Blood and Thunder

“The newspapers have called Carl ‘brooding,’ and a ‘loner,’” she said. She laughed-softly, bitterly. “I never heard anything so ridiculous. He was the most well-rounded, brilliant man…. He finished high school at fifteen, you know.”

“That is remarkable.”

“Graduated college by nineteen, a doctor of medicine by twenty-one…”

“Mrs. Weiss, sometimes brilliant students, prodigies, are loners. If you’ve skipped grades, and are thrown in with the older kids, it can-”

“That wasn’t the case with Carl. He loved to read, but he was no egghead. Yes, he was quiet, even shy…but he had a keen sense of humor, and he loved music…” She glanced at a spinet piano by the wall. “…But he was also a wonderful carpenter, and an amateur inventor…went to plays and prize fights, alike….”

A Renaissance man who died a political assassin.

I searched for the words. “There was nothing…morbid in his outlook?”

The dark eyes flared. “What you mean is, were there any signs of suicidal tendencies…no there were not. Carl loved his work-he loved working with his father, the two of them were the best ear, nose and throat men in the state. And he was the most doting father…took dozens of snapshots of little Carl Jr., gave the baby his two a.m. feeding, wheeled his carriage, I hardly changed a diaper.”

I narrowed my eyes and asked the question she wanted me to ask: “Does a man so devoted to his three- month-old son walk into a suicidal situation?”

“Of course not! Surely, already you can see how ridiculous…”

When she trailed off, I jumped in. “But the gun they found-it was your husband’s weapon.”

“Yes.” She tilted her head; her posture, it seemed to me, had become suddenly defensive. “A lot of doctors carry a firearm, in their bags. There are drug addicts lurking on every corner.”

Of Baton Rouge?

“Well, certainly,” I said, smiling affably, “and it’s not like guns were one of your husband’s many interests.”

I was just trying to fill the space with something innocuous, but I’d struck a nerve. She blinked and suddenly she nervously fingered the antimacassar on the arm of the sofa.

“Actually,” she said, “guns were an interest of Carl’s. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing unusual.”

“Of course not. Was he a hunter?”

“Not really. It wasn’t in his character to kill anything; he was a doctor, after all. But he and another physician friend liked target shooting. They had rifles, shotguns, pistols. They’d bring clay pigeons with them. Sometimes they’d just shoot at the water. Just…boys will be boys, you know.”

I wasn’t quite sure she bought that, herself.

“Where did they do this target shooting?” I asked.

She frowned. “What does this have to do with proving Carl’s innocence?”

“Mrs. Weiss…my job is to ascertain what really happened that awful night at the capitol. I will tell you, frankly, that I am inclined toward your husband’s innocence.”

The lovely eyes widened. “You are?”

“I told you that on the phone. And it wasn’t a lie, or a ruse, just to get some time with you.”

“What makes you believe in Carl’s innocence?”

I told her about Huey’s bleeding mouth and his question about who hit him.

She shook a righteous fist. “I heard that! I knew they’d suppressed that evidence! That rumor was flying around Our Lady of the Lake.”

Now I was frowning. “Did your husband have friends on the staff?”

“At the hospital? Of course. He did many operations there. There are only two hospitals in Baton Rouge, Mr. Heller.”

I sipped my sweet, sweet tea. Smiled. “Now,” I said, “where did Carl go target shooting?”

“At Carl’s father’s cabin. On the Amite River, over in Livingston Parish. It’s a popular recreation spot.”

A harmless enough response, considering how hard she’d ducked the question.

I asked, “You didn’t happen to go there, that Sunday afternoon, did you?”

She tugged at the collar of the navy-print frock. “Yes, we did. We frequently spent quiet Sunday afternoons at the cabin.”

Quiet afternoons, shooting.

“Did your husband do any target shooting that particular Sunday afternoon?”

“No! Certainly not!”

Bingo.

Well, this seemed to be the first time she’d lied to me, and it was an understandable falsehood at that: even if he’d spent every Sunday for the previous three years target shooting, doing so on that Sunday would seem to attain a terrible significance.

So I moved on, and said, “There were no signs, on that Sunday, that anything was disturbing him? The morning papers surely must’ve covered the bills Huey was pushing through. Didn’t your father being gerrymandered out of his judgeship kind of spoil your Sunday?”

She sighed. “First of all, you have to understand that Carl wasn’t very political at all. He wasn’t involved in local politics, and it wasn’t a subject he discussed much, even though his father did, all the time.”

“His father had an interest in politics?”

“Particularly Huey Long. He despised him.”

“What about Carl?”

Her shrug only seemed casual. “He was certainly no admirer of the man. Like a lot of people around here, he felt things were being…badly managed. There was some bitterness in our family, toward that administration…my sister Marie lost her third-grade teaching job, and my uncle Paul lost his job as principal of Opelousas High.”

“Why did they lose their jobs?”

“Because they were Pavys. My papa was one of the few anti-Long judges still on the bench, you know.”

I sat forward. “Which brings us back to the gerrymander…. Your family had just heard about it, that Sunday morning, isn’t that right?”

Reluctantly, she nodded. “But it was no surprise to us. In fact, my mother was delighted by the prospect.”

“Delighted?”

“Papa didn’t make as much money as a judge as he could in private practice. Mama was elated he’d be stepping down. Papa himself didn’t feel there was any great injustice being done to him, personally. It was just politics. Dirty politics, but politics.”

“So the gerrymander, as a motive for Carl…?”

“Ridiculous. We all knew Papa was ready to step down off the bench, anyway.”

I hadn’t taken many notes, yet. But I needed Carl Weiss’s timetable. “Tell me about that day. That Sunday.”

“All right.” She shrugged. “It was a typical Sunday. We went to Mass, and we came home and changed our clothes, and went to Carl’s parents’ house-we always had Sunday dinner at one o’clock with them-fried chicken, rice, gravy, salad, all the trimmings. Carl’s parents have a wonderful colored cook.”

“And this is when you discussed the gerrymander bill?”

“I…I suppose. I remember someone said it was a kind of backhanded compliment to the judge, from Huey.”

“How so?”

Her smile was small and smug. “Papa must’ve been a pretty good judge, if they couldn’t vote him out of office.”

“Did Carl seem at all…preoccupied?”

“No. He was skinny, you know, and we teased him about it, and I remember he ate really well, and went out of his way to compliment Martha…that’s the cook…about the meal. Tom Ed excused himself…”