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"Oh man, I'm really sick. I've never been this sick. I'm going into the D.T.s."
I put my hand on his shoulder. His muscles were as tight and hard as cable wire and quivering with anxiety. Then he covered his eyes and began weeping, his wet hair matted with dirt, his body trembling like that of a man whose soul was being consumed by its own special flame.
I DROVE OUT TO SPANISH LAKE TO FIND JULIE BALBONI. No one was in the security building by the dirt road that led into the movie location, and I dropped the chain into the dirt and parked in the shade, close by the lake, next to a catering truck. The sky was darkening with rain clouds, and the wind off the water blew leaves across the ground under the oak trees. I walked through a group of actors dressed as Confederate infantry. They were smoking cigarettes and lounging around a freshly dug rifle pit and ramparts made out of huge stick-woven baskets filled with dirt. Close by, a wheeled canon faced out at the empty lake. I could smell the drowsy, warm odor of reefer on the breeze.
"Could y'all tell me where to find Julie Balboni?" I said.
None of them answered. Their faces had turned dour. I asked again.
"We're just the hired help," a man with sergeant's stripes said.
"If you see him, would you tell him Dave Robicheaux is looking for him?"
"You'd better tell him yourself," another actor said.
"Do you know where Mr. Goldman is?"
"He went into town with some lawyers. He'll be back in a few minutes," the sergeant said.
"Thank you," I said.
I walked back to my truck and had just opened the door when I heard someone's feet in the leaves behind me.
"I need a moment of your time, please," Twinky Lemoyne said. He had been walking fast, holding his ballpoint pens in his shirt pocket with one hand; a strand of hair hung over his rimless glasses and his face was flushed.
"What can I do for you?"
"I'd like to know what your investigation has found out."
"You would?"
"Yes. What have you learned about these murders?"
I shouldn't have been surprised at the presumption and intrusiveness of his question. Successful businessmen in any small town usually think of policemen as extensions of their mercantile fraternity, dedicated in some ill-defined way to the financial good of the community. But previously he had stonewalled me, had even been self-righteous, and it was hard to accept him now as an innocuous Rotarian.
"Maybe you should call the sheriff's office or the FBI, Mr. Lemoyne. I'm suspended from the department right now."
"Is this man Balboni connected with the deaths of these women?"
"Did someone tell you he was?"
"I'm asking you an honest question, sir."
"And I'm asking you one, Mr. Lemoyne, and I advise you to take it quite seriously. Do you have some personal knowledge about Balboni's invol
vement with a murder?"
"No, I don't."
"You don't?"
"No, of course not. How could I?"
"Then why your sense of urgency, sir?"
"You wouldn't keep coming out here unless you suspected him. Isn't that right?"
"What difference should it make to you?"
