AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Are you using a voice box of some kind?”
“You’re a stupid man,” he said.
“Probably. Why’d you want to hurt Clete Purcel?”
“Mr. Purcel injures himself.”
“How about you row up on the bank and we talk about it?”
“I’m a revelator,” he said. “You should feel honored. We don’t give our time to everyone.”
I could feel the pulse beating in my right wrist, the cold steel frame in my hand. “Where are you from, Richetti?”
“Address me as Mr. Richetti or as Gideon.”
“Tell me where the children are, partner. I’d owe you a big solid on that.”
“You’re a simpleton, Mr. Robicheaux. You want the children out of the way so you can do as you will.”
I felt like he had stuck a dirty finger inside my brain. “Come a little closer. I can hardly hear you.”
“Idiot,” he said.
“You got that right. I should have capped your sorry ass as soon as I saw you.”
I gripped my .45 with both hands and began firing at the boat’s waterline. There were seven rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. I could see the flash leaping from the muzzle, hear the spent cartridges splashing in the shallows, hear a round go long and hit a tree trunk. I saw wood fly from his boat and float in the water. But Gideon Richetti showed no reaction, not even when a round went high and whanged off an oar lock.
The slide on the .45 locked open on the empty chamber. Richetti and his boat drifted into the mist. I opened and closed my mouth to clear my hearing. I could hear the sound of his oars thinning among the flooded trees. I could not believe what I had just done. I had fired into a fog bank that could have been occupied by hunters or other fishermen or even the children who wanted to sell me night crawlers.
I got into my boat, my hands shaking, and started the engine and drove into the fog. The aluminum hull screeched against the cypress knees protruding from the water, all of them as hard and shiny as wet stone. I saw no sign of Richetti and his boat. Nor did I see any channels in the lichen that floated between the trees.
I killed the engine and drifted in the silence. The water was black, the sun a smudge of egg yolk on the horizon. Inside that soiled piece of Eden, I saw the worst image I could possibly see under the circumstances. There was a patina of blood on a tupelo stump, and a strip of wash-faded cloth that was as thin as Kleenex.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY was Saturday. My first stop early that morning was Father Julian’s house outside Jeanerette. The sun was just above the trees when he opened the door. He made a pot of coffee while I told him everything that had happened the previous evening at Henderson Swamp. He sat down at the kitchen table, his face empty. He stared through the window at the graveyard. I felt my heart constricting.
“You think a stray bullet hit the little girl?” he said.
“I don’t know what to think.”
“But you feel you shouldn’t have fired at the boat?”
“I should have gotten in my boat and gone after him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I thought he’d get away in the fog.”
“That’s not convincing, Dave.”
“I thought this was my only chance,” I said.
“To do what?”
“To prove he was human.”
“Because you think that may not be the case?”
