Then I was running out of the rain toward him. I hit him so hard spittle and blood flew from his mouth onto a woman's blouse four feet away. I drove my fist into his kidney, a blow that made his back arch as though his spine had been broken, then I hooked him with a left below the eye and drove a right cross into his jaw that knocked him across a folding table.

A man I didn't know grabbed my arm, and a big uniformed policeman crashed into me from the other side, wrestling with both of his big meaty hands to get his arms around me and smother me against his girth. But even while the two men tried to pull me off of Gable, I kicked him in the side of the head and kicked at him once more and missed his face and shattered his watch on the cement.

I fell over a chair and stared stupidly at the faces looking down at me, like a derelict who has collapsed on a sidewalk and must witness from the cement the pity and revulsion he inspires in his fellowman. Bootsie was between me and Gable now, her face incredulous. A wet cigarette butt clung to my cheek like a mashed cockroach. I could smell whiskey and beer in my clothes and Gable's blood on my knuckles and I swore I could taste whiskey surging out of my stomach into my throat, like an old friend who has come back in a time of need.

Through the sweat and water that dripped out of my hair I saw the governor and people from the crowd lifting Jim Gable to his feet. He was smiling at me, his teeth like pink tombstones in his mouth.

MY HANDS STILL HURT the next morning. I ran cold water over them in the kitchen sink, then drank coffee out on the picnic table in the blueness of the dawn and tried not to think about last night. I walked along the coulee that traversed the back of our property and looked at the periwinkles along the bank, the caladiums and elephant ears beaded with moisture, the willows swelling in the breeze. I wanted to stay in that spot forever and not go into the department on Monday morning, not look at the early edition of the Daily Iberian, not deal with the people who would speak politely to me on a sidewalk or in a courthouse corridor, then whisper to one another after they thought I was out of earshot.

I walked back up toward the house just as the sun rose behind the cypress trees and seemed to flatten like fire inside the swamp. The back of the house was still deep in shadow, but I could see a white envelope taped to Alafair's screen. I pulled it loose and looked at her name written across the front in a flowing calligraphy. The flap was glued, with tiny felt-pen marks that transected both the flap and the body of the envelope so the dried glue could not be broken without the addressee knowing it.

I opened my pocketknife and slit the envelope all the way across the top and removed the folded sheet of stationery inside.

I went down to the bait shop and called Wally, our 275-pound dispatcher at the department, and told him I was taking a vacation day on Monday and not coming in.

"You axed the old man?" he said.

"I have a feeling he'll get in touch," I said.

"Hey, Dave, if I pass the detectives exam, can I hang around wit' y'all, solve big cases, mop the shrimp tails off the floor with New Orleans cops?"

But as I went back on the dock, I wasn't thinking about Wally's sardonic humor or my eventual encounter with the sheriff. I sat at a spool table and read again the letter that was written with the symmetry and baroque curlicues of a self-absorbed artist or what a psychologist would simply call a megalomaniac.

It read:

Dear Alafair,

I had a harsh conversation with your father. But he has tried to destroy our friendship and has also been asking people about my private life, about things that are none of his business.

At first I could not believe your words when you said you couldn't see me again. Did you really mean that? I would never betray you. Would you do that to me? I already know what the answer is.

Remember all our secret meeting places? Just be at any one of them and I'll find you. You're the best person I've ever known, Alafair. We're like the soldier and the girl on the vase. Even though they lived long ago and have probably moldered in the grave, they're still alive inside the arbor on the vase. Death can be beautiful, just like art, and once you're inside either of them, you stay young forever and your love never dies. See you soon.

As ever, Your loyal friend, Johnny

I walked up the slope to the house and went into the bedroom with the letter and showed it to Bootsie.

"My God," she said.

"I'm at a loss on this one."

"Where is she?"

"Still asleep. I'd like to-"

"What?" Bootsie said. She was still in her nightgown, propped on one elbow.

"Nothing," I said.

She sat up and took both my hands in hers. "We can't solve all our problems with violence. Remeta's a sick person," she said.

"It sounds like we're talking about last night instead of Remeta."

She lay back down on the pillow, then turned her head and looked out the window at the pecan and oak trees in the yard, as though fearing that whatever she said next would be wrong.

"You know why I don't believe in capital punishment?" she said. "It empowers the people we execute. We allow them to remake us in their image."

"Gables a degenerate. You didn't see him. I hope I ruptured his spleen."

"I can't take this shit. I can't, I can't, I can't," she said, and sat on the side of the bed, her back stiff with anger.

I FOUND Clete that afternoon, drinking beer, half in the bag, in a St. Martinville bar. The bar had lath walls and a high, stamped ceiling, and because it was raining outside, someone had opened the back door to let in the cool air, and I could see the rain dripping on a banana tree that grew by a brick wall. A group of bikers and their girlfriends were shooting pool in back, yelling each time one of them made a difficult shot, slamming the butts of their cues on the floor.

"Passion tell you I was here?" Clete said. His lap and the area around his stool were littered with popcorn.

"Yeah. Y'all on the outs?"

"She's wrapped up in her own head all the time. I'm tired of guessing at what's going on. I mean who needs it, right?"

"If I wanted to have somebody capped, who would I call?"

"A couple of the asswipes at that pool table would do it for a hand job."

"I'm serious."

"The major talent is still out of Miami. You're actually talking about having somebody smoked? You must have had a bad day, Streak."

"It's getting worse, too."

"What's that mean?"

"Nothing. I want to throw a steel net over Johnny Remeta. Most button men know each other."

"I already tried. A stone killer in Little Havana, a guy who goes back to the days of Johnny Roselli? He hung up on me as soon as I mentioned Remeta's name. What's Remeta done now?"

"He's got a death wish. I think he wants to take Alafair with him."

Clete's face was flushed and he wiped the heat and oil out of his eyes with a paper napkin. The pool players yelled at another extraordinary shot.

"How about putting it under a glass bell, Jack?" Clete said to them, then looked back at me, a half-smile on his face, his eyes slightly out of focus. "Say all that again?"

"I'll catch you another time, Cletus."

He removed a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and stared at it.

"What's scareoderm mean? I couldn't find it in the dictionary," he said.

"I don't know. Why?"

"I took Passion to the doctor yesterday. I heard the nurses talking about her. I wrote that word down."

"You mean scleroderma?" I asked.