DR13 - Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke

bottle at a trash barrel. But the bottle bounced on the rim of the barrel and fell on the gravel path. Rather than get up from the bench and retrieve it, I looked at it dumbly, all my energies dissipated for reasons that made no sense, the light as cold and brittle as if the sun were layered with ice.
    I heard footsteps behind me.
    "I wasn't going to disturb you but I have to get back home," Theo-dos ha Flannigan said.
    "Pardon?" I said.
    "Your neighbor told me you'd be here if you weren't at home," she said. "I was parked in my car, waiting for you to come out. Merchie doesn't know where I am. He ducks bullets in Afghanistan, then gets strung out if he breaks a shoelace. It's because of his mother. I think she was lobotomized. That's not a joke."
    I couldn't follow what she was saying. I started to get up, but she put her hand on my shoulder and sat down beside me.
    "It's about Saturday night. Those two children were in danger of falling in the pond and I just stood there and watched it happening. I feel like shit," she said.
    " "Bravery' and 'fear' are relative terms. What counts is you went after them," I said.
    "I have some bad memories about that pond," she said. She bit on a hangnail and stared into space. "I never go inside that fence. You must think I'm an awful person."
    But the truth was I didn't want to talk about Theo's personal problems. I stood and picked up the plastic bottle that had bounced off the trash can and dropped it inside. When I sat back down I felt the blood rush from my head.
    "Are you okay?" she said.
    "I still have bouts with malaria sometimes," I said.
    She wore a scarf tied under her chin, the points of her hair pressed flat against her cheeks. "Something else is bothering me, too, Dave. I think I make you uncomfortable," she said.
    "No, that's not true. Not at all," I said, focusing my eyes on the bayou.
    "That night we had the little fling? We'd both been drinking our heads off. Neither one of us was married at the time. I admit I thought you might come back around, but you didn't. So I wrote it off. It's no big deal."
    "You're right, it's no big deal. I didn't say it was a big deal," I replied.
    "Then why are you so "
    "It's not a problem. That's really important to understand here," I said.
    "I'm afraid I've intruded upon you."
    "No, you haven't. Everything is fine. Give Merchie my best."
    "Will you come out to dinner?"
    I pinched my temples and looked down the bayou at the Evange-line Oak looming over the water and at the spire of the old French church, a sliver of moon rising behind the steeple.
    "Maybe we can talk about it later," I said.
    "Sure. I'm sorry for being here like this. Since my psychiatrist died .. . No, that's the wrong word. Since he shot himself I feel this terrible sense of guilt. I've got two days' sobriety now. That's pitiful, isn't it? I mean, taking pride in staying off the hooch for two days, like I invented the wheel?"
    "I'll see you, Theo."
    She exhaled her breath and I felt it touch my skin. She raised her eyebrows, staring inquisitively into my face, as though I needed to supply the endings to all her unfinished thoughts. Then she seemed to give it up and kissed the tips of two fingers, pressed them against my cheek, and walked out of the cemetery, a solitary firefly lighting in a tree above her head.
    In the morning I called a homicide detective at the Lafayette City Police Department by the name of Joe Dupree. He had been in the 173 Airborne Brigade in Vietnam, but never spoke of the war and ate aspirin constantly for the pain he'd carried in his knees for thirty-five years. He was also one of the most thorough investigators I had ever known.
    "What do you have on this psychiatrist who shot himself in Girard Park?" I said.
    "Dr. Bernstine? It's going down as a suicide. Why do you ask?"
    "A woman named Theodosha Flannigan has brought it up a couple of times."
    "Merchie Flannigan's wife?"
    "Yeah, how'd you know?"
    "Her name was in Bernstine's appointment book,"