Del Jr. grudgingly holds out his hand, and I shake it. You’d have to cut a quarter inch into his palm to draw blood.
“Take the kids inside,” Althea tells him.
Del Jr. jerks his head toward the house, and the children walk backwards to the front door, staring at me as they go. Del looks at my father’s BMW, and it’s painfully easy to read his face. The money that car cost would keep his family fed and sheltered for five years. He turns and follows his kids into the house.
“He’s got a lot of bitterness in his heart,” Althea says.
“He’s got reason to. I sure thank you for the tomatoes.”
“Any time, Penn.”
I get into the car and lay the bandanna on top of the police file, then wave at Georgia Payton as I drive away. She doesn’t respond.
As I clear the first turn, the significance of what I saw in Del Payton’s charred Fairlane bursts into my conscious mind with the brilliance of a flare. I pull onto the shoulder, park, and with shaking hands pick up the file I bought from Willie Pinder. Caitlin’s article said Del’s car was destroyed by dynamite. That fit with the story I’d heard all my life. But if I remember Huey Moak’s drawled lectures correctly, much of what I saw five minutes ago contradicts that version of events.
For one thing, dynamited cars almost never burn. Payton’s did. But it’s the shearing that’s important. Whatever exploded in that Fairlane attacked both engine and firewall with tremendous cutting force, like an acetylene torch completing its job in a fraction of a second. It left shrapnel no bigger than thumbtacks. And it created a flash hot enough to set fire to a car constructed with only a fraction of the plastic used in modern vehicles. I can still hear Huey’s voice in my mind: Those are characteristics of a uniquely stable, versatile, and powerful explosive that the Army calls C-4. The Russians call it Semtex. The French, plastique. Civilians call it good old plastic explosive …
Fifteen pages into the Payton file, I find the crime-scene report. Near the middle of the page a handwritten sentence reads “Bomb constructed of unknown material” in black ink. But a blue line has been drawn through the words “unknown material” and the words “commercial-grade dynamite” written above them. At the bottom of the page, a note in blue reads, “One day following the initial scene investigation, Patrolman Ray Presley discovered fragments of civilian blasting caps and wire fragments in the wooded area one hundred feet from the vehicle. Subsequent lab analysis showed traces of nitroglycerine.” Nitroglycerine is one of the main ingredients in dynamite. Beneath that final note are two signatures: Detective First Grade Henry Creel and Detective Ronnie Temple.
One day after a bomb destroyed Del Payton’s Fairlane, Ray Presley discovered “proof” that the bomb was made of dynamite. Thirty years later I glance into the same car and find evidence that seems to indicate something quite different. I could be wrong, of course. I know of no reason why Presley should lie about the type of bomb that destroyed Del Payton’s car. And speculation is pointless until I know that he did. But that’s the beauty of physical evidence. I’ll get my answer. All I have to do is get that sheared fragment and sack of shrapnel to Huey Moak, then convince the BATF agent that it’s in his interest to help me. And the surest way to do that is to let him know that a quick analysis could put a great deal of egg on the face of the FBI.
Though I can’t see how, I am strangely certain that I’ve taken one step closer to Leo Marston.
“Daddy, look at the crawdads! They’ve got humongous claws!”
Annie races across the patio and leaps into my arms like a thirty-pound bullet. Though petite for her age, she is wiry and strong, like her mother.
“You’d better not let one get your nose!” I warn her. “It’ll thunder seven times before he turns loose.”
“Your daddy’s lying to you, girl,” Ruby calls from beside the pool. “That’s a snapping turtle he talking ’bout. Crawfish can’t hurt you none.”
“One already pinched my finger!” Annie cries. “It didn’t even hurt.”
Dad is tending a five-gallon boiler near the house, and the roar of burning propane makes my stomach rumble, a Pavlovian response that remains automatic even after twenty years away. A cooler full of live crawfish sits beside the boiling water.
“Sam Jacobs brought these by,” he explains. “He went over to Catahoula Parish to look at a stripper well and brought them back. They’re good-sized. Pretty too.”
“Did you ask him to stay?”
“He said he had to get home, but that you should call him one night and go get a beer.”
“I could use one now.”
“There’s a six-pack of Corona in the fridge. Limes too. Bring me a Heineken while you’re at it.”
“On the way.”
I walk over and hug Ruby, then go inside. My mother’s in the kitchen, washing corn and potatoes for the crawfish pot. She asks how my day went, and I say something inane about how little the town has changed. During the past hour I photocopied the Del Payton police file, rented a safe deposit box and stored the original inside, bought packaging material at Fred’s Dollar Store, and delivered the fragments of Del’s engine to the UPS office five minutes before they closed. I also spoke to Huey Moak, whom Cilla tracked down in Lexington, Kentucky, where he is investigating an explosion at the university. Huey could not conceal his pleasure at the prospect of solving a bombing case the FBI had bungled, even if it was thirty years old. The engine fragments will arrive before noon tomorrow at the Holiday Inn where he and his BATF team are staying. All that activity left me only one task to complete: the felony I started this morning.
I carry a Heineken out to my father and sit in a lawn chair at the edge of the pool. Annie has taken two crawfish from the cooler and is trying to make them race across the patio. She quickly learns that the only direction crawfish will move under duress is backward. I sip the Corona and watch the crustacean derby while Dad purges the mudbugs in the cooler by dumping salt water over them. Mom brings out a huge bowl of new potatoes, corn, and onions, which she dumps into the steaming pot along with three bags of Zatarain’s crab boil. The sharp aroma of spices fills the air, making my mouth water, and Annie stares with saucer eyes as Dad loads the wire-mesh inner boiler with brown crawfish and submerges them in the boiling water. When he hauls them out twenty minutes later, they are a flaming red-orange.
“Wow!” Annie marvels.
“Time to eat ’em!” Dad says.
Mom covers the wrought-iron patio table with newspaper, and Dad dumps the steaming crawfish onto the center, making a small mountain. I spear some potatoes and corn with a fork and make a plate for Annie, assuming she likes the look of crawfish better than she’ll like the taste. But I’m wrong. She isn’t strong enough to crack the tails efficiently, but with Dad peeling for her, she goes through a half pound of tails before she’s done. As I watch her joyful eyes, the Payton case recedes in my mind. I should have brought Annie here right after the funeral. My mother’s matter-of-fact attitude toward the mysteries of life has already brought her out of her melancholia. When Annie announces that her tummy is full,
