Now! I thought.

'Throw your weapon away! Down on your face with your hands out in front of you!' I yelled.

But he wanted another season to run.

He tore through the sugarcane, flailing his arms at the stalks, stumbling across the rows. I was crouched on one knee when I began shooting. I believe the first shot went high, because I heard a distant sound in a tree, like a rock skipping off of bark and falling through limbs. And he kept plowing forward through the cane, trying to hack an opening with his left hand, shielding a weapon with his right.

But the second shot went home. I know it did; I heard the impact, like a cleated shoe connecting with a football, heard the wind go out of his lungs as he was driven forward through the cane.

But he was still standing, with a metallic object in his right hand, its flat surfaces blue with moonlight, and he was turning on one foot toward me, just as a scarecrow might if it had been spun in a violent-wind.

Clete had loaded only five rounds in the cylinder and had set the hammer on an empty chamber. I let off all three remaining rounds as fast as I could pull the trigger. Sparks and fine splinters of lead flew from the sides of the cylinder into the darkness.

His left arm flipped sideways, as if jerked by a wire, his stomach buckled, then his chin snapped back on his shoulder as if he had been struck by an invisible club.

The hammer snapped dryly on the empty sixth chamber. Then something happened that I didn't understand. As he crumpled sideways to the earth, breaking the stalks of cane down around him, he yelled out in pain for the first time.

I walked across the rows to where he lay on his back, his crossed eyes opening and closing with shock. He kept trying to expel a bloody clot from his mouth with the tip of his tongue. My last round had hit him in the chin and exited just above the jawbone. His left arm was twisted in the sleeve like a piece of discarded rope. He had taken another round in the side, with no exit wound that I could see, and blood was leaking out of his shirt into the dirt. Then I saw his right hand quivering uncontrollably above the feathered shaft of the aluminum arrow that had discharged from his crossbow when he fell. The flanged point had sliced down into the thigh and emerged gleaming and red through the kneecap.

I knelt beside him, loosened his belt, and brushed the dirt out of his eyes with my fingers.

'Where's Buchalter?' I said.

He swallowed with a clicking sound and tried to speak, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. I turned his head with my hands so his mouth could drain.

'Where did Buchalter go, Chuck?' I said. 'Don't try to protect this guy. He deserted you.'

'I don't know,' he said. His voice was weak and devoid of all defense. 'Get the arrow out.'

'I can't do it. You might hemorrhage. I'm going to call an ambulance.'

His crossed eyes tried to focus on mine. They were luminous and black with pain and fear. His tongue came out of his mouth and went back in again.

'What is it?' I said.

'I need a priest. I ain't gonna make it.'

'We'll get you one.'

'You gotta listen, man…'

'Say it.'

'I didn't have nothing against y'all. I done it for the money.'

'For the money?' I said as much to myself as to him.

'Tell your old lady I'm sorry. It wasn't personal. Oh God, I ain't gonna make it.'

'Give me Buchalter, Chuck.'

But his eyes had already focused inward on a vision whose intensity and dimension probably only he could appreciate. In the distance I heard someone start a high-powered automobile engine and roar southward, away from the drawbridge, down the bayou road in the rain.

The next morning I went down to the sheriffs office and got my badge back.

Chuck, whose full name was Charles Arthur Sitwell, made it through the night and was in the intensive care unit at Iberia General, his body wired to machines, an oxygen tube taped to his nose, an IV needle inserted in a swollen vein inside his right forearm. The lower half of his face was swathed in bandages and plaster, with only a small hole, the size of a quarter, for his mouth. I pulled a chair close to his bed while Clete stood behind me.

'Did Father Melancon visit you, Chuck?' I said.

He didn't answer. His eyelids were blue and had a metallic shine to them.

'Didn't a priest come see you?' I asked.

He blinked his eyes.

'Look, partner, if you got on the square with the Man Upstairs, why not get on the square with us?' I said.

Still, he didn't answer.

'You've been down four times, Chuck,' I said. 'Your jacket shows you were always a solid con. But Buchalter's not stand-up, Chuck. He's letting you take his fall.'

'You're standing on third base,' Clete said behind me.

I turned in the chair and looked into Clete's face. But Clete only stepped closer to the bed.

'Chuck was in max at Leavenworth, he was a big stripe at Angola. He wants it straight,' he said to me. 'Right, Chuck? Buchalter'll piss on your grave. Don't take the bounce for a guy like that.'

Chuck's defective eyes looked as small as a bird's. They seemed to focus on Clete; then they looked past him at the swinging door to the intensive care unit, which had opened briefly and was now flapping back and forth.

His mouth began moving inside the hole in the bandages. I leaned my ear close to his face. His breath was sour with bile.

'I already told the priest everything. I ain't saying no more,' he whispered. 'Tell everybody that. I ain't saying no more.'

'I don't want to be hard on you, partner, but why not do some good while you have the chance?' I said.

He turned his face away from me on the pillow.

'If that's the way you want it,' I said, and stood up to go. 'If you change your mind, ask for the cop at the door.'

Out in the corridor, Clete put an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

'I never get used to the way these fuckers think. The sonofabitch is on the edge of eternity and he's scared he'll be made for a snitch,' he said, then noticed a Catholic nun with a basket of fruit two feet from him. 'Excuse me, Sister,' he said.

She was dressed in a white skirt and lavender blouse, but she wore a black veil with white edging on her head. Her hair was a reddish gold and was tapered on her neck.

'How is he doing?' she said.

'Who?' I said.

'That poor man who was shot last night,' she said.

'Not very well,' I said.

'Will he live?' she said.

'You never know, I guess,' I said.

'Were you one of the officers who-'

'Yes?'

'I was going to ask if you were one of the officers who arrested him.'

'I'm the officer who shot him, Sister,' I said. But my attempt at directness was short-lived, and involuntarily my eyes broke contact with hers.

'Is he going to die?' she said. Her eyes became clouded in a peculiar way, like dark smoke infused in green glass.

'You should probably ask the doctor that,' I said.

'I see,' she said. Then she smiled politely. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound rude. I'm Marie Guilbeaux. It's nice meeting you.'

'I'm Dave Robicheaux. This is Clete Purcel. It's nice meeting you, too, Sister,' I said. 'You're not from New Iberia, are you?'

'No, I live in Lafayette.'

'Well, see you around,' I said.

'Yes, good-bye,' she said, and smiled again.

Clete and I walked out into the sunlight and drove back toward my house. It was the beginning of the Labor Day weekend, and the convenience stores were filled with people buying beer and ice and charcoal for barbecues.

'Why didn't the nuns look like that when I was in grade school?' Clete said. 'The ones I remember had faces like boiled hams… What are you brooding about?'