Pearlie Washington is sitting on her porch reading the newspaper when I drive into the lot behind the slave quarters. Aunt Ann’s Acura hasn’t returned-or else it’s come and gone-but my grandfather’s Lincoln is back. I see no sign of Billy Neal, though, and I’m glad for it.

“Where you been?” Pearlie asks, not looking up from her copy of the Natchez Examiner. She’s wearing street clothes and a pair of reading glasses. They look expensive, unlike the Wal-Mart specials my mother wears.

“Driving.”

“ Driving? That sounds like what you used to tell me when you was a teenager out chasing boys.”

“I never chased boys. They chased me.” There are two rockers on Pearlie’s porch. I sit in the empty one.

“Don’t bother asking,” she says. “I done told you all I know.”

“About what?”

“Whatever it is you gonna ask me about.”

I look over at the rows of blooming rosebushes. “Pearlie, I think you could talk from now until next week and not finish telling me everything you know about this family.”

“I ain’t paid to talk. I’m paid to clean.” She licks her finger and turns a page. “Dr. Overton’s wife died yesterday. She was a cranky old so-and-so.”

“Tell me about Jesse Billups.”

Pearlie goes still, like a deer sensing threat.

“Don’t even try to pretend you don’t know who he is.”

She looks up from her newspaper at last. “Who you been talking to?”

“A guy who served in Vietnam. Jesse Billups knew Daddy, Pearlie. I want you to tell me who and where he is. You know I’ll find out one way or the other. I can’t believe you never told me about him before.”

Pearlie closes her eyes as though in pain. “Jesse is my sister’s child. Half sister, really. We had the same mama but different daddies.”

“Your sister from DeSalle Island?”

Pearlie nods. “Ivy the only sister I got.”

I see an image of a small, strong black woman with her hair pulled back in a bun. With this image comes the smell of alcohol and a memory of pain. Ivy gave me a painful tetanus injection once, after I stepped on a nail in the pond.

“Where is she now?”

“Ivy done passed, baby. Don’t you remember? Been almost four years now.”

I don’t remember hearing that Ivy died, but I remember the woman well-not by name, but by occupation. She worked as my grandfather’s assistant in the little building known on DeSalle Island as the clinic. Grandpapa maintains the clinic to treat the island’s black population whenever he stays there, or when emergencies arise. At times, more than a hundred people have lived and worked on the island, many of them using chain saws and dangerous farm equipment daily. I saw Grandpapa stitch up so many lacerations there that by twelve I could do it myself if the need arose. He charged nothing for his services, so most islanders waited for his visits rather than seeking medical care on the “mainland” across the river. Ivy had no formal medical training, but she was smart, silent, and had deft hands. Grandpapa taught her enough to do a good deal of “doctoring” in his absence. Their most famous exploit was removing my aunt Ann’s appendix by lantern light during a storm that cut off the island from the mainland in 1958.

“What about Jesse Billups?” I ask. “Is he still around?”

Pearlie sighs and rubs her forehead. “Baby, what you digging into all this old business for?”

I refuse to be sidetracked. “Is Jesse still alive?”

“Jesse’s the foreman on the island now. Or caretaker, or overseer, whatever they call it now.”

“Jesse Billups is caretaker on the island now? He runs the hunting camp, all of that?”

“Sho’ do.”

“How old is he?”

“Fiftysomething, I guess.”

“If he was Ivy’s son, why don’t I remember him?”

Pearlie shrugs again. “He took his daddy’s last name, for one thing, even though he was an outside child. Plus, he was gone a lot back in your day. Went off to the city with some big plan, but all he got was big trouble. Did him a hitch in Angola, right across from the island. Funny, when you think about it.”

I’ve never seen much funny about Angola Penitentiary. “You don’t sound like you care for him much.”

“Jesse’s all right, I reckon. I told you the other day. Some good boys went over to that war and came back different. Not their fault.”

“What happened to him in the war?”

“Different things, I guess. Some inside, some out. He never talked about it. Same as Mr. Luke.”

“Did you ever see Jesse talking to Daddy?”

“I seen ’em together some. Thick as thieves for a while. Mr. Luke spent a lot of time down on the island. Said he liked the quiet down there.”

“What did they do together?”

“Smoked that dope, probably.” Pearlie’s voice is bitter. “That’s about all Jesse done after he got back.”

“And Daddy?”

“Mr. Luke did some of that, too. Not as bad as Jesse, though. Your daddy had a lot of pain from his woundin his mind, too. I think he used that weed to help. No hard stuff, though.”

“When was the last time you saw Jesse?”

“Been a long time, now. He stay on the island, and I don’t go down there.”

“Never?”

Pearlie shakes her head. “I don’t like it. Don’t like the peoples, and they don’t like me.”

“Why not? You were born on that island.”

She snorts. “I’m a house nigger, girl.”

“You’re kidding me. That kind of stuff is ancient history.”

She peers at me over the rims of her reading glasses. “Not on DeSalle Island it ain’t. They never joined the modern world down there. Dr. Kirkland likes it that way, and I think the black peoples down there like it all right, too. Change is something they can’t abide.”

“Well, I’m going down there.”

Pearlie’s eyes widen. “When?”

“Today. I’m going to see Jesse.”

“Child, don’t you go messing round down there. Can’t no good come of that.”

“You think something bad will come of it?”

Pearlie folds her newspaper and lays it beside her chair. “You go poking a stick in a hole, you best be ready for a snake to crawl out of it.”

I’m about to ask her what’s she’s afraid of when my cell phone beeps. The screen shows a text message waiting. I flip open the phone and hit a button. The message reads, I’m going to call you in a second. Don’t even think about not answering. It’s about Malik. Sean.

“Somebody trying to call you?” Pearlie asks. “I hate them phones.”

“Someone’s about to.”

The phone rings on cue.

“Tell me,” I answer.

“The shit’s hit the fan,” says Sean. “A little after eleven, we got an anonymous call telling us to check an apartment in Kenner. The caller said Malik rented it under an alias. We got a warrant and went there with some Jefferson Parish detectives. The landlord ID’d Malik from a photo, and we went in.”

“What did you find?”

“A lot of video equipment, for one thing. Pro quality stuff, and a computer rigged for digital film production.”

Video equipment? “What else?”

“We found the murder weapon, Cat.”

My throat tightens. “What?”

“Thirty-two-caliber Charter Arms revolver. The handgun that killed our five victims. It had the serial number filed off. We’re going to try to bring it out with acid, but we don’t know anything yet.”

“Did you arrest Malik for murder?”

“Yeah. Got him at his home.”

“He resist?”

“No. Went like a lamb. And no Hollywood Walk this time. We booked him and took him to the CLU through the garage.”

“Jesus. Who do you think the tipper was?”

“We don’t know. Maybe one of Malik’s patients? A girl he took to that apartment?”

“Or a guy,” I suggest.

“The caller was female. Anyway, Malik was already so high profile because of the contempt story that we had to go ahead with his arraignment. The DA argued for no bail, but the judge set one anyway. A million bucks.”