“What are you saying?”

“We don’t have the juice to take these guys down. I’m glad you capped Rydel when you had the chance.”

“He dealt it.”

“That’s not my point. The guy was protected. He was a killing machine for years and always had somebody with juice covering his butt.”

“You think that’s how Bledsoe has stayed off the computer?”

“No, that’s where it doesn’t make sense. Bledsoe is no mercenary. He’s a serial predator, a guy who doesn’t like to take orders. Maybe somebody brought him in for a short gig. That’s all I can figure. This whole bunch should have been in soap dispensers a long time ago.” he was quiet the rest of the way to the Crime Lab.

TECHNICALLY I WAS still on the desk, but technically again my desk extended to the Lab. The head forensic technician there was Mack Bertrand. He was a slender, nice-looking family man, always well groomed, who carried his pipe in a leather case on his belt. Wherever he went, he trailed a fragrance of apple-spiked pipe tobacco. I could tell he wasn’t entirely comfortable with Clete’s presence inside the Lab. Clete sensed it, too, and went outside.

“Did I say something?” Mack asked.

“It’s all right. What have you got?” I said.

Mack had created virtual images on a computer screen from the dissolved texture of the paper towel on which Bertrand Melancon had written his letter of amends. In our earlier conversation on the telephone, Mack had made use of a metaphor involving alphabet soup. The metaphor could not have been more appropriate.

I could make out several words in the body of the letter, but toward the bottom of the page, only a few letters, re-created from both the ink and the pressure of the ballpoint pen, were discernible:

Th dym s un the ri s on e ot ide of h an.

“Does that help you?” Mack asked.

“Not right offhand. But maybe it’ll make sense down the line.”

“Tell Purcel I’ve got nothing against him. But it’s supposed to be only authorized personnel. I always thought he was a pretty decent guy.”

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have brought him in,” I said.

“You okay from yesterday?”

“No problem.”

“That’s the way. When they deal it, we slam the door on it, case closed. Right? Don’t think about it,” he said, knowing a lie when he heard one, both mine and his.

THE NEXT DAY, in the Atchafalaya Basin, a black man was bobber-fishing with a cane pole inside a grove of flooded trees. It wasn’t the abandoned rental car on the levee that caught his eye. It was the gray cloud of gnats that hovered above the boxlike remains of a cabin at the foot of the levee. The cabin had been built of plywood and tarpaper and had been blown or floated there years ago by a hurricane. On several occasions, during an electrical storm, the black man had taken shelter inside the cabin, and he knew it to be a dry, empty place that was clean of any dead animals or discarded food.

He paddled his pirogue through the trees, dropping his baited hook and cork bobber into the dark pools that were unruffled by the wind out on the channel. Then he heard flies buzzing and saw shadows swooping across the grassy slope of the levee. When he looked up into the sky, he saw three turkey buzzards gliding in a circle.

He turned his back toward the levee and lifted his pole in the air, swinging the line back toward the channel, dropping the worm next to a cypress trunk. The wind changed direction, blowing down the slope of the levee. An odor that made him gag struck his nostrils.

He rolled his line up on his pole and paddled through the flooded trees onto the mudflat, sufficiently upwind now. He dragged the pirogue onto the grass and climbed the levee, then descended again so the wind was firmly at his back. The door to the cabin hung partially open. He picked up a stick to open it the rest of the way, then felt foolish at his fearful behavior. He put his hand on the edge of the door and dragged it open, scraping the bottom across the ground.

“Oh Lord,” he said under his breath.

WHEN HELEN SOILEAU and I arrived, the St. Mary Parish Sheriff’s Department had already strung yellow crime scene tape from the flooded trees to the top of the levee, sealing off access to the cabin. The St. Mary sheriff was out of town and the investigation was being run by a lead detective named Lamar Fuselier. His blond hair was cut short and boxed on his neck, and he wore a blue windbreaker and starched khakis and spit-shined black shoes. I used to see him at Red’s Gym sometimes in Lafayette, dead-lifting three hundred pounds on the bar. That’s when he was taking courses in criminal justice at the university. That was where I also saw him pay a student in the locker room for an examination that had been stored in a fraternity file.

“What’s the haps, Lamar?” I said.

He was writing on a clipboard, his brow furrowed with concentration. He looked up and away from me, then huffed air out his nose. “Smell it?” he said.

“Hard not to,” I said.

“We’re still waiting on the coroner. The old black guy over there called it in. How come y’all are down here?”

“We’re looking for a couple of guys who might be missing,” I said.

“If I had to bet, I’d say these guys had been at the casino. Maybe somebody followed them or got in their car and forced them to drive down the levee.”

“To rob them?” I said.

“Yeah, they got no wallet or ID on them. We found four ejected twelve-gauge shells inside.”

“What did you find in the rental?” I asked.

“Nothing. Somebody emptied the glove box. I thought that was strange. Why would the shooter take the paperwork out of the glove box?”

“Probably to make our jobs harder.”

“If you see puke inside, that’s from the old guy. He got sick when he went inside.” He laughed under his breath.

“Mind if we take a look?” Helen said.

“Be my guest,” he replied, finally taking notice of her. His eyes traveled up and down her person. “We got barf bags in one of our cruisers if you need one.”

“Give mine to your wife,” she said.

The door to the cabin had been pried back onto the levee’s incline, allowing the sunlight inside. I took out a handkerchief and held it to my nose. The odor of decomposition was exacerbated by the nature of the wounds. Both men had been shot at close range, in the stomach and in the face. Their viscera were exposed, their facial features hardly recognizable. Their brain matter was splattered all over one wall. Both men wore sports coats, silk shirts, and expensive Italian shoes with tassels on them. Both of them lay on their side, the remnants of their eyes glistening.

I stepped back out in the sunlight and blew out my breath. Helen looked at me.

“I’m pretty sure it’s Charlie Weiss and Marco Scarlotti,” I said.

“Kovick’s gumballs?”

“What’s left of them.”

“You see Bledsoe for this?”

“I see Ronald Bledsoe for anything,” I replied.

Then I looked up on the levee and saw Clete Purcel watching us. He must have used his police radio scanner to find the location of the double homicide. Lamar Fusilier looked up and saw him, too.

“You got no business at this crime scene, Purcel. Haul your fat ass out of here,” he said.

Clete lit a cigarette in the wind and flipped the dead match down the levee, never moving from his position, smoke leaking out of his mouth.