“How?”

“Who was it who said, ‘When people say this is not about money, it’s about money’?”

“H. L. Mencken.”

“This is about those blood stones or whatever. Put all the scorpions in a matchbox and shake it up.”

“With Bledsoe it’s personal. He enjoys it. If someone didn’t pay him to hurt other people, he’d pay to do it.”

“Start over again. Go after Otis Baylor,” she said.

“Waste of time.”

“Really? I wonder why he’s downstairs,” she replied.

I BUZZED WALLY and asked him to send Otis Baylor up. I expected Wally to make a wisecrack. But he surprised me. “Glad you and your family are okay, Dave. I’m glad you capped that dude, too. That was a righteous shoot. Everybody here knows that. You hearing me?”

“Yeah, I do, Wally. Thanks,” I said.

Two minutes later Otis knocked on my glass pane and I waved him inside. He was wearing a navy blue suit and white shirt and tie, and his shoes were brushed to a soft luster. He put a piece of lined notebook paper on my desk. “That’s Bertrand Melancon’s address in the Ninth Ward. If you want him, he’s yours.”

“Sit down, Mr. Baylor.”

He didn’t argue. He took a chair in front of my desk and gazed around my office.

“I’ll pass this information on to NOPD. I’ll also pass it on to the FBI in Baton Rouge. Maybe they’ll get around to picking him up one day, but I don’t believe that’s going to happen soon. I think others will get their hands on Bertrand first, and when they do, they’ll boil the meat off his bones.”

“Then it’s on y’all. My family and I are finished with him.”

“I have a feeling something happened since I last saw you. Want to tell me about it?”

He did just that, in detail, leaving nothing out, describing his temptation to tear Bertrand Melancon into pieces in front of his auntie and the act of intervention and mercy on his daughter’s part.

“I admire what you’ve done, sir, but yesterday I shot and killed a man by the name of Bobby Mack Rydel. I killed him because he tried to kill my daughter, my wife, and me. He did this because Ronald Bledsoe put him up to it. Are you aware of all this? Because you don’t seem to be.”

“No, I wasn’t aware. We got back from New Orleans late last night. I didn’t watch the news or read the paper this morning. I came straight to your office. I’m sorry to hear about your trouble.”

I thought it was time to use the information Deputy Catin Segura had given me regarding Otis Baylor’s wife.

“You didn’t shoot those looters, Mr. Baylor. I think your wife did. I think before you two met, she was sexually abused, probably by someone with sadistic tendencies, maybe someone addicted to sado-porn. I think she saw the looters approaching your house and got frightened and opened up on them.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Who told you this stuff about Mrs. Baylor?”

“Who cares? Your wife picked up the Springfield and probably fired it out the front door. She was probably scared. Who wouldn’t be? A jury should be able to understand that. I think it’s pretty dumb to protect someone who perhaps doesn’t need protecting.”

His eyes stayed on mine and I knew he was thinking about the statement I had just made. I had said a jury “should understand.” Like most intelligent people, Otis knew equivocation and nuance in language when he heard it. He also knew that a prosecutor would emphasize to the jury that the shooter had been deadly accurate and had managed to take down not just one but two looters with a single shot. It was obvious the shooter had not fired simply to frighten them away.

But right now I was no longer interested in whether or not Otis worked out his family problems.

“Bertrand told me he tried to make amends to you. I think he tried to give you part or all of the blood diamonds stolen from Sidney Kovick’s house. I need to know where they are.”

“We have nothing to do with that.”

“Does you wife know where they are?”

“No.”

I remained silent, turning a pencil in a circle on my blotter with my finger, leaving the burden of evidence on him.

“Look, Melancon brought a letter to the house,” he said. “He had handwritten an apology to our family and tried to read it to her. He told my wife the location of the diamonds was on the bottom of the letter. But she threw it in his face. I found the letter in the yard. It was written on a paper hand towel. The ink had dissolved in the water. It’s unreadable.”

“Where is it now?”

“Probably still in the can I use for yard cleanup.”

“With your permission, I’m going to send someone out there to pick it up,” I said.

“Do whatever you want,” he replied.

I got the exact location of the trash can from him and called the Acadiana Crime Lab. After I got off the phone, I looked at Otis for a long time. “I wish you had told me this before,” I said. “Your lack of cooperation hasn’t been good for any of us, Mr. Baylor, least of all for yourself. If I can share a little bit of police wisdom with you, it’s a fool’s errand to take other people’s weight.”

“I’m not up on police terminology. You want to rephrase that?”

“When we allow others to victimize us in order to prove our own worth, we invite a cancer into our lives.”

“We through here, Mr. Robicheaux?”

I felt my old enemy, anger, flare in my chest. My daughter and wife had almost lost their lives the previous day and I had been forced to shoot and kill their assailant. Regardless of what he had suffered himself, I was tired of Otis Baylor’s recalcitrant attitudes.

He was studying my face, perhaps finally aware that other people have their limits.

“No, we’re not through. And it’s Detective Robicheaux. Why do you think we came down on you with both feet?” I said.

“Bad luck?”

“Because your neighbor gave you up.”

“Tom Claggart?”

“He said the night the looters were shot, you made a statement about ‘hanging black ivory on the wall.’ You remember saying that?”

“Yeah, I do. But I don’t blame Tom for telling you that. He’s a simpleminded man who wants to please authority. He went to the Virginia Military Institute or the Citadel or one of those military colleges. I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

It has to do with the fact you’re unteachable, sir, I thought. But I kept my feelings to myself.

MY GUESS WAS that Ronald Bledsoe had already left town. Wrong again. Two other detectives went to his motor court early Monday morning and were told by the manager that Mr. Bledsoe could be found at an assisted-care facility next door to Iberia General.

One of the detectives, Lukas Cormier, called me on his cell phone from the parking lot outside the facility. He had a bachelor’s degree in business administration, with a minor in psychology, and was a good investigator. “You want to come over here?” he said.

“I’m supposed to be on the desk till IA cuts me loose,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“When we went inside, this guy who looks like he was squirted out of a toothpaste tube was reading a Harry Potter book aloud to a roomful of Alzheimer patients. He goes, ‘Hi, my name is Ronald. What’s yours?’”

“What’s his alibi for yesterday?”

“He says he was in Barnes and Noble in Lafayette, buying books for his Alzheimer friends.”

“Does he have any purchase receipts?”

“No, I asked him.”

“How about the Humvee? You got anything on it?”

“Zip. We tried all the rentals and talked to a couple of dealerships. But without a tag number I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere on the vehicle. You want us to bring him in?”

“No, let him think he’s slid one past us.”

“He’s got no sheet at all? Mental institutions, stuff like that?”

“None. Bledsoe is a blank. Not so much as a traffic violation.”

There was a beat and I knew what was coming.