Every Dead Thing

As O’Neill Brouchard was dying, I sat in the detective squad room in St. Martinville as men were pulled in from holidays and days off to assist in the search. Woolrich had switched off his cell phone but the phone company had been alerted. If he used it, they would try to pinpoint a location.

Someone handed me a cup of coffee in an alligator cup, and while I drank it, I tried Rachel’s room at the motel again. On the tenth ring the desk clerk interrupted.

“Are you…Do they call you the Birdman?” he said. He sounded young and uncertain.

“Yes, some people do.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Did you call before?”

I told him that this was my third call. I was aware of an edge in my voice.

“I was grabbing lunch. I have a message for you, from the FBI.”

He said the three letters with a sort of wonder in his voice. Nausea bubbled in my throat.

“It’s from Agent Woolrich, Mr. Birdman. He said to tell you that he and Ms. Wolfe were taking a trip, and that you’d know where to find them. He said he wanted you to keep it to just the three of you. He doesn’t want anyone else to spoil the occasion. He told me to tell you that especially, sir.”

I closed my eyes and his voice grew further away.

“That’s the message, sir. Did I do okay?”

Toussaint, Dupree and I lay the map across Dupree’s desk. Dupree took out a red felt-tip and drew a circle around the Crowley-Ramah area, with the two towns acting as the diameters of the circle and Lafayette as its center.

“I figure he’s got a place in there somewhere,” said Dupree. “If you’re right and he needed to be close to Byron, if not to the Aguillards as well, then we’re looking at an area as far as Krotz Springs to the north and, damn, maybe as far as Bayou Sorrel to the south. If he took your friend, that probably delayed him a little: he needed time to check motel reservations-not much, but enough if he was unlucky with the places he called-and he needed time to get her out. He won’t want to stay on the roads, so he’ll hole up, maybe in a motel or, if it’s close enough, his own place.”

He tapped the pen in the center of the circle. “We’ve alerted the locals, the feds, and the state troopers. That leaves us-and you.”

I had been thinking of what Woolrich had said, that I would know where to find them, but so far nothing had come to me. “I can’t pin anything down. The obvious ones, like the Aguillard house and his own place in Algiers, are already being checked, but I don’t think he’s going to be at either of those places.”

I put my head in my hands. My fears for Rachel were obscuring my reasoning. I needed to pull back. I took my jacket and walked to the door.

“I need space to think. I’ll stay in touch.”

Dupree seemed about to object, but he said nothing. Outside, my car was parked in a police space. I sat in it, rolled down the windows, and took my Louisiana map from the glove compartment. I ran my fingers over the names: Arnaudville, Grand Coteau, Carencro, Broussard, Milton, Catahoula, Coteau Holmes, St. Martinville itself.

The last name seemed familiar from somewhere, but by that point all the towns seemed to resonate with some form of meaning, which left them all meaningless. It was like repeating your name over and over and over again in your head, until the name itself lost its familiarity and you began to doubt your own identity. I started to drive out of town toward Lafayette.

Still, St. Martinville came back to me again. Something about New Iberia and a hospital. A nurse. Nurse Judy Neubolt. Judy the Nut. As I drove, I recalled the conversation that I had had with Woolrich when I’d arrived in New Orleans for the first time after the deaths of Susan and Jennifer. Judy the Nut. “She said I murdered her in a past life.” Was the story true, or did it mean something else? Had Woolrich been toying with me, even then?

The more I thought about it, the more certain I became. He had told me that Judy Neubolt had moved to La Jolla on a one-year contract after their relationship broke up. I doubted that Judy had ever got as far as La Jolla.

Judy Neubolt wasn’t in the current directory, or the previous year’s directory either. I found her in an old directory in a gas station-her phone had since been disconnected- and figured I could get more directions in St. Martinville. Then I called Huckstetter at home, gave him Judy Neubolt’s address, and asked him to contact Dupree in an hour if he hadn’t heard from me. He agreed, reluctantly.

As I drove, I thought of David Fontenot and the call from Woolrich that had almost certainly brought him to Honey Island, a promise of an end to the search for his sister. He couldn’t have known how close he was to her resting place when he died.

I thought of the deaths I had brought on Morphy and Angie; the echo of Tante Marie’s voice in my head as he came for her; and Remarr, gilded in fading sunlight. I think I realized, too, why the details had appeared in the newspaper: it was Woolrich’s way of bringing his work to a larger audience, a modern-day equivalent of the public anatomization.