went over to the guy from the Eldorado with a lot of hand-waving, and then fell to the ground, pulling at the Eldorado's legs. The guy from the Eldorado kicked at the old man, then pulled out a small revolver, put it to the old man's head, and we heard a single, small pop.
My breath caught and I felt Pike tense.
The guy from the Eldo kicked the old man's body away, then said something to LeRoy Bennett, and Bennett nodded. The guys from the towboat climbed back aboard, and LeRoy and the guy with the gun walked out to the Eldo. The shooter opened the Eldo's trunk, took out a small handbag, and gave it to LeRoy. LeRoy brought it to his Polara. The towboat's engines revved, it backed from the shed, spun slowly into the canal, then eased back the way it had come, still without lights, the low gurgle of its engines fading into the mist. The shooter got into his Eldo and followed after the trucks. Now there were only four of us.
Pike said, "Too late for the old man. What do you want to do?"
"Let's see what happens."
LeRoy took a shovel from the Polara, then he and René dragged the old man and the rag doll along a little trail into the weeds. Pike and I crept after them, moving closer. René dug a small depression in the wet earth, dumped in the bodies, covered them, then went back to their car. LeRoy turned off the generator, and the swamp was suddenly dark. He and René got into their car, and then they, too, were gone.
I said, "Okay."
Pike and I moved to the shallow grave and pushed the mud away with our hands and found the old man and a little girl. The girl was maybe five. She was small and thin, and perhaps she might have been ill, but maybe not. Her face was dark with the rich earth, but as the rain kissed her skin the dirt washed away. I stroked her hair and felt my breath slow and the muscles along my neck and back and across my ribs tighten. She might have been the old man's granddaughter, but maybe not. Maybe she was alone, and he had befriended her. Maybe he just cared, and in the caring expressed his outrage at her death, and for his outrage he'd been killed. We went through his pockets hoping for some sort of identification, but there was none. There was only a small photograph, bent and water-stained, of the man and a group of people who may have been his family. The man was smiling. I put the photograph in my pocket. I said, "Let's get them out of here."
Pike touched my arm. "We can't, Elvis."
I looked at him.
"If we move them, Rossier will know. We have to wait. We have to know more before we help them."
I breathed deep in the wet air, and then I nodded. I didn't like it, but there you are.
We sat in the rain with the old man and the little girl, and after a while we left.
CHAPTER 27
W e returned to the motel at a little before two the next morning, driving slowly along roads that were glassy with rain, through a town so still that it seemed as lifeless and empty as the bodies we'd left in the mud and the sawgrass. We were all that moved in Ville Platte, Joe and I, neither of us speaking, lit only by flashing yellow signal lights that whispered caution.
We showered and changed, Joe going first, and when we were done and the lights were out, I said, "Joe?"
I heard him move on the floor, but it took him several seconds to answer. "Yes."
"Oh, Jesus, Joe."
Pike might have slept, but I did not. I was in the dry room, yet not. I was with the old man and the girl, yet not. I crouched in the sawgrass beside them, the night air dank and muggy, the rain running out of my hair and down my back, the great fat drops falling on the faces below me, washing circles of perfect clarity on the muddy skin, but a clarity that did not maintain and soon faded, obscured by more drops, as if every new truth clouded an old.
The rain stopped falling a few minutes after four, and at 7:05 we called Lucy at her home and told her what we had seen. She said, "Do you think these people were illegal