Purple Cane Road

34

AS A POLICE OFFICER I had learned years ago a basic truth about all aberrant people: They're predictable. Their nemesis is not a lack of intelligence or creativity. Like the moth that wishes to live inside flame, the obsession that drives them is never satiated, the revenge against the world never adequate.

Johnny Remeta called the office at two o'clock that afternoon.

"How'd you like your boy?" he asked.

"You've killed three cops, Johnny. I don't think you're going to make the jail."

"They all had it coming. Tell me I'm wrong."

"You've been set up, kid."

After a beat, he said, "Alafair wants to be a screen writer. Tell her to write better lines for you."

"You cut a deal. You thought you were going to pop Gable and have it all," I said.

"Good try," he said. But the confidence had slipped in his voice.

"Yeah? The same person who sent you to kill Gable gave orders to the Louisiana State Police to shoot you on sight. There are two Texas Rangers sitting outside my office right now. Why is that? you ask yourself. Because you whacked a couple of people in Houston, and these two Rangers are mean-spirited peckerwoods who can't wait to blow up your shit. You wonder why your mother dumped you? It's no mystery. You're a born loser, kid."

"You listen-" he said, his voice starting to shake.

"Think I'm lying? Ask yourself how I know all this stuff. I'm just not that smart."

He began to curse and threaten me, but the transmission was breaking up and his voice sounded like that of a man trying to shout down an electric storm.

I hung up the receiver and looked out the glass partition in my office at the empty corridor, then began filling out some of the endless paperwork that found its way to my basket on an hourly basis.

I tried TO KEEP my head empty the rest of the afternoon, or to occupy myself with any task that kept my mind off the fate of Letty Labiche or the razor wire I had deliberately wrapped around Johnny Remeta's soul. I called the jail in St. Martinville and was told Clete Purcel had thrown his food tray in a hack's face and had been moved into an isolation cell.

"Has he been arraigned yet?" I asked.

"Arraigned?" the deputy said. "We had to Mace and cuff and leg-chain him to do a body search. You want this prick? We'll transfer him to Iberia Prison."

At 4:30 I went outside and walked through St. Peter's Cemetery. My head was thundering, the veins tightening in my scalp. The sky was like a bronze bowl, and dark, broad-winged birds that made no sound drifted across it. I wanted this day to be over; I wanted to look at the rain-worn grave markers of Eighth and Eighteenth Louisiana Infantry who had fought at Shiloh Church; I wanted to stay in a vacuum until Letty Labiche was executed; I wanted to slay my conscience.

I went back into the department and called Connie Deshotel's office in Baton Rouge.

"She's taken a few vacation days, Mr. Robicheaux. What with the demonstrations and all outside," the secretary said.

"Is she at Lake Fausse Pointe?"

"I'm sorry. I'm not at liberty to say," the secretary replied.

"Will you call her for me and ask her to call me?"

There was a long pause.

"Her phone is out of order. I've reported it to the telephone company," the secretary said.

"How long has it been out of order?"

"I don't know. I don't understand why you're asking me these questions. Is this an emergency?"

I thought about it, then said, "Thanks for your time."

I walked down to Helen Soileau's office and opened her door without knocking. She looked up from her paperwork at my face. She was chewing gum and her eyes were bright and focused with a caffeinated intensity on mine. Then one finger pointed at an empty chair by the side of her desk.

A few minutes later she said, "Go through that again. How'd you know Remeta was working for Connie Deshotel?"

"The last time Alafair saw him he was sunburned. He said he'd been out on Lake Fausse Pointe. That's where Connie's camp is. Connie was Jim Gable's partner at NOPD back in the sixties. When Remeta tried to shake her down, she got him to hit Gable."

"How?"

"He's a basket case. He's always looking for the womb."

"You sure of all this, Dave?"

"No. But Johnny went crazy when I convinced him he'd been betrayed."

"So you set Connie up?" Before I could reply, she picked up a ballpoint and drew lines on a piece of paper and said, "You'll never prove she was one of the cops who killed your mother."

"That's true."

"Maybe we should just let things play out," she said. Her eyes drifted back on mine.

I looked out the window. The sky was the color of brass and smoke, and the wind was gusting in the streets.

"A storm is coming in. I have to get out on the lake," I said.

Helen remained seated in her chair.

"You didn't do Gable. You want to nail Connie Deshotel yourself," she said.

"The other side always deals the play. You coming or not?"

"Let me be honest with you, bwana. I had a bad night last night. I couldn't get Letty Labiche out of my mind. I guess it's because I was molested myself. So lose the attitude."

Wally, the dispatcher, stopped us on the way out of the office. He had a pink memo slip in his hand.

"You wasn't in your office. I was fixing to put this in your pigeonhole," he said to me.

"What is it?"

"A cop in St. Martinville said Clete Purcel wants to talk to you. It's suppose to be important," Wally said.

"I'll take care of it later," I said.

Wally shrugged and let the memo slip float from his fingers into my box.

Helen and I towed a department outboard on the back of my truck to Loreauville, a few miles up the Teche, then drove through the sugarcane fields to the landing at Lake Fausse Pointe. The wind was blowing hard now, and I could see waves capping out on the lake and red leaves rising in the air against a golden sun.

Helen laced on a life preserver and sat down in the bow of the boat, and I handed her a department-issue cut-down twelve-gauge pump loaded with double-ought buckshot. She kept studying my face, as though she were taking the measure of a man she didn't know.

"You've got to tell me, Dave," she said.

"What?" I smiled good-naturedly.

"Don't shine me on."

"If Remeta's there, we call in backup and take him down."

"That's it?"

"She's the attorney general of Louisiana. What do you think I'm going to do, kill her in cold blood?"

"I know you, Dave. You figure, out ways to make things happen."

"Really?" I said.

"Let's get something straight. I don't like that snooty cunt. I said she was dirty from the get-go. But don't jerk me around."

I started to say something, then let it go and started the engine. We headed down the canal bordered by cypress and willow and gum trees, then entered the vast lily-dotted expanse of the lake itself.

It was a strange evening. In the east and south the sky was like a black ink wash, but the clouds overhead were suffused with a sulfurous yellow light. In the distance I could see the grassy slope of the levee and the live oaks that shadowed Connie Deshotel's stilt house and the waves from the lake sliding up into the grass and the wildflowers at the foot of her property. An outboard was tied to her dock, straining against its painter, knocking against one of the pilings. Helen sat hunched forward, the barrel of her shotgun tilted away from the spray of water off the bow.

I cut the engine and we drifted on our wake into the shallows, then I speared the bottom with the boat paddle and the hull snugged onto the bank.

The lights were on inside the house and I could hear music playing on a radio. A shadow crossed a screen window. Helen stepped out into the shallows and waded out to the moored boat and placed her hand on the engine's housing.

"It's still warm," she said, walking toward me, the twelve-gauge in both hands. She studied the house, the skin twitching slightly below her left eye.

"You want to call for backup?" I asked.

"It doesn't feel right," she said.

"You call it, Helen."

She thought about it. "Fuck it," she said, and pumped a round into the chamber, then inserted a replacement round into the magazine with her thumb.

But she was wired. She had killed three perpetrators on the job, all three of them in situations in which she had unexpectedly walked into hostile fire.

We walked up the slope in the shadows of the live oaks. The air was cool and tannic with the autumnal smell of flooded woods, the windows of the house gold with the western light. I took out my.45 and we mounted the steps and stood on each side of the door.

" Iberia Sheriff's Department, Ms. Deshotel. Please step out on the gallery," I said.

There was no response. I could hear shower water running in the back. I pulled open the screen, and Helen and I stepped inside, crossed the small living room, and looked in the kitchen and on the back porch. Then Helen moved into the hallway and the back bedroom. I saw her stop and lift the shotgun barrel so that it was pointed toward the ceiling.

"You better come in here, Dave. Watch where you step," she said.

Johnny Remeta lay on top of a white throw rug in his Jockey undershorts, his chest, one cheek, and his arm peppered with five entry wounds. A cut-down Remington twelve-gauge was propped in the corner. It was the same pump shotgun he had been carrying when he first visited my dock. He had not gone down all at once. The blood splatter was on the walls, the floor, and the bed sheets, and he had torn one of the curtains on the doors that gave onto a roofed deck.

The doors were open and I could see a redwood table on the deck, and on top of it a green bottle of wine, a platter of sandwiches, a package of filter-tipped cigarettes, Connie's gold-and-leather-encased lighter, and a big box of kitchen matches with a Glock automatic lying across it. The spent shell casings from the Glock were aluminum reloads and glinted on the deck like fat silver teeth.

I heard a faucet squeak in the bathroom, then the sound of the shower water died inside the stall. Helen pushed open the bathroom door and I saw her eyes go up and down the form of someone inside.

"Put a robe on and get out here, ma'am," she said.

"Don't worry. I heard you long before you started banging around inside. Call in the report for me, please. My phone's out of order," Connie Deshotel's voice said.

Helen picked up a pink robe off the toilet tank and flung it at Connie.

"Get your ass out here, ma'am," she said.

A moment later Connie emerged into the bedroom, flattening her hair back wetly on her head with a hairbrush. She wore no makeup, but her face was calm, dispassionate, ruddy from her warm shower.

"I don't know if I can prove this, Dave, but I think you sent this man after me," she said.

"You talked Remeta into the sack, then wasted him," I said.

"He tried to rape me, you idiot. I got my gun out of my bag and shot him through the door. Otherwise I'd be dead." Then she said "God!" between her teeth, and started to walk past us, as though we were only incidental elements in her day. Her slippers tracked Remeta's blood across the floor.

Helen pushed her in the chest with her fingers. "You're tainting a crime scene. You don't do anything until we tell you," she said.

"Touch my person again and you'll be charged with battery," Connie said.

"What?"

"I'm the chief law officer of Louisiana. Does that register with you at all? A psychopath tried to rape and sodomize me. Do you think I'm going to let you come in here and treat me like a perpetrator? Now, get out of my way."

Helen's face was bright with anger, a lump of cartilage flexing against her jaw. But no words came out of her mouth.

"Are you deaf as well as stupid? I told you to get out of my way," Connie said.

Helen held the shotgun at port arms and shoved Connie through the side door onto the deck. "Sit in that chair, you prissy bitch," she said, and snipped a cuff on Connie's left wrist and hooked the other end to the handle on a huge earthen pot that was planted with bougainvillea.

"Are you placing me under arrest? I hope you are, because I'm going to ensure you live in penury the rest of your life," Connie said.

"No, I'm restricting you from a crime scene. You want my job, you can have it," Helen said.

I could hear lightning popping in the swamp and raindrops striking the tin roof. Helen began punching in numbers on her cell phone, then she hit the phone against the wall.

"I can't get through. I'm going out front," she said.

I followed her into the living room.

"Take it easy," I said.

"She's gonna walk."

"There's no statute of limitations on homicide. We'll get her sooner or later."

"That's not enough. When they blow somebody apart and take a shower and then get in your face, it's not enough. It's not nearly enough," she said.

I put my hand on her arm, but she stepped away from me. "Just let me do my job. Not everybody in this world is a member of the walking wounded," she said, and flipped the shotgun's barrel up on her shoulder and pushed open the screen door and went out on the front porch, punching in numbers on her cell phone with her thumb.

I went back through the bedroom onto the deck. Connie Deshotel was gazing into the distance, at a heron, perhaps, or at her plans for her future or perhaps at nothing.

"When you and Jim Gable killed my mother, she took back her married name," I said.

"Excuse me?" Connie said.

"Right before she died she told you her name was Mae Robicheaux. Y'all took her life, Connie, but she took back her soul. She had the kind of courage you and Jim Gable couldn't dream about."

"If you want to charge me with a crime, that's your prerogative. Otherwise, please shut up."

"You ever think about what lies beyond the grave?"

"Yes. Worms. Will you unlock this handcuff and keep that ridiculous woman away from me?"

I looked at her eyes, the sun-bleached tips of her wet hair, the healthy glow of her skin. There was no dark aura surrounding the head, no tuberous growth wrapping its tentacles around the spirit, no guilty attempt to avoid the indictment in my stare. She was one of those who could rise early and rested in the morning, fix tea and buttered toast, and light the ovens in Dachau.

I gave it up. I couldn't look at her face any more. Connie Deshotel's eyes had once contained the reflected image of my mother dying on a strip of frozen ground between fields of sugarcane that creaked with ice, whose clattering in the wind was probably the last sound my mother ever heard. Whatever Connie had done or seen that winter day long ago meant nothing to her, and when I looked into the moral vacuity of her eyes I wanted to kill her.

I turned my back to her and leaned on the deck railing and looked out at the rain falling on the lake. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her shake a cigarette out of her pack and place it in her mouth. Then she picked up her cigarette lighter, the one probably given her by Jim Gable, and snapped it dryly several times. She replaced it on the table and leaned forward, her redwood chair creaking under her, and reached for the box of kitchen matches on which rested the Glock automatic she had used to murder Johnny Remeta.

Simultaneously I heard Helen Soileau say, "Hey, Dave, the St. Martin sheriff's office is trying to patch into you. Clete's going era-"

That was as far as she got. When she reached the door she saw Connie Deshotel's hand lift the Glock to get to the box of kitchen matches.

Connie's unlit filter-tipped cigarette was still hanging from her mouth when Helen blew most of her head off.