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"You're not hearing me. The Feds believe Coll is ..." She paused and I heard her shuffling papers around. "They say he's a nonpatho-logical compulsive-obsessive with paranoid and antisocial tendencies."
"Antisocial tendencies? This is the kind of crap that comes out of Quantico. Don't buy into it."
"Will you shut up? They're saying Coll kills people because he feels he has a right to. He's not a psychopath or a schizophrenic or anything like that. He's just a very angry man. Have I got your attention?"
"Yes," I said.
"He had a wife and son in Belfast nobody in law enforcement knew about. They used a different name so Coil's enemies wouldn't find them. But about five years ago a Protestant death squad of some kind put a bomb under their car and killed both of them. They were on their way to Mass."
The subject wasn't funny anymore.
"Is there a tap on my home phone?" I asked.
"We're in the George W. Bush era. I'd keep that in mind," she said.
Fifteen minutes later Helen came into my office, a clutch of fax sheets in her hand. "Did you hear anything about an explosion on the drawbridge in Jeanerette?" she asked.
"No," I said.
She sat on the corner of my desk and studied the fax sheets in her hand. "This is from the St. Mary's sheriff's office. See what you think," she said. Her jawbone flexed against her cheek.
I took the sheets from her hand and read them, trying not to show any expression. The details of the investigator's report were incredible. In the early A.M. someone had evidently slim-jimmed a wrecker that was parked in a filling station located a half block from the trailer court by the Jeanerette drawbridge. After hot-wiring the ignition, the perpetrator drove the wrecker down to the trailer court, hooked up the winch to a trailer owned by one Bobby Joe Fontenot, and ripped it off its cinder blocks, tearing loose all the plumbing, electrical, phone and cable connections.
According to witnesses, the owner tried to exit the trailer but discovered the door had been sealed shut with a bonding adhesive used to repair the bodies of wrecked automobiles. The perpetrator skidded the trailer out of the court onto the surfaced road, bouncing it across a drainage ditch, smashing mailboxes and parked cars. When the trailer toppled on its side, witnesses thought they saw the owner trying to climb out of an exposed window. But the driver of the wrecker accelerated, knocking Fontenot, the owner, back inside. The driver then dragged the trailer across the steel grid of the drawbridge, geysering rooster-tails of sparks in the darkness.
A liquid blue flame enveloped one of the butane tanks on the rear of the trailer. The explosion that ensued blew burning paper, fabric,
and particle board all over the bayou. The owner, who by this time had broken out a window and cleaned the glass from the frame with a hammer, barely escaped with his life.
The perpetrator abandoned the wrecker and burning trailer, which was tightly wedged between the steel side beams on the bridge, and disappeared into the darkness on the far side of the bayou. A moment later an ancient Cadillac convertible was seen speeding down the road toward New Iberia, the engine misfiring, leaking oil smoke, the driver wearing a small, short-brim hat perched on the front of his head.
"Wow, that's something, isn't it?" I said, handing the fax sheets back to Helen.
"Any idea who could pull a stunt like that?" she said.
"There're a lot of old gas guzzlers like that around," I replied, my eyes drifting around the room.
"Right," she said.
"No mention of the Cadillac's color?"
"Nope," she said.
"It's not in our jurisdiction, anyway. Let St. Mary Parish do some work for a change."
"You get Clete Purcel in here right now," she said.
But Clete did not answer his phone, and when I drove by the motor court, the manager told me he had not seen Clete's car in the last day or two. I called Clete's office in New Orleans. The temporary secretary he sometimes used was an ex-nun by the name of Alice Weren-haus who put the fear of God in some of Clete's clients.
"You are Mr. Robicheaux?" she said.
"I was when I got up this morning," I replied, then quickly regretted my mistake in attempting humor with Alice Werenhaus.
"Oh, it is you, isn't it? I should have immediately recognized the quick wit at work in your rhetoric," she said. "Mr. Purcel left a message for you. Would you like me to read it to you?"
"Yes, that would be very nice, Ms. Werenhaus," I replied.
"It says, "Give Alice a pay phone number and a time. Fart, Barf, and Itch probably have you tapped.""
