There was no sound at all. The wind stopped, the water around the drill barge flattened, then seemed to drop away from the steel pilings, as though all the water were being sucked out of the bay. The gum and cypress trees and willows along the shore straightened in the stillness, their leaves green and bright with sunshine, then the world came apart.

All the glass exploded from the windows in the pilothouse. The instrument shack, made of aluminum and bolted down on the stern, was shredded into confetti. The crew chief was shouting at everyone on the deck, pointing toward the hatch that led down to the engine room, but his words were lost in the roar of the wind. A curtain of rain slapped across the barge, then we were inside a vortex that looked exactly like millions of crystallized grass cuttings, except it was filled with objects and creatures that should not have been there. Fish of every kind and size, snakes, raccoons, blue herons, turkey buzzards, a pirogue, uprooted trees, possums and wood rabbits, a twisted tin roof, dozens of crab traps and conical fishnets packed with enormous carp, hundreds of frogs, clusters of tar paper and weathered boards-all these things were spinning around our barge, sometimes thudding against the handrails and ladders and bulkheads.

I got to my feet just as an avalanche of water and mud surged across the decks. It stank of oil sludge, seaweed encrusted with dead shellfish, sewage, and human feces. The driller, who had been huddled under a pipe rack, vomited in his lap.

Then the sky turned black with rain, and in the west we saw lightning striking the shoreline and in the wetlands and in fishing communities where our relatives lived and in small cities like Lafayette and Lake Charles, and we were glad that it was them and not us who were about to receive the brunt of the storm, even the tidal wave that would curl over Cameron and crush the entire town, drowning over five hundred people.

I USED WEE WILLIE BIMSTINE and Nig Rosewater’s agency in New Orleans to go bail for Cesaire Darbonne. Willie and Nig kept my name out of the court record, but Cesaire was released from jail on Wednesday morning and was at my house ten minutes after I arrived home for lunch with Molly.

He removed his straw hat before he knocked on the door. I invited him in but he shook his head. “I just come to t’ank you,” he said.

“It’s not a big deal, Mr. Darbonne,” I replied.

“Ain’t many people would do somet’ing like that.”

“More than you think.”

He looked out at the traffic on the street, his expression neutral, his turquoise eyes empty of any thoughts that I could see. He fitted on his hat, his skin darkening in the shadow it made on his face. In absentminded fashion, he scratched the chain of scars on his right forearm. “You ever want to go duck hunting, I got a camp and a blind. I know where the sac-a-lait is at on Whiskey Bay, too,” he said.

“I appreciate it, sir, but you don’t owe me anything,” I said.

He turned his eyes on me. They were almost luminous, full of portent, and for just a moment I was sure he was about to tell me something of enormous importance. But if that was his intention, he changed his mind and got in his truck without saying anything further and drove away.

“Who was that?” Molly said behind me.

“Mr. Darbonne. He wanted to thank us for getting him out of the can.”

“Your food is getting cold.”

“I’ll be there in a second,” I said, still looking down the street, where Cesaire’s truck was stopped at the traffic light in front of an 1831 antebellum home called the Shadows.

“What’s bothering you, Dave?” Molly said.

“I’ve never had a more perplexing case. It’s like trying to hold water in your fingers. The real problem is most of the people I keep looking at would probably have led normal lives if they hadn’t met one another.”

“Start over again.”

“I have. None of it goes anywhere.”

She kneaded the back of my neck, then ran her fingers up into my hair, her nails raking my scalp. “I’ll always be proud of you,” she said.

“What for?”

“Because you’re incapable of being anyone other than yourself.”

I closed the door and turned around. I wanted to hold her, to pull her against me, to whisper words to her that are embarrassing when they are spoken in a conventional situation. But she had already gone back into the kitchen.

AFTER LUNCH, I returned to the office and once again got out all my notes on Yvonne Darbonne’s death. Except this time I had something else to go on: Slim Bruxal’s firsthand account of how Yvonne had died. At 2 p.m. Helen came into my office. “Where’s Clete Purcel?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I replied.

“NOPD just tried to serve a warrant at his cottage. It’s empty. The owner says Clete left late last night with a young blond woman. You have no idea where he is?”

“Nothing specific,” I replied, squinting thoughtfully at the far wall.

She closed the door behind her so no one could hear her next words. “Don’t let them get their hands on him, Dave. They’re not talking about six months in Central Lockup. It’s Angola on this one. The insurance companies are tired of Clete destroying half of New Orleans.”

“Glad to know the city is looking out for the right interests,” I said.

She looked at the crime scene photos and case files spread on my desk. “Where are you doing?” she said.

“I think maybe I found the key in the murder of Tony Lujan.”

I DIDN’T TRY to explain it to her. Instead, I went looking for Monarch Little. His next-door neighbor told me Monarch was doing body-and-fender work for a man who ran a repair shop in St. Martinville.

“You know the repairman’s name?” I asked.

The neighbor was the same woman who had shown great irritation at Monarch for getting drunk with his friends and throwing beer cans in her yard after his mother died.

“Monarch done straightened up. Why don’t y’all leave him alone?” she said.

“I’m not here to hurt him, ma’am.”

Her eyes wandered over my face. “He’s working for that albino man on the bayou, the one always grinning when he ain’t got nothing to grin about,” she said.

A half hour later I parked by the side of the sagging, rust-streaked trailer of Prospect Desmoreau, the same albino man who had repaired the Buick that had run down Crustacean Man. Monarch Little was under the pole shed, pulling the door off a Honda that had evidently been broadsided.

“You’re looking good, Mon,” I said.

“My name is Monarch,” he said.

“I need your help.”

“That’s why you’re here? I’m shocked.”

“Lose the comic book dialogue. I’m looking for a black guy who rides a bicycle and salvages bottles and beer cans from the roadside. A black guy who might have seen what happened when Yvonne Darbonne died.”

“The girl who shot herself by the sugar mill?”

I nodded.

The sun was in the west, burning like a bronze flame on the bayou’s surface. Monarch was sweating heavily in the shade, his neck beaded with dirt rings.

“Is this guy on the bike gonna be jammed up over this?” he asked.

“No, I just want to know what he saw. I’m just excluding a possibility, that’s all.”

“There’s two or t’ree street people do that. But they’re white. They stay at a shelter.”

“Quit waltzing me around, Monarch.”

“There’s this one black guy, he’s retarded and got a li’l head. I mean a real li’l-bitty one. You see him digging trash out of Dumpsters or stopping his bike by rain ditches wit’ cars flying right past him. Know who I mean?”

“No,” I replied.

Monarch lifted up his shirt and smelled himself, then wiped the sweat off his upper lip onto the shirt. “He’s retarded and scared of people he don’t know. I better go wit’ you,” he said.