Vincent seemed a little over-awed by the woman, or perhaps afraid. Whatever the reason, he was clearly having trouble getting to the point and asking her about Delores. Eric decided to take over for him.
“So, Mrs.Carter,” he began, “Tommy tells us that you knew Delores Nash?”
“That’s right,” she said. “It’s a terrible thing, what happened.”
“It is,” agreed Eric. “Did Tommy tell you why we wanted to know more about Mrs, Nash?”
“Yes, he did. And I want you to know that I’ve heard about you, Eric Boucher. And I don’t believe any of your paranoid nonsense.”
“Okay,” said Eric. “I suppose we can agree to disagree about that. But if that’s what you think of me, why did you come?”
“Because as wrong-headed as you may be, you three misfits are the only people who seem to care about getting justice for Delores.”
“The cops certainly don’t,” agreed Eric. Mrs. Carter began to cry.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Carter. Sometimes I speak without thinking,” said Eric.
“No, no, it’s not that,” she said. “It’s just- I hear all the things that Tommy and the rest of you kids say about the police, and I just tell myself that you’ll all grow out of it one day. But something like this happens, and it makes me wonder if you weren’t right all this time. They really don’t care, but they were happy enough to accept free coffees from her the day before she was killed and every day before that.”

No one said anything for a few minutes. No one knew what to say, thought Eric, Tommy least of all. He was staring at his mother in gap-mouthed astonishment. Everyone has hidden depths, buddy, thought Eric.

It was Jim who finally broke the silence.
“So, you knew Delores before she opened the store?” he asked.
“Yes, we worked together during the war. Afterwards, she married a GI from some small town in Iowa, and he moved out here. When he retired from the army in 1962, they opened the store together.”
“Yeah, I think I remember him from when I first came here,” said Jim. “John, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right. John Nash. He was a fine figure of a man when we met him.”
“He wasn’t in bad shape then, and he must have been pushing sixty or so. I remember thinking that he looked like an old weight lifter the first time I saw him. He was a very muscle-bound man for a guy his age.”
“And that all came from after war. He was a beanpole when we first met him, but his family ran to fat, he said. He used to spend hours working out – he always said he was trying to keep ahead of it,” she said, and smiled fondly at the memory.
“He, uh, passed away a few years ago, didn’t he?” asked Vincent. Mrs. Carter nodded.
“Heart attack in ’74.”
“I suppose that ran in his family too?” asked Eric.
“No,” she said. “I remember asking his brother about that at the funeral, and he said that John was the only Nash to have a heart attack since before the Civil War. And there was no history of that on his mother’s side, either.” She hesitated, then asked: “Is any of this helping?” Eric, Vincent and Jim exchanged somewhat sheepish glances.
“It is, yeah,” said Eric. “Every little detail helps to build a picture, and suggests more places to look for other details. It’s a very slow process,” he added apologetically. Mrs, Carter patted him on the knee.
“I’m sure it is, but I think I can trust you boys to see it through.”
“Yes ma’am,” they chorused. We sound like obedient schoolboys, Eric thought, and the look on Jim’s face suggested that he was thinking the same.

Still lying facedown in the gutter, he risked turning his head slightly for a better angle of vision. He couldn’t see Fargan anywhere on that side, so he tried looking the other way. Not there either. So it was probably safe to stand up again now. He wasn’t just going to be knocked back down again the instant that he did.

Time, he thought, to steal a horse and get as far away from this town as possible, before Fargan talked to his friends, and they all learned what so far only Fargan knew: that the property deeds Hollis had been peddling were about as real as a lover’s promise never to be angry. They would come looking for him, he knew. But it was entirely up to him whether they found him or not.

Eric had news of his own when he got in, but the tv had the same news, and all Eric could really add to it was speculation. He readily agreed to hang around for Tommy’s tale.
“We’re only as good as the quality of our information,” he said cheerfully, and Vincent suppressed a shudder. Wasn’t it enough that a thing was true, without having to enjoy it?
“I knew Robert, you know,” said Jim. “He used to work in the library at West Point.”
“That doesn’t seem like a place you would meet him,” said Eric.
“I didn’t, for a while. But his son was a promoter in New York, and I met him through him when Robert asked him to introduce us.”
“Why would he want to meet you?” asked Eric. “No offence, but I’m assuming he was pretty establishment.”
“Was he a celebrity stalker?” asked Vincent jokingly. Jim ignored him and answered Eric instead.
“Not as much as you might think. He was a pretty open-minded guy. Fought in the Pacific, served with the occupation forces in Japan after the war, and got into Zen a bit.”
“Weird combination.”
“Yeah, but he made it work,” said Jim. “He asked to meet us because he kept getting letters from GIs in Vietnam who wanted him to add our records to the West Point library’s collection.”
“Really?” asked Eric and Vincent in stunned unison. Jim grinned wickedly.
“Really. He even brought some of the letters along to show us.”
“Wow,” said Eric.
“Yeah. I never did find out how that all turned out, but I remember we gave him a complete set of our albums, and we all signed them to him, too.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“Nahh. I knew he’d moved out here, and I always meant to go see him someday, but you know how it is. You always think that there will be more time.”

Vincent was about to agree with him when they all heard the doorbell. Answering it, he was unsurprised to find Tommy there, but a little more surprised that his Mom was with him. They made a weird contrast, the hippy-looking guy and the lady who looked like she’d just walked out of the fifties, but there was no mistaking their relation to each other. Tommy’s Mom carried herself with great dignity, but there was a certain amount of anger leaking out from under it. Vincent was pretty sure he knew what it was about, too.

There was so much going on in the soul of the city that even Ward had trouble sorting it all out. There was a strong current of sympathy for New Orleans, but also a fear of it, which Ward attributed to worries about both refugees and government funding in the short term. The city was also afraid for its own sake – Katrina had come too close for comfort. And underneath all that, there was a sly calculation going on of how all this could work to Lafayette’s advantage in its never-ending struggle with Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Ward was used to the competitiveness of cities, but there was a vulturish quality to this particular incarnation of it that sickened him, even as he couldn’t help agreeing with the logic of it.

An instant later, Lafayette recognised him as the intruder he was, and his window to the thoughts of the city’s soul was slammed shut. Despite knowing that he’d been lying flat on his back the whole time, Ward had the sensation that the back of his head had been slammed against a wall. Hard.

Dammit. He had to learn to control his own emotions a little better. Lafayette had had no idea he was there until he’d reacted like that. Hard as it was, he needed to be better at this if he was going to be any use at all. That was what the Aussie at the casino had been trying to tell him, among other things. That was what had made him turn around and come home again. Mostly.

It made his head hurt to think about all this, although no doubt a part of that was the kicking Lafayette had given his spirit.

Ward got up and staggered to the minibar. This was going to require some anaesthetizing.

The person who had caused the screams was beyond any need of first aid – he could see that at a glance. The actual screamer was one of the librarians, and most likely just needed to lie down somewhere quiet and maybe sip from a glass of water. Eric could see that her workmates had that situation well in hand, so he turned his attention back to the body.

The man was about sixty years old, and he was lying on his back. Although there was blood all over his clothes, he only hand one visible wound – his throat had been cut by someone who knew what they were doing, from the looks of it, although Eric couldn’t get quite close enough to tell whether the cutter had been left or right handed. He was wearing a badge identifying him as a library staff member, and his name was Robert.

Despite what Vincent so often said, Eric wasn’t completely lacking in human sensitivities. He wandered off between the shelves where no one could see him before adding Robert’s name and the few details he knew about the man to the list in his notebook. It might be nothing, but something about the professionalism of the killing suggested to Eric that this one was connected. In a way, he kind of hoped it was – the alternative, that Robert had been killed by some random psycho, was even less comforting.

They couldn’t get all the way through to New Orleans that night. After a long, slow drive, she’d finally decided that it made more sense to stop in Lafayette, a little over half the distance they needed to travel. Ward had tried to persuade her to share a motel room to save a little money, but she’d told him he could get his own room or sleep in the car. There was something about him that made her head itch, and until she knew for sure what it was, she wasn’t going to be sharing a room with him, much less a bed.

Not that she wasn’t tempted – he was a good looking man, it had been a while and he clearly found her attractive. But she wasn’t about jump into bed with anyone until she knew them a whole lot better. Maybe she was a little too cautious, but Jenna firmly believed that it was better to be safe than sorry.