay like that.'
He vanished behind the emerald green cane and the sawgrass.
Pike said, 'What do you think he'll do?'
I shook my head. 'I don't know, but I hope he does something.'
We waited beside the little grave, the two of us staring down at the old man's arm, reaching up out of the earth, reaching as if he was trying to find his way back from darkness.
CHAPTER 30
T wo Evangeline Parish sheriff's cars and a gray van from the parish coroner's office came out to disinter the bodies. A powder blue Buick sedan arrived a few minutes later, driven by a man named Deets Boedicker. Boedicker owned a Dodge-Chrysler dealership and had been elected coroner, a job that mostly consisted of overseeing the technicians from Able Brothers Mortuary to make sure they didn't screw up any evidence until the police had finished with the scene. Able Brothers had a contract with the parish. When the police had finished with their photographs and measurements, Boedicker asked how the bodies were discovered, and Sheriff Boudreaux said that a couple of kids fishing for channel cats in a
Sheriff Boudreaux told a young black deputy named Berry to finish up with the mortuary people, and then he drove us back to the Eunice substation. None of the cops or coroner's people had asked who we were or why we were on the scene. I guess they had grown used to not asking questions, and the thought of that bothered me, but perhaps it should have bothered me more.
We reached the hotel in Baton Rouge at eight minutes after seven and went to our rooms to shower and change. I asked the front desk people if Jodi Taylor had checked in, and they said she had, but when I called her room she wasn't there. I called Lucy at home, and asked if Jodi was with her.
'Yes, she is. She flew in yesterday.'
'Good. I found out what's going on. I spoke with Boudreaux, and I should tell Jodi about it. Things are going to happen, and they'll probably happen quickly, and she might be affected.'
'We've already eaten, but you and Joe could come over for dessert and we can discuss it.'
I told her that that would be fine, and then I showered and changed and rapped on Joe Pike's door. He didn't answer, so I let myself in, thinking he might be in the shower. He wasn't. There was a haze of fog on the bathroom mirror, but all water had been wiped from the tub and the damp towels had been folded and rehung on their racks. The room was immaculate, the bedspread military tight, the magazines squared on the table by the window, the chairs undimpled by the weight of a reclining body. The only sign that he was here or ever had been was the olive green duffel on the closet floor. It was zipped shut and locked with a tempered steel Master Lock.
