be hoeing sweet potatoes on Angola Farin the rest of his life.
But something that had bothered me at noon while I had watched Alafair playing in the park was troubling me again, this time because of an idle glance across the bayou at a young man fishing under a cypress tree. I was watching him because he reminded me of so many working-class Cajun boys I had grown up with. He stood while he fished, bare chested, lean, olive-skinned, his body knotted with muscle, his Marine Corps utilities low on his stomach, smoking a cigarette in the center of his mouth without taking it out.
His bobber went under, and he jerked his pole up and pulled a catfish through the lily pads. Then I noticed that his left hand was gone at the wrist and he had to unhook the catfish and string it with one hand. But he was quite good at it. He laid the fish across a rock, pressed the sole of his boot down on its stomach, slipped the hook loose from the corner of its mouth, and worked a shaved willow fork through the gills until the hard white point emerged bloody and coated with membrane from the mouth. Then with his good hand he flopped the fish into the shallows and sank the willow fork deep into the mud.
The sheriff was sitting sideways in his swivel chair, reading a diet book, punching at his stomach with three fingers, when I walked into his office. He looked up at me, then put the book in his drawer and began fiddling with some papers on his blotter. Like many Cajun men, his chin was round and dimpled and his cheeks ruddy and flecked with small veins.
'I was thinking about going on a diet myself,' I said.
'Somebody left that in here. I don't know who it belongs to.'
'Oh.'
'What's up?'
I told him I was going out to Drew Sonnier's again and my suspicions about what had happened at the gazebo.
'All right, Dave, but make sure you get her permission to look around on the property. If she won't give it to you, let's get a warrant. We don't want any tainted evidence.'
He saw me raise my eyebrows.
'What?' he said.
'You're talking about evidence we might use against her?'
'It's not up to us. If she's filed false charges against Joey Gouza, the prosecutor might want to stick it to her. You still want to go out there?'
'Yes.'
'Then do it. By the way, she was discharged from the hospital this morning, so she's back home now.'
'Okeydoke.'
'Dave, a little advice. Try to put the lid on your personal feelings about the Sonniers. They're grown-up people now.'
'All right, sheriff.'
'There're a couple of other things I need to tell you. While you were out the jailer called. It seems one trusty decided to snitch on another one. The night Joey Gouza went apeshit and vomited all over his cell, the trusty preparing the food got swacked on paregoric and accidentally knocked a box of ant poison off the shelf onto a table. It probably got in Gouza's food. Except the trusty didn't tell anybody about it. Instead he wiped off the table and served the trays like nothing had happened.'
'Gouza's convinced there's a hit on him.'
'That might be, but this time it looks like it was an accident.'
'Where's the trusty now?'
'They're moving him over to the parish jail. I'd hate to be that guy when Gouza finds out who fired up his ulcers.'
'There's no chance an AB guy was involved?'
'The guy who spilled the ant poison is a migrant farm worker in for DWI…. You almost look disappointed.'
'No, I just thought maybe the guys in the black hats were starting to cannibalize each other. Anyway, was there something else?'
'Yeah, I'm afraid there is.' He kept putting one hand on top of the other, which was always his habit when he didn't want to say something offensive to someone. Then he pressed his glasses more tightly against his eyes. 'I got three phone calls, two from state legislators and one from Bobby Earl's attorney. They say you're harassing Earl.'
'I don't read it that way.'
'They say you gave him a pretty bad time in a Baton Rouge restaurant.'
'I had five minutes' conversation with him. I didn't see anything that unusual in it, considering the fact that I think he's involved with a murder.'
'This is another thing that bothers me, Dave. We don't have any evidence that Earl is connected with Garrett's death. But you seem determined to tie Earl to it.'
'Should I leave him alone?' I looked him straight in the face.
'I didn't say that. I'm just asking you to look at your motivations.'
'I want-' He saw the heat in my face.
'What?' he asked.
'I want to turn the key on the people who killed Garrett. It's that simple, sheriff.'
'Sometimes we have an agenda we don't tell ourselves about. It's just human.'
'Maybe it's time somebody 'fronts a guy like Earl. Maybe he's gotten a free pass too long.'
'You're going to have to ease up, Dave, or it'll be out of my hands.'
'He's got that kind of juice?'
'No, he doesn't. But if you try to shave the dice, you'll give it to him. You got into it at his house, then you created a situation with him in a public place. I don't want a suit filed against this department, I don't want a couple of peckerwood politicians telling me I've got a rogue cop on my hands. It's time to take your foot off the accelerator, Dave.'
My palms were ringing with anger.
'You think I'm being too hard on you?' he asked.
'You have to do what you think is right.'
'You're probably the best cop we ever had in this department. Don't walk out of here thinking my opinion is otherwise, Dave. But you've got a way of kicking it up into overdrive.'
'Then the bottom line is we're cutting Bobby Earl some slack.'
'You once told me the best pitch in baseball is a change of pace. Why not ease up on the batter and see what happens?'
'Ease up on the wrong guy and he'll drill a hole in your sternum with it.'
He turned his hands up on the blotter.
'I tried,' he said, and smiled.
When I left the room, the back of my neck felt as though someone had held a lighted match to it.
Drew answered her door in a print sundress covered with yellow flowers. Her tan shoulders were spotted with freckles the size of pennies. Even though her left hand was swathed in bandages as thick as a boxing glove, she had put on eye shadow, lipstick, and dangling earrings set with scarlet stones, and she looked absolutely stunning as she stood with one plump hip pressed against the door jam.
I had called fifteen minutes earlier.
'I don't want to keep you if you're on your way out, Drew,' I said.
'No, it's fine. Let's sit on the porch. I fixed some tea with mint leaves in it.'
'I just need to look around back.'
'What for?'
'I might have missed something when I was out before.'
'I thought you might like some tea.'
'Thanks just the same.'
'I appreciated the flowers.'
'What flowers?'
