The Neon Rain (Dave Robicheaux 1)

At five-thirty I drove over to Annie's place. The sky had cleared and the air was suddenly blue and gold when the sun broke through the clouds, but the wind was still loud in the oak trees along the lane, and torn leaves were scattered across the lawns. She fixed both of us iced coffee, tuna sandwiches, and deviled eggs, and we took them out on the back porch and ate on the glass table under the chinaberry tree. She wore white Levi's, a pink pullover blouse, and gold hoop earrings that made her look like a flower child of the sixties. I hadn't told her about Jimmie, or anything about Biloxi, but she had caught my mood when I came through the door, and now as I sat with my food half eaten, her anxiety and incomprehension in having to deal with a representative of a violent and unfathomable world stole back into her face.

"What is it, Dave? Can't you trust me a little? Are we always going to stake out our private areas that we don't let the other one into?"

So I told her about Jimmie.

> "I thought it was probably in the newspaper," I said. "He's a well-known guy in the Quarter."

"I don't—" she began.

"You don't read those kinds of stories."

She looked away, her eyes hurt.

"I'm sorry. Jimmie might not make it, and I might not be around to help him, either. I'm in some very big trouble right now."

Her blue eyes looked intently into mine.

"The roses and the pralines in the delicatessen," she said. "That's why you didn't want to see me. You were going somewhere, and you thought I'd try to stop you."

"There's no reason I should bring all my problems into your life. Loving a girl shouldn't include making her miserable."

"Dave, why do you think you're the only person who can bear hardship? A relationship is more than just sleeping with somebody, at least it is with me. I don't want to be your part-time lover. If you really want to do some damage, keep treating me like somebody who can't take it, who has to be protected."

"I'm going to hurt you tonight, and I don't have any way around it."

"I don't understand."

"I had to kill Philip Murphy last night in Biloxi."

Her face jumped, and I saw her throat swallow.

"He didn't give me a choice," I said. "I guess I wanted to do it when I went over there, but wanting to do something and deliberately choosing to do it are two different things. I was going to take him back to New Orleans. I got careless, and he thought he could drop me."

"Was he the one who shot your brother?" Her voice was quiet, the knowledge I had given her an enormous pain behind her eyes.

"I don't think so."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm not quite sure yet. Somebody'll find the body soon. In this weather, even with the air conditioning on—"

I saw her mouth form a tight line and her nostrils dilate slightly.

"The point is, sooner or later I'll be arrested," I said.

"You did it in self-defense."

"I broke into somebody's house with a shotgun, with no legal authority. Then I left the scene of a homicide. It'll take them a while, but they'll run my prints and eventually get a warrant out."

"We have to talk with somebody. It isn't fair," she said. "Everything you do turns back on you. You're an innocent man. It's these other people who should be in jail. Doesn't anybody in that police department see that?"

"I've told you all this for another reason, Annie." I let out my breath. "Murphy said some things I have to ask you about. He was an evil man who tried to make others think the world was as evil as he was. But if any part of what he said is true, he had connections with a government agency or somebody in one."

"What—"

"He said you were a peace groupie back in Kansas. He said you got pregnant and lost the child riding a horse."

I waited. Her face flushed and her eyes filmed with tears.