I hit my blinker. He doesn’t signal.
Bascombe’s car is right near the entrance, parked in the rightmost space in front of the convenience store. We’ll both have to pass him to reach the pumps. The tac van is in the same position on the opposite side of the store. Once he’s in, Bayard can’t get out without going through them. When Bascombe and the van reverse into the lane, he’ll be boxed in. Cops in front of him and behind him, the store on his right and the pumps on his left.
Aguilar sits with his engine running by the air dispenser on the far side of the gas pumps, ready to cut either way if needed.
I make the turn, coasting past Bascombe’s bumper. Bayard’s car follows, closing the distance a little. I pull toward the pump, rolling to a stop. Any moment the tac van will reverse into position. I loosen my seat belt and pop open the door. I pop the thumb break on my holster.
David rolls by me slowly. I glance over. He comes to a stop, window down.
He looks at me with the same hard eyes from the photograph, a different man than the one I interviewed before. There’s a cruel smile on his lips. An orange glow flickers against the side of his face. But I don’t have time to observe much else.
He raises his hand. There’s a bottle in his fist. Sloshing liquid. A tongue of flame hanging from the neck.
A Molotov.
His arm cocks back and releases.
THINGS ARE ABOUT TO HEAT UP.
Maybe he intends to throw it, but the distance is wrong. I stand there, flat-footed. My hand moving toward the butt of my gun. He doesn’t lob the bottle. He christens the car with it, breaking the bomb against the roof like a magnum of champagne against the hull of a ship.
Tires screech.
A film of gas ignites across the top of the car. A wall of flame rushing toward me with a fatal hiss.
Then I’m on my knees. I’m crawling. I’m dragging myself between the pumps. The fuel pumps. Full to bursting with gasoline. The roar behind me, filling my ears, and in my fevered mind a mushroom cloud on the horizon, a timer ticking down to nothing.
I scramble to my feet.
Shouting, lots of shouting. Across the column of flame that envelops my car, I see David’s car hemmed in by the tac van, a half dozen muzzles ringing him round. A half dozen voices yelling for him to get out.
I draw my gun. I rush toward them.
A shell-shocked station attendant appears from inside, Bascombe on his heels. Both of them wielding fire extinguishers. They step up to my car, releasing torrents of white fog.
“Get out with your hands up!”
“Hands where I can see ’em! Hands where I can see ’em!”
David ignores the stream of commands. His silhouette is visible behind the glass. He’s rolled the driver’s window up. His engine idles.
The last lick of flame goes out. The fog envelops my scorched car. I level my pistol at David Bayard’s head, shouting with the rest of them.
He shifts behind the glass.
“Watch his hands!”
A ball of orange flame engulfs the car’s interior. Bright as the sun behind safety glass. We jump back involuntarily. I see a head, a hand thrashing behind the windshield.
Bascombe bashes in the driver’s window with the butt of his extinguisher, releasing a puff of fire. He sprays into the opening, reaching inside to unlock the door.
I holster my gun and take the other extinguisher from the attendant, following my lieutenant’s lead. The smell of gasoline is sickeningly strong.
We empty the extinguishers into the car. I pull the door open. I reach with my free hand and grab at Bayard’s clothing, pulling him out onto the pavement.
The writhing husk is unrecognizable. Red and black and bubbling. Twitching on the ground. Charred from the waist up, parts of him almost melted. I can’t look.
“March. March!”
Bascombe’s hand on my arm.
“Get yourself together. We need an ambo. Now!”
I stare at him, uncomprehending.
“He’s still breathing, man. Call an ambulance!”
“I’m on it, boss.” Aguilar. Over my shoulder.
I drop the extinguisher. I walk to my flame-blackened car. The top and passenger side are scorched. I pull the door open and strangely my briefcase lies unharmed on the passenger seat. Like nothing happened. I push it to the floor mat, making room, then lower myself down. The sight replaying in my mind. Immolation. He burned himself up rather than surrender.
One, two, three. Four, five, six.
I’m sitting in the passenger seat with my feet on the pavement, inhaling the odor of fuel and flesh. I rest my face in my hands, but all I can see is his face, his hands. I pull them away, and my palms are full of tears.
CHAPTER 29
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18 — 9:43 A.M.
If you play with fire. .
Morning briefing. Then a debrief on last night’s incident-me and Aguilar, the head of the tactical team, Bascombe and Hedges. Everybody’s gonna write on it and, without dictating the course of events, the lieutenant wants to be sure we’re all on the same page. That nobody questions what went down: a well-organized police operation that accounted for everything that could be accounted for. The wild card being the suspect’s reaction.
Next to me, Aguilar takes careful notes. At least it looks that way. On his page, the same line repeated over and over. Cartoon illustrations in the margin.
You’re gonna get burned.
A quip from an action hero, something he wishes he’d said on scene, when it could have earned him respect from the tac boys, and not thought of at the water cooler the next morning, along with everyone else.
If you play with fire. .
Back at my desk, there’s a voicemail from Gene Fontenot. There are four, in fact, left over the course of the last week. He hasn’t tried my cell, though. Maybe leaving messages is what he needs to do. Maybe the last thing he wants is for me to pick up.
Monday AM: “You sure shot out of here fast. You ever heard of leaving a note?” Delete.
Monday PM: “Hey, I just heard about Charlotte. I hope she’s all-” Delete.
Thursday AM: “Is it true what I hear, that you arrested your-” Delete.
Friday AM: “You are not gonna believe what just happened, man. Another notch on your belt, and you didn’t even know it. Call me when you get this, you dog.”
I cradle the phone on my shoulder, fingers poised over the keypad, reluctant to make the call. But I’m a desk jockey today, stuck in the office, killing time before my appointment with the head shrink. It’s just procedure. Another hoop to jump through. The fact that I never discharged my weapon doesn’t seem to matter. My reaction gave Bascombe “cause for concern.”
Like it didn’t concern me, too.
“You’re not gonna believe this,” Gene says.
“So I hear.”
“Are you sitting down?”
“All day.”
“Remember that ex-con you chased through the cemetery?”
“Of course,” I say. “Wayne Bourgeois.”
“Guess what? They found him.”
“That’s good.” I know I must sound disinterested, but how much enthusiasm can I be expected to muster? I saw a man burned to a crisp last night by his own scarred hand, and saw him gurneyed, still breathing, into an ambulance. But Bourgeois did assault that young prostitute, so I’m glad he’ll get the justice that’s coming to him. I say as much to Gene.
He laughs. “Justice? He got it already, March. And it was you that dealt the card.”
“You wanna explain yourself?”
“When I say they found him, that’s exactly what I mean: they. Not us, not NOPD. We did our usual perfunctory search and made the obvious conclusion. The athletic young perp had managed to escape the clutches of the wheezing, middle-aged cop-”
“You’re one to talk, you cripple.”
“Hey, I’m with you a hundred percent. So anyway, a couple of days pass and Bourgeois doesn’t turn up.
I figured he was back in your neck of the woods by now. But we got a call this morning from one of the caretakers out at the cemetery. Said he’d found something mighty disturbing: one of the bodies wasn’t in its crypt.”
My eye starts to twitch.
“No,” he continues, “Bourgeois never made it out. To me, you seemed like a tortoise out there running, but that boy looked over his shoulder and saw the hound of hell. He poured on the speed, lost his footing, and went on down. Crushed his head open on the edge of a marble step.”
I remember the sound from that night. A distant yelp of pain.
“He was breathing long enough to crawl between two of the crypts, probably trying to hide himself from you, and right there’s where he bled out. Our search must have walked right past him, and nobody shined a light between the gap.”
“He’s dead,” I say.
“As a doornail. You saved us the cost of a trial, and if it was up to me, I’d cut you a check right now out of gratitude. But that’s not how we do things down here. Anyway, I thought you’d get a kick out of that.”
“Right,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Hey, March. .”
“Yeah?”
“The kid did slip, right? You didn’t help him along or anything?”
“Next time I’m in New Orleans,” I say, putting the receiver down, “I’ll be sure to get a hotel room.”
Dead. A snap of the fingers. Just like that. One moment he’s on his feet. He’s actually winning the race. And then he falls and his head cracks open like an egg and he’s down for the count, down forever after. Down, down, and down. No trial or conviction. No sentence to be carried out. A summary execution, a hit carried out by fate.
Evil and suffering. Inflicted on the evil one, on the source of suffering. They don’t mean to him what they mean to us. There are things more important than living. Sometimes the blow falls like lightning from heaven. How are you supposed to argue with that?
And other times a killer, a man with no good reason to live, douses himself in gasoline, lights himself up out of nothing but spite, nothing more than the desire to deny his enemies the satisfaction of taking him. A certain death. Only he’s still breathing. The blow hasn’t fallen, the fatal hand is stayed, and the charred and blistered object of my hunt lies anesthetized in a coma, out of surgery and about to go back in, a victim once more, despite the blood on his hands.
How are you supposed to argue with that, either?
You’re gonna get burned.
One of the keys to a long career in law enforcement is learning how to tell police psychologists what they need to hear without sounding deceptive. The only alternative is good mental health, which to me has always seemed too unrealistic a goal.
My chat with the psychologist goes reasonably well. It doesn’t hurt that at the scene of a suspect’s near fatal injury, an injury which I did not cause and only narrowly avoided myself, I made an involuntary show of remorse and disgust.
Bascombe might worry that I’ve cracked, but the head shrink gives me the impression I might be the last emotionally functioning human in the Homicide Division.
She’s wrong, of course.
“Is there something you want to tell me about last night?”
“Like what?”
“Like Carter waited up and you never came home.”
“Oh,” I say. “Right. There was a development.”
“You could have called.”
“Yes,” I say. “Right. I’m sorry about that.”
“Where were you?”
“I was. . thinking.”
That’s one way to put it. Another way would be sleeping in the reclined driver’s seat of a half-scorched car, nauseous from fumes real and remembered, rolling over occasionally to glance out over the dashboard at the building that used to be the Paragon.
“Roland,” she says. “Are you all right? You don’t sound all right.”
“I have a clean bill of health. It’s official.”
A pause. “I can’t talk to you when you’re being this way.”
“What way? I’m not trying to be a ‘way’ at all. I should have called, I’m sorry. Something strange happened. You’ll hear about it soon enough. The guy who broke into the house? He lit himself on fire. We had him cornered and he decided he wasn’t going quietly.”
“That’s terrible. Is he-?”
“He’s alive,” I say. “Whatever that means under the circumstances. He was unrecognizable afterward. Like melted wax.”
She draws in a breath. “Don’t tell me any more.”
“That’s the reason I couldn’t call. I had to be alone. I had to process.” A good therapeutic word. “I’m not sure it’s so terrible, though. Didn’t he get what he deserved?”
“Roland,” she says. “Are you going to be late again tonight?”
“No. I’m riding the desk. Working the phones. Following up on some loose ends for the ADA. We got a fingerprint match to the table at the scene. We might get more, now that it doesn’t matter. I’ll leave when my shift ends, just like always. Everything back to normal.”
“I’ll be waiting,” she says. “And there’s something else. Remember what Charlie Bodeen told you? About the future of the firm? It’s official. You’ve been so distracted I didn’t want to burden you with anything.”
So I’m not the only one keeping quiet.
She waits for me to say something. I don’t.
“The good news,” she says, a thin coat of cheer on her voice, “the good news is, I’m starting a new job.”
“A new job.”
“I got an offer from one of the big firms.”
“The ‘unsavory BigLaw types’?”
“They’re not that bad,” she says, not realizing I’m quoting her words back to her. “They’ve been shedding associates like so much dead weight, but they still made me an offer.” Pride in her voice. “A good one too, Roland. It would be quite a step up.”
“That’s great,” I say.
“Only I’d have to go into the office. It wouldn’t be the contract work. I wouldn’t be working from home anymore. And there might be some travel involved, too.”
“Good. That’s really good. I’m happy for you.”
“Are you?” She listens to the silence. “Because if you’re not, I don’t have to accept. I just thought. . with you working so much, keeping such crazy hours, you wouldn’t miss me if I had to pop out of town every so often. Or work a late night myself.”
“I’d miss you,” I say. “But it’s good. I approve.”
“I’m glad,” she says. “We can talk about it tonight. I’ve been waiting to tell you, but I couldn’t wait any longer or you’d have heard it from somebody else.”
“I understand.” A thought occurs to me. “There’s one stop I need to make after work. It won’t take long.”
“Okay.” She draws the word out, wondering if I’ll elaborate.
I don’t. “I’ll see you.”
“I love you, too,” she says, hanging up.
I sit at my desk, staring at the computer screen, reflecting on the difference between what I said and what she heard. Like she wasn’t hearing, or was hearing too much.
The man behind the desk is Hedges, the old version, wearing one of the boxy gray suits that disappeared around the time the promotion bug bit him. His bent Aviators hang from the breast pocket like he’s just come in from the field, though it’s so gray outside he might only have forgotten them there from the last time he wore the suit.
Bascombe sits at his right hand-or to be more precise, on the credenza over his right shoulder. The lieutenant looks happy, which is to say he looks mean. Satisfied to be playing bad cop to the captain’s good. Back to normal. God in his heaven and the earth in its proper orbit.
“The DA’s office just got a proffer from Bayard’s attorney,” Hedges says. “Apparently the father is ready to go on record against the son.”
“That’s convenient.”
He nods. “Be
that as it may, they want our input. Given the trajectory of your investigation, I assume you now consider the arrest of Bayard Sr. premature? It was the son who killed those girls, not the father.”
“As far as I can tell, that’s true. But the father bears some responsibility. At minimum he tried to cover up the son’s tracks. He can’t just walk free by pointing the finger.”
“No,” he says, “but if he’s willing to plead on that, you’re not going to lose sleep, right?”
“That’s your question or the DA’s?” I ask. Then: “Never mind. I don’t care whose it is. I’ll do whatever you want. It’s not my call. Either it goes to the jury or they work out a deal. My bit is done. The real killer sentenced himself.”
“You don’t sound happy about that. Most people around here feel otherwise. Saved us the trouble of going to court.”
Fontenot’s sentiment exactly, talking about Wayne Bourgeois.
I glance down, feeling the weight of both pairs of eyes on me. I went home before coming in, changed out of my reeking clothes. But I still smell the scent of fuel on me.
Whether it’s really there or not.
“He saved us the trouble,” I say. “But I wish I could have interrogated him. Found out what made him tick. For a while there, he was going back and forth with me. I think I could’ve gotten him to talk.”
Hedges sighs. He leans forward, elbows on his desk.
“It’s not knowing that gets you, right? I understand where you’re coming from. But there’s one thing you’re missing. Maybe you can’t put a label on him. Maybe it’s not enough to say he was insane or evil or a product of a bad environment. But in this case, there’s one thing you do know. He’s guilty. There’s no doubt about that. And if you have that much, March, I’m not sure any of the rest really matters. To the sociologists maybe, but not to cops.”
“You’re right about that,” I say. Hoping to believe it one day.
I’m outside the office, listening as the closed blinds rattle against the door, and it occurs to me I made it through the whole meeting without the lieutenant interjecting once. He must be thrilled to have the old boss back. So satisfied he didn’t feel the need to add a single word.
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