“It’s okay, Wally. Don’t worry about it,” I said.

I met them at the door and stopped Otis before he could speak. “I think you need to talk to either the district attorney or Sheriff Soileau.”

“No, we need to talk to you, Mr. Robicheaux. We’ve deceived you and we need to set things right,” Otis said.

Of course, they had no attorney with them.

“I want you to understand this. The Iberia Sheriff’s Department has no direct relationship to the prosecution of your case, Mr. Baylor. We’re liaison people on lend-lease to other agencies. It’s only because of Katrina that we were drawn into your case. Your issue is with the FBI and the Orleans Parish DA’s office. Sir, use your head.”

“Shut up, Mr. Robicheaux,” Melanie Baylor said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re going to tell us to get a lawyer. We have a lawyer. I let you hound my husband and I have to account for that. I shot the two black men. My husband had nothing to do with it and neither did my stepdaughter.”

There were circles under her eyes, and the smell of whiskey and cigarettes was deep in her lungs. I suspected that in her naïveté she believed her sudden admission of guilt would disarm and vanquish all those who had persecuted her and her family, that somehow culpability and accusation would be replaced by the healing balm of martyrdom.

“Would you like to sit down?” I said to her.

“What for?” she replied.

I took a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen from a shelf and dropped them on my desk. “So you can write out an account of what happened the night the two men were shot in front of your house,” I said.

“I don’t see why that’s necessary. I just told you what happened,” she said.

“You’re under arrest, Mrs. Baylor. You can have a lawyer here if you wish. You do not have to talk to me, you do not have to write on that legal pad. Whatever you say here from this moment on can be used against you. You are now formally in custody and in all probability you will not return home today. But you came to my office of your own volition. I think that fact will have a strong influence on the disposition of your case. I wouldn’t mar that gesture by obfuscation and recalcitrance now.”

She looked at her husband and stepdaughter.

“Do what he says, Melanie,” Otis said.

Then her face began to dissolve, just like papier-mâché held to a hot light.

Mrs. Baylor was not a likable woman. I believe she sighted on Eddy Melancon’s throat with forethought and intentionally took his life. I also believe his death was entirely avoidable and that he and Kevin Rochon posed no threat to her safety. But in that moment, as she broke down in my office, who would choose to take on her burden by becoming her judge?

I handed her a box of Kleenex and watched the Sunset Limited wobble down the railway tracks while she wrote on my legal pad.

CLETE PICKED ME UP at noon and we drove toward my house in his Caddy, the top down. Molly was at work and Alafair was doing research for her novel at the university library in Lafayette. Ronald Bledsoe still had not returned to his cottage at the motor court. I told Clete about the confession of Melanie Baylor.

“How do you think it’ll play out?” he said.

“Remember that Japanese exchange student who went up a driveway in Baton Rouge on Halloween evening? He asked at the side door for directions to a party?”

“The wife panicked and the husband shot and killed the kid with a forty-four Mag?” he said.

“Yeah, the shooter walked.”

“That’s because the Feds weren’t in on that one. This time they are. Look, Dave, we’ve got one issue here and that’s to bag the guys who tried to kill your family.” He turned onto East Main, a net of light and shadow sliding across his face. “We’ve missed something, I just don’t know what it is. I had a funny dream last night. I was walking in a woods and I could smell fall in the air. There were leaves and mushrooms all over the ground, and air vines were hanging from the trees. When I came out of the woods, you were standing on the edge of a stream with a suitcase by your foot, like you were about to go on a trip. You said, ‘You walked over a grave, Clete. Didn’t you see it?’ Then you waded into the water.”

The connotations of his dream made something drop in my chest, like a stone tumbling down a well.

“What do you think it means?” he said.

“Nothing,” I said. “Dreams are just dreams.”

“No, we missed something. I stepped on a grave and didn’t see it. We’ve been chasing blood diamonds and street pukes and dealing with Dagwood and Blondie while Ronald Bledsoe wipes his ass on the drapes. Bledsoe is the key. How could a guy like that go this long without getting busted somewhere for something? There’s another story to this, Streak.”

We pulled into my driveway. I opened the front door of the house, then checked all the locks and the windows. I went into the backyard and checked on Snuggs and Tripod. I even squatted down and looked under the house for wires or a device or a package that didn’t belong there. That’s what the inculcation of fear does. Without leaving his home, your enemy makes you his prisoner and controls every minute of your day.

Clete was waiting for me in the kitchen when I came back into the house.

“When I told you about the dream? About you walking into the water? I saw a look on your face. Why’d you look like that, Dave?”

“I don’t remember,” I replied, avoiding his eyes. “Let’s fix lunch. I have to get back to work.”

THAT AFTERNOON Wally came up to my office, wheezing from the effort of climbing the stairs. He had a folded sheet of lined paper in his hand. “This come over from lockup. It’s for you,” he said.

I unfolded the letter and looked at the flowing calligraphy and the name at the bottom. “Thanks, Wally.”

After he had gone, I sat down and read the letter. No one is exactly sure of the engines that drive the alcoholic. AA literature makes use of terms like “self-centered fear” and “self-will run riot” and “moral and psychological insanity.” Some people consider it a deep-seated neurosis and personality disorder. But regardless of its origins, pride is high up on the list of its attributes.

To Detective Robicheaux,

I want to clarify my statement in your office earlier today. I shot into the darkness in order to dissuade the looters from entering our home. Now I must be accountable for that, even though I think one of the looters positioned himself in the path of the bullet, probably because of the self-destructive nature of his kind, although I cannot say that for certain.

I confessed to my “crime” because you harassed my husband and daughter and would give our family no peace. I have been told by members of my aerobics class you have a history as a drunkard and your meddlesome ways are your means to avoid not being drunk all the time.

If you want the truth about what happened that terrible night, I will now tell you and you can attach it to my earlier statement. We were at the mercy of depraved animals. The next-door neighbor and his friends said they would protect us. But the next-door neighbor, with his supposed military training and background as a “Southern gentleman,” is a poseur and a blowhard as well as a drunkard like yourself, and after my husband fell asleep from exhaustion, I had to take charge of things and fire blindly into the darkness before the looters who were also the ones who raped our daughter broke down our doors.

I forgive you for what you did. Your ineptitude and low intelligence are probably not your fault, but your alcoholic personality is. If I were you, I would do something about it, if not for your own sake, then for the sake of those who have to live around you.

Sincerely,

Melanie Baylor

I made a Xerox copy of the letter and sent the original to the district attorney’s office, hoping I never heard the name of Melanie Baylor again.