James Burke - Last Car to Elysian Fields

“So what happened today?” she asked.

I told her.

“Will Guillot creeped the psychiatrist’s office and stole Theo Flan-nigan’s file so he could blackmail Castille LeJeune?” she said.

“It’s more serious than that. I think he murdered the psychiatrist on orders from Castille LeJeune. He was probably supposed to deliver the file back to LeJeune, but he either didn’t do that or he xeroxed it and is using it to take over the old man’s business.”

Through the window I saw a hearse pass on its way to the funeral home on St. Peter Street. I got up from my desk and let down the Venetian blinds. My office suddenly seemed hermetically sealed, artificially lit, shut off from the rest of the world.

“You unhappy about something?” Helen said.

“No. Everything is fine.”

She looked somberly at my face. “Have dinner with me, Pops,” she said.

“Why not?” I said.

That evening I walked into the kitchen while Father Jimmie was on the phone. Unconsciously he turned his back to me, rounding his shoulders, as though somehow creating a shell around his conversation.

“I believe you, but we’ll do this on my terms. No, you have my word. I’ll be there. Now, good-bye,” he said. After he hung up he turned around and grinned sheepishly. “I get calls from a neurotic parishioner once in a while,” he said.

“Was that one of them?” I asked.

“Let’s don’t clutter up the evening, Dave.”

“You’re meeting Max Coll?”

“He’s ready to change his way. I can’t deny him reconciliation or communion.”

“Coll is planning to kill somebody. But you’re supposed to repair his soul so he can sneak into heaven through a side window?”

“That last sentence describes two thirds of my constituency,” he said.

He picked up Snuggs and a box of cat food and went out on the back steps to feed him.

“I already fed him,” I said.

“He’s a warrior. He needs extra rations,” Father Jimmie replied.

There was no moon that night. Screech owls were screaming in the trees and the humidity was so thick I could hear moisture ticking in the leaves on the ground. Father Jimmie had gone out, although I had no idea where. I went into the small office I had created in my rented house and sat at the desk and began writing a letter to Alafair.

Dear Alf,

We’re going to have a swell time at Christmas. Clete’s in town and is anxious to see you, as of course am I. How is your novel going? I bet it’s going to be a fine one. Hope you’re through exams by now. Don’t be too worried about grades. You always did well in school and college is not going to be any different. Would you like to take a ride out on the salt if the weather permits? Batist says he’s found a new spot for redfish by Southwest Pass.

The images out of the past, created by my own words, made my eyes film.

I saw Bootsie, Alafair, and me in the stern of our boat, with Batist at the wheel, the throttle full out, slapping across West Cote Blanche Bay at sunrise, the salt spray like a wet kiss on a spring morning.

I put aside the letter and stared at the guns mounted on the gun-rack I had screwed into the wall: an AR-15, a sporterized ‘03 Springfield, and my old Remington twelve-gauge, the barrel sawed off even with the pump, the sportsman’s plug long ago removed from the magazine.

I knew what had been on my mind all afternoon and evening. Since I had interviewed Gretchen Peltier at the insurance office in Abbeville I’d had little doubt about Will Guillot’s involvement in the burglary of Dr. Bernstine’s office and Bernstine’s death by gunshot in Lafayette’s Girard Park. I also had no doubt he was mixed up in pornography and narcotics and the blackmail of Castille LeJeune. The problem was his crimes had all been committed in other parishes, and there was no way to hang the killing of either Sammy Figorelli or the drive-by daiquiri store operator in New Iberia on him.

In order to get at him and subsequently Castille LeJeune, I would have to work with at least three other law-enforcement agencies. Then the legal processes of indictment and prosecution would be turned entirely over to others, perhaps in a parish Castille LeJeune controlled.

I turned off the light and sat in the darkness with the twelve-gauge across my lap. The steel and the wood of the stock felt cool against my palms. I opened the breech and smelled the odor of the machine oil I had used to clean the chamber and the magazine, then set the stock butt-down between my legs, moving my thumb along the edges of the barrel where I had sawed it off and sanded it smooth with emery paper.

I thought about my dead wife Bootsie and the systemic corruption of the place I loved and the inhumanity and cruelty that had been visited upon a great blues artist like Junior Crudup.

I removed a box of double-ought buckshot from my closet shelf and began pressing a handful of shells one at a time into the magazine of my Remington. I sat in the darkness a long time, the gun resting on my knees, my mind free of all thought, a strange numbness in my body. Then I ejected the shells and replaced them one by one in their box, set the shotgun back in the rack, and took a walk down by the drawbridge. A lighted tug was waiting for the bridge tender to raise the bridge. I waved at him in the pilot house and he waved back at me, then I walked back home and went to bed, with Snuggs sleeping at the foot.

The next day, Friday, I contacted Joe Dupree in Lafayette, and we went to work on getting a search warrant on Will Guillot’s home and place of business. But it was going to be a long haul. The warrant request was based on statements made by Gretchen Peltier, the psychiatrist’s former secretary, about a break-in committed in Lafayette by a man who lived in Franklin. Also, Will Guillot was probably many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. It was highly unlikely he would keep the stolen case file, which he was using to blackmail Castille LeJeune, in either his home or office.

There are days in law enforcement, just like those at the craps table, when you think the dice have no combinations on them except treys and boxcars. Then suddenly they magically bounce off the backboard, all elevens and sevens.

Just before quitting time Helen opened my door and leaned inside. “The sheriff in St. Mary just called. Will Guillot made a prowler report last night. The city cops who responded told him there’d been a peeping Tom in the neighborhood, but Guillot seemed to think it was someone else.”

“Who?”

“He was walking around in the yard with a gun and not saying.”

“Thanks for passing it on,” I said.

I continued with the paperwork I was doing, my expression flat. I thought she was about to close the door and go back to her office but instead she approached my desk, her eyes on mine.

“My words don’t have much influence on you. But be careful, Dave.

Don’t give power to a guy like Castille LeJeune,” she said.

“I hear you,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said.

At 5 P.M. I went home, reloaded my cut-down twelve-gauge, locked it in the steel box that was welded to the bed of my pickup truck, and drove to Clete’s cottage at the motor court.

He was outside, grilling a chicken, drinking from a quart bottle of beer, his eyes watering in the smoke, the collar of his jacket pulled up around his neck, his utility cap cocked sideways.

“What’s shakin’, big mon?” he said.

“Think the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide should make a house call down in Franklin?” I said.

“Oh my, yes indeedy,” he replied, as though the statement were one word.

The shrubs and gazebo and wide gallery of Will Guillot’s house were threaded with Christmas lights, and sequined cutouts of reindeer, with tinted flood lamps aimed at them, were spiked into the lawn. We pulled into the driveway and parked just inches from where Dr. Parks had bled to death on the cement. I unlocked the steel box in the truck bed, removed my cut-down twelve-gauge, and tossed it to Clete. He went into the shrubbery with it, deliberately silhouetting against the Christmas lights and tinted flood lamps the barrel held at an upward angle. As I walked up on the gallery I saw Will Guillot pull aside a curtain on a tall window and look outside. I hung my badge holder on the breast pocket of my sports coat and banged hard on the door with the flat of my fist.