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"Here," she said, and tapped her finger on the computer printout. The date was one day after the gunshot death of the psychiatrist, Dr. Bernstine. "But the dispatcher called and got the password."
I ran my finger up the column on the printout to a billing notation for July and a description of services that amounted to two thousand dollars. "What's this?" I asked.
"It looks like the customer changed out the system. If I remember correctly, a power surge fried the main panel and the customer decided to use the opportunity to upgrade."
I was getting nowhere. "Let me think about this stuff and come back," I said.
"I don't know if this is of any help to you, but the customer changed his keypad code when he got his new system. See?" she said, and tapped the notation again.
"Yes?"
"He didn't change his password. Sometimes people don't like to change the password, particularly if it's a pet name or part of a private joke in the family," she said.
She looked me flatly in the face.
"That's a hole in the dike, isn't it?" I said.
"You might say that," she replied.
"Did you say today was your anniversary?" I asked.
"That's correct. Our twenty-seventh."
"Have a great anniversary, Ms. Dauterive."
I headed straight for Abbeville, twenty miles south on the Vermilion River, and the insurance company that employed Gretchen Peltier,
the woman who had given Will Guillot his alibi for the night the drive-by daiquiri shop operator was murdered and who had also turned out to be a former employee of the slain psychiatrist.
She was terrified. Like most people who lead ordinary lives and stray across a line, usually in concert with someone far more devious than themselves, she could neither defend herself nor lie convincingly. Instead, she began to perspire and swallow like someone in an elevator hearing steel cables snap a strand at a time.
"I don't think you're a bad person, Ms. Peltier. But you're taking the weight for a bad guy," I said.
"Taking the weight?" she said, more confused and frightened than ever now, her eyes flicking to the open door of her employer's office.
"You're about to take Will Guillot's fall. That means you'll go to prison. You'll live behind razor wire and cell with murderers and sexual deviates of every stripe. Snitch one of them off and you get glass put in your food. That's where Will Guillot has taken you."
My rhetoric was cruel. She was a sad woman, her eyes etched with mascara, her clothes obviously bough
t at a discount store. I could only guess at the means of seduction Will Guillot had used to entice her into cooperating with the systematic destruction of her own life.
"I knew the code numbers to the alarm system in Dr. Bernstine's office," she said. "Dr. Bernstine had shot himself in the park. I gave the numbers to Will because he said his wife, the one he's divorcing, told Dr. Bernstine a lot of lies that were going to be used in court against him. I gave him the password, too."
"How did he get into the building?" I said.
"A man who works for him, an electrician, opened the door. But the numbers on the keypad had been changed. The alarm went off. If Will hadn't had the password, the cops would have come out."
Her eyes were wet. She rested her forehead on the heel of her hand.
"You told me Guillot was with you the night the daiquiri store operator was killed. Was that a lie?"
"No."
"You sure?" I said, looking down into her face.
"I thought I was helping Will. Why have you done this to me?" she replied. She found a handkerchief in her purse and pressed it against her eyes.
"What's going on out here?" her employer said, standing in the doorway of his office, his tie printed with hundreds of tiny blue stars against a red background, a small American flag pinned on the lapel of his suit.
