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“Who is?”
“God, you’re dumb,” she said, and broke the connection.
My ear felt cold when I set the receiver down in the cradle.
“What is it, Dave?” Alafair asked.
“That was Emma Poche. She’s a deputy sheriff in St. Martin Parish. Her boat must have left the dock a little early today.”
But I kept staring at Alafair, my words banal and silly, poorly disguising the portent of Emma’s call.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“She said I was in danger, as well as anyone who might be with me.”
“Danger from whom?”
“She hung up without saying.”
“Let’s have a talk with her.”
“I did that this morning. Maybe this is her way of getting even or appeasing her conscience. She’s a drunk, and nothing she says is reliable.”
Alafair sat down at the breakfast table and gazed out the back window. Molly was feeding Tripod on top of his hutch, and Snuggs was watching both of them from a fork in the tree overhead. “I have to tell you something, Dave,” Alafair said.
“What is it?”
“I heard two deputies in uniform talking in the booth next to me in McDonald’s. They were talking about the guys who tried to kill you and Clete in Jeff Davis Parish. One of them said, ‘I wonder if Robicheaux is starting to see black helicopters.’”
“Who cares what he said?”
“I care,” she said.
“Did you say something to this guy?”
“I told him he’d better keep his mouth off you or he’d be wearing his Big Mac on his head.”
I sat down next to her and put my arm around her shoulders. Her back was as stiff and hard as a stump. “Even when you were a little bitty girl, you were heck on wheels, Alf.”
When she looked back at me, there were tears in her eyes. “You’re better than all these people, Dave. They don’t deserve you.”
“I’m better than no one.”
“This Poche woman is in St. Martinville?”
“Bad idea,” I said.
“Where does she live?”
“Stay away from her,” I said. “Are you listening, Alf? Come back here.”
IT WAS DARK and rain had started to fall before Alafair found the cypress house on the bayou where Emma Poche lived. Only one light burned in the house, perhaps in a back bedroom. The light fell out into the backyard, where a barbecue pit with an open top smoldered under a live oak, the smoke ris
ing into the leaves in an acrid flume.
The tide was in, and Bayou Teche was high and swollen with mud, the surface chained with rain rings. A speedboat was moored among the flooded elephant ears, a tarp thrown carelessly over the console and the front seat. Alafair could hear music playing inside the cypress house. She could also hear wind chimes tinkling on the gallery and the sound of someone’s voice rising and falling above the music. She stepped up on the gallery and started to tap on the door. Then she realized what she was hearing, a soliloquy of need and debasement, a confession of personal inadequacy made by someone who was either drunk or morally insane or without any vestige of self-respect.
“I’ve done everything you wanted,” the voice said. “But you treat me like fingernail parings. I’m supposed to fuck you on demand and never expect a kind word, and act like that’s normal. I bought a roast and a cake and fixed your potatoes just the way you like them. I thought we’d eat and go out in public or go to New Orleans and stay at the Monteleone. I don’t have a career or a life anymore. All I have is you. Come back to bed. Let me hold you.”
