"They treated me worsen they would a nigger rapist. You think I give a fuck about what you don't like?… We got a mutual interest here."

"No, we don't."

He put the.45 under my jaw. "Then you walk to the shed."

"You're starting to seriously piss me off, Aaron."

He pushed the barrel harder into my throat. "LaRose used my daughter and throwed her away. Then he sent me to the penitentiary. You side with them, then you're my enemy."

His face was bloodless, his dilated nostrils radiating gray hair. He wasn't a bizarre old man anymore, or even a pitiful and ignorant victim. For some reason, as I stared into the vacuity of his eyes, I was absolutely convinced he would have found reason to wage war against Buford LaRose's world even if Buford LaRose had never existed.

"I'm not going in that shed, Aaron. It ends here," I said.

He breathed loudly in the darkness. His tongue looked like a gray biscuit inside his mouth.

"I done cut your phone line already. I'll give you back this later. But don't come after me," he said.

"You're a foolish man, sir."

"No, I'm a dead one. That's what they call people in the Death House, the Dead Men. Wait till you feel that big nigger's hand on you. Or one of yourn up at the house. See how goddamn liberal you are then."

"What did you say?"

But he was gone, running like a crab through the trees, his prison work boots crashing in the leaves.

I sat on the floor by the couch where Bootsie slept. Her eyes opened into mine.

"What is it?" she said.

"Aaron Crown was outside…" I placed my hand on her arm before she could get up. "It's all right. He's gone now. But he cut the phone line."

"Crown was-"

"I'm giving it up, Boots. Aaron, the LaRose family, whatever they're into, it's somebody else's responsibility now."

She raised herself on one elbow.

"What happened out there?" she asked.

"Nothing. That's the point. Nothing I do will ever change the forces these people represent."

Her eyes steadied on mine and seemed to look inside me.

"You want to fix something to eat?" she said.

"That'd be swell. I'll use the phone in the bait shop to call the department."

When I locked the front door behind me, I could see her in the kitchen, shredding a raw potato on a grater to make hash browns, her robe cinched around her hips, just as though we were waking to an ordinary dawn and the life we'd had before I'd allowed the fortunes of Aaron Crown and the LaRose family to grow like a tentacle into our own.

In the morning Batist found my.45 wrapped in a Kentucky Fried Chicken bag under the doormat on his gallery.

"we've got a real prize in the holding cell," Helen said.

I followed her down the corridor to the lockup area and waited for the deputy to open the cell. The biker inside had a gold beard and head of hair like a lion's mane. His eyes reminded me of red Lifesavers, pushed deep into folds of skin that were raw from wind-burn or alcohol or blood pressure that could probably blow an automobile gasket.

His name was Jody Hatcher. A year and a half ago the court had released him to the Marine Corps, in hopes, perhaps, that the whole Hatcher family would simply disappear from Iberia Parish. His twin sister achieved a brief national notoriety when she was arrested for murdering seven men who picked her up hitchhiking on the Florida Turnpike. The mother, an obese, choleric woman with heavy facial hair, was interviewed by CBS on the porch of the shack where the Hatcher children were raised. I'll never forget her words: "It ain't my fault. She was born that way. I whipped her every day when she was little. It didn't do no good."

"They treating you all right, Jody?" I said after the deputy locked me and Helen inside.

"I don't like the echoes, man. I can't tell what's out in the hall and what's inside," he said, grinning, pointing at his head. He wore skintight black jeans and a black leather vest with no shirt. His face seemed filled with a merry, self-ironic glow, like a man who's become an amused spectator at the dissolution of his own life.

Helen and I sat down on the wood bench against the far wall. In the center of the cell was a urine-streaked drain hole.

"They say your saddlebags were full of crystal meth," I said.

"Yeah, dude I lent my Harley to probably really messed me over. Wow, I hate it when they do that to you."

I nodded, as though we were all listening to a sad truth.

"I thought you were in Haiti," I said.

"Got cut loose, man. You saw that on TV about the firelight at the police station? That was my squad. See, this native woman was cheering us up on a balcony and an attache busted her upside the head with a baton. That's why we was down at the police station. We camied-up and set up a perimeter 'cause we didn't want these guys hurting the people no more. The Corps is peace makers, not peace keepers, a lot of civilians don't understand that. We got the word these guys was gonna light us up, so this one dude comes outside and starts to turn toward us with an Uzi in his hand, and pow, man, I see the tracer come out of the lieutenant's gun, and then a shit storm is flying through the air and before I knew it I burned a whole magazine on just one guy, like chickens was pecking him to death against the wall. I wasn't up for it, man. That's some real cruel shit to watch."

He was seated on a wood bench, his wrists crossed on his knees, his fists clenched, his face staring disjointedly into space.

"Tell Detective Robicheaux about the Mexican cowboy," Helen said.

"We already covered that, ain't we? I don't like remembering stuff like that." He puckered his mouth like a fish's.

"You got to work with us, Jody, you want some slack on the meth," Helen said.

"It was right before I went in the Crotch. I met the Mexican guys in a bar in Loreauville. I was doing dust and rainbows and drinking vodka on top of it, and we all ended up out in a woods somewhere. It was a real weirded-out hot night, with fireflies crawling all over the trees and bullfrogs croaking and nutrias screaming out on the water. These guys had some beautiful meth, high-grade clean stuff that don't foul your blood. But this one cowboy tied off and slapped a vein till it was purple as a turnip, then he spikes into it and whop, he doubles over and crumples on the ground, with the rubber tourniquet flopping in his teeth like a snake with its head cut off.

"It's not like skag. You don't drop the guy in cold water or a snowbank. The guy's eyes rolled, all kind of stuff came out of his mouth, his knees started jerking against his chest. What are you gonna do, man? I was wasted. Jesus, it was like watching a guy drown when you can't do nothing about it."

"Is that all of it, Jody?" I asked.

"Tell him," Helen said.

"They dug a hole and buried him," he said.

"Who?" I asked.

"Everybody. I run off in the trees. I couldn't watch it… Maybe he wasn't dead… That's what keeps going through my head… They didn't get a doctor or nothing… They should have put a mirror in front of his nose or something…"

"Who was there, Jody?" I asked.

"The guy who just got elected governor."

"You're sure?" I said.

"He was strung out, crying like a little kid. There was some other Americans there had to take care of him."

"Who?" I asked.

"I don't know, man. I blacked out. I couldn't take it. I can't even tell you where I was at. I woke up behind a colored bar in St. Martinville with dogs peeing on me."

His face was swollen, glazed like the red surfaces on a lollipop, decades older than his years. He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.