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“It’s raining too hard for him to go nowhere. I’ll give him a ride to town later on,” Batist replied.
“Tell him to stay there. I’ll be along in a few minutes,” I said.
When I got to the bait shop, the swamp looked colorless and stricken in the rain, except for the canopy of cypresses, which was a dull green against an infinite gray sky. Most of the concrete boat ramp was under water and a flock of mallards and pintails had taken shelter under the dock. I opened an umbrella over my head and ran for the bait shop.
The man who claimed to have been a medic from my outfit was looking out the window at the rain dancing on the bayou. He was dressed in clean denims, his short sleeves turned up in cuffs, steel-toed oil-field boots laced on his feet.
“Take a ride with me down to St. Mary Parish, Doc,” I said.
“What for?” he asked.
“Nothing in particular. You got anything else to do?” I said.
“Nope,” he said.
We walked up the dock together, under the umbrella, while lightning banged and flashed around us and thunder peeled across the sky like incoming mail from a distant war.
The motel out on the four-lane was a run-down two-story building that had once belonged to a chain but was now operated by the owner of the truck stop next door. I parked the cruiser by a walkway and asked my friend, the ex-soldier, to wait for me. I found Marie Guilbeau in a laundry room, stuffing sheets into a washing machine. Her dark hair was pinned on the back of her head, her maid’s uniform stretched tight against the thickness of her body when she bent over the machine. “I’d like for you to look at a man for me, Ms. Guilbeau,” I said.
“The one who was staying at the motel?” she said, her face stark.
“Let’s find out,” I replied. “Take a walk with me to the cruiser.”
She hesitated, then set down her laundry and followed me through an alcove to the outside walkway. I stepped out into the rain and held my umbrella over the passenger’s door and tapped on the glass.
“Hey, Doc, I want you to meet someone,” I said, making a rotating motion with my finger.
He rolled down the window and looked at me.
“This is a friend of mine, Ms. Guilbeau,” I said.
“Hi,” he said.
She folded her hands and lowered her eyes and said nothing in reply.
The ex-soldier glanced at me, unsure of what was happening.
“I’ll be with you in a minute, Doc,” I said, then stepped back into the alcove with Marie Guilbeau.
“You know that fellow?” I asked.
“Yeah, why you bringing him here?”
“He’s the man who made an inappropriate remark to you?”
“No. He’s a homeless person. He walks all over New Iberia. Carrying his t’ings on his back. I seen him there,” she replied.
“Okay, take a look at these pictures,” I said, and removed a piece of mounting board from a manila envelope. Six mug shots were slipped into viewing slots in two rows of threes, one on top of the other.
It didn’t take her five seconds to place her finger on one photo in particular.
“That’s the one,” she said. “He was nice at first. Then he got the wrong idea and said somet’ing fresh. Like he t’ought I was a prostitute.” Maybe it was simply the light, but the memory of the incident seemed to climb in her face like a bruise.
“You’re sure this is the guy?” I asked.
“That’s the guy. You better believe that’s the guy,” she said, tapping the picture again, her eyes angry now. “What’s his name?”
“Marvin Oates. He sells Bibles,” I said.
