How about oil? Its extraction and production in Louisiana had set us free from economic bondage to the agricultural oligarchy that had ruled the state from antebellum days well into the mid-twentieth century. But we discovered that our new corporate liege lord had a few warts on his face, too. Like the Great Whore of Babylon, Louisiana was always desirable for her beauty and not her virtue, and when her new corporate suitor plunged into things, he left his mark.
I didn’t revisit Bernadette’s grandmother; instead, I talked to people at a crossroads store, a bait shop, and a trailer settlement. Some of the damage done by Hurricane Rita was still visible: concrete foundations in empty fields, an automobile wedged upside down in a coulee, the wreckage of homes bulldozed in piles as high as small pyramids, and the tangled bones of livestock that had drowned by the tens of thousands, sometimes on rooftops or inside the second stories of farmhouses. But I was struck most by the riparian resilience of the land, the sawgrass that extended as far as the eye could see, the hummocks of gum and persimmon and hackberry and oak trees, the seagulls and brown pelicans that sailed over the mouth of a freshwater river flowing into the Gulf. In moments like these, I knew that Louisiana was still a magical place, not terribly different than it was when Jim Bowie and his business partner the pirate Jean Lafitte smuggled slaves illegally into the United States and kept them in a barracoon, somewhere close to the very spot I was standing on. If anyone doubts the history I’ve described, he can visit an island at the south end of this particular parish and perhaps find some of the skeletal remains for which it is known. The skulls and vertebrae and rib cages and femurs that have washed out of the sand belonged to a shipload of slaves abandoned by a blackbirder sea captain who left them to starve when he feared arrest. Louisiana is a poem, but as with the Homeric epic, it’s not good to examine its heroes too closely.
I parked my pickup at the end of the road and got out on the asphalt and looked southward. In the alluvial sweep of the land, I thought I could see the past and the present and the future all at once, as though time were not sequential in nature but took place without a beginning or an end, like a flash of green light rippling outward from the center of creation, not unlike a dream inside the mind of God.
I could smell the salt out on the Gulf, the baitfish and shrimp in the waves, the warm and stagnant smell of wet sand and dead vegetation and ponded water in the marsh, and the distant hint of rain and electricity in the clouds. It was a grand place to be. Did the seven arpents of land that Bernadette had inherited from her father have anything to do with her death? Her grandmother had said Bernadette wanted to save the bears. The people I spoke to on the south end of the parish said they knew nothing of any attempt to save bears, nor were they sure where Bernadette’s seven arpents might have been located, although they said that many years ago some of the Latiolais family had farmed some rice acreage that had been turned into commercial crawfish ponds. But the ponds had been abandoned because of the importation of Chinese crawfish, and the land was now little more than a soggy swamp.
Plus, Louisiana’s land areas had been drilled and redrilled and offered little in the way of further exploration. The money was in offshore drilling, and to my knowledge, no new refineries were being built in Louisiana. What possible value could Bernadette’s seven arpents have possessed?
At lunchtime I gave up my odyssey and went back to a crossroads service station where I had stopped earlier. I sat on a chair outside facing the Gulf and ate two microwaved lengths of white boudin and a pile of dirty rice and potato salad off a paper plate. Then I went back inside and bought a fried pie and a cup of Community coffee and ate the pie and drank the coffee while I looked out the window at a shrimp boat moving down a canal through the sawgrass, seagulls whirling and dipping over its wake.
“Find out any more about that property you were looking for, Mr. Robicheaux?” the clerk said. He was in his mid-twenties and wore a crew cut and striped strap overalls and a brown T-shirt.
“Not much,” I said. “I’ll probably go to the courthouse and check the records tomorrow.”
“After you left, another man came in and asked me about that property. No, not exactly about the property, but about the girl, the one who was killed?”
“Bernadette Latiolais.”
“Yeah, a man came in and said didn’t that girl come from a family that had a rice or crawfish farm here’bouts.”
“What did this fellow look like?” I asked.
“‘Strange’ is the word I’d use.”
“Strange in what way?”
“His eyes, they didn’t have any pupils.”
“What color were they?”
“Blue. And he had black hair combed up on his head.”
“What else do you remember about him?”
“He had a country accent, but not one from around here. He was grinning all the time, like there was some kind of joke going on between us. Except I couldn’t figure out what the joke was. He had a binocular case hanging from his arm.”
“What kind of car was he driving?”
“I didn’t pay it much mind, sir.”
“What did you tell this fellow?”
“Same thing I told you. I was in the army for the last six years and haven’t kept up much with the news at home. You know this guy?”
“Yes, I do.” I wrote my cell phone number on the back of my business card and gave it to the clerk. “If you see him again, call me. Don’t try to detain him and don’t provoke him.”
“He’s dangerous?”
“Maybe, maybe not. His name is Vidor Perkins. Personally, I wouldn’t touch him with a soiled Q-tip. But that’s just one man’s opinion.”
“A soiled Q-tip?” the ex-soldier said. He shook his head and stuck my card under the corner of his register.
I washed my hands in a sink outside the men’s room and dried them on a paper towel. Through the window I saw a semi go through the intersection, hauling huge machinery of some kind that was snugged down on the flatbed with boomer chains. A low-slung white car, one with charcoal-tinted windows, was following close behind it. The hood was painted with primer so that it resembled a blackened tooth inset in the car body. The driver was obviously irritated by the slow momentum of the semi and kept gunning his engine, swinging out to pass, then ducking back behind the semi’s rear bumper, so close he couldn’t adequately see the road. His engine was loud and sounded too powerful for the vehicle. When he gained a clear spot on the road, he floored the accelerator, his vehicle sinking low and flat on the springs, blowing dust and newspaper in his wake, ripping a strip of gravel out of the road shoulder.
There was a Florida plate on the vehicle, the numbers obscured with dirt. There was also orange rust around the bottoms of the doors and fenders, the kinds of patterns you see in automobiles that have been exposed over a long period of time to a saltwater environment. Any Florida-licensed automobile, particularly one built for high speed, is suspect along the I-10 corridor that runs from Jacksonville all the way to Los Angeles. But for those who transport narcotics, and for the cops who try to put them out of business, the area of concern begins at I-95 in Miami. I-95 feeds into I-10 just north of Lake City, Florida, and a westward journey from that point on allows the transporter to make drop-offs in Tallahassee, Mobile, Biloxi, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Beaumont, and Houston. Like the modern equivalent of Typhoid Mary, one transporter can string systemic misery and death across 20 percent of the country.
Except the transporters have a problem they didn’t anticipate. I-10 is heavily patrolled by narcs in the state of Louisiana, particularly in Iberville Parish. As a consequence, transporters often swing off the interstate and use Old Highway 90 or any number of parish roads that are not patrolled.
“Did you ever see that white car that just went south through the intersection?” I asked the clerk.
“It’s funny you mention it. He drove by here a couple of times. Once right after the guy with the binoculars was in here.”
> “Did you get a look at the driver?”
“No, sir, I didn’t. I only noticed him because of how loud his engine was.”
“If he comes back and you get a look at his tag number, give me a call, will you?”
“Yes, sir, I can do that. What’s the problem with this guy?”
“Probably nothing,” I said.
I drove north on the road, retracing my route, my radio on, my windows down. The air was balmy, the cow pastures on either side of the road emerald-green and dotted with buttercups and pooled with shadows. But I couldn’t shake a feeling that had occurred periodically in my life for decades, often without cause. It was like the tension in a banjo or guitar string that is wrapped too tightly on the peg. Or a tremolo that can travel through the fuselage of an airplane just before you glance out the window and see engine oil blow back across the wing. Or perhaps the cold vapor that wraps around your heart on a night trail, one sown with Bouncing Betties and Chinese toe poppers, or the peculiar distortion in your vision when you climb down into a spider hole and realize you have just touched a thin strand of trip wire attached to a booby-trapped 105 dud.
Years ago I could rid myself of my apprehensions with VA dope and Beam straight up and a Jax back. But I didn’t have my old parachute anymore. So I said the Serenity Prayer that is recited in unison at the beginning of every A.A. meeting in the world. If that didn’t work, I would use the short form of the same prayer, which is “Fuck it” and is not meant as an irreverent statement.
I pulled to the side of the road and took a deep breath. The wind was cool, and gulls were cawing overhead. Not far away, a black family was cane-fishing in a canal, swinging their bobbers onto the edge of the cattails. It was Sunday, I told myself. A day of rest. A respite from anxiety and fear and ambition and greed and all the other forces that seem to drive our lives. A truck pulling an empty cane wagon rattled past me, then a delivery van with a cargo door. A red airplane that looked like a crop sprayer came in low over a field and, just before it reached a power line, gained altitude again and disappeared beyond a windbreak that had been created by a hedgerow of gum trees.
Now the road was totally empty, both behind and ahead of me. I realized that although my radio was still on, I was unaware of what was being broadcast. It was a baseball game. I clicked off the switch and put my truck in gear. I had accomplished virtually nothing on my trip to Jefferson Parish. Maybe I should at least drop by the home of Bernadette Latiolais’s grandmother, I thought. If nothing else, I could offer to drive her somewhere or do a chore for her that she could not do for herself. Something good could come out of my trip.
I parked in front of the grandmother’s white frame house and tapped on the screen door, but no one answered. One of the coffee cans planted with petunias had been blown or knocked off the gallery into the yard. I opened the screen and knocked on the inside door. Then I twisted the handle. The door was locked. I walked around the side of the house and into the backyard. The rear door was locked as well, and all the curtains were closed. No vehicle was parked in the yard. I returned to the front yard and stared at the house. The pecan trees and water oaks on the sides of the house were in partial leaf, and the shadows they cast looked like rain running down the walls and tin roof. I picked up the spilled coffee can and repacked the dirt and uprooted petunias with my fingers, then replaced the can on the porch. Hard by the circular spot where the can had originally stood was a muddy smear, the kind the bottom of a shoe or a boot would make.
I was letting it get away from me. Maybe the grandmother had gone to the home of relatives for Sunday dinner. Maybe she was sick and in the hospital. Maybe she had died. I could not think of any reason she would be in danger.
Unless the seven arpents of land owned by Bernadette Latiolais had automatically reverted upon Bernadette’s death to the grandmother.
I sat down on the steps and dialed 911 on my cell phone and told the dispatcher who and where I was. “Can you send out a cruiser? I’m a little worried about Mrs. Latiolais,” I said.
“What’s the nature of your emergency?”
“I’m not sure there is one. But I’m out of my jurisdiction, and I’d like somebody from your department to help me check things out.”
“We’ll send someone as soon as—” the dispatcher began.
I heard the door open behind me.
CHAPTER
16
WHAT YOU DOIN’ on my gallery?” Bernadette Latiolais’s grandmother said.
“I was looking for you,” I replied, getting up from the step. I told the Jeff Davis dispatcher to cancel my request for a cruiser.
“I was taking a nap. I didn’t know anybody was out here,” the grandmother said. She was silhouetted behind the screen, her thick glasses filled with reflected images of the trees in her yard, her massive weight bent on her walking cane. “Where’s that other one?”
“Other what?” I asked.
“I t’ought he was wit’ you. He used your name. You’re Mr. Robicheaux, aren’t you?”
“That’s correct. Who used my name, Mrs. Latiolais?”
“Mr. Big Foot did. Knocked my li’l flower can in the yard and didn’t pick it up. Just drove on off. In his li’l blue truck.”
“Did he give his name?”
“No, he just give yours. Said he was doing research and was a friend of yours, and wanted to know where my granddaughter’s land was at.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That it was part of a big estate that wasn’t never divided. Maybe it’s on top of the land, maybe it’s underwater. Who cares? My family didn’t even own the oil rights. They was sold for ten dollars an arpent back in the twenties. Why’s he axing me questions?”
“What did this fellow look like?”
“He had a red birt’mark on the back of his neck.”
“Mrs. Latiolais, this man is no friend of mine. He’s an ex-convict by the name of Vidor Perkins. If he comes back, don’t let him in your house for any reason. Call 911 and have a cruiser sent to your home.”
She hobbled out on the porch. Her girth and stooped posture and the entreating manner in which she twisted her head up made me think of a female Quasimodo, stricken and cheated by the fates in ways that were too many to count. “You t’ink he had somet’ing to do wit’ what they done to Bernadette?”
“Maybe, but I can’t be sure.” Then I thought about the words she had just used. “You said ‘they.’”
“Suh?”
“When you mentioned your granddaughter’s death, you indicated that more than one person was involved.”
“’Cause that’s what I t’ink. Bernadette didn’t just go off wit’ some man from a bar, no. She didn’t have no interest in that kind of man. She was an honor student. She had a scholarship to colletch. It wasn’t one man that tricked her or pulled her into a car or somet’ing like that. It took at least a couple of them cowards to do what they done.”
I told her I was sorry for having disturbed her, and I got in my truck. I started the engine and called Clete’s cell phone and ended up with his voice mail. “Clete, I’m just now leaving the home of Bernadette Latiolais’s grandmother. A man who sounds like Vidor Perkins was here today. He was asking questions about the seven arpents of land Bernadette owned. Do those seven arpents coincide with anything you learned from the families of the other dead girls? Call me back ASAP. I might be here awhile.”
As I drove away from the Latiolais home, I could see Mrs. Latiolais in my rearview mirror, still watching me from behind the screen, as though her conversation with me was her only conduit back to the girl who had been stolen from her.
I drove back to the parish road that led north to the interstate and back to New Iberia. But I couldn’t give up my obsession with Bernadette Latiolais and the secrets she had probably taken to the grave. What did she mean when she said she was going to save the bears? What had been her relationship with Kermit Abelard? He claimed he had known her name only because she was a recipient of a
scholarship his family had endowed. Was Kermit lying? Was he covering up for his grandfather or Robert Weingart or perhaps even Layton Blanchet?
I had never met Bernadette Latiolais, but I had come to admire her. In spite of the poverty in which she had been born, and the illiteracy and ignorance that surrounded her, she had graduated from high school with honors and had won a scholarship to a university. She had wanted to be a nurse and to help others and evidently had wanted to protect wild animals in a state where the hunting culture is almost a religion. Where were her friends and advocates now? I believed more and more that Bernadette had died for a cause and that her homicide was not a random one. And my experience has been that people who die for causes have few friends in death.
For reasons I couldn’t quite explain, other than the fact that I believed somehow the geography of this area was linked to Bernadette’s death, I drove down toward the river where I had seen an ancient Acadian cottage that was being used to store hay. Most of the pioneer homes built by the original Acadian settlers have disappeared, destroyed by fire or plowed under by tractors or torn down for the two-hundred-year-old cypress planks in their walls. But each one of them, with its small roofed gallery and twin front doors and tall windows, is a reminder for me of the pastoral Louisiana of my childhood. Clouds had moved across the sun, and I could see rain falling on the south end of the parish. In minutes big raindrops and fine bits of hail were hitting my windshield. I parked by the abandoned Acadian cottage and turned off my engine. Down by the river, I could see the gum trees along the bank growing dimmer and dimmer, the clouds swollen and black as soot now and veined with electricity.