his scalp in the rain.
Clete picked up the.45 and went through the back door like a wrecking ball.
I DON’T THINK I learned a great deal from life. Certainly I never figured out any of the great mysteries: why the innocent suffer, why wars and pestilence seem to be our lot, why evil men prosper and go unpunished while the poor and downtrodden are oppressed. The lessons I’ve taken with me are rather simple and possibly aren’t worthy of mention. But these are the two I remember most. When I was a young lieutenant in the United States Army and about to experience my first combat, I was very afraid and had no one to whom I could confess my fear. I was sure my ineptitude would cause not only my own death but also the deaths of the men and boys for whom supposedly I was an example. Then a line sergeant told me something I never forgot: “Don’t think about it before it starts, and don’t think about it when it’s over. If you have nightmares, there’s always an all-night bar open someplace, if you don’t mind the tab.”
The larger lesson I took from the sergeant’s statement was the implication about the arbitrary and accidental nature of both birth and death. Just as we have no control over our conception and our delivery from the birth canal, the hour of our death is not of our choosing, and neither are the circumstances surrounding it. An admission of powerlessness is not a choice. That’s just the way things are.
I can’t say these lessons ever brought me peace of mind. But they did allow me to feel that in the time I was on earth, I at least saw part of the truth that governs our lives.
When Clete came through the kitchen door, he had no idea what to expect. Kermit Abelard and Robert Weingart and Carolyn Blanchet were all standing under the kitchen light. Maybe it was the presence of a woman that caused Clete to hesitate, or the fact that Kermit did not have a weapon in his hand. Or perhaps his eyes did not adjust quickly enough to the change from darkness to light. But by the time he had swung the silenced Smith & Wesson toward Weingart, Weingart had raised his.25 semiauto and pointed it directly at Clete’s chest. Then, coward that he was, his face was averted when he pulled the trigger, lest Clete get off a shot before he went down.
The report of the.25 was like the pop of a firecracker. The bullet punched a small hole in the strap of Clete’s shoulder holster, inches above his heart. He crashed against the breakfast table, dropping the silenced semiautomatic to the floor, the.45 falling loose from his pants. I could see him fighting not to go down, struggling to get his.38 loose from its holster.
Carolyn Blanchet was screaming hysterically. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Molly cut through the tape on her ankles and tear the tape off her mouth and come toward me. I extended my wrists behind me, then felt the weight of the scissors wedge between my hands, the blades slicing into the tape. In the kitchen, Kermit was shouting at Weingart, “Shoot him! Shoot him! Shoot him!”
Clete straightened up, grasping the back of a chair with one hand, lifting his.38 in front of him. Weingart shot him again, this time high up on the right arm. Clete went down in the chair, doubling over. For a second, there was no sound in the house except the wind blowing a shower of pine needles across the roof. I took the scissors from Molly’s hand and freed my ankles. “Get Alf loose and go out the front,” I said.
“You have to come with us,” she said.
“Clete’s going to die,” I said.
“We’ll get help,” she said, her voice starting to break.
“I’ll never leave Clete,” I said. “My shotgun is in the closet. You guys go on. Please.”
“He’s right, Molly. Come on,” Alafair said, getting to her feet, the tape still hanging from her wrists and ankles.
I ran into the bedroom and pulled my cut-down twelve-gauge from the back of the closet. My hands were shaking as I got down the box of shells from the shelf and thumbed five rounds in the magazine. Then I dipped another handful of shells out of the box, stuffed them in my pocket, and went into the kitchen.
Clete still sat in the chair, his face white with the first stages of shock. The phone on the counter had been torn from the jack, the receiver broken in half. Carolyn Blanchet was huddled in a corner, trembling all over, her makeup running, her mouth contorted. Weingart and Kermit were gone, and so were my.45 and the silenced semiauto.
“Where are they?” I said.
“Bagged ass down the slope, I think. They were talking about a boat,” Clete said. “Maybe down toward The Shadows.”
His breathing was ragged, the color leaching out of his hands and arms. A single rivulet of blood was running from the hole above his heart. He looked into my face. “I know what you’re thinking, big mon,” he said. “Go after them. Don’t stay here. If they come back through the house, it’ll be to clip us both. Remember what I said. It’s a black flag. Don’t let these guys skate again.”
I turned to Carolyn Blanchet. “You get off your ass and take care of him,” I said. “You do whatever he says. If I come back and he’s not all right, you’ll leave here in a body bag.”
I went out the back door into the yard. I could see Tripod on the tree limb above his hutch, shaking with fear, his chain dripping from his neck. The rain had slackened, but the fog was thicker and whiter, the trees and camellia bushes glistening with it. Out on the bayou, I could hear a powerboat coming upstream from The Shadows. I suspected it was the one that Kermit and Weingart had planned to use for their escape. But the boat did not stop or pull into the bank. Instead, the driver gave it the gas, and a moment later it shot past the back of my property, whining into the distance.
Kermit and Weingart were on their own.
“Give it up,” I said.
The only sound in the yard was the ticking of the rain on the canopy. Weingart had manipulated the system all his life. Why should he either fear or heed it now? The same with Kermit Abelard. He had been born into wealth and privilege and had managed to convince others and probably himself as well that he was an egalitarian rebel. In reality, he had created an inextricable bond with another dysfunctional man, each finding in the other what he lacked, the two of them probably creating a third personality that was subhuman and genuinely monstrous.
I didn’t care to dwell on the psychological complexities of evil men. Whether their kind possesses the wingspread of a Lucifer or a moth is a question better left to theologians. Clete needed me. If I could be certain I had established a safe perimeter, I could return to Clete and let my colleagues take care of Kermit Abelard and Robert Weingart. But that was not the way things would work out.
The fog was like steam on my skin. My eyes were stinging and I couldn’t trust my vision. Across the bayou, I thought I saw lights burning in City Park. But I realized the luminosity inside the fog came from another source. The vessel was a double-decker, its passenger windows lamplit, its beam big enough to withstand ten-foot seas. I could hear the engines throbbing through the decks and the sound of water cascading off a paddle wheel on the stern.
“Look what you have wrought, Mr. Robicheaux,” Kermit’s voice said from the darkness. “You’re a controller. You poisoned my relationship with your daughter. You tormented my grandfather. Hubris is your bane. You’re like most alcoholics. You’ve superimposed all your character defects onto others and brought down your house.”
“If I harmed you in any way, Kermit, I regret not doing a whole lot more of it,” I said.
“If you’re so brave, Mr. Robicheaux, walk out here and face me man-to-man.”
In the darkness I could see little more than the shapes of the trees and the camellia bushes and the air vines and Spanish moss that dripped with rain. I doubted that Kermit Abelard wanted to duel under the oaks. He was a creature of guile, and I suspected he was trying to distract me until Robert Weingart could position himself and get a clear shot at me.
I knelt on one knee in the leaves and pine needles, the cut-down twelve-gauge tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. I heard footsteps to my right. As a parasite and a narcissist, Weingart had made a career out of earning the trust of others, making them dependent upon him, flattering them when need be, then quickly deflating them and injecting feelings of failure and guilt in them, and finally sucking the lifeblood from their veins. As with all his ilk, he didn’t do well on a level playing field. When I heard a rotted branch break under his foot, he was still forty feet from me, not close enough for an unskilled shooter to take out a target in the dark.
The wind gusted down the slope when I saw him. He was standing between a camellia bush and the bamboo border between my property and the neighbor’s. The bamboo swayed and rattled in the wind; the leaves and flowers on the camellia bush filled with air and motion. Weingart remained frozen, the only unmoving object in his
