Koko Hebert had said a small cross had been incised postmortem inside Honoria's hairline, forcing us to conclude the killer had not acted randomly and that he bore the Chalons family an enormous animus.

But the Chalons's coat of arms hung in Val's quarters as well as in the main house. In the past, the Baton Rouge serial killer had already demonstrated his proclivity and skill at making others besides his immediate victim suffer as long as possible. He made sure the rest of us knew he had sexually degraded the victim before killing her. He left the instruments of bondage and torture with the body. He mutilated the features after death. He hung a purse in a tree to ensure we would find his handiwork while it was still fresh. Why not mock the Chalons family by lifting the Cross of Jesus from their family seal, then leaving it as an insult to be discovered hours later by the probing fingers of a parish coroner?

But I still couldn't figure out Val Chalons. Had he hired Bad Texas Bob Cobb through intermediaries to cancel my ticket and Clete's as well, just to hide the fact he was illegitimate? It didn't seem plausible.

Over the years I had known many people of his background. They revised the past on a daily basis and lived vicariously through their dead ancestors. Inside termite-eaten historical homes, they stayed drunk and talked endlessly of a grander time and thought of themselves as characters in a Greek tragedy. In their own minds, they were not dissolute or effete but simply bacchanal eccentrics living in an intolerable century. They absolved themselves of their own sins, believing them to be the price one paid for the gift of gentility. Robert Lee had long ago proved that penury and failure could be borne with the dignity of a battle-stained flag. They were not bad people and meant no harm to anyone, not unless you counted the loss they imposed upon themselves.

But my objectivity was gone and I couldn't sort any of these things out. My anger toward Val Chalons had helped me get drunk once and I was sure my next slip would probably be my last. Maybe it was time to take it to Val on a different level, one that he would not be expecting.

I went to his home after work and was told by the handyman that Valentine was having dinner with friends at Clementine's in New Iberia. I drove back to town and parked by the bayou and entered the supper club through the terrace. Clementine's was once a saloon and pool hall called Provost's, a workingman's place with a sports wire and green sawdust and scrolls of ticker tape on the floor. On Thursday nights the owner covered the pool tables with dropcloths and served free sausage and robin gumbo. Those things are gone, but the cavernous rooms, the stamped tin ceilings, and the hand-carved mahogany bar remain. In the shadowy light I could almost see the ghost of my father. Big Aldous, knocking back two inches of Jack at the bar, bellowing at his own jokes, his pinstripe strap overalls still spotted with drilling mud.

I ordered coffee at the end of the bar, where I could see through a wide door into the dining room. Val was with a group of well-dressed people, his back to me. He was the only man at the table without a jacket. His hair had just been barbered, the sides clipped close to the head, which accented the severity of his angular features. He wore a starched white shirt, but without a tie and with the collar unbuttoned, as though he were demonstrating a deliberate disregard for the decorum of the evening. The austerity in his expression and posture made me think of a photograph I had once seen of the Confederate guerrilla leader, William Clarke Quantrill.

In fact, I think he was assuming a persona I had seen him play before. He had been a guest narrator on a Louisiana Public Television broadcast regarding the activities of the White League and the Knights of the White Camellia during Reconstruction. He had spoken of his ancestors' participation in the White League with veiled pride, even dismissing their moral culpability for the execution of fifty black soldiers in what came to be known as the Colfax Massacre. "It was a violent era. My great-grandfather did what he had to. It's facile to impose our standards on the past," Val had explained.

Now, in the glow of candlelight at his table, he was holding forth about contemporary wars, his rhetoric threaded with moral certitude, although he himself had never heard a shot fired in anger.

I had resolved earlier to approach Val Chalons with a new and objective attitude. But my thought processes were deteriorating rapidly. I saw him excuse himself from the table and walk through the back hall toward the restrooms, which were housed on the terrace.

Don't confront him here, not in this state of mind, I told myself.

But if not here, where? Val Chalons wouldn't change and I wouldn't, either. Just stick to principles and keep personalities out of it, I thought. The fate of the world didn't hang on what I might say to a member of the Chalons family.

As chance would have it, Clete Purcel came through the front door, just as I got up from the bar stool. "Where you going?" he asked.

"To the head," I replied.

"Did I just see Val Chalons?"

"Maybe," I said.

"Why waste your time bird-dogging a bucket of shit?"

"I dropped in for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie."

"Yeah, I used to go on skivvy runs in Cherry Alley to play the piano. Let me handle this, Streak."

"There's no problem here. Stay out of it," I replied.

I followed Chalons out onto the terrace, into a fragrance of flowers and bourbon and grilled steaks and the fecund summertime odor of the Teche. He was at the urinal when I entered the restroom.

"Unless you're in here to hang out your dick, I suggest you leave," he said.

"You seem to have many personalities, Val," I said.

"Don't think your current environment protects you, Robicheaux. I'm going to boil you in your own grease."

He continued to urinate, his chin tilted slightly upward, his fingers cupped under his phallus.

"I think there's reason to believe your sister may have been murdered by the Baton Rouge serial killer," I said. "I had dismissed that possibility because I was carrying a personal resentment against you. I was wrong in doing that, both as a police officer and as an AA member."

He laughed to himself and shook off his phallus. "God, I love you people," he said.

"Which people is that, Val?"

"Guys who constantly confess their guilt in public with doleful faces. Why is it I always feel you're up to something?" He brushed past me and began washing his hands in the basin.

"It's called 'transfer.' The person assumes other people think in the same duplicitous fashion as himself," I said.

"You still don't get it, do you?" he said, drying his hands on a paper towel.

"Get what?"

"You're our local Attila. A little campfire smoke and animal grease in your hair and you'd be perfect. You're shit, Robicheaux. So is your wife. She's a poseur and a cunt. You just haven't figured it out yet."

He was standing within arm's reach of me now. He balled up the paper towel and dropped it in the waste can. I started to speak, but instead stepped back from him and looked into empty space, my thumbs hooked into the sides of my belt. The heavy metal door slammed behind him.

Don't take the bait, I told myself.

But there are instances when that old-time rock 'n' roll is the only music on the jukebox.

I followed Val Chalons through the bar area into the dining room. He had taken his chair and was spreading his napkin on his lap. His friends looked up at me, expecting to be introduced.

"We finally got to the bottom of Ida Durbin's disappearance, Val," I said. "Your father rescued her from a whorehouse he had money in. So out of either obligation or reasons of opportunity, Ida became his regular punch. Then you came along about nine months later. If you'd like to check out the story, your mother is staying with a friend of my brother on Lake Pontchartrain. Your mother is married to her former pimp, Lou Kale. They run an escort service together in Miami."