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"They used to get along with him just fine."
"People loved Mussolini until it came time to hang him upside down in a filling station."
"Come on, cut to it, sheriff. Who are the other players?"
"The feds. They want Balboni bad. Doucet's lawyer says his client can put Julie so far down under the penal system they'll have to dig him up to bury him."
"What's Doucet get?"
"He cops to resisting arrest and procuring, one-year max on an honor farm. Then maybe the federal witness protection program, psychological counseling, ongoing supervision, all that jazz."
"Tell them to go fuck themselves."
"Why is it I thought you might say that?"
"Call the press in. Tell them what kind of bullshit's going on here. Give them the morgue photos of Cherry LeBlanc."
"Be serious. They're not going to run pictures like that. Look, we can't indict with what we have. This way we get the guy into custody and permanent supervision."
"He's going to kill again. It's a matter of time."
"So what do you suggest?"
"Don't give an inch. Make them sweat ball bearings."
"With what? I'm surprised his lawyer even wants to accept the procuring charge."
"They think I've got a photo of Doucet with Balboni and Cherry LeBlanc in Biloxi."
"Think?"
"Doucet's face is out of focus. The man in the picture looks like bread dough."
"Great."
"I still say we should exhume the body and match the utility knife to the slash wounds."
"All an expert witness can do is testify that the wounds are consistent with those that might have been made with a utility knife. At least that's what the prosecutor's office says. Doucet will walk and so will Balboni. I say we take the bird in hand."
"It's a mistake."
"You don't have to answer to people, Dave. I do. They want Julie out of this parish and they don't care how we do it."
"Maybe you should give some thought about having to answer to the family of Doucet's next victim, sheriff."
He picked up a chain of paper clips and trailed them around his blotter.
"I don't guess there's much point in continuing this conversation, is there?" he said.
"I'm right about this guy. Don't let him fly."
"Wake up, Dave. He flew this morning." He dropped the paper clips into a clean ashtray and walked past me with his coffee cup. "You'd better take off a little early this afternoon. This hurricane looks to be a real frog stringer."
It hit late that evening, pushing waves ahead of it that curled over houseboats and stilt cabins at West Cote Blanche Bay and flattened them like a huge fist. In the south the sky was the color of burnt pewter, then rain-streaked, flumed with thunderheads. You could see tornadoes dropping like suspended snakes from the clouds, filling with water and splintered trees from the marshes, and suddenly breaking apart like whips snapping themselves into nothingness.
I heard canvas popping loose on the dock, billowing against the ropes Batist and I had tried to secure it with, then bursting free and flapping end over end among the cattails. The windows swam with water, lightning exploded out of the gray-green haze of swamp, and in the distance, in the roar of wind and thunder that seemed to clamp down on us like an enormous black glass bell, I thought I could
hear the terrified moaning of my neighbor's cattle as they fought to find cover in a woods where mature trees were whipped out of the soft ground like seedlings.
