Free Eye of the Cricket by James Sallis Page B

said after I briefed him. "This is local, right? We know where this kid was? Just a minute. Damn
     computer's just sitting here blinking at me."
    Too many people surfing on the Third Wave.
    "I'm waiting . . . waiting . . . I said later," he told someone. "Here it is. Armantine 'Army' or 'R. M.' Rauch. Went up on attempted second-degree, twenty to thirty. Remanded
     to LTI by judicial order. That's Louisiana Training Institute, and I've no doubt he was trained there, though not quite the way society intended. On the street they call it going to college."
    "Plea-bargained? "
    "Couldn't. They'd have tried to kick it down to manslaughter, even aggravated assault, but statutes say if the wound's to
     trunk or head it's gotta be second-degree. Evidence of past offenses, the usual escalation, was also entered."
    "He's out?"
    "Nineteenth of August. Happy birthday."
    "Just like that."
    "Yeah, butterfly time. The weird thing is, we have an address. I guess Rauch was carrying on an extensive correspondence while
     he was in prison, wanted to be sure it got continued once he was outside."
    I climbed out of the cab in front of a tract house just across the parish line off Old Metairie Road. Almost certainly it
     had been military housing, later converted to fifties sub-suburban with accrual of screened-in porch, cinder-block utility
     room and partial second floor. Plywood nailed to the windows signaled a more recent conversion to abandoned building. The
     yard was ankle deep in rotting leaves, bright green clover, grenadelike pinecones.
    Don's address had taken me to a poolroom-lounge on Jefferson Highway. The owner-bartender didn't appreciate my questions near
     as much as he had my business when I first came in and ordered a beer, and the whole thing quickly developed into one of those
     standard dialogues involving baseball bats produced from beneath the bar and bodies hauled across the top of it, after which
     he decided maybe it would be okay to tell me where R. M. was staying.
    The front door gave with a sharp tug, nails pulling free of well-worn holes. Inside I found hard evidence of habitation: hot
     plate, pans, stack of dishes, aluminum percolator, canned goods, large tin of coffee, clothes that smelled of sweat hanging
     from nails in the wall. A plastic ice chest wi th two beer cans half afloat in tepid water and a pile of empty, crushed ones
     nearby.
    In one comer, tucked under a sleeping bag, I found torn envelopes addressed to Armantine Rauch and letters beginning Dear Arm.
    In another room I found, jammed into the wall behind broken paneling and swaddled in a canvas backpack, a long-barreled .22
     target pistol.
    In the last room I found a body lying facedown.

10

    FOR SOME TIME words had been dropping without apparent reason or provocation, refusing to be dislodged, into my mind. Once
     it was poshlost, another time sere. Often these were words whose meanings I knew, if at all, imperfectly, though they were familiar.
    Coming upon the body was like that. It wasn't Shon Delany's, but for a moment, for no good reason, I became absolutely certain
     that it was, and couldn't shake the impression.
    I spent a couple of hours at the sheriff's office out there. In Jefferson Parish, unlike Orleans, it's the sheriff who handles
     police work. Officers sat across tables from me staring and served me plastic cups of coffee foul enough to elicit confession
     from the staunchest wrongdoer. They refused to get too worked up over this. Their attitude told me it was the kind of death
     that belonged to New Orleans, just happened to stray over the line into their territory.
    I gave my statement, survived coffee and stares and when they finally agreed to put a call through, spoke to Don Walsh.
    "Lew," he said, "I've been giving this some thought. What you need to work on is finding live bodies for a change. Maybe even the ones you're actually looking for."
    "Good point."
    "Let me talk to whoever's running the show."
    His brief conversation