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"You got it," he said, tied one lace on his jacket, and went out into the rain.
He held on to the rail on the cabin roof and worked his way forward toward the bow. Kelly watched him through the glass, biting down on the corner of his lip.
"He waded ashore before," I said, and smiled at her. "He's not in any danger there."
"El has accidents. Always."
"A psychologist might say there's a reason for that."
She turned away from the glass, and her green eyes moved over my face.
"You don't know him, Mr. Robicheaux. Not the gentle person who gives himself no credit for anything. You're too hard on him."
"I don't mean to be."
"You are. You judge him."
"I'd like to see him get help. But he won't as long as he's on the juice or using."
"I wish I had those kinds of easy answers."
"They're not easy. Not at all."
Elrod eased himself over the gunwale, sinking to his chest, then felt his way through the silt toward the slope on the sandbar.
"Can you stand in the stern? For the weight," I said to Kelly.
"Where?"
"In the back of the boat."
"Sure."
"Take my raincoat."
"I'm already sopped."
I restarted the engine.
"Just a minute," I said, and put my rain hat on her head. Her wet blond curls were flattened against her brow. "I don't mean to be personal, but I think you're a special lady, Ms. Drummond, a real soldier."
She used both her hands to pull the hat's floppy brim down tightly on her hair. She didn't answer, but for the first time since I had met her, she looked directly into my eyes with no defensiveness or anger or fear and in fact with a measure of respect that I felt in all probability was not easily won.
I waved at Elrod through the front glass, kicked the engine into reverse, and opened the throttle. The exhaust pipes throbbed and blew spray high into the air at the waterline, the windows shook, the boards under my feet hummed with the vibrations from the engine compartment. I looked over my shoulder through the back glass and saw Kelly bent across the gunwale, pushing at the bottom of the bayou with a tarpon gaff; then suddenly the hull scraped backward in the sand, sliding out of a trench in a yellow and brown gush of silt and dead reeds, and popped free in the current.
Elrod was standing up on the sandbar, his balled fists raised over his head in victory.
I cut the gas and started out the cabin door to get the anchor.
Just as the rain struck my bare head and stung my eyes, just as I looked across the bayou and saw the man in the shapeless fedora kneeling hard against an oak tree, his shadowed face aimed along the sights of a bolt-action rifle, the leather sling twisted military style around the forearm, I knew that I was caught in one of those moments that will always remain forever too late, knew this even before I could yell, wave my arms, tell him that the person in the rain hat and Ragin' Cajuns T-shirt with my name on the back was not me. Then the rifle's muzzle flashed in the rain, the report echoing across the water and into the willow islands. The bullet cut a hole like a rose petal in the back of Kelly's shirt and left an exit wound in her throat that made me think of wolves with red mouths running through trees.
Chapter 10
It was a strange week, for me as well as the town. Kelly's death brought journalists from all over the country to New Iberia. They filled all the motels, rented every available automobile in Lafayette, and dwarfed in both numbers and technical sophistication our small area news services.
Many of them were simply trying to do their jobs. But another kind came among us, too, those who have a voyeuristic glint in their eyes, whose real motivations and potential for callousness are unknown even to themselves.
I got an unlisted phone number for the house.
