I nodded. "Forget it."

He looked down at his pants. "Jesus, I look like I wet myself."

Pike handed Boudreaux a handkerchief.

Boudreaux wiped at his hands and his face, then blew his nose. "I ain't cried like that since I was a kid. I'm ashamed of myself."

I said, "You ready to talk about this?"

He offered the handkerchief back to Pike but Pike shook his head. Boudreaux shrugged. "Jesus, I don't know what to do. If I knew what to do, I wouldn't be in this fix." He blew his nose into the handkerchief again, then put it into his pocket. "I gotta talk with Edie."

"Your choices are limited, Jo-el. The one choice you do not have is inaction. Inaction has led to this, and I will not allow this to continue."

He nodded and looked at the water. It was muddy and still and probably didn't offer much in the way of advice to him. He said, "Man, isn't this a mess. Isn't this a goddamned mess." He looked at the shallow grave and what was in it. "Shit."

Pike said, "There's a way to survive this."

When he said it something cold washed down my spine. I said, "Joe."

Jo-el Boudreaux squinted at Pike, his eyes curious and hopeful. "What?"

Pike said, "Prima's at war with another coyote named Frank Escobar. Escobar's been trying to take out Prima because Prima's cutting into his trade. If he knew that Rossier was in business with Prima, and he knew how to get to them, he might take them out."

Jo-el Boudreaux's left eye began ticking. He stared at Pike, and then he looked at me. "That's murder."

I said, "I don't know if this is helping, Joe."

Pike said, "We could make it happen. Rossier's gone. Prima's gone. You bust Escobar." He cocked his head, and the hot Louisiana sun gleamed off his glasses. "No one ever has to know what Rossier knows." He cocked his head the other way. "You see?" The world according to Pike.

Jo-el Boudreaux wet his lips and looked shaken. "Jesus Christ, I don't know."

I said, "There are a couple of ways to go with this, but what you can't do is nothing. Doing nothing is why those people died." I pointed at the little grave. "If Jodi Taylor's back, I'll have to see her. I have to see Lucy Chenier. You have until tomorrow, Jo-el. Talk about all of this with Edith and decide. We'll call you tomorrow."

He was nodding again. "Okay. Yeah. Sure. Tomorrow." He wet his lips again, then looked again at the little grave and shook his head. He said, "Those poor folks. Those poor folks." He started back toward the highway car.

"Where are you going?"

He answered without looking back at me. "Gotta get the coroner's people out here and recover these bodies. Can't just let these folks stay like that."

He vanished behind the emerald green cane and the sawgrass.

Pike said, "What do you think he'll do?"

I shook my head. "I don't know, but I hope he does something."

We waited beside the little grave, the two of us staring down at the old man's arm, reaching up out of the earth, reaching as if he was trying to find his way back from darkness.

CHAPTER 30

T wo Evangeline Parish sheriff's cars and a gray van from the parish coroner's office came out to disinter the bodies. A powder blue Buick sedan arrived a few minutes later, driven by a man named Deets Boedicker. Boedicker owned a Dodge-Chrysler dealership and had been elected coroner, a job that mostly consisted of overseeing the technicians from Able Brothers Mortuary to make sure they didn't screw up any evidence until the police had finished with the scene. Able Brothers had a contract with the parish. When the police had finished with their photographs and measurements, Boedicker asked how the bodies were discovered, and Sheriff Boudreaux said that a couple of kids fishing for channel cats in a bateau had found them and phoned it in. Boedicker said, "Looks like a couple of Mexes to me. Ain't that just the thing? Sure been a lot of Mexes around here lately." I guess that was the extent of his expertise.

Sheriff Boudreaux told a young black deputy named Berry to finish up with the mortuary people, and then he drove us back to the Eunice substation. None of the cops or coroner's people had asked who we were or why we were on the scene. I guess they had grown used to not asking questions, and the thought of that bothered me, but perhaps it should have bothered me more.

We reached the hotel in Baton Rouge at eight minutes after seven and went to our rooms to shower and change. I asked the front desk people if Jodi Taylor had checked in, and they said she had, but when I called her room she wasn't there. I called Lucy at home, and asked if Jodi was with her.

"Yes, she is. She flew in yesterday."

"Good. I found out what's going on. I spoke with Boudreaux, and I should tell Jodi about it. Things are going to happen, and they'll probably happen quickly, and she might be affected."

"We've already eaten, but you and Joe could come over for dessert and we can discuss it."

I told her that that would be fine, and then I showered and changed and rapped on Joe Pike's door. He didn't answer, so I let myself in, thinking he might be in the shower. He wasn't. There was a haze of fog on the bathroom mirror, but all water had been wiped from the tub and the damp towels had been folded and rehung on their racks. The room was immaculate, the bedspread military tight, the magazines squared on the table by the window, the chairs undimpled by the weight of a reclining body. The only sign that he was here or ever had been was the olive green duffel on the closet floor. It was zipped shut and locked with a tempered steel Master Lock. Now you see him, now you don't. Off doing Pike things, no doubt.

At ten minutes before eight, Lucy let me into her home with a smile that was as warm as the sun glittering off dew-covered grass. I said, "Hi."

She said hi back. The master and mistress of restraint.

Jodi Taylor was standing behind her in the entry with a glass of red wine, clearly expectant. But where it was easy to look at Lucy, it was hard for me to look at Jodi. It would be harder still to tell her the things I would tell her. Jodi said, "Did you find out what's going on?"

"Yes. We need to talk about it."

Lucy led us to the kitchen. The lights in the backyard were on, and Ben and another boy were using the rope to climb into the pecan tree. A black-and-white dog ran in frantic circles around the base of the tree, its rear end high and happy.

Lucy said, "I have a key lime pie. Would you like coffee?"

"How about a beer?"

She took a bottle of Dixie from the Sub-Zero and opened it for me. I drank some. The key lime pie was sitting on the counter beside a little stack of glass dessert plates and forks and cloth napkins. Two pieces of the pie were missing, and I deducted that the two boys in the yard had probably already had their dessert. I am a powerhouse of deduction. A veritable master of the art.

Jodi said, "What's wrong? Why aren't you saying anything?"

I had more of the beer and watched Lucy cut equal slices of the pie and put the pie on the plates.

Jodi pulled at my arm. "Why do I think that something's wrong?"

"Because something is. Rossier and a guy named Donaldo Prima bring in illegal aliens, and sometimes it works out but sometimes it doesn't, and they don't much care." I went through.everything. There was a kind of comfort in the telling, as if with each telling the memory of it would become less clear, the sharp lines of the old man and the young girl less distinct.

When I told the part about Donaldo Prima killing the old man, Jodi said, "Waitaminute. This man murdered someone?"

"Yes."

"You actually saw a murder!"

I said yes again.

Jodi looked at her wineglass. Lucy caught the look, and refilled the glass. Jodi said, "I can't believe this. I'm an actress. I sing, for God's sake." She shook her head and looked at the two boys. Outside, Ben was hanging upside down on the rope, and the other boy was pushing him. Moths and June bugs swarmed around the patio lights. The black-and-white dog danced happily. Inside, the adults were discussing murder and human degradation. Just another day in middle-class America.