CHAPTER 13

T he night canopy above the Atchafalaya Basin was velvet black as I drove through the sugar cane and the sweet potato fields and the living earth back to Ville Platte. A woman I had known for approximately four days had given me what was maybe the world's shortest kiss, and I could not stop smiling about it. A lawyer, no less.

I folded up the grin and put it away and rolled down the window and breathed. Come to your senses, Cole. The air was warm and rich and alive with the smells of water and loam soil and blossoming plants. The sky was a cascade of stars. I started singing. I stopped singing and glanced in the mirror. Smiling, again. I let the smile stay and drove on. To hell with senses.

When I got back to Ville Platte there was a message from Jimmie Ray on the motel's voice mail system, his voice tight and sounding scared. "This is Jimmie Ray Rebenack and you really put me in a world of hurt, podnuh." You could hear him breathing into the phone. The breathing was strained. "It's twenty after six right now, and I need to talk to ya. I'm at home." He said the number and hung up.

It was now ten fifty-two, and there were no other messages in the voice mail.

I dialed his number and got a busy signal. I took off my shirt, then went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. I dialed his number again and again got a busy signal. I dialed his office, got his answering machine, and hung up without leaving a message. I redialed his home. Busy. I called the operator. "I need an emergency break-in."

"Number, please?"

I gave her the number. She went away for a little bit and then she came back. "I'm sorry, sir, but that number seems to be off the hook."

"He's not on the line?"

"No, sir. The phone's probably just off the hook. It happens all the time."

I put my shirt back on and drove once more to Jimmie Ray's house. A couple of houses on his street were still bright with life, but most of the street was dark and still. Jimmie Ray's Mustang was parked at the curb in a dapple of moonshadows, and the front upstairs window of his duplex was lighted. The bedroom. Probably with a woman. They had probably been thrashing around and had knocked the phone out of its cradle. I left my car on the street, went to his front door, and rang the bell. I could hear the buzzer go off inside, but that was it. No giggles. No people scrambling for their clothes. I rang the bell twice more, then went around the side of the house and let myself in through the back exactly as I had twelve hours ago.

The ground floor was dark, and the kitchen still smelled of fried food, but now there was a sharp, ugly smell beneath it. I moved across the kitchen and stood in the darkness, listening. Light from the upstairs filtered down the stairwell and put a faint yellow glow in Jimmie Ray Rebenack's bachelor-pad living room. I said, "Oh, Jimmie. You goof."

The imitation zebra skin couch was tipped over on its back and Jimmie Ray Rebenack was lying across it, head down and arms out, Joey Buttafucco boots pointing toward the ceiling. The living room phone had been knocked off its hook when the couch went over. I took out the Dan Wesson, held it along my thigh, and went past Jimmie Ray to the stairs and listened again. Nothing. I went back to Jimmie Ray and looked without touching him. His neck was bent at a profound and unnatural angle, as if the vertebrae there had been separated by some tremendous force. His neck didn't get that way by tripping over the couch or by falling down the stairs. It took a car wreck to do that to a neck. Or a four-story fall. His face was dark with lividity, and the big, stiff pompadour was crushed and matted on one side, the way it might be if someone with large hands had grabbed his head and pushed very hard to make the neck fail. René.

I went upstairs and looked in the two rooms, but everything was pretty much as it had been twelve hours ago, the magazines and posters still in their places in the back room, the bed still rumpled in the front room. The pants he had worn at Rossier's crawfish farm were soaking in the upstairs lavatory. Getting out the pee stains. The front bedroom's light was on, and the room showed no evidence of a search or other invasion. No one had come to search. No one had come to steal. Whoever had been here had come only to murder Jimmie Ray Rebenack, and they had probably done it not so very long after he'd called me. Maybe Jimmie Ray had finally realized that he was in over his head and had called for help. That was possible. A lot of things are possible until you're dead.

The message counter on Jimmie Ray's answering machine showed three messages. The first was a young woman who did not identify herself and who said that she missed Jimmie Ray and wanted to speak with him. The second message was from a guy named Phil who wanted to know if Jimmie Ray would like to pick up a couple of days' mechanic work. Phil left a number and said he needed to hear by Friday. The third message was the young woman again, only this time she sounded irritated. She said she thought that Jimmie Ray was rotten for not calling her, but then her voice softened and said she really did wish he'd call because she really, really missed him. She whispered, "I love you, Jimmie," and then she hung up. There were no other messages. So long, Jimmie Ray.

I left the upstairs light on and the rooms as I'd found them and Jimmie Ray Rebenack's body in its frozen position across the overturned couch. I wiped the kitchen doorknob and the places on the jamb I might have touched, and then I let myself out and went around to the front porch and wiped the doorbell button. I called the police from a pay phone outside a Winn-Dixie supermarket. I gave them Jimmie Ray's address twice, then said that there was a body on the premises. I hung up, wiped the phone, and went back to the motel where I called Lucy Chenier. Two hours ago I'd been feeling pretty good about things.

Lucy answered on the second ring, her voice clear the way it might be if she were awake and working. I said, "Rebenack's been murdered."

"Oh, Jesus God. How?"

"I think it was Rossier, but I can't be sure. I think he paid off Jimmie for the double-dealing."

She blew a loud breath. "Did you call the police?"

"Yes, but I didn't identify myself."

"They'll want to speak with you."

"If I talk with them I'll bring in Jodi Taylor, and I don't want to do that. Do you see?"

She said, "Oh, my God."

"Do you see?"

It took her a few seconds to answer. "I understand. What are you going to do?"

"Wait for you to find out about Leon Williams."

She paused again. "Are you all right, Elvis?"

"Sure."

"You sound upset."

"I'm fine."

"If you want to talk, I'm here."

"I know. Call me when you find out about Leon Williams."

We hung up, and in that moment my little motel room there in Ville Platte, Louisiana, became more empty than any room I have ever known. There were the sounds of crickets and frogs and the rumble of a passing truck, but the sounds seemed to heighten the emptiness rather than fill it. The cheap motel furniture stood out in a kind of stark clarity, as if everything were magnified through some great invisible lens, and the emptiness became oppressive.

I turned off the light and went out into the parking lot and breathed the warm air. I had come two thousand miles believing that I had been hired to uncover a woman's medical history, and now a man was dead. He was a goof and an extortionist, but somewhere near his final moment a young woman had called and said that she loved him. I wondered if he had played back the message. Jimmie Ray Rebenack was just the kind of guy who would have missed the message, or, if he'd heard it, wouldn't have listened. Guys like Jimmie Ray never quite learn that love doesn't visit often, and that even when it comes, it can always change its mind and walk away. You never know.