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I was about to turn back toward the house when the breeze blew the oak limbs overhead, and the pattern of sunlight and shade shifted on the ground like the squares in a net, and I saw a brassy glint in a curl of mud. I stepped over the wall, and with the tip of my pen lifted a spent .308 hull out of the mud and dropped it in the plastic bag with the cigarette butt.
I walked through the sideyard, back out to the front drive and my pickup truck. Weldon was waiting for me. I held the plastic bag up briefly for him to look at.
“Here’s the size round your rabbit hunter was using,” I said. “He’d ejected it, too, Weldon. Unless he had a semiautomatic rifle, he was probably going to take a second shot at you.”
“Look, from here on out, how about talking to me and leaving Bama out of it? She’s not up to it.”
I took a breath and looked away through the oak trees at the sunlight on the blacktop road.
“I think your wife has a serious problem. Maybe it’s time to address it,” I said.
I could see the heat in his neck. He cleared his throat.
“Maybe you’re going a little beyond the limits of your job, too,” he said.
“Maybe. But she’s a nice lady, and I think she needs help.”
He chewed on his lower lip, put his hands on his hips, looked down at his foot, and stirred a pattern in the pea gravel, like a third-base coach considering his next play.
“There are a bunch of twelve-step groups in New Iberia and St. Martinville. They’re good people,” I said.
He nodded without looking up.
“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “You flew an observation plane off a carrier in Vietnam, didn’t you? You must have been pretty good.”
“Give me a chimpanzee, three bananas, and thirty minutes of his attention, and I’ll give you a pilot.”
“I also heard you flew for Air America.”
“So?”
“Not everybody has that kind of material in his dossier. You’re not still involved in some CIA bullshit, are you?”
He tapped his jaw with his finger like a drum.
“CIA . . . yeah, that’s Catholic, Irish, and alcoholic, right? No, I’m a coonass, my religion is shaky, and I’ve never hit the juice. I don’t guess I fit the category, Dave.”
“I see. If you get tired of it, call me at the office or at home.”
“Tired of what?”
“Jerking yourself around, being clever with people who’re trying to help you. I’ll see you around, Weldon.”
I left him standing in his driveway, a faint grin on his mouth, a piece of cartilage as thick as a biscuit in his jaw, his big, square hands open and loose at his sides.
BACK AT THE OFFICE I asked the dispatcher where Garrett, the new man, was.
“He went to pick up a prisoner in St. Martinville. You want me to call him?” he said.
“Ask him to drop by my office when he has a chance. It’s nothing urgent.” I kept my face empty of meaning. “Tell me, what kind of beef did he have with Internal Affairs in Houston?”
“Actually it was his partner who had the beef. Maybe you read about it. The partner left Garrett in the car and marched a Mexican kid under the bridge on Buffalo Bayou and played Russian roulette with him. Except he miscalculated where the round was in the cylinder and blew the kid’s brains all over a concrete piling. Garrett got pissed off because he was under investigation, cussed out a captain, and quit the department. It’s too bad, because they cleared him later. So I guess he’s starting all over. Did something happen out there at the Sonniers’?”
“No, I just wanted to compare notes with him.”
“Say, you have an interesting phone message in your box.”
I raised my eyebrows and waited.
