“Paging Dr. Martane.”
Joshua Martane ran his hands through his hair and said words that neither a minister nor a psychologist normally indulge in. He was both a minister and a psychologist, but he was a man first. The man was bone-deep weary and finally finished with a shift that had stretched three hours beyond the norm. At home waiting for him was the wife he adored and the daughter who already knew how to get around her father’s stern philosophy of child rearing. He wanted to go home before Bridget went to bed and in time to take Maggie to bed. He ignored his page, striding toward the City Hospital parking garage.
“Dr. Martane. Didn’t you hear your page?”
“I heard it.” Joshua spun around to face the physician who had called his name. “I was ignoring it.”
The man’s lopsided smile was understanding, but he sobered quickly. “You’ll want to know about this one. A friend of yours was brought into ER a little while ago. I just finished stitching him up. He’s going to be fine, but I thought you might want to go talk to him. He’s upset, I think, though he hasn’t said much.”
“Who is it?”
“Sergeant Sam Long. He asked if you were still here.”
Joshua had never known Sam to ask for anything. He was down the hall and through the doors of the emergency room before the doctor could finish his report.
Sam was sitting on a gurney in one of the little emergency cubicles, his shirt off and his shoulder bandaged. His expression was unfathomable, but his face was a ghostly white.
“What happened to you?”
“I almost got to meet Tante Louise.”
“What?”
“And the Grim Reaper.”
Joshua whistled softly. “That close? What in the hell were you doing?”
“Daydreaming.”
Joshua had a feeling that it was going to be a long story. He looked around for a chair, turned it backward and pulled it close to the gurney. “Why don’t you start from the beginning.”
“Got all night?”
“As long as it takes.”
“I turned my back on a suspect today.” Sam’s voice was filled with self-condemnation. “I turned my back like a rookie recruit issuing a parking ticket. I almost got my partner killed.”
“And here I thought you were beyond mistakes.”
Sam grimaced at the gentle sarcasm. “You don’t make mistakes in my line of work, Josh. You make a mistake and you don’t have to worry about regretting it.”
“You survived.”
“Because I have a partner who was a little faster than our suspect and a lot better shot.”
“He killed him?”
“No, in fact, the guy’s up in surgery now. He should make it, although it wouldn’t be any loss to the world if he didn’t. He’s a real lowlife. Name a crime, any crime, and this guy’s been involved.”
“Well, he’s off the streets now.”
“Off the streets and on the critical list. It’ll be days before we can interrogate him.”
Joshua suspected that Sam regretted that as much as his own wound. “At least he’ll be here waiting for you.”
Sam thought about Omega Oil. They’d been close to a break. He’d felt it in his bones. The guy they’d gone to talk to had been tried and set free on two different counts of arson in the past three years. He was a known if unproven arsonist, and he was living in New Orleans—had been, it turned out, for months. Furthermore, he’d been seen hanging around the Omega Oil building several nights before the fire. Things were adding up nicely. Adding up nicely until Sam had turned his back on the guy because he’d suddenly thought of Antoinette and how much he’d like to be able to tell her what they’d found.
Joshua watched Sam’s face contort in disgust. “How important was talking to him immediately?”
“We think he was our link to a big case that involves one of the oil companies. We can’t wait for answers. If this guy’s guilty, somebody hired him. We have to find out who.”
“It isn’t going to do you any good to rake yourself over the coals for one error. So you’re not perfect, and because you’re not, this case is going to take longer to solve. You’re still alive and so is your suspect. Things will work out.”
Sam snorted. He could forgive himself for almost anything. He was not the type to worry unduly about past actions. Worry took energy, and energy was better used for his job. This time, however, his job was affected, and in Sam’s mind that was the bottom line. “People may die because I was daydreaming. Do you have any idea what that does to me?”
“Suppose you tell me what you were daydreaming about.”
Joshua was a hard man to fool. Sam imagined that on some level that was exactly why he’d chosen him to talk to. “You’re a winning combination, Josh,” he said, trying to smile. “A little bit the minister demanding a confession, a little bit the psychologist probing beneath the surface.”
“Let’s see if it works tonight.”
“I was daydreaming about a woman. Antoinette, if you want the whole truth and nothing but.”
“She’s a woman worth daydreaming about.” Joshua watched his friend brood over his own admission. For the first time in his life, Joshua was absolutely certain that Sam was going to be all right. The man was going to live a long, happy life, teased out of his compulsive devotion to duty by a woman any man would be lucky to have.
“We’re not seeing each other anymore.”
“Oh?”
“To think someone pays you a fortune to give one-syllable answers,” Sam said with disgust heavy in his voice.
“Well, I’ll do better, then. I’ll tell you that it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy. I’d about given up hope that you’d get off that pedestal you built for yourself.”
“What in the hell does that mean?”
“It means that if Sam Long the perfect policeman no longer exists and Sam Long the human being has taken his place, I’ll bring out the champagne.”
Sam knew only too well what Joshua meant, even if he didn’t agree with his friend’s assessment. “My job is my life. I make no apologies for that.”
“No apologies are needed, and no explanations. I’ve known you longer than anyone else. We’ve both struggled most of our lives to be free of our backgrounds. I went into the ministry and psychology to understand myself better. You went on the force to put as much distance as possible between you and the life you almost fell into. I know about the work you’ve done trying to rehabilitate juveniles in trouble. I know how you’ve worked night and day to clean up this city.”
Sam’s eyes were narrow slits. “Are you saying that my life’s been a pathetic attempt at gratitude? That everything I’ve done has just been some sort of compulsion?”
“I’m saying that you can let up now. You’ve paid your dues, Sam. You can live like everyone else. You can have it all and still be a good guy. You can have Antoinette if you want her. When you’re done with work every day, you can go home to her and forget about everything else until the next morning. The side benefit to all that pleasure is that you’ll be a better cop, too.” Joshua combed weary fingers through his hair. The day had been much too long.
“Maggie must be wondering where you are.”
Joshua knew that Sam wanted no more insights thrown at him. He stood. “Let’s get you checked out of here. Is somebody from the station here with you?”
“I sent them back to file a report.”
“I’ll drive you home.” Joshua waited for Sam to refuse, to insist that he was perfectly capable of getting home by himself.
Instead, Sam stood, holding on to the gurney until he was sure he was steady. “All right.”
“Antoinette’s a beautiful woman,” Joshua said as they walked to the nurse’s desk. “She needs you almost as much as you need her. She hasn’t had much loyalty or devotion in her life. You could give her both.”
“She’s through with me.”
“Maybe.”
“She’d be a fool to give me another chance.
”
Joshua didn’t ask for details. “Maggie gave me more chances than I deserved.”
“Maggie’s damned special.”
“So’s Antoinette.”
“I know.”
Joshua knew better than to push. He’d already given Sam more to think about than Sam wanted. On the way home he told stories of Bridget’s latest antics, coaxing a halfhearted smile from the proud godfather before he dropped Sam off at his house. Joshua remembered what it was like to be caught squarely between the brain and the heart. Silently he wished his friend well.
Inside his apartment Sam threw a week’s collection of newspapers off the sofa and stretched out, too tired to go through the motions of getting ready for bed. His shoulder throbbed, his head throbbed, his entire being throbbed. He let himself imagine what it would have been like to come home to Antoinette tonight, instead of to an empty, unattractive apartment.
He could no longer deny the obvious. If he’d been coming home to her tonight, none of this would ever have happened. His mind would have been on his work. He wouldn’t have been daydreaming about the impossible pleasure of sharing his triumphs with her. He’d thought that, without Antoinette in his life, he could get back down to business. He’d believed that all it would take to recapture his single-mindedness was to tell her goodbye. Had he always deluded himself that way?
He turned a little to ease the ache in his shoulder. He had been born to become a cop. There was nothing about his job—except, perhaps, the endless paperwork—that he didn’t find fascinating. He was energized by the contact with people of all kinds; he was constantly challenged by the demands of solving cases. There were days when nothing happened, but those days were always a prelude to excitement. His job had been enough for him. Enough until now.
His needs had changed. Maybe Joshua was right and he’d spent these years paying fate back for giving him another chance. If so, it hadn’t been a bad way to spend this part of his life. He’d been happy, and if he’d been lonely, he’d been too busy to notice. But he was not the person he had once been. Evidently he was a man first, not a cop. And that man inside the cop’s uniform needed a life away from the police station. He needed Antoinette.
He needed her. Just the thought of needing someone repulsed him. He had never needed anyone. No one. No one.
No one except his uncle. No one except Martin and Leonce and, later, Didi. No one except Joshua and Skeeter. No one except Maggie and Bridget. No one except little Laurie Fischer, who, for a brief time, had taken the place of the child he should have had himself.
God, he’d been filled with needs. And he’d never even seen it. He’d thought he was the man of iron, the cynical cop who watched but never joined in. He was just a man.
Just a man. The words didn’t come with the wrench in his gut that he’d have expected. He tried them out loud. “Just a man.” Funny thing, they didn’t sound so bad after all. He’d always been just a man. On some level he must have known it all along.
He wondered if the blood he’d lost was doing funny things to his head. His eyes were blurred, as if by tears. He hadn’t cried since he was a child. He hadn’t expected to cry again, ever. He fell asleep wondering if he would feel better in the morning.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
Chapter 14
The route to Bayou Midnight seemed to have been stretched by the hands of some unseen giant. Antoinette was sure that the trip was exactly twice as long as she remembered it. But then, the first time she had traveled these miles, she had been sitting next to Sam. Now she and Tootsie were alone in the car, and the trip was interminable. She tried to take her mind off the differences in this trip and the last by enjoying the picturesque scenes she was passing. Today, however, the swamps looked fetid and decidedly evil, the marshes were stultifying, endless sweeps of grass and water. Even the occasional fisherman was a testimony to foolish optimism.
She passed cane-processing and chemical plants and cursed man’s nonchalance about destroying the environment; she passed the place where she and Sam had twice eaten breakfast and remembered only that the coffee had been too strong. She smoked all her cigarettes and stopped to buy a carton before she turned onto the clamshell bayou road. Didi’s directions were excellent, but as the road twisted along the water, finally becoming the dirt track that led to Claude’s and then to Didi’s, she wondered what would happen if she made a mistake and took a wrong turn. Today nothing seemed welcoming. She tried to imagine what it would be like to be lost in the middle of this desolate, snake-infested countryside.
With gratitude she realized she was not to find out. Claude’s cabin was around the next bend. She continued following the track, making a sharp left about five hundred yards past Claude’s, and soon Didi’s house appeared in the distance. In a minute Antoinette was knocking at the back door. At the first joyous sniff of bayou air, Tootsie had taken off for Claude’s.
“’Toinette.” Didi gave Antoinette a spontaneous hug and guided her inside the house. “I got no right to make you come all this ways. But I got to talk to somebody.”
“I guess I needed to come, too,” Antoinette reassured her. “I think the trip down here helped clear the romantic cobwebs out of my brain.”
“Just tell me one thing. Was it you or Sam-son that said ‘no more, thank you’?” Didi motioned to the sofa, and Antoinette sat down. Didi disappeared only to return in a minute with two big glasses of iced tea.
“Sam.” Antoinette took the glass and enjoyed a long drink before she continued. “He doesn’t want a woman in his life. He doesn’t want anybody in his life.”
“That one, he don’t know what he wants.”
“I’m afraid he does. It’s not me.”
“Did you want Sam-son?”
“Yes.”
“Did you want marriage?”
Antoinette had asked herself the same question for the past month. Had Sam sensed some pressure from her that she wasn’t even aware of? “Didi,” she answered finally, “I really don’t know. I was glad to be with him, but I had a lot of doubts that Sam would let our relationship grow. I wasn’t thinking marriage because it seemed so impossible. Someday, though, I’d like to marry somebody with all of Sam’s good qualities.”
Didi waved aside her words. “You want Sam-son. Stubborn and blind as he is. He’s like le poisson arme, the garfish. He don’t seem like much of a catch, hardly worth the time, but he’s a prize fish, that one. No one better out there than Sam-son.”
Antoinette chuckled at Didi’s simile. “Well, let’s just say that after he got off the hook the last time, I decided to give up fishing altogether.”
“Sam-son, he was here. Didn’t say nuthin’ to nobody. Didn’t come to supper, didn’t show his face.”
“I’m sure he was tired. He’s been working night and day on the Omega Oil case.”
“Not tired. Sad. Mad at himself, and he should be, him.” Didi called Sam a few lyrical names and shook her head. “But why talk about Sam-son? Let’s talk about ’Toinette.”
Antoinette couldn’t think of anything she’d rather not do at the moment. “No, let’s talk about Didi. Tell me about the baby.”
Didi was glad to oblige. She told Antoinette everything about what was obviously the most thrilling event that had ever happened to her.
“So the baby’s due at Christmas.”
“Leonce, he says it’s gonna be a girl, but I tell him it’s his son, through and through.”
“Son?”
“Mais yeah. That’s what I been askin’ for.”
Antoinette suspected that Didi had been practicing some of her father’s gris-gris. “You won’t be disappointed if you’re wrong, will you?”
“Oh, I’m not wrong,” Didi said with a giggle. “And I want a girl next. I get sick of all these men.”
“How is everybody else?”
Didi sobered instantly. “That’s why I called. ’Toinette, somethin’ bad, it’s goin’ on here. Claude won’t listen. He says I’m l
ike Mamselle Damsel Fly who’s so busy watchin’ out for the gator she forgets about the bullfrog.”
“In other words, you should mind your own business?”
“Claude says if I keep talkin’ ’bout problems Martin has, Leonce is going git very mad at me.” Didi pouted a little, obviously perturbed that her beloved husband might not like her interference in his brother’s life.
“What does Leonce say when you talk to him?”
“Nuthin’. He just looks at me like I stabbed him with a knife. He don’t believe nuthin’ could be wrong with Martin. Martin, he could set fire to the house, and Leonce would roast a pig in the ashes, then thank Martin for dinner.”
Antoinette found the idea of that kind of loyalty touching. She also saw the problems. “What did you think I could do, Didi?”
“I gotta know if this problem with Martin, if it’s just in my head. If you think there’s a problem, too, then I’m gonna go back home and talk to my mama and papa and git them to talk to Claude.”
“You haven’t told them anything about this yet?”
Didi shook her head. “I don’t want it talked about till I know somethin’ is wrong. The bayou world, it’s a small world. Word gits out that Martin’s head’s not screwed on tight, people, they’ll look at all of us funny. Don’t wanna take no chances.”
Antoinette could understand exactly what Didi was saying. She imagined that Martin’s problems would cause a lot of gossip, but she also imagined that there might be more tolerance for him here than in a city where he would be a stranger to those around him. “If I think Martin might have some serious problems, what are you going to suggest?”
“Martin, he’s a veteran. We can git him help at the VA hospital. They could treat him, he could come home at night. He’d really go crazy if they tried to put him somewhere else than the swamps.”
Antoinette nodded. Didi was not trying to get rid of a troublesome family member. Her concern was obviously genuine. “Okay, suppose you tell me what kind of things you’ve noticed.”
Half an hour later it was clear to Antoinette that Martin was increasingly troubled. According to Didi, the behavior that Antoinette had noticed and worried about during her last visit had escalated. His self-control was slipping. He was exploding with rage over little things, and he was acting out his rage by disappearing for days without a word to his family concerning his whereabouts. He rarely spoke to Didi, but she had heard bits and pieces of conversations with Leonce that worried her. Omega Oil’s closing of the marsh where he had always trapped was a prime topic of their conversations.
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