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"Would you like to continue our conversation?" I said.
"You think I was out of line or something?"
"What did you want to tell me, Elrod?"
"Take a walk with me out yonder in those trees and I'll show you something."
"The old cemetery?"
"That isn't it. Something you probably don't know about."
We walked through a thicket of stunted oaks and hack-berry trees, briars and dead morning-glory vines, to a small cemetery with a rusted and sagging piked iron fence around it. Pines with deep-green needles grew out of the graves. A solitary brick crypt had long ago collapsed in upon itself and become overgrown with wild roses and showers of four o'-clocks.
Elrod stood beside me, and I could smell the scent of bourbon and spearmint on his breath. He looked out into the dazzling sunlight but his eyes didn't squint. They had a peculiar look in them, what we used to call in Vietnam the thousand-yard stare.
"There," he said, "in the shade, right on the edge of those hackberry trees. You see those depressions?"
"No."
He squeezed my arm hard and pointed.
"Right where the ground slopes down to the bayou," he said, and walked ahead of me toward the rear of the property. He pointed down at the ground. "There's four of them. You stick a shovel in here and you'll bring up bone."
In a damp area, where rainwater drained off the incline into a narrow coulee, there was a series of indentations that were covered with mushrooms.
"What's the point of all this?" I said.
"They were cooking mush in an iron pot and an artillery shell got all four of them. The general put wood crosses on their graves, but they rotted away a long time ago. He was a hell of an officer, Mr. Robicheaux."
"I'll be going now," I said. "I'd like to help you, Elrod, but I think you've marked your own course."
"I've been with these guys. I know what they went through. They had courage, by God. They made soup out of their shoes and rifle balls out of melted nails and wagonwheel rims. There was no way in hell they were going to quit."
I turned and began walking back to my truck. Through the shade I could see the security guard urinating by the open door of the Cadillac. Elrod caught up with me. His hand clenched on my arm again.
"You want to write me off as a wet-brain, that's your business," he said. "You don't care about what these guys went through, that's your business, too. I didn't bring you out here for this, anyway."
"Then why am I here?"
He turned me toward him with his hand.
"Because I don't like somebody carrying my oil can," he said.
"What?"
"That's a Texas expression. It means I don't want somebody else toting my load. You've convinced yourself the guy who killed Kelly thought he had you in his sights. That's right, isn't it?"
"Maybe."
"What makes you so goddamn important?"
I continued to walk toward my truck. He caught up with me again.
"You listen to me," he said. "Before she was killed I had a blowout with Mikey. I told him the script stinks, the screenwriters he's hired couldn't get jobs writing tampon ads, he's nickel-and-dimeing the whole project to death, and I'm walking of
f the set unless he gets his head on straight. The greaseballs heard me."
"Which greaseballs?"
