THAT NIGHT I sat in the kitchen and tried to figure out combinations of letters that would give meaning to the illegible remnant of Bertrand Melancon’s statement of amends to the Baylor family. In reality, I didn’t care if anyone ever found the blood diamonds or not. My only interest in them at this point was to find out who had hired Ronald Bledsoe. I still believed he may have worked for Sidney. But if Sidney wasn’t lying, that left only Bo Diddley Wiggins.
“What are you doing?” Alafair asked, looking over my shoulder.
“Probably wasting time,” I replied.
“Is this part of the note you said was in the Baylors’ yard?”
“That’s right.”
She picked up the yellow legal pad on which I had printed the disconnected letters. “Let me try a few combinations on the computer.”
“How’s that going to help?”
“If the words had been typed rather than hand-printed, it would be fairly easy. The problem with a hand-printed version is the absence of uniform spacing. So you have to be imaginative in order to compensate.”
“Really?” I said.
“Lose the sardonic attitude,” she said.
I walked down the slope of the yard to the bayou. The air was damp, the evening sky lit by the fire stacks at the sugar mill. I was more tired than I had ever been. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could almost feel a great weight oppressing the land, a darkness stealing across its surface, a theft of light that seemed to have no origin. Was this just more of the world destruction fantasy that had invaded my childhood dreams and followed me to Vietnam and into bars all over the Orient? Or was William Blake’s tiger much larger than we ever guessed, its time finally come round?
I called Clete on his cell phone. “Where are you?” I said.
“At the motor court.”
“Any sign of Bledsoe?”
“No.”
“Look, I don’t want to leave the house. Come on over.”
“What for?”
“Nothing. That’s it. Nothing is up. And I’m powerless to do anything about any of it.”
“Any of what?”
“I don’t know. That’s it, I don’t know. Sunday, I blew a plug out of a guy’s chest the size of a quarter. I enjoyed it. I had a fantasy about the guy going to Hell.”
“So what?”
“We’ve got blood splatter all over us, Clete.”
“The only time that’s a problem is when it’s ours and not theirs.”
“Wrong,” I said.
“Dangle loose. I’m going to motor on over.”
I had advised Sidney Kovick to develop some clarity in his life. What a joke.
WEDNESDAY MORNING I experienced one of those instances when middle-class people walk into a law enforcement agency and in the next few minutes trustingly consign their lives to a bureaucratic system that operates with all the compassion of dice clattering out of a leather cup.
I happened to glance out the window just as Melanie and Otis and Thelma Baylor entered the building. I believed I knew the nature of their visit and I didn’t want to be part of it. Contrary to popular belief, the lion’s share of police work is administrative or clerical in nature. Occasionally we get to slam the door on people whose convictions represent only a small fraction of their crimes and you take a pleasure in separating them from the rest of us. But sometimes you are forced to sit down with offenders who are little different from yourself. They cannot believe the damage they have done to their lives. Even worse, they cannot deal with the institutional consequences that await them. I had come to believe the Baylors fell into this category and I did not want to aid them in their own dismemberment.
Sure enough, Wally buzzed me on my extension and told me the Baylors wanted to see me.
“Keep them down there,” I said.
“I t’ought you liked Mr. Baylor. I already sent them up.”
“It’s okay, Wally. Don’t worry about it,” I said.
I met them at the door and stopped Otis before he could speak. “I think you need to talk to either the district attorney or Sheriff Soileau.”
“No, we need to talk to you, Mr. Robicheaux. We’ve deceived you and we need to set things right,” Otis said.
Of course, they had no attorney with them.
“I want you to understand this. The Iberia Sheriff’s Department has no direct relationship to the prosecution of your case, Mr. Baylor. We’re liaison people on lend-lease to other agencies. It’s only because of Katrina that we were drawn into your case. Your issue is with the FBI and the Orleans Parish DA’s office. Sir, use your head.”
“Shut up, Mr. Robicheaux,” Melanie Baylor said.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re going to tell us to get a lawyer. We have a lawyer. I let you hound my husband and I have to account for that. I shot the two black men. My husband had nothing to do with it and neither did my stepdaughter.”
There were circles under her eyes, and the smell of whiskey and cigarettes was deep in her lungs. I suspected that in her naïveté she believed her sudden admission of guilt would disarm and vanquish all those who had persecuted her and her family, that somehow culpability and accusation would be replaced by the healing balm of martyrdom.
“Would you like to sit down?” I said to her.
“What for?” she replied.
I took a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen from a shelf and dropped them on my desk. “So you can write out an account of what happened the night the two men were shot in front of your house,” I said.
“I don’t see why that’s necessary. I just told you what happened,” she said.
“You’re under arrest, Mrs. Baylor. You can have a lawyer here if you wish. You do not have to talk to me, you do not have to write on that legal pad. Whatever you say here from this moment on can be used against you. You are now formally in custody and in all probability you will not return home today. But you came to my office of your own volition. I think that fact will have a strong influence on the disposition of your case. I wouldn’t mar that gesture by obfuscation and recalcitrance now.”
She looked at her husband and stepdaughter.
“Do what he says, Melanie,” Otis said.
Then her face began to dissolve, just like papier-mâché held to a hot light.
Mrs. Baylor was not a likable woman. I believe she sighted on Eddy Melancon’s throat with forethought and intentionally took his life. I also believe his death was entirely avoidable and that he and Kevin Rochon posed no threat to her safety. But in that moment, as she broke down in my office, who would choose to take on her burden by becoming her judge?
I handed her a box of Kleenex and watched the Sunset Limited wobble down the railway tracks while she wrote on my legal pad.
CLETE PICKED ME UP at noon and we drove toward my house in his Caddy, the top down. Molly was at work and Alafair was doing research for her novel at the university library in Lafayette. Ronald Bledsoe still had not returned to his cottage at the motor court. I told Clete about the confession of Melanie Baylor.
“How do you think it’ll play out?” he said.
“Remember that Japanese exchange student who went up a driveway in Baton Rouge on Halloween evening? He asked at the side door for directions to a party?”
“The wife panicked and the husband shot and killed the kid with a forty-four Mag?” he said.
“Yeah, the shooter walked.”
“That’s because the Feds weren’t in on that one. This time they are. Look, Dave, we’ve got one issue here and that’s to bag the guys who tried to kill your family.” He turned onto East Main, a net of light and shadow sliding across his face. “We’ve missed something, I just don’t know what it is. I had a funny dream last night. I was walking in a woods and I could smell fall in the air. There were leaves and mushrooms all over the ground, and air vines were hanging from the trees. When I came out of the woods, you were standing on the edge of a stream with a suitcase by your foot, like you were about to go on
a trip. You said, ‘You walked over a grave, Clete. Didn’t you see it?’ Then you waded into the water.”
The connotations of his dream made something drop in my chest, like a stone tumbling down a well.
“What do you think it means?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Dreams are just dreams.”
“No, we missed something. I stepped on a grave and didn’t see it. We’ve been chasing blood diamonds and street pukes and dealing with Dagwood and Blondie while Ronald Bledsoe wipes his ass on the drapes. Bledsoe is the key. How could a guy like that go this long without getting busted somewhere for something? There’s another story to this, Streak.”
We pulled into my driveway. I opened the front door of the house, then checked all the locks and the windows. I went into the backyard and checked on Snuggs and Tripod. I even squatted down and looked under the house for wires or a device or a package that didn’t belong there. That’s what the inculcation of fear does. Without leaving his home, your enemy makes you his prisoner and controls every minute of your day.
Clete was waiting for me in the kitchen when I came back into the house.
“When I told you about the dream? About you walking into the water? I saw a look on your face. Why’d you look like that, Dave?”
“I don’t remember,” I replied, avoiding his eyes. “Let’s fix lunch. I have to get back to work.”
THAT AFTERNOON Wally came up to my office, wheezing from the effort of climbing the stairs. He had a folded sheet of lined paper in his hand. “This come over from lockup. It’s for you,” he said.
I unfolded the letter and looked at the flowing calligraphy and the name at the bottom. “Thanks, Wally.”
After he had gone, I sat down and read the letter. No one is exactly sure of the engines that drive the alcoholic. AA literature makes use of terms like “self-centered fear” and “self-will run riot” and “moral and psychological insanity.” Some people consider it a deep-seated neurosis and personality disorder. But regardless of its origins, pride is high up on the list of its attributes.
To Detective Robicheaux,
I want to clarify my statement in your office earlier today. I shot into the darkness in order to dissuade the looters from entering our home. Now I must be accountable for that, even though I think one of the looters positioned himself in the path of the bullet, probably because of the self-destructive nature of his kind, although I cannot say that for certain.
I confessed to my “crime” because you harassed my husband and daughter and would give our family no peace. I have been told by members of my aerobics class you have a history as a drunkard and your meddlesome ways are your means to avoid not being drunk all the time.
If you want the truth about what happened that terrible night, I will now tell you and you can attach it to my earlier statement. We were at the mercy of depraved animals. The next-door neighbor and his friends said they would protect us. But the next-door neighbor, with his supposed military training and background as a “Southern gentleman,” is a poseur and a blowhard as well as a drunkard like yourself, and after my husband fell asleep from exhaustion, I had to take charge of things and fire blindly into the darkness before the looters who were also the ones who raped our daughter broke down our doors.
I forgive you for what you did. Your ineptitude and low intelligence are probably not your fault, but your alcoholic personality is. If I were you, I would do something about it, if not for your own sake, then for the sake of those who have to live around you.
Sincerely, Melanie Baylor
I made a Xerox copy of the letter and sent the original to the district attorney’s office, hoping I never heard the name of Melanie Baylor again. Chapter 31
L ATER, I CALLED Betsy Mossbacher at the FBI office in Baton Rouge. I had left her a message after I had found out Bertrand Melancon was in the Ninth Ward. I had also called her after Bobby Mack Rydel had tried to kill my family. But she had not returned my calls. This time she picked up.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“All over the state. What’s this about?”
“I left you a message about Bertrand Melancon. Otis Baylor found him. Melancon is at his aunt’s house in the Ninth Ward. I also left you a message about Bobby Mack Rydel.”
“Yeah, I was sorry to hear about that. I’m glad you’re okay.”
I waited for her to go on, but she didn’t.
“Y’all been pretty busy?” I said.
“Give me Melancon’s address. I’ll see what we can do.”
I could feel my energies draining. We had been called into a jurisdiction not our own and asked to do scut work that was the responsibility of other agencies. Now I was getting the inference, I had become an annoyance. I gave her the address of Melancon’s aunt in the Ninth Ward.
“Melanie Baylor confessed this morning to shooting the looters. Her husband was covering for her.”
“Sheriff Soileau faxed us that info an hour ago.”
“Melancon wrote a letter of amends to the Baylor family. He gave them directions to the blood diamonds. Except the letter got water-soaked and so far hasn’t been of much value to us. In the meantime, two of Sidney Kovick’s guys got whacked in the Atchafalaya Basin.”
“Yeah, we got that.”
“Betsy, I’m supposed to share information with you. If you don’t want me to do that, tell me to get lost.”
“We’re buried alive in work. Maybe all this will get sorted out one day, but it’s going to be a long time. Do you have any idea how many open homicide cases we have in New Orleans? The city is a giant repository for the dead. I’m not talking about gangbangers, I’m talking about patients who were allowed to drown in nursing homes. Do you realize how many complaints about unjustified police shootings we have to investigate? I can’t even get information about our own people. I think some navy SEALs took out some snipers we don’t know about.”
But I wasn’t concerned with the FBI’s problems. “I’ve got to get a net over Ronald Bledsoe. He’s ruining our lives,” I said.
I heard her breathe air out her nose. But I didn’t allow her to speak and continued to bore in. “Sidney Kovick inasmuch as told me he took the diamonds off some guys from the Mideast. You told me yourself he fancied himself a patriot. Maybe these guys are al Qaeda. You have unlimited electronic access when it comes to Homeland Security matters. Bledsoe is the loose thread on the sweater. We just have to pull on it.”
“Good try, no cigar.”
“So long, Betsy. I think you’re working for the right bunch,” I said, and hung up, coming down hard with the receiver.
WEDNESDAY EVENING was exceptionally beautiful, as though the earth and the heavens had decided to join together and re-create South Louisiana the way it was before Katrina and Rita tore it apart. The sky was a hard blue, the evening star twinkling in the west, a big brown moon rising above the cane fields. The rains had turned the oaks a deeper green and had sent Bayou Teche over its banks, swirling along the edges of our yards. You could smell barbecue fires in the park and the tannic odor of chrysanthemums and a clean, bright odor that perhaps signaled the coming of winter, but not in a bad way. For no demonstrable reason, I felt a sense of peace, as though I had been invited to a war but at the last moment had decided not to attend.
Alafair was returning to the university library to finish the research for her novel and Molly was going to drive her. “You’re sure you won’t come?” Molly said from the doorway.
“I’ll probably just read a bit and take a walk,” I said.
“I think I almost have the words worked out on the bottom of the letter the black guy left at the Baylors’,” Alafair said. “It’s just a matter of finding the right combination, not the letters, but the words themselves, so they form a sensible statement.”
I tried not to show my lack of enthusiasm. “That’s good,” I said.
“Would the word ‘bricks’ mean anything?” she said.
I thought about it. “Yeah, i
t could.”
“I’ll let you know what I come up with. Actually this is great material. I’d like to use it in my novel.”
They said good-bye and started out the door. Alafair snapped her fingers in the air. “I forgot my purse. I don’t have any money,” she said. “I was going to pick up a dessert.”
“Here,” I said. I took twenty dollars from my wallet and handed it to her. “I’ll put it on your tab.”
“We won’t be late,” she said.
“I’ll still be up,” I replied, and gave her the thumbs-up sign, the one I had always given her when she was little.
A HALF HOUR LATER, I saw Clete’s Caddy pull into the driveway. I went outside and waited for him on the gallery. He tore the tab on a can of beer and sat down on the steps, his porkpie hat slanted forward on his forehead. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it and blew smoke out into the yard. He still had not spoken except to comment negatively on the price of gasoline. I took the cigarette from his mouth, walked out to the curb, and dropped it into the storm drain.
“Dave, being around you is like being married. Will you lay off it?”
“What’s on your mind, Cletus?”
“What’s on my mind is I’ve either been living in my own thoughts too long or I’ve developed shit-for-brains syndrome.”
I sat down next to him. The streetlights had gone on and the canopy of oaks that arched over the street ruffled when the wind blew.
“Remember when we were searching the Baylor property and the neighbor came out and asked us what we were doing?” he said.
“Yeah, his name is Tom Claggart.”
“Remember I told you I thought I’d seen him somewhere?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Last year I took a gal for a boat ride out in the Basin. It was cold as hell and I ran out of gas. There were some hunters in a camp up on an island, about three hundred yards from the Atchafalaya. I walked up on them while they were dressing a deer. The deer was hanging by its feet from a tree. There were guts and strips of hide all over the ground. These guys looked pretty uncomfortable. Then I remembered deer season had closed two or three days earlier.
DR16 - The Tin Roof Blowdown Page 36