Chapter 9: Blue Lights

Laurent was gone before Russ finished spelling the address.

"I can't be here when they come," he said to me at the door, low. "I'll call you."

He walked off down the dark beach road without looking back.

Russ dragged the net room door shut on the chips and the broken bottle and the table, and locked it.

Then he went up to the porch and waited for the deputies.

Two cruisers came down East Beach with their blue lights going and no sirens.

The neighbors came out onto their porches in robes and slippers.

The old woman next door had her phone up, filming.

The deputy who got out of the first car was the same one from Andre's counter on Monday morning.

He saw me and closed his eyes for a second.

"Ma'am," he said.

"That man took my wife out of her bed," Russ said, pointing at Andre. "She can't walk. She can't talk. I want him arrested."

"Where is she?" the deputy asked.

"In my truck," Andre said. "Two houses down. Go ask her."

"She can't answer you," Russ said. "She's brain damaged."

"She can answer," I said. "Wait."

I ran to Andre's truck and opened the glovebox.

I'd bought the letterboard on Wednesday at a medical supply store on Pass Road.

It was a white plastic board with the alphabet and YES and NO printed in big black letters.

Mama was awake in the front seat.

When she saw the board she made a sound I'd never heard from her, half laugh, half sob.

I held it on her lap.

The deputy came up beside the open door with his flashlight, and Russ came behind him, and half the street came behind Russ.

"Ma'am," the deputy said to her gently. "Do you know where you are?"

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