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trip.”
    â€œClaude Bauterre.” Sheriff Vallot dropped the name.
    The man’s face did not change expression. “I believe he was killed that year. Yes. His killer was never found.”
    â€œWhy was he killed?”
    â€œWhy all this interest in something that happened forty years ago, Edan?”
    â€œWas he really murdered and his body burned to ash? Sealed in concrete?”
    The elder Daily smoothed his pencil-line moustache. “I really don’t know, Edan. I was out of town at the time. Baton Rouge.”
    Sheriff Vallot looked at the man for several long seconds. He’s lying, Edan concluded. But why?
    â€œSomeone desecrated his grave,” Edan said. “That doesn’t happen ’round here very often. You know he’s buried in the older part of the cemetery; lots of folks saw the open crypt. Yet no one came to me about it. Had to have happened three, four weeks ago. I find it odd no one reported it. Don’t you, Mr. Daily?”
    The man shrugged.
    â€œThanks so much,” Sheriff Vallot said dryly, then abruptly wheeled around, walking back to his car. He stopped, turned around. “Mr. Daily? did you know about Trahan’s child? The one that’s called the dog-boy?”
    â€œLot of people knew about him.”
    â€œThat he was chained up like some goddamned wild animal! Why would they keep him like that?”
    Once again, that shrug. “Let it all alone, Edan,” Daily said. “You’ve done your duty; taken the boy off to a cell. As far as Claude Bauterre is concerned . . . all that is old news. Why drag it up now?”
    Edan looked at the young Daily. “You ridin’ back with me?”
    â€œI’ll stay out with dad for a few minutes, Edan. He’ll take me back to the office.”
    Edan knew it would do no good to ask about the missing papers; he would just receive another lie, another shrug. He nodded then walked to his car.
    â€œNow, what, Dad?” Eli asked his father.
    â€œNothing,” the man replied. “Nothing at all.”

Chapter Five
    Sheriff Vallot talked with a dozen or more older citizens of Joyeux. But every time he brought up the name of Claude Bauterre, their faces went blank and their memories suddenly numbed.
    â€œGot kilt. Don know who kilt him. Don care, neither.”
    â€œClaude Bauterre? Oh, yeah. Amour House. Got kilt ’bout forty year ago. Naw . . . don know who kilt him.”
    â€œI don’t know anything about it, Edan. I was in the navy.”
    â€œForget it, Edan. He was a bad man. Forget it.”
    And so it went.
    Just after noon, Sheriff Vallot parked his car, got in his bass boat, and headed up the bayou toward Blind Bayou and the dark swamp. If she would talk to him, he knew one person who could tell him what happened: Annie Metrejean.
    At the chute, Edan headed the boat northwest, into the black water. Here, even during the day one almost needed lights to see. The trees touched overhead, branches intertwining, as if touching in a subtle caress only they could understand.
    Not many people came up this way. Not that anyone would admit to being afraid of the old woman; no one nowadays admitted any belief in her mumbo jumbo. But the fishing was no good up there—for some reason; boat might get hung up; nothing up there ’cept cottonmouths and rattlesnakes and old mossy-back ’gators; too far to go, anyway.
    Edan nosed his boat against the pilings of the old woman’s home, part of the home built out over the dark waters, and cut the engine. The air was still, the dark swamp silent in early afternoon.
    â€œAnnie? Sheriff Vallot—you home?”
    She stuck her gray head over the railing and frowned at him. “Where else I be—hah? What you think, I got maybe a big fancy power boat lak you to run up and down the bayou, aggravatin’ peoples? What you want, boy?”
    Annie was almost ninety, but still spry and active, her mind sharp as a