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'Then what happened?'
'Nothing. What do you mean?'
'Come on, think about it. What happened after she came by?'
'She used the phone. To call somebody at the hospital, I think.'
'When did Buchalter call?'
'A little later. I tried to get you at your office. That's when the sheriff told me there'd been a shooting. I couldn't just stay at home and wonder what happened to you and wait for Buchalter to call again. Marie and I took Alafair to Batist's, then drove to New Orleans. What else was I supposed to do?'
'Whose idea was it to go to New Orleans?'
'Mine… Both of us, I guess… She saw my anxiety, she was trying to be a friend.'
'How many nuns do you know who gravitate toward trouble, who are always around when it happens?' I said.
She was looking at me now.
'Did you check the machine when you first came in the house?' I asked.
'No.'
'Our new number is written down by the side of the phone, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'It's time to check out Sister Guilbeaux, Boots.'
'You think she erased your message and called Buc—That's crazy, Dave. She's a good person.'
'Buchalter's flesh and blood. I think somebody close to us is helping him. How many candidates are there?'
Her eyes became fixed on the tunnel of trees ahead. I could see her chest rising and falling as she touched her fingers to her mouth.
The next morning, in my office, I sorted through all the case notes, crime scene photographs, autopsy reports, computer printouts, voice cassettes, rap sheets, convict prison records, and Xeroxes and faxes from other law-enforcement agencies that had anything to do with the vigilante killings, Tommy Lonighan, the Calucci brothers, and Will Buchalter and his followers.
I also called the office of the Catholic diocese in Lafayette. Both the bishop and his assistant were out. The secretary said one of them would return my call later. She was new to the job and was not sure if she knew a Sister Marie Guilbeaux.
I read every document on my desk twice. The more I read, the more ill-defined and confusing the case became.
Clete Purcel had always been a good cop because he kept the lines simple. I took a yellow legal pad and a felt pen from my desk drawer and tried to do the same. It wasn't easy.
The owner of the car repair shop where Zoot and I had been taken by Buchalter had turned out to be an alcoholic right-wing simpleton who had already fled the state on a bigamy charge. It seemed that anyone who might lead us to Buchalter had a way of disappearing or going off-planet.
Tommy Bobalouba's mother had emigrated from Germany and perhaps-had been a member of the Silver Shirts. Tommy wanted to salvage the Nazi U-boat before Hippo Bimstine got to it, and his rhetoric was often anti-Semitic. But in reality Tommy had never had any ideology except making money. He prided himself on his military record and blue-collar patriotism, and didn't seem to have any physical connection with Buchalter.
Why did Buchalter (if indeed it was Buchalter) attempt to ascribe the murder of his followers, the men called Freddy and Hatch, to the vigilante?
Was he involved with the ritualistic killings of black dope dealers in the projects? If not, how many psychological mutants of his potential did New Orleans contain?
Why had Lonighan crossed an old New Orleans ethnic line and gotten mixed up with the Calucci brothers, and did it have anything to do with the vigilante killings?
If you have ever been in psychoanalysis or analytically oriented therapy, you're aware that the exploration of one's own unconscious can be an intriguing pursuit. It is also self-inflating, grandiose, and endless, and often has the same practical value as meditating upon one's genitalia.
The inductive and deductive processes of police work offer the same temptation. You can drown in it. The truth is that most people, with the exception of the psychotic, commit crimes for predictable reasons.
Question: Why steal?
