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“Mr. Younger, could I have a word with you?” I said.
“Concerning what?”
“Your granddaughter.”
In the illumination of emergency flares and headlights, I saw Love Younger’s eyes sharpen and fix on mine. There were tiny blue and red veins in his cheeks, a bit of stubble on his throat above his collar, and a look of heated intensity in the face that usually hides either great tragedy or great anger.
“Up on that ridge just west of us, somebody shot a hunter’s arrow at my daughter. It cut her ear,” I said. “A half inch closer, she probably would have been killed. We think the guy who did it could be connected to the death of your granddaughter.”
“What’s your name?”
“Dave Robicheaux. I’m a sheriff’s detective in New Iberia, Louisiana.”
“Get his information,” Younger said to one of his aides.
“No, sir, I’ll talk to you, or we’ll not talk at all.”
He turned toward me, his expression neutral, and seemed to take my measure a second time. He pulled a notepad from his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “Write down your contact number. I’ll call you as soon as I clean up this mess. What’s your name again?”
I told him.
“You were involved in a shooting in Louisiana. I was there when it happened. You killed a man named Alexis Dupree,” he said. “I knew him.”
“I didn’t do it, but a friend of mine did. I was there and watched it and thought my friend did the right thing. I think the world is a better place for it. I’ll look forward to your call, Mr. Younger. My condolences for your loss.” I walked back down the line of cars and rejoined Alafair and Clete.
“What’s the haps?” Clete said.
“Jacksonian democracy is highly overrated,” I replied. “Did you hear from Gretchen?”
“No, something’s wrong. She always lets me know where she is, even out in California. Does a day come when you don’t have to worry about your kid?”
“Never,” I said.
AS SHE LAY helpless in the back of the van, her wrists fastened behind her with plastic ligatures, she could see the black shapes of the mountains through the rear windows and the rain slapping against the roof and sweeping in sheets across the highway. Her muscles felt like butter, her neck so weak it could barely support the weight of her head. She estimated that the van had been on the four-lane only about ten minutes before it made a turn, and she guessed they were now on the two-lane state road that led through the old company mill town of Bonner and on up the Blackfoot River. Pepper had been silent the whole time, filling the inside of the van with the smoke from his unfiltered cigarettes.
She heard the hollow rumbling of a bridge under the van. Abruptly, the van swung off the asphalt onto a dirt surface, gravel pinging the undercarriage. Minutes lat
er, the van climbed a steep hill and came down the other side, then turned left onto a rocky track pocked with holes and probably strewn with desiccated tree branches and twigs that snapped and splintered up into the frame.
Bill Pepper hit the brakes, tossing her against the back of his seat. When he cut the engine, she could hear the rain pattering on the roof and see the wind flattening the drops of water on the back windows. She could not remember a time in her life when the smallest of details about the natural world had seemed so important to her. Pepper continued to smoke his cigarette, leaning forward to get a better look at the heavens, like a sailor or a fisherman trying to anticipate a squall. “I like it out here,” he said, staring straight ahead.
When she tried to speak, her voice box felt stuffed with cotton.
“My daddy used to take my little sister and me fishing for speckled trout south of Mobile Bay,” he said. “When the rain would first dimple the water, they’d start to school up. You could smell them, just like when they’re spawning.”
He rolled down his window halfway and flicked his cigarette into the darkness. A balloon of yellow electricity flared and raced through the clouds overhead and disappeared without sound beyond the hills on the far side of the Blackfoot. “You brought this on your own self. You know that, don’t you?” he said.
“My father is—” she began.
“Yeah, I know. Your father is going to punch my ticket. So why didn’t you send him after me instead of coming to my door with Mace and an ASP in your bag?”
“Clete Purcel is my father.”
“It doesn’t matter who he is. It’s just you and me now. You came to my house to do me harm. If you do me injury, you do injury to my grandchildren, and I won’t put up with that.”
He got out of the van and walked to the back and opened the doors, the rain spotting his hat and leather jacket. He stepped on the back bumper and climbed inside and closed the doors behind him. He reached in his pocket and removed a small flashlight and turned it on and set it on the floor. “A vice cop in Broward County told me you pulled a train for the Florida Outlaws.”
“He lied to you.”
