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"If it wasn't for Jude, I'd a been majoring in cotton picking on a prison farm."
"I took Dock out to the LaRose plantation yesterday. He says there's a kid's grave down by the water."
"Better listen to him, then."
"Oh?"
"The guy hears voices. It's like he knows stuff people aren't supposed to know. He puts dead things in jars. Maybe he's a ghoul."
I started to leave. "Stay away from his construction site, okay?" I said.
"I'm not the problem, Dave. Neither is Dock. You got a disease in this town. The whole state does, and it's right up the bayou."
"Then stop letting Buford use you for his regular punch," I said.
Jerry Joe clipped his comb inside his shirt pocket and stepped close to my face, his open hands curved simianlike by his sides, the white scar at the corner of his eye bunching into a knot.
"We're friends, but don't you ever in your life say anything like that to me again," he said.
After I got back to the department, the sheriff buzzed my extension and asked me to come into his office. He sat humped behind his desk, scraping the bowl of his pipe with a penknife.
"Our health carrier called this morning. They've developed a problem with your coverage," he said.
"What problem?"
"Your drinking history."
"Why call about it now?"
"That's the question. You were in therapy a few years back?"
"That's right."
"After your wife was killed?"
I nodded, my eyes shifting off his.
"The psychologist's file on you went through their fax this morning," he said. "It came through ours, too. It also went to the Daily Iberian." Before I could speak, he said, "I tore it up. But the guy from Blue Cross was a little strung out."
"Too bad."
"Dave, you're sober now, but you had two slips before you made it. I guess there was a lot of Vietnam stuff in that file, too. Civilians don't handle that stuff well." He set the pipe down and looked at the tops of his hands. "Who sent the fax?"
"The therapist died two years ago."
"So?"
"I'm not omniscient."
"We both know what I'm talking about."
"He had an office in the Oil Center. In the same suite as Buford LaRose's."
"It wasn't Buford, though, was it?"
"I don't know if Buford's potential has ever been plumbed."
"Dave, tell me you haven't been out to see Karyn."
