"I was going to call it in as a possible."
"With my name."
Wade said nothing.
"Somebody told you to come here. At five o'clock. To me." He did not make it a question. "That is interesting, I think. You should think about why that is interesting."
Then he picked the bow line back up, turned to the trailer, and said something quick in Vietnamese to the boy, who came down off the rail and waded out knee-deep to catch the skiff as it slid free. Mr. Tran parked the truck and the empty trailer in the gravel lot. The Yamaha coughed twice and caught. The boy hopped onto the bow. By the time Wade had walked back to the cruiser, the little white skiff with the green stripe was a shape on the brightening water, heading out past the channel markers toward wherever the crabs were that morning, and Bud Theriot was still standing at the edge of the ramp with his coffee.
"Wade Pruitt," Bud said. "You Dale's boy."
"Yes sir."
"Uh-huh." Bud sipped. "Your daddy'd have known that boat in the dark with his eyes shut."
"I'm sure he would've."
"No, son," Bud said, and the laugh had gone out of his voice. "I don't think you're sure of anything about it at all."
* * *
The Bayou Clement Police Department occupied half of a cinderblock building on Front Street that it shared with the water board. On the department side there were four desks, a holding cell that mostly held boxes of old parking tickets, a coffee maker older than two of the officers, and Chief Lorraine Batiste's office, which had a window onto the harbor and a door she kept open unless someone was in trouble.
She closed it behind Wade.
"Sit."