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“No.”
“Watch.” He slid the cigarette back in the package, then rolled down the window and sprinkled all the cigarettes in the package into the wind stream. He took off his hat and kept his head outside the window for a long time, looking back into the darkness. Then he rolled up the window, his hair sparkling with raindrops. “Shoot me if I ever buy a pack of smokes again.”
“I promise,” I replied.
“Carolyn Blanchet would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.”
“It’s the only game in town,” I said.
He didn’t argue.
BECAUSE OF FLOODING and the collapse of a sewer drain four blocks up from my house, East Main had been barricaded and the street was virtually deserted. It was strange to see Main devoid of people, like it was part of a dream rather than reality, the asphalt as sleek and black as oil under the streetlamps, rainwater coursing through the gutters, a dirty cusp surging over the sidewalks. The lawns of the antebellum and Victorian homes along the street had been windblown with camellia and bougainvillea and hibiscus petals and pieces of bamboo and thousands of leaves from the live-oak trees. The grotto dedicated to the statue of Jesus’s mother was lit by a solitary flood lamp next to the library, the stone draped by the shadows of the moss moving in the trees. I felt that I had moved back in time, but not in a good way. I felt like I had as a little boy during the war years, when I experienced what a psychiatrist would call fantasies of world destruction, of things coming apart and ending, of people going away from me forever.
The temperature had dropped, and fog was rolling off the bayou and puffing through the trees onto the street. Up ahead, I could see a cruiser parked close by my house. No other vehic
les were parked on the street or in my driveway. I saw a woman come out my front door and approach the sidewalk, holding a newspaper over her head, jiggling her fingers at us the same way I had seen Kermit Abelard jiggle his fingers. At first I didn’t recognize her. She was wearing a raincoat and a bandanna over her hair. It was Carolyn Blanchet.
“Go around the block,” Clete said.
“What for?”
“I’m not sure. You called Emma a Judas goat. I think that was Emma’s teacher right there.” He picked up my cell phone from the dash.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling your house,” he said.
“Screw that.”
“They’re desperate, Dave. It’s all or nothing for them now.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I turned in to the drive and cut the engine. My front yard was flooded, the house lights burning brightly inside the rain, like the image of a snug sea shanty battered by a coastal storm, a place where a lamp stayed lit and bread baked in an oven.
I opened the truck door and got out. Carolyn Blanchet smiled at me. “Where’s Molly?” I asked.
“She’s still in the bathroom,” Carolyn replied.
Her statement didn’t compute, but I didn’t pursue it. The cruiser was parked in the shadows of the neighbor’s oak trees, backlit by a streetlamp. I could see the deputy’s silhouette behind the wheel, his hat cocked at an angle, as though he were dozing. I heard Clete get out of the truck.
“What kept you?” Carolyn said.
“Nothing. We were doing ninety all the way.”
She gave me a funny look. “You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“Alafair got away. We tried to reach your cell phone, but the service was down. Molly was calling you from the bathroom. I thought she got through.”
I never took my eyes from her face. Her skin glistened with moisture. Her chin was uplifted, her eyes happy, like those of a woman waiting to be kissed. Her mouth was beautiful and alluring, exuding warmth and affection and a promise of exploration, and I suspected it had charmed many men and women out of their heart and soul.
“You’re such a crazy guy, Dave. There she is,” she said.
I saw Alafair standing motionlessly in the bedroom window, the curtains pulled back on either side of her. If there was any expression on her face, I couldn’t see it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clete moving toward the cruiser that was parked back in the shadows. My heart was racing, my throat dry, the rain clicking on my hat. Behind me, I heard Clete rip open the front door of the cruiser.
“Dave, don’t do it!” he called out.
I knocked Carolyn Blanchet on her butt getting into the house.
