Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux #21)

by James Lee Burke

AUTHOR’S NOTE THE LITERARY ANTECEDENTS of this novel lie in two earlier works of mine. The unsolved murders in Jefferson Davis Parish formed the backdrop for the Dave Robicheaux novel titled The Glass Rainbow, published by Simon & Schuster in 2010. These homicides are often referred to in the media as the Jeff Davis Eight. The bombing of the Indian village in Latin America happened in 1956. I wrote about this incident in the short story titled “The Wild Side of Life,” published in the winter issue of The Southern Review in 2017.

I had to hand it to him: Whitey was stand-up. I had tried to use my power wrongly to help a friend, and in so doing, I had probably put an unskilled and poor man at the mercy of an unscrupulous mortgage holder.

Since my wife’s accident, this had become my worst time of day. My home was cavernous with silence and emptiness. My wife was gone, and so were my pets and most of my relatives. With each day that passed, I felt as though the world I had known was being airbrushed out of a painting.

“Why do you pal around with a shitbag like Bobby Earl?” “The eyes of God see no evil,” he replied. “I’ve always envied people who know the mind of God.”

I went inside and made coffee and warmed a pan of milk and put four cinnamon rolls in the oven, then went into the backyard again and looked for the coon. Tripod had died years ago, but I often dreamed of him in my sleep, as I did my other pets, and I wondered if animals, like people I’ve known, have ways of contacting us again.

My feelings about Helen were the same as my feelings about Clete: I believed their virtues were poured from a crucible whose heat couldn’t be measured.

Levon leaned forward, interdicting her line of sight. “You keep company with Bobby Earl, Mr. Nightingale?” “Call me Jimmy. I know Earl, but I wouldn’t call him a close friend.” “A friend nonetheless?” Levon said. “Judge not, lest you be judged,” Jimmy said. “What’s to judge? His record is demonstrable, isn’t it?” Levon said. “If he had his way, the bunch of us would be soap.” “I think he’s paid for his sins,” Jimmy said. “His time in prison?” Levon said. “Considering the ethnic makeup of the population, I suspect he found himself in the middle of a nightmare,” Jimmy said. “I don’t think that’s much solace to the victims of the Ku Klux Klan.”

“Chacun à son goût,” I said.

But if I had come here for solace, my journey was in vain. The loss of my wife, my inability to accept the suddenness of the accident, the words of a paramedic telling me she was gone and they had done everything they could, his mouth moving like that of someone in a film with no sound track, I carried all these things wherever I went, my blood and mind fouled, the ground shifting, the realization at sunrise that her death was not a dream and she was gone forever, unfairly taken, her dignity and courage and spiritual resolve extinguished by a fool rounding a curve in a pickup truck, the accelerator mashed to the floor. These thoughts robbed the light from my eyes, the birdsong from the trees, the sound of children playing in a park.

I could not get my mind off Molly, her warmth and steadfastness as a companion, her ability to deal with the sorrow and suffering of the world and not be undone by it.

“Those eight women who were killed,” Clete said. “They haunt me.” He wasn’t alone. I had worked with a task force on some of those homicides in Jeff Davis Parish. Eight young women, all of them poor, all of them involved with drugs and prostitution, were found with their throats cut, or so badly decomposed in a swamp that the cause of death couldn’t be determined. At the same time, there was a series of kidnappings and murders in East and West Baton Rouge parishes. Those victims were also dumped in wetlands areas. We thought we had the killers. In fact, Clete and I helped take them off the board.

We were wrong. The murders in Jeff Davis Parish came out of a culture that many Americans would not be able to understand, an aggregate of corrupt cops, ignorance, greed, misogyny, cruelty, sexual degradation, drug addiction, and ultimately, collective indifference toward the fate of people who have neither power nor voice. I’m talking about a new social class, one that is not racially defined.

They come out of the womb addicted to crack and booze, have only a semblance of a family, drift from town to town selling themselves or dealing dope or stealing to buy it. The irony is they’re not criminals, not in the traditional sense. They’re pitiful, sad, a...

“You want to believe people are better than they are,” she said. “Send me a bill for that, will you?” “Bwana go now. Bwana also shut mouth.” Nobody put the slide or the glide on Helen Soileau.

The eight women who were killed had no advocate. The cops assigned to the case early on were pitiful if not complicit. Any cop who is honest will tell you there are police officers in our midst who never should have been given power over others. Misogamy is a big part of their makeup. Sexual perversity as well. I’ve known both male and female vice cops who have the psychological makeup of degenerates and closet sadists.

That we protect them is beyond my comprehension.

The hundreds of cops and firemen who went into the Towers on 9/11 knew they probably would not come out. What are the limits of human courage? The cops and firemen who walked into stairwells that were not stairwells but chimneys filled with flame and smoke, proved that the human spirit is...

Her face was impossible to read. She was one of those women who seemed to choose solitude and plainness over beauty, and anger over happiness. “You ever meet a guy named Kevin Penny?” I said. “Our convict gardener?” she replied. “I fired him.” I looked at Jimmy. He shrugged and turned up his palms. “I don’t know the name of every guy who cuts the grass, Dave.” “What is this about?” Emmeline said. “Veracity,” I said. “I don’t care for your tone,” she said. “I don’t blame you. It bothers me, too.” I pointed my finger at Jimmy Nightingale. “I think you’re slick.” “I’m dishonest?” “Take it any way you want.” “You’ve got some damn nerve,” he said. “Tell it to the eight murdered women in Jeff Davis Parish,” I replied. “What do they have to do with me?” “I heard you hung around Bobby Earl because you wanted his mailing list. I never believed that,” I said. “It’s politics. This is Louisiana.” “I remember many situations when I said it was just Vietnam.”

porte cochere

Her eyes wandered over my face. “I’ll bring a cruiser around. Get your shit together.” “Pardon?” “You haven’t been fooling anyone.” She walked away, her back stiff with anger.

“I don’t have words for how I feel. You break my heart.” I knew I would hear that last one in my sleep.

He lit a cigarette with a match, cupping the flame in the wind; normally, he carried a gold lighter, because there was little he did that wasn’t ostentatious.

“I was thinking about the way things used to be. I was thinking about my mother and father and fishing in a pirogue. It’s just the foolish way I get sometimes.” “Listen, big mon. I know your thoughts before you have them. Look at what you just told me. You were thinking about the best times in your life. You weren’t thinking about killing a guy. You’re not a killer, Dave. Neither of us is. We never dusted anybody who didn’t deal the hand. You got that? I don’t want to hear any Dr. Freud dog shit.” “Freud was a genius,” I said. “That’s why he stuck all that coke up his nose.”

“What do you want?” “A few minutes, Kev,” Clete said. “This is my friend Dave Robicheaux.”

Kev. Ha!

“Why you looking at me?” he said. “Clete showed me your sheet,” I said. “You were in three mainline joints. But you don’t have any tats.” “Pencil dicks need tats. Want to find the biggest sissy on the yard? Check the guy with sleeves. What’d that bitch say?”

So we got to have a look at your truck, Robo.” “I don’t know who gave you permission to give me a nickname, but I advise you to stop using it.” “Ease up on the batter, bubba.” “Get out of my office.” He flipped the notebook shut. “Have it your way.” “I plan to.” But I was all rhetoric. The truth is, the backs of my legs were shaking.

Permission to give a nickname

He waited for me to reply. I hate to handle sexual assault and child molestation cases because the victims seldom get justice, and that’s just for starters. Adult victims are exposed to shame, embarrassment, and scorn. Often they are made to feel they warranted their fate. Defense attorneys tear them apart on the stand; judges hand out probation to men who should be shot. Sometimes the perpetrator is given bail without the court’s notifying the victim, and the victim ends up either dead or too frightened to testify. I’ve also known cops who take glee in a woman’s degradation, and it’s not coincidental that they work vice.

* I WATCHED THE video. As in most interviews with sexual assault victims, the dialogue, the violation of privacy, and the demeanor of the victim were excruciating. For anyone who has a cavalier attitude about predation, he need only watch its influence on the victims in order to change his attitude. They cannot scrub the stain out of their skin. Over and over again, the assault flickers like a sado-porn film on a screen inside their heads, sometimes for months, sometimes years. This goes on until they turn over the fate of their assailant to a power greater than they are. I’ve known nine or ten rapists who beat the system. I was convinced every one of them carried an incubus that eventually pissed on their graves.

“I don’t think you’re looking for exculpatory evidence about Dave,” she said. “I don’t think you’re a friend. I think you have a lean and hungry look.” “If there’s something I haven’t done to help your stepfather, tell me what it is, little lady, and I’ll get on it.” “He’s not my stepfather, he’s my father. Call me ‘little lady’ again and see what happens.”

He forked the steak off the flames and laid it on a plate. “Is that what you came by to tell me?” “No, I got the loan on my house. You’re a quarter of a mil richer than you were this morning.” “You actually did that?” “Why not?” His eyes were shiny. He wiped them on his forearm. “I’ve got to get out of this smoke.” “Pay off those bums and get them out of your life.” “You’re truly a noble mon, noble mon. I’ll brown us some bread.”

“You hurt him pretty bad before. Don’t tell me you didn’t.” “I’ve been to anger management class.” “That’s like managing bone cancer. The people who peddle that stuff are douchebags. It’s like listening to Pee-wee Herman talk about weight lifting.”

The guy’s NCAA, no class at all.”

I left without saying good-bye. I couldn’t blame her for her anger, but I wasn’t sympathetic with it, either. She seemed to nurse it as a friend at the expense of others. I believed Rowena Broussard might take up residence in a black box for the rest of her life.

PEOPLE ARE WHAT they do, not what they think, not what they say. But I think we all have moments when we realize we never quite know a person in his or her totality.

Now? I said. What better time? the sergeant said. His cheeks were spiked with blond whiskers, his uniform sun-faded and stiff with salt, white light radiating from a hole in his chest. I have a daughter who needs me. We all get to the same place. She’ll be joining us one day as well. You wouldn’t talk like that if you had a daughter. I had a son, though. The blue-belly who put a ball through my heart didn’t care about him or me. If God had a daughter, I bet He wouldn’t have let her die on a cross. Then perhaps you belong among the quick. Right you are, sir. Top of the evening to you.

Someone shook my arm, hard and steady. “Wake up, Dave.” I looked up at Alafair’s face. “Better come in before you get rained on,” she said. I stood up, off balance. “What a dream.” “You were laughing.” “I thought a big coon jumped in my lap.” “Better take a look at your trousers.” The muddy paw prints were unmistakable. There was a gummy smear on one thigh. I touched it and smelled my fingers. “What is it?” she said. “Sardines.” “Maybe he got in somebody’s trash.” “Coons don’t jump in people’s laps.” “Tripod did,” she said.

When she started her car, her heart was thudding in her ears, as though evil could insinuate its way into a person’s life without consent.

I harbored emotions that no Christian should ever have. But they were mine. I owned them. And they still lived within me, even though T. J. Dartez was lying on a slab, as cold and bloodless as stale lunch meat.

CLETE PURCEL NORMALLY referred to cop shows on television as “the most recent shit Hollywood is foisting on really stupid people.” Clete’s intolerance aside, the facsimile has little to do with the reality. Probably one third of cops are dedicated to the job; one third eat too many doughnuts; and one third are people who should not be given power over others. Female detectives do not show off their cleavage. Many cops carry a drop or a throw-down. Cops plant evidence and lie on the stand. In our midst are sadists and racists who taint the rest of us. And the greatest contributor to solving crimes is not the lab but the informant, usually someone who skipped toilet training and couldn’t make a peanut butter sandwich with a diagram.

Clete found the business card that Carolyn Ardoin had given him and dialed the cell number on it. “I thought I’d ring and let you know I’ll be checking on Homer as often as I can,” he said. “Mr. Smith told me you bought Homer a ball and glove and bat. That was probably one of the best gifts that boy ever had.” “I happened to see them on sale.” “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit, Mr. Purcel.” Clete couldn’t remember why he had called. Or maybe he did. It wasn’t easy to talk to normal women. “Is the weather pretty nice over there?” “In Jennings?” she said. “Yeah, it’s a couple parishes over from us. I wondered if the weather was the same.” “I’m pretty sure it’s like yours in New Iberia.” “It’s a swell day here.” “Are you worried about Homer?” “I was also wondering, you know, are you a married lady? I mean, I didn’t see you wearing a wedding ring.” “You saw correctly. I am not married. I was widowed when I was twenty-three.” “I’ve enjoyed our talks and meeting you,” he said. “Three or four times a year I go fishing thereabouts. South of Jennings, I mean.” “Are you trying to tell me something, Mr. Purcel?” “I was wondering if you like movies.” “I love them,” she said. “There’re some good ones playing in Lafayette. There’s a dinner club close by that I’m fond of, too.” “I think I know the place.” “Miss Carolyn, could I motor on by your home this evening?” “I’d like that very much, Mr. Purcel.”

THEOLOGIANS CALL IT the calculated testing of others’ charity. By some it’s considered a serious sin. But for someone who is manipulative or morally insane, it’s not a big obstacle.

He unlocked the French doors on the patio and waited for me to walk ahead of him. A pitcher and a glass sat on a folding table by his desk. He filled the glass and wrapped it with a paper napkin and handed it to me, then went to the kitchen and got a glass for himself. For the first time, behind the door, I saw a sun-faded Confederate battle flag mounted on the wall in a glass case. He came back into the room. “A fourteen-year-old boy carried that up the slope on Beauregard’s left flank at Shiloh,” Levon said. “They were supposed to be supported by the founder of Angola Penitentiary, but he didn’t show up. Forty percent were casualties in fifteen minutes.” I nodded, not knowing what to say. I disliked people who thought war was a glorious endeavor, and I disliked those who enjoyed talking about it. I despised those who had not seen war yet espoused it and lived vicariously through the suffering of others and never gave a thought to the civilians and children who died in burn wards or were buried under collapsed buildings. Levon was not one of these. He had gone unarmed and with a leftist reputation into El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua when bodies were dumped off trucks with the morning garbage. Yet here we stood in reverence before an iconic flag that retained the pink stain of a farm boy’s blood, and whether anybody would admit it or not, the cause it represented was the protection and furtherance of human bondage. “You have nothing to say about it?” he asked. “Rich...

The top of his Caddy was up, and her skin looked warm and rosy in the glow of the dash lights. He liked everything about her. The way she shook all over when she laughed, the happy shine in her eyes, her manners and all the books she had read. He turned in to her neighborhood, not wanting the night to end.

In the darkness of the gallery, she took her key from her purse. She looked up into his face. “You’re a gentleman. You’re kind and strong, and you respect women. Those things are not lost on a woman.” “I didn’t quite get that.” “If you need to go, I understand. I just want you to know you’re always welcome here and that I appreciate your gentlemanly ways.” When he spoke, he felt as though he had swallowed a pebble. “I’d love to come in.” Inside, she closed the blinds and turned on a light in a back hallway. “This way.” In the bedroom, the wood floor creaked under his weight as he approached her. She turned on a lamp. The wallpaper was covered with roses. The quilt on the bed was lavender, the pillows pink. He felt as though he were inside a dollhouse, but in a good way. “Miss Carolyn, I’ve led a checkered life.” “Who hasn’t?” she replied.

The office was closed because it was Sunday, but I knew he monitored his voicemail day and night. Sundays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas might be days of rest or gratitude or celebration for some, but Tony’s deity had a dollar sign for a face and gave no days off to his adherents.

“You’re a reminder from God, Spade,” she said. “Didn’t catch that.” “Whenever I hear people talk about white superiority, I have to pause and think back on some of the white people I’ve known. It’s a depressing moment.”

I MENTIONED MY speculation that Helen Soileau may have had several people living inside her, none of them entirely normal. That afternoon, at 4:57, she buzzed my phone and told me to come to her office. I walked down the corridor and went inside. “Shut the door and sit down,” she said. I took a chair. She walked past me and lowered the blinds on the glass. I waited for her to return to her desk, but she didn’t. I felt her standing behind me, saw her shadow fall across mine. There was a lump in my throat. “What’s going on, boss lady?” She placed a hand on each of my shoulders. “I’ve wanted to do this all day,” she said. She tucked her elbows in under my chin and pulled my head into her breasts. “Jesus Christ, Helen!” “Shut up. I don’t know what happened at Bayou Benoit, but you didn’t kill T. J. Dartez.” She kissed my hair. “Now go home.” Top that.

I LOVE THE rain, whether it’s a tropical one or one that falls on you in the dead of winter. For me, rain is the natural world’s absolution, like the story of the Flood and new beginnings and loading the animals two by two onto the Ark. I love the mist hanging in the trees, a hint of wraiths that would not let heavy stones weigh them down in their graves, the raindrops clicking on the lily pads, the fish rising as though in celebration.

I took great comfort on nights like these, and on this particular night I sat down in a cloth-covered chair in the living room and began reading a novel by Ron Hansen titled The Kid, the best story I ever read about the Lincoln County cattle wars.

Keeping a list of books mentioned. The Kid by Robert Hansen.

“Comment est la vie?”

How’s life?