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"How do you know this?" she said.
"I was out to his place. Those state troopers aren't planning to take prisoners."
She sucked in her bottom lip.
"What are you offering?" she asked.
"Maybe transfer to a federal facility."
"Daddy hates the federal government."
"That's a dumb attitude."
"Thanks for the remark. I'll think about it."
"There're only a few people who've stood in Buford's way, Sabelle. The scriptwriter and Lonnie Felton were two of them. Jerry Joe Plumb was another. He was killed yesterday morning. That leaves your dad."
"Jerry Joe?" she said. Her face was blank, like that of someone who has been caught unawares by a photographer's flash.
"He was methodically beaten to death. My guess is by the same black guy who killed Felton and his girlfriend and the scriptwriter."
She sat down at her small kitchen table and looked out the window across the rooftops.
"The black guy again?" she said.
"That means something to you?"
"What do I know about black guys? They pick up the trash. They don't drink in my bar."
"Get a hold of your old man, Sabelle."
"Say, you're wrong about one thing."
"Oh?"
"Daddy's not the only guy in Buford's way. Take it from a girl who's been there. When he decides to fuck somebody, he doesn't care if it's male or female. Keep your legs crossed, sweetie."
I looked at the glint in her eye, and at the anger and injury it represented, and I knew that her friendship with me had always been a presumption and vanity on my part and that in reality Sabelle Crown had long ago consigned me, unfairly or not, to that army of male violators and users who took and never gave.
Monday an overweight man in a navy blue suit with hair as black as patent leather tapped on my office glass. There was a deep dimple in his chin.
"Can I help you?" I said.
"Yeah, I just kind of walked myself back here. This is a nice building y'all got." His right hand was folded on a paper bag. I waited. "Oh, excuse me," he said. "I'm Ciro Tauzin, state police, Baton Rouge. You got a minute, suh?"
His thighs splayed on the chair when he sat down. His starched dress shirt was too small for him and the collar button had popped loose under the knot in his necktie.
"You know what I got here?" he asked, putting his hand in the paper bag. "An oar lock with a handerchief tied through it. That's a strange thing for somebody to find on their back lawn, ain't it?"
"Depends on who the person is."
"In this case, it was one of my men found it on Buford LaRose's place. So since an escaped convict is trying to assassinate the governor-elect, we didn't want to take nothing for granted and we took some prints off it and ran them through AFIS, you know, the Automatic Fingerprint Identification System. I tell you, podna, what a surprise when we found out who those prints belonged to. Somebody steal an oar lock off one of your boats, suh?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"You just out throwing your oar locks on people's lawn?"
"It was just an idle speculation on my part. About a body that might have been buried there."
