wet sand and dead vegetation and ponded water in the marsh, and the distant hint of rain and electricity in the clouds. It was a grand place to be. Did the seven arpents of land that Bernadette had inherited from her father have anything to do with her death? Her grandmother had said Bernadette wanted to save the bears. The people I spoke to on the south end of the parish said they knew nothing of any attempt to save bears, nor were they sure where Bernadette’s seven arpents might have been located, although they said that many years ago some of the Latiolais family had farmed some rice acreage that had been turned into commercial crawfish ponds. But the ponds had been abandoned because of the importation of Chinese crawfish, and the land was now little more than a soggy swamp.
Plus, Louisiana’s land areas had been drilled and redrilled and offered little in the way of further exploration. The money was in offshore drilling, and to my knowledge, no new refineries were being built in Louisiana. What possible value could Bernadette’s seven arpents have possessed?
At lunchtime I gave up my odyssey and went back to a crossroads service station where I had stopped earlier. I sat on a chair outside facing the Gulf and ate two microwaved lengths of white boudin and a pile of dirty rice and potato salad off a paper plate. Then I went back inside and bought a fried pie and a cup of Community coffee and ate the pie and drank the coffee while I looked out the window at a shrimp boat moving down a canal through the sawgrass, seagulls whirling and dipping over its wake.
“Find out any more about that property you were looking for, Mr. Robicheaux?” the clerk said. He was in his mid-twenties and wore a crew cut and striped strap overalls and a brown T-shirt.
“Not much,” I said. “I’ll probably go to the courthouse and check the records tomorrow.”
“After you left, another man came in and asked me about that property. No, not exactly about the property, but about the girl, the one who was killed?”
“Bernadette Latiolais.”
“Yeah, a man came in and said didn’t that girl come from a family that had a rice or crawfish farm here’bouts.”
“What did this fellow look like?” I asked.
“‘Strange’ is the word I’d use.”
“Strange in what way?”
“His eyes, they didn’t have any pupils.”
“What color were they?”
“Blue. And he had black hair combed up on his head.”
“What else do you remember about him?”
“He had a country accent, but not one from around here. He was grinning all the time, like there was some kind of joke going on between us. Except I couldn’t figure out what the joke was. He had a binocular case hanging from his arm.”
“What kind of car was he driving?”
“I didn’t pay it much mind, sir.”
“What did you tell this fellow?”
“Same thing I told you. I was in the army for the last six years and haven’t kept up much with the news at home. You know this guy?”
“Yes, I do.” I wrote my cell phone number on the back of my business card and gave it to the clerk. “If you see him again, call me. Don’t try to detain him and don’t provoke him.”
“He’s dangerous?”
“Maybe, maybe not. His name is Vidor Perkins. Personally, I wouldn’t touch him with a soiled Q-tip. But that’s just one man’s opinion.”
“A soiled Q-tip?” the ex-soldier said. He shook his head and stuck my card under the corner of his register.
I washed my hands in a sink outside the men’s room and dried them on a paper towel. Through the window I saw a semi go through the intersection, hauling huge machinery of some kind that was snugged down on the flatbed with boomer chains. A low-slung white car, one with charcoal-tinted windows, was following close behind it. The hood was painted with primer so that it resembled a blackened tooth inset in the car body. The driver was obviously irritated by the slow momentum of the semi and kept gunning his engine, swinging out to pass, then ducking back behind the semi’s rear bumper, so close he couldn’t adequately see the road. His engine was loud and sounded too powerful for the vehicle. When he gained a clear spot on the road, he floored the accelerator, his vehicle sinking low and flat on the springs, blowing dust and newspaper in his wake, ripping a strip of gravel out of the road shoulder.
There was a Florida plate on the vehicle, the numbers obscured with dirt. There was also orange rust around the bottoms of the doors and fenders, the kinds of patterns you see in automobiles that have been exposed over a long period of time to a saltwater environment. Any Florida-licensed automobile, particularly one built for high speed, is suspect along the I-10 corridor that runs from Jacksonville all the way to Los Angeles. But for those who transport narcotics, and for the cops who try to put them out of business, the area of concern begins at I-95 in Miami. I-95 feeds into I-10 just north of Lake City, Florida, and a westward journey from that point on allows the transporter to make drop-offs in Tallahassee, Mobile, Biloxi, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Beaumont, and Houston. Like the modern equivalent of Typhoid Mary, one transporter can string systemic misery and death across 20 percent of the country.
Except the transporters have a problem they didn’t anticipate. I-10 is heavily patrolled by narcs in the state of Louisiana, particularly in Iberville Parish. As a consequence, transporters often swing off the interstate and use Old Highway 90 or any number of parish roads that are not patrolled.
“Did you ever see that white car that just went south through the intersection?” I asked the clerk.
“It’s funny you mention it. He drove by here a couple of times. Once right after the guy with the binoculars was in here.”
“Did you get a look at the driver?”
“No, sir, I didn’t. I only noticed him because of how loud his engine was.”
“If he comes back and you get a look at his tag number, give me a call, will you?”
“Yes, sir, I can do that. What’s the problem with this guy?”
“Probably nothing,” I said.
I drove north on the road, retracing my route, my radio on, my windows down. The air was balmy, the cow pastures on either side of the road emerald-green and dotted with buttercups and pooled with shadows. But I couldn’t shake a feeling that had occurred periodically in my life for decades, often without cause. It was like the tension in a banjo or guitar string that is wrapped too tightly on the peg. Or a tremolo that can travel through the fuselage of an airplane just before you glance out the window and see engine oil blow back across the wing. Or perhaps the cold vapor that wraps around your heart on a night trail, one sown with Bouncing Betties and Chinese toe poppers, or the peculiar distortion in your vision when you climb down into a spider hole and realize you have just touched a thin strand of trip wire attached to a booby-trapped 105 dud.
Years ago I could rid myself of my apprehensions with VA dope and Beam straight up and a Jax back. But I didn’t have my old parachute anymore. So I said the Serenity Prayer that is recited in unison at the beginning of every A.A. meeting in the world. If that didn’t work, I would use the short form of the same prayer, which is “Fuck it” and is not meant as an irreverent statement.
I pulled to the side of the road and took a deep breath. The wind was cool, and gulls were cawing overhead. Not far away, a black family was cane-fishing in a canal, swinging their bobbers onto the edge of the cattails. It was Sunday, I told myself. A day of rest. A respite from anxiety and fear and ambition and greed and all the other forces that seem to drive our lives. A truck pulling an empty cane wagon rattled past me, then a delivery van with a cargo door. A red airplane that looked like a crop sprayer came in low over a field and, just before it reached a power line, gained altitude again and disappeared beyond a windbreak that had been created by a hedgerow of gum trees.
Now the road was totally empty, both behind and ahead of me. I realized that although my radio was still on, I was unaware of what was being broadcast. It was a baseball game. I clicked off the switch and put my truck in gear. I had accomplished virtually nothing on my trip to Jefferson Parish. Maybe I should at least drop by the home of Bernadette Latiolais’s grandmother, I thought. If nothing else, I could offer to drive her somewhere or do a chore for her that she could not do for herself. Something good could come out of my trip.
