New Iberia has always been an insular place, Shintoistic, protective of its traditions, virtually incestuous in its familial relationships and attitudes toward outsiders. It did not take long for the rumors to start about me and Molly Boyle. One week after our tryst in the motel outside Morgan City, Molly received a call from a priest in the diocesan office. He was an elderly, genteel man who obviously did not enjoy the charge that had been given him. He asked about her health, how she was doing in her work, was there any problem in her life that either he or another clergy member could help her with.

"No, but it's very thoughtful of you to ask," she replied. "Everything is wonderful here, Father. Come visit us sometime."

"Well, I guess that answers that," he said. Then, probably because of his years and his long experience with human frailty and the harsh judgment the world can visit upon the innocent, his voice changed. "Take care of yourself, Molly. You're a good girl. Don't load the gun so others can hurt you."

That same day, Helen tapped on my door. "How you doin', Streak?" she said.

"Right as rain," I replied.

She sat on the corner of my desk and fed a stick of gum into her mouth. Her triceps were ridged like rolls of nickels. "I've gotten three phone calls and several anonymous letters about someone you might be seeing," she said.

"Who might that be?"

She chewed her gum, her eyes roving over my face. "I'm your friend, bwana. Don't treat me disrespectfully."

"A person's private life is his private life," I said.

"That might flush in San Francisco, but not on Bayou Teche. If you're involved with a Catholic nun, I'd damn well better know about it."

"The person you're talking about never took vows. In fact, she's been thinking about returning to the role of a lay person. She's a person of enormous conscience."

My words sounded rehearsed, even to me, as though I had read them off an index card. Helen looked out the window at a freight train wobbling down the tracks between two rows of shacks. "They're going to put you inside the Iron Maiden," she said.

"Who's 'they'?" I said.

"Take your choice," she replied.

Three more days went by. People were polite to me on the street and at the supermarket or the filling station, but it was obvious that something in my life had changed. Few stopped to talk, and none joined me at a coffee counter or table in a restaurant. Those who could not escape a social encounter with me held their eyes steadily on mine, fearful I would read the knowledge that was hidden there. Frequently another cop gave me a thumbs-up or hit me on the shoulder, as if I were spiritually ill. I even cornered one of them in the department's men's room and learned quickly that acceptance of sympathy is not without a price.

"I look like the walking wounded?" I said, and tried to grin.

"Thought you needed a boost in morale, Dave, is all I was doing. Didn't mean to get in your face," he said.

"Can you spell that out?"

"My ex spread rumors I molested my stepdaughter. So I know where you're at right now. I say, screw all them people. You know the troot' about my situation? She come on to me. But don't nobody care about the troot'. So I'm like you, screw 'em."

Then, just before quitting time, a phone call changed my perspective in ways I could not quite put together. It was from Dana Magelli in New Orleans. "We got the DNA report back on Holly Blankenship. It's a match," he said.

"Match with what?" I said.

"The Baton Rouge serial killer. He killed her within twelve hours of the time you and Purcel interviewed her. I don't get it, Dave. This guy hasn't struck in New Orleans, but he shows up in town the same day you do and murders a hooker. That's not the guy's M.O. So far, he's left street people alone. Got any thoughts?"

"No."

"Gee, I wish I had that kind of latitude. Blow into town, blow out of town, body dumped in a trash pit, sayonara, sonofabitch. Can I get a job over there?"

I wanted to be angry at Dana, but I couldn't. The fact the Baton Rouge serial killer had targeted a teenage prostitute, a girl who bore no similarity to his other victims, indicated either a dramatic change in the nature of his obsession or the possibility he was sending a message.

"Did you hear me?" he said.

"Yeah, I did. I wish I hadn't gotten near that girl," I replied.

That evening I stood outside my bedroom window, staring at the indentations sculpted into my flower bed. Were these from the workboots of the Baton Rouge serial killer? I called Mack Bertrand, our forensic chemist, at his home. "Can you make some casts in my flower bed?" I said.

"We're a little backed up, but, yeah, what d'you got, Dave?" he said.

"Maybe just a Peeping Tom."

"Can you be a little more forthcoming?"

"I interviewed the latest serial killer's victim shortly before she was killed. Maybe the guy knows me."

Mack was quiet a moment, and I realized how grandiose if not paranoid my statement must have sounded. But Mack was always a gentleman. "We'll get it done first thing in the morning, podna," he said.

That night I placed flowers on Bootsie's tomb in St. Martinville. The bayou was black, wrinkled with wind, bladed by moonlight. I sat for a long time on the steel bench in the darkness, saying nothing to Bootsie, not even thinking thoughts she might hear. Then I walked to the old church in the square, pressed a folded five-dollar bill into the poor box, and returned with a votive candle burning inside a small blue vessel. I heard a flapping of wings overhead., but could see no birds in flight. Then I told Bootsie about Molly and me.

I believe the dead have voice and inhabit the earth as surely as we do. I believe they speak in our dreams or inside the sound of rain or even in the static of a telephone call, on the other side of which there is no caller. But Bootsie did not speak to me, and I felt an intolerable sense of guilt about the affair I had embarked upon with Molly Boyle.

I not only felt I had betrayed Bootsie, I could no longer deny I was creating scandal for Molly as well as for my church. My rationalizations of my behavior left me exhausted in the morning and agitated during the day.

"What should I do, Boots?" I said.

But there was no answer. On another occasion when I had visited her grave, I had seen two brown pelicans floating on the bayou, farther inland than I had seen pelicans since my childhood. On that day Bootsie had spoken to me. Her voice and her presence were as real as if she had sat beside me, clasped my hand, and looked directly into my face. She said that one day the pelicans would return to Bayou Teche, that hope was indeed eternal, and the world was still a grand place in which to live.

But the wings I had heard earlier were those of bats and the only sound in the cemetery was music from a jukebox in a neon-scrolled bar across the Teche. An evil man once told me that hell is a place that has no boundaries, a place that you carry with you wherever you go. A puff of wind blew out the candle burning on Bootsie's tomb. I could hear the blood roaring in my ears as I walked across the drawbridge toward the town square. The hammering sound in my ears was almost as loud as the music and the shouts of the revelers as I pushed open the door of the bar and went inside.