I don’t say a thing. Byron Boudreaux. Having a name for the man who abducted my sons has in some way given focus to my torment and for the moment, I’m so inundated with emotion, I can hardly see. Byron Boudreaux. I’m going to squeeze the life out of him.

“Alex? You there?”

“Yeah,” I manage. “Good work.”

“Blind fool luck is what,” Pinky says. “By the way, Miss Vicky went ahead and put in for that commitment order, which is good because there might be other information on there of use to us. But it’s gonna take a couple days to get our hands on it. You gonna get yourself over here?”

“Tell you what,” Pinky says, once I’m settled into the Barcelona chair in his office. He’s given me the case file. Clipped to it is a map of Louisiana, the route to Morgan City marked on it, and an index card listing the various telephone numbers of Miss Victoria Sims. “Why don’t I come along?”

“Well, I-”

“Cajun folks is friendly but they can be a little twitchy toward outsiders. And truth be told, offshore rigs don’t make for a particularly orderly populace, so Morgan City can be a kind of rough-and-tumble place. It’s the second coming of shore leave when those boys come off shift.”

“Well…”

“You thinking about the money, don’t think no more. It’s on the château, so to speak.”

“Well, that’s-”

“Hold the applause. I been thinking about those two little boys of yours. ’Bout time for the Pinkster to do a little pro bono travail.” He gestures around the office. “Got nothin’ pressing here. Nothin’ can’t wait.”

Pinky’s office and expensive clothing denote the value of his time. “I appreciate it.”

“Oh, forget it,” Pinky says. “I need to get out of the office, pleasant as it is. And I know some boys out that way might prove helpful.”

We head out into the sunset in Pinky’s car, a silver BMW X5 SUV so new that it still has that smell. “Albinos generally have bad eyesight,” he tells me. “I’m the exception – I see pretty good, especially at night.”

It’s about a ninety-mile drive from New Orleans to Morgan City – where Pinky’s secretary booked rooms for us at the Holiday Inn. Despite the darkness, the way the lights are strung along riverbanks, clustered on shores, absent in large black expanses, conveys the constant presence of water. Going through Houma (“HOME-uh,” Pinky corrects me when I mispronounce it), we see faded remnants of patriotic support for the invasion of Iraq: tattered yellow ribbons and a big showing of the stars and stripes. When we swing around one corner, the BMW’s lights illuminate a marquee above a defunct gas station:

SADDAM? NEAUX PROBLEM

Vicky Sims meets us for the buffet breakfast at the Holiday Inn. She’s about thirty, with bad skin and a sweet, soft voice. “I located the case file at the courthouse in Franklin,” she tells us, “after I talked to you, Pinky. It’s in the public record, so there’s no problem with getting it, although some of the medical opinion leading to commitment is likely to be under seal. I did my best to hurry ’em up over there, but it’s going to take a couple days to retrieve and copy. Staff cutbacks, you know? Parish finances are just in terrible shape.”

“Same everywhere,” Pinky says. “Just pitiful. But why don’t we just start with what you remember your own self about Mr. Byron Boudreaux. Then Alex and I plan to go talk to people mighta known the guy, what folk may still be around.”

She dabs her lips. “Excuse me,” she says. “I consider grits a platform for butter and salt. It can get messy.”

“Obviously you don’t indulge too often,” Pinky says.

Vicky Sims smiles. “I don’t know as I can help you all that much with Byron. He lived in Berwick – across the river – so I didn’t really know him. Just knew about him – we all knew about him.” She frowns. “Good-lookin’ boy, and really smart, almost like a genius, or maybe really a genius. He had quite a following during his preaching days. He was the kind of kid could turn out to be a great man, or could turn out to be as crazy as a bedbug. Which was the way Byron went.”

“He was a preacher?” I ask.

“Boy preacher, oh, yes.”

“Really,” Pinky says.

“Oh, yes, he could preach up a storm, that boy. He was like a little Billy Graham. People came from all over to see him. He was at the Primitive Baptist Church over to Berwick. As I recall, he took up preaching after his little brother drowned.” She frowns. “I didn’t live here when that happened. We were still in Baton Rouge then, but apparently there were rumors.”

“Like what?” Pinky asks.

“Like it wasn’t an accident. Like maybe Byron drowned his baby brother.” She shakes her head. “But I don’t know – Byron was just a kid himself when it happened. And I can’t really remember whether people had suspicions at the time, or if it just came up later, after he killed his father.”

“Is that what he did?” I ask. “He killed his father?”

“Now, this, I do remember very well. And it’s what sent him away to the asylum. He murdered his crippled daddy.”

“You’re kidding,” I say, although nothing this monster could have done would surprise me.

“I’m not. Byron was seventeen years old, and they were planning to try him as an adult. Then he was found incompetent. Which everybody figured was about right, because that boy was about as twisted as a corkscrew.”

Pinky drains his coffee. “His father was crippled?”

Vicky Sims dabs at her lips with a napkin. “Claude, Byron’s daddy – he worked out on the rigs for Anadarko. Had some kind of accident and surgery. He was on the mend, but he was still in a wheelchair at the time of the murder – which seemed to make it even more terrible.”

“What’d he do – shoot his old man?” To me Pinky adds: “We tend to be kinda heavily armed down here.”

“Oh, no, nothin’ that normal,” Vicky says. “Poisoned him in some sneaky way – through his skin, I think it was. Can that be right?”

“Transdermal,” Pinky says. “Hell, yes! But wow. How’d he get caught?”

Vicky frowns. “I don’t know as I ever knew that. It never did come to trial. But since it was poison – there was no question it was premeditated. So that’s why they were going to try Byron as an adult.”

“He pled insanity,” I say.

“Right. The lawyers said he was crazy, that he heard voices, that his daddy abused him from when he was a little guy.” She sprinkles some more salt on her grits. “Usual stuff. There’ll be more about it in the court records. Or in the paper – The New Iberian might be your best bet there. Come to think of it, I know the editor – Max Maldonado. You want his telephone number?”

We call from my hotel room, with Pinky on the extension. I explain who I am and what I want, and Maldonado says he’s on deadline but he was a reporter back in the day and of course he remembers the Boudreaux case. He’ll call me in the afternoon. I’m agreeing to that when Pinky weighs in.

“Shame on you, Max. Start talking right this minute. Surely you can spare five minutes of your invaluable time for two missing bambinos. Come on now.”

“Am I talking to the whitest private investigator in Louisiana?” Maldonado says. “Shit, Pink, why didn’t you say it’s you?”

“I’m testing your moral compass, Max.” He lets out a rumble of laughter at the protesting hoot from Maldonado. “I am. I’m not kiddin’. All we want is a heads-up on this fellow. Like where did he live, where did he work, somethin’ to go on. We don’t want to twiddle our thumbs while we’re waiting for them to find the damn court record.”

“My moral compass, huh? Well, all right, I’ll try to swing it around your way, Pink. Byron Boudreaux – why am I not surprised we didn’t hear the last of him?” A sigh. “I can give you five minutes now, all the time you want later tonight.”