"I think the blood on the ceiling was thrown there by a knife or barber's razor or weed sickle," I said.
His face darkened; his eyes glanced sideways at his wife. His hand pinched hard into my arm.
"Step over here with me," he said, pushing and walking with me toward my truck.
"Excuse me, but take your hand off my person, Dr. Cole."
"You hear my words, Mr. Robicheaux. I know Vachel Carmouche's relatives. They don't need to suffer any more than they have. There's nothing that requires a pathologist to exacerbate the pain of the survivors. Are you understanding me, sir?"
"You mean you lied on an autopsy?"
"Watch your tongue."
"There was a second weapon? Which means there might have been a second killer."
"He was sexually mutilated. While he was still alive. What difference does it make what kind of weapon she used? The woman's depraved. You're trying to get her off? Where's your common sense, man?"
At sunset that same day Batist phoned up from the dock.
"Dave, there's a man down here don't want to come up to the house," he said.
"Why not?"
"Hang on." I heard Batist put the receiver down on the counter, walk away from it, then scrape it up in his hand again. "He's outside where he cain't hear me. I t'ink he's a sad fellow 'cause of his face."
"Is his name Mike or Micah or something like that?"
"I'll go ax."
"Never mind. I'll be right down."
I walked down the slope toward the dock. A purple haze hung in the trees, and birds lifted on the wind that blew across the dead cypress in the swamp. The man who was the chauffeur for Cora Gable was leaning on the rail at the end of the dock, looking out at the bayou, his face turned into the shadows. His shirtsleeves were rolled and his biceps were tattooed with coiled green and red snakes whose fangs were arched into their own tails.
"You're Micah?" I said.
"That's right."
"Can I help you?" I asked.
"Maybe you can Ms. Perez."
"Jim Gable's wife?"
"I call her by her screen name. The man who marries her ought to take her name, not the other way around."
His right eye glimmered, barely visible behind the nodulous growth that deformed the side of his face and exposed the teeth at the corner of his mouth. His hair was straw-colored and neatly barbered and combed, as though his personal grooming could negate the joke nature had played upon him.
"It's all about a racetrack. Outside of Luna Mescalero, New Mexico," he said.
"Pardon?"
"Mr. Gable got her to buy a spread out there. He's building a racetrack. He's been trying to do it for years. That's where I'm from. I was a drunkard, a carnival man, what they call the geek act, before that woman come into my life."
"She seems like a special person," I said.
He turned his face into the glow of the electric lights and looked me directly in the eyes.
"I did nine months on a county road gang, Mr. Robicheaux. One day I sassed a hack and he pulled me behind the van and caned knots all over my head. When I tried to get up he spit on me and jabbed me in the ribs and whipped me till I cried. Ms. Perez seen it from her front porch. She called the governor of New Mexico and threatened to walk in his office with a reporter and slap his face unless I was released from jail. She give me a job and an air-conditioned brick cottage to live in when other people would hide their children from me."
"I don't know what I can do, Micah. Not unless Jim Gable has committed a crime of some kind."
He chewed the skin on the ball of his thumb.
"A man who doesn't respect one woman, won't respect another," he said.
"Excuse me?"
He looked out into the shadows again, his head twisting back and forth on his neck, as though searching for words that would not injure.
"He speaks disrespectfully of Ms. Perez in front of other men. She's not the only one. Is your wife's first name Bootsie?"
"Yes," I replied, the skin tightening around my temples.
"He said dirty things about her to a cop named Rit-ter. They laughed about her."
"I think it's time for you to go."
He splayed open his hand, like a fielder's glove, and stared at it and wiped dirt off the heel with the tips of his fingers.
"I've been told to get off better places. I come here on account of Ms. Perez. If you won't stand up for your wife, it's your own damn business," he said, and brushed past me, his arm grazing against mine.
"You hold on," I said, and lifted my finger at him. "If you've got a beef to square with Jim Gable, you do it on your own hook."
He walked back toward me, the teeth at the corner of his mouth glinting in the purple dusk.
"People come to the geek act so they can look on the outside of a man like me and not look at the inside of themselves. You stick your finger in my face again and I'll break it, policeman be damned," he said.
It stormed that night. The rain blew against the house and ran off the eaves and braided and whipped in the light that fell from the windows. Just as the ten o'clock news came on, the phone rang in the kitchen.
The accent was East Kentucky or Tennessee, the pronunciation soft, the "r" sound almost gone from the words, the vowels round and deep-throated.
"There's no point in trying to trace this call. I'm not using a ground line," he said.
"I'm going to take a guess. Johnny Remeta?" I said.
"I got a hit on me. Maybe you're responsible. I can't be sure."
"Then get out of town."
"I don't do that."
"Why'd you call me?"
"Sir, you told folks I was a snitch. What gives you the right to lie like that? I don't even know you."
"Come in. It's not too late to turn it around. Nobody's mourning Zipper Clum."
"You've got to set straight what you've done, Mr. Robicheaux."
"You're in the wrong line of work to demand redress, partner."
"Demand what?"
"Listen, you wouldn't go through with the job at Little Face Dautrieve's place. Maybe you have qualities you haven't thought about. Meet me someplace."
"Are you kidding?"
I didn't reply. He waited in the silence, then cleared his throat as though he wanted to continue talking but didn't know what to say.
The line went dead.
A hit man who calls you "sir"?
11
AT EIGHT O'CLOCK Monday morning the sheriff stopped me just as I walked in the front door of the department. A small square of blood-crusted tissue paper was stuck to his jawbone where he had cut himself shaving.
"Come down the hall and talk with me a minute," he said.
I followed him inside his office. He took off his coat and hung it on a chair and gazed out the window. He pressed his knuckles into his lower spine as though relieving himself of a sharp pain in his back.
"Close the door. Pull the blind, too," he said.
"Is this about the other day?"
"I told you I didn't want Clete Purcel in here. I believe that to be a reasonable request. You interpreted that to mean I have problems of conscience over Letty Labiche."
"Maybe you just don't like Purcel. I apologize for implying anything else," I said.
"You were on leave when Carmouche was killed. You didn't have to put your hand in it."
"No, I didn't."
"The prosecutor asked for the death penalty. The decision wasn't ours."
"Carmouche was a pedophile and a sadist. One of his victims is on death row. That one just won't go down, Sheriff."
The color climbed out of his neck into his face. He cut his head to speak, but no words came out of his mouth. His profile was as scissored as an Indian's against the window.
"Don't lay this off on me, Dave. I won't abide it," he said.
"I think we ought to reopen the case. I think a second killer is out there."
He widened his eyes and said, "You guys in A.A. have an expression, what is it, 'dry drunks'? You've got a situation you can't work your way out of, so you create another problem and get emotionally drunk on it. I'm talking about your mother's death. That's the only reason I'm not putting you on suspension."