She nodded. "Okay. I'll call you there tomorrow as soon as I have something."

"Great." A man and a woman and an Akita walked past. The Akita was a big brindle pinto, and watched me suspiciously as his people nodded h.e.l.lo. I said, "Good-looking dog."

The man said, "Thanks."

Lucy and I stood silently until they were gone, vanishing gently in the humid dark.

We looked at each other. "This is the second time you've fed me. Thanks again."

"It's an ugly job, but somebody's gotta do it."

We both grinned. I said, "Oh, man. Dueling comedians."

She looked at me carefully and said, "I have a good time with you."

I nodded. "Me, too."

Then she said, "Oh, d.a.m.n." She leaned forward, kissed me, then pulled away. "I've just kissed a man who ate dog. Yuck."

She ran back into her house.

I guess there are lines, but sometimes lines bend.

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 h.e.l.l 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 b.u.t.tafucco 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. Ren+!.

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 doork.n.o.b 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 b.u.t.ton. 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d."

"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 pa.s.sing 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.

I went back inside and double-locked the door and wedged one of the flimsy motel chairs under the k.n.o.b. The locks and the chair wouldn't keep out a guy like Rend, but there was always the Dan Wesson.

I lay on the bed and tried to sleep, but sleep, like love, is not always there when you want it.

Chapter 14.

T he phone in my room rang at 9:14 the next morning as I stepped out of the shower. I had been up early, eating breakfast at the diner across from what used to be Jimmie Ray's office and waiting for the morning paper. A couple of police cars had been outside the fish market, but when the paper came there was nothing in it about Jimmie Ray's murder. Not enough lead time, I guess. When I answered the phone, Lucy Chenier said, "I spoke with my friend at BRPD.""Could he identify Leon Williams?" I toweled off as I listened.

"Yes. Leon Williams was killed by a single gunshot to the head on May 12, thirty-six years ago, in Ville Platte."

"Sonof.a.gun."

"There was an investigation by the Ville Platte police and the Evangeline Parish Sheriff's Department, but there were no suspects and no one was arrested for the crime. The case currently resides in the unsolved homicide file."

"My first move in Ville Platte was to scan through the microfiche at the local library. The May films were missing."

"Do you think it's connected?"

"Maybe. Maybe there's something in the local news coverage that someone didn't want us to see."

She didn't say anything for a time. "There's LSU. The School of Journalism keeps an extensive library of state papers. You might be able to find it there."

"That sounds good. I'll check it out."

She paused again. "Have you heard anything about Mr. Rebenack?"

I told her about the cops at his office and the local papers. I left out the part about wedging the chair against the door because I was scared.

She said, "Is there any way they can connect you to him?"

"I move with the silence of a stalking leopard. I leave less evidence than a pa.s.sing shadow. I am invisible as is the breeze."

She sighed. "Yes, well, we have an able staff of criminal attorneys should you need us."

"Hey, the fragile male ego needs constant reinforcement, not cheap humor."

"My rates are anything but cheap, Mr. Cole, I a.s.sure you." Then she said, "I enjoyed myself last night, Elvis. I hope we can get together again."

"I could probably be there in thirty minutes. Faster, if I run down the highway naked."

She laughed. "That would probably be worth seeing, but I think you should concentrate on Leon Williams."

" 'Probably'?"

"Ah, the male ego is indeed a fragile beast."

Lucy hung up. I got the LSU School of Journalism's number from Information, called, and spoke with a woman who sounded to be in her fifties. I explained what I wanted and she told me that she'd have to connect me with the journalism library. A man came on the line. "May I help you?"

"I'm looking for the Ville Platte Gazette." I told him the year and the month. "Would you guys have that on microfiche?"

"Can you hold while I check?"

"Sure."

He came back on the line maybe thirty seconds later. Fast checker. "We have it. Would you like me to put it aside?"

"Please." I gave him my name and told him that I was coming from Ville Platte but that I would be there directly. He said fine. Maybe things were looking up. Maybe I was getting to the bottom of this and, once reaching the bottom, would bounce over the top. Of course, reaching the bottom can sometimes be painful, but we try not to think of that. Imagine an egg.

One hour and ten minutes later I drove through a wide gate that said Louisiana State University. A young guy in an information kiosk gave me a map of the university, pointed out the journalism building, then told me to park in a big lot by the football stadium. I left the car where he told me, then walked back between Tiger stadium and the basketball arena where Pistol Pete Maravich used to rack up forty-four points a game. The House that Pete Built. It was a pretty campus with green lawns and curved walkways, and I remembered once hearing the radio broadcast of an LSU basketball game in which Maravich scored fifty-five points against Alabama. It was in 1970, and I was in the army at Fort Benning, Georgia. Ranger School. A guy in my platoon named James Munster was from Alabama and loved basketball. His parents had recorded the game and sent it to him and six of us listened to the tape on a Sat.u.r.day night. Jimmy Munster loved the Crimson Tide and he hated LSU, but could only shake his head at the miracle that was Pistol Pete Maravich, saying, "What can you do? That guy owns the basket. What can you do?" Seven months later Specialist Fourth Cla.s.s James Munster died in a VC ambush while on a long-range reconnaissance patrol just south of the Cambodian highlands. He was eighteen years old. I still remember the score of that game. LSU 90, Alabama 83.

A clutch of coeds in biking shorts and T-shirts cut so diat you could see their midriffs pa.s.sed and smiled at me, and I smiled back. Southern belles. A little sign saying TENNIS STADIUM pointed past the arena, and I thought maybe it'd be fun to see where Lucy had played, but then I thought it might be more fun if she were with me to give me the tour. Have to ignore the coeds, though.

I walked up a little hill and past a couple of stately buildings and into Memorial Hall, also known as the School of Journalism. The kid in the kiosk had told me that the journalism library was in the bas.e.m.e.nt, so I found the stairs, went down, and wandered around for twenty minutes before I located the right door. Professional detection at its finest.

A bald guy in his early thirties was sitting with a placard that said RESEARCH. He looked up from a textbook and said, "May I help you?"

I told him that I had called a little while ago. I told him it was about the Ville Platte Gazette.

He said, "Oh, yeah. I've got it right here." He had a little box on his desk. "You a student?"

"Nope."

"I'll need your driver's license, and I'll need you to sign right here. You can use any of the cubicles down that aisle."

I gave him my driver's license, signed where he wanted, then took the single spool of microfiche film to the first cubicle and threaded it into the projector. On May 13, there was a short article on stating that a male Negro named Leon Ca.s.sius Williams, age 14, had been found floating at the south bank of Bayou Maurapaus by two kids fishing for mudcats. Sheriff Andrus Duplasus stated that the cause of death was a single .38 caliber gunshot wound to the head, and that there were no leads at present. The article ended by saying that Leon Ca.s.sius Williams was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Robert T. Williams, of Ville Platte, and that services were scheduled at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The entire article was four inches long, and set between an ad for Carter's Little Liver Pills and an article about a guy who'd caught an eight-pound large-mouthed ba.s.s in Bayou Nezpique.

On May 17, another short article appeared on , this one reporting that Leon Ca.s.sius Williams, 14, found murdered the week before, had been laid to rest. An obituary included within the article said that Leon was survived by his mother and father and three siblings, all of whom were listed, along with their ages. I copied the list. Sheriff Duplasus was quoted as saying that there were no new developments in the case. The last article relating to Leon Williams appeared on of the May 28 paper. Sheriff Duplasus reported that investigations within the Negro community had led him to believe that Leon Williams was murdered by a Negro transient seen earlier that day, and that the murder very likely resulted from a dispute over a gambling debt. Duplasus said that he was continuing to compile evidence, and had issued a description to state police authorities, but that the chances for an arrest were minimal. None of Leon Williams's survivors were referred to except for a single quote from Mrs. Robert T. Williams, who said, "I feel like they robbed my heart. I pray the good Lord watches after my baby."

When I reached the end of the film I turned off the projector and thought about what I had found. Leon Williams, a fourteen-year-old African-American male, had been murdered, and the murder was unsolved. Nothing in the articles indicated a connection to the Johnson family, or to any other princ.i.p.al in my investigation. I had thought there might be, but there you go. Nada. Jimmie Ray Rebenack was very likely the guy who had stolen the May microfiche film from the Ville Platte Library. I didn't know that, and I hadn't found it at his home, but it made sense. Jimmie Ray had found some significance in Leon and had made note of him. Since Jimmie Ray had done all right with the other stuff, further investigation was in order.

I brought the film back to the bald guy, then went to a bank of pay phones at the side of the building. There were three names on the list of Leon Williams's siblings: Lawrence, 17; Robert, Jr., 15; and Chantel Louise, 10. Thirty-six years later, Lawrence would be fifty-two and Chantel Louise forty-six. Chantel Louise would very likely have a different last name. I called Ville Platte Information and asked for numbers and addresses for Lawrence Williams and Robert Williams, Jr. There was no listing for a Robert Williams, Jr., but they had Lawrence. I copied his number and address, thanked the operator, then dialed Lawrence Williams. On the third ring, a woman with a precise voice answered. I said, "May I speak with Mr. Lawrence Williams, please?"

There was a pause, and then she said, "I'm sorry, but Mr. Williams is deceased. May I help you?" Deceased.

"Is this Mrs. Williams?"

"Yes, I am Mrs. Lawrence Williams. Who is calling, please?"

I told her my name. "Mrs. Williams, did your husband have a younger brother named Leon?"

"Why, yes. Yes, he did. Leon died, though, when they were boys. He was murdered." Maybe this was going to work out after all.

"That's why I'm calling, Mrs. Williams. I'm a private investigator, and I'm looking into the murder. Did Mr. Williams speak about it with you?"

"Mr. Williams did not. I'm afraid I can't help you."