“Where’s this black kid now?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“All this is about those diamonds, huh? It doesn’t have squat to do with me or my family, does it?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

He stood up and shook my hand, then walked into his backyard without saying good-bye.

THAT EVENING ALAFAIR went to a book signing at Barnes amp; Noble in Lafayette, with plans to stay over at a friend’s. Molly and I hooked up my boat and trailer, and drove up to Henderson Swamp. It was a fine evening to fish for big-mouth bass. The wind had died, and the islands of willows and cypress trees had taken on a gold cast against the sunset. Clouds of insects gathered in the lee of the islands, and you could see bream popping the surface and occasionally the slick, black-green roll of a bass’s dorsal fin on the edge of lily pads.

Molly had fixed fried-oyster po’boy sandwiches for us and packed several cans of Dr Pepper with crushed ice in a cooler, but I had no appetite and could not concentrate on the perfection of the evening or the fish that were feeding in the shadows of trees that were now etched like pyro-fountains against the sun.

I didn’t want revenge against Ronald Bledsoe. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to do it close up, with a.45, one loaded with 230-grain brass-jacketed hollow-points. I wanted to empty the whole magazine into him. I wanted to smell the good, clean, head-reeling odor of burnt gunpowder and feel the jackhammer recoil of the steel frame in my wrist. I wanted to see Ronald Bledsoe translated into wallpaper.

“Why so quiet?” Molly asked.

“No reason,” I replied.

Had I confessed the nature of my thoughts to Molly, I would not have only frightened or perhaps even repelled her, I would have also revealed my inability to find a legal solution for dealing with Bledsoe and those like him.

Supposedly we are a Christian society, or at least one founded by Christians. According to our self-manufactured mythos, we revere Jesus and Mother Teresa and Saint Francis of Assisi. But I think the truth is otherwise. When we feel collectively threatened, or when we are collectively injured, we want the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday on the job and we want the bad guys smoked, dried, fried, and plowed under with bulldozers.

For that reason, I no longer feel guilt and shame over my own inclinations. But I don’t talk about them, either.

Just as the sun seemed to descend like a molten ball beyond the causeway that spanned the swamp, I cast a Mepps spinner into a cut between two willow islands. There was a current between the islands, and insects that fell from the trees onto the surface were carried into a narrow channel flanged on each side with lily pads. The water was dark and deep and undisturbed. The Mepps arched over the channel and made a tiny splash by a cluster of blooming hyacinths. Just as I began to rotate the handle on my reel, taking the slack from the line, I saw the water swell under the hyacinths as though a pillow of air were rising from the bottom. Then a dorsal fin cut the surface and something hit the Mepps so hard my rod smacked down on the gunwale like a broom handle.

In Louisiana, in freshwater areas, only large-mouth bass hit with that kind of power and force. I socked him hard, setting the treble hook, and tried to lift the rod and keep the tension and weight of the fish off the monofilament. But the tip of my rod arched to the water, bowing so severely I thought it would break, beads of water shining on the line. Then he began stripping the drag, sawing the line under the boat, trying to find a stump or log to wind it around.

Molly used the oars to turn us in a half circle, freeing the line from under the boat and allowing the bass to head up the channel. He came up once, rattling the Mepps at the corner of his mouth, then went deep again and tried to pull the boat. He fought for ten minutes, and when he finally began to swim with the pressure of the line and the hook in his mouth, I knew he was done. It was the kind of victory a fisherman doesn’t necessarily take pride in.

I slipped the net under him and lifted him into the boat. He was heavy and wet and thick-bodied inside the netting, the barbs of the treble hook protruding from the webbed skin at the corner of his mouth. I wet one hand in the water and lifted him, still inside the net, onto the boat seat and worked the hook out of his mouth. Then I cupped him under the belly and eased him back into the water. I could see his gills working, then he dropped away into the current like a green-gold bubble going in the wrong direction.

“Giving dispensations these days?” Molly said.

“Only to warriors and other guys who deserve them,” I said.

She laughed and opened a can of Dr Pepper and drank it in silence. Then a peculiar phenomenon occurred. Maybe it was because the sun had died and we were deeper into the fall. Maybe it was because the stars were out early and the moon was rising. Maybe car lights on the causeway or the evening glow of Lafayette were reflected off the clouds. But in the cut between the two willow islands, in the darkness of the water where I had just placed the valiant bass, I saw lights that were like pieces of a broken mirror swimming about. I saw them as surely as I had caught that fish and felt it fat and heavy and dripping in my palm.

Chapter 23

HOW DO YOU nail the perps when they have no handles?

Tuesday afternoon, just before quitting time, Clete called me at the office. “A guy who’s a regular at the casino just went in Bledsoe’s cottage,” he said. “This dude is a Texas Hold ’ Em player. I saw him reading the back of a package of rubbers in the restroom, in front of about six guys who’d seen him with his girlfriend outside the door.”

“You think he can be a lead?”

“He’s Bledsoe’s kind of guy. Bledsoe has left no trail, but how many of his friends can have the same kind of luck? Doing anything tonight?”

“Not a thing,” I replied.

“Let’s use two vehicles. I’ll stay with them for now. Leave your cell on,” he said.

I was about to hang up when he added, “You won’t believe the jugs on the broad who’s sitting in his convertible. I’m getting a boner just looking through the blinds.”

“Will you act your age and stop talking like that?”

“You’re right. There’s nothing funny about this bunch. Somebody is going to pay for what they did to Courtney. It’s been a while since the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide were under a black flag.”

I wished I hadn’t said anything.

An hour and a half later, while Molly and I were washing the dishes, Clete called again. “I’m about a quarter of a mile behind Bledsoe and his friend and the broad with Elsie-the-Cow bongos. I think they’re headed for the casino. Unless I call you back, we ROA there,” he said.

Roger that, I thought, more casually than I should have.

“Where are you going?” Molly asked.

“Clete has a lead on Bledsoe.”

“I want to go with you.”

“It’s just surveillance. It’s pretty boring stuff.”

“That doesn’t matter. He broke in our home. He urinated in Alafair’s bedroom. My stomach turns when I think about it. She told me he tried to get on as a volunteer at the shelter.”

“He’s going off the board, Molly. It’s a matter of time.”

She stepped closer to me. “You think I have to be protected from reality? I had maryknoll friends who were raped and murdered in El Salvador. Our government didn’t do a goddamn thing about it. Dave, I’m not going to sit around while this man brings his evil into our lives.”

“I understand how you feel.”

“Do you?”

I looked at the earnestness in her face and wanted to hold her. I put my arms around her back, cupping one hand on her neck. She was wearing a sundress and her skin felt cool and warm at the same time under the wood-bladed ceiling fan. I rubbed my cheek against her hair and squeezed her tighter. “I promise I won’t let him hurt us again,” I said.