Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux 7)

'She got a little vague.'

'I bet.'

He propped his elbow on the desk blotter and scratched at the hollow of his cheek with a pink fingernail.

'She's got a lawyer from Lafayette. He's already raising hell down at the prosecutor's office,' he said.

'You want to talk to Clete Purcel? He saw her outside Sitwell's hospital room.'

'Great witness, Dave. Purcel's got a rap sheet that few mainline cons have. It looks like something a computer virus printed by mistake.'

'I think he was right.'

'About what?'

'He told me to salt the shaft. He knew how it was going to go down.'

The sheriff stuck his pipe in his leather tobacco pouch and began filling the bowl. He didn't look up.

'I didn't hear you say that,' he said.

'It's one man's point of view.'

He didn't answer. I got up to leave the room.

'The Americans won the Revolution because they learned to fight from the Indians,' he said. 'They shot from behind the trees. I guess it sure beat marching across a field in white bandoliers and silver breastplates.'

'I was never fond of allegory.'

'All I said was I didn't hear Purcel's remark. The woman's purse is in Possessions. Who knows what the lab might find?' He raised his eyebrows.

'We've got to hold her as a murder suspect, Sheriff.'

'It's not going to happen, Dave. You going to the arraignment?'

'You'd better believe it.'

He nodded silently, lit his pipe, and looked out the window.

Back inside my office, I looked again at all the paperwork concerning Will Buchalter. What were the common denominators? What had I missed?

Buchalter was perverse and sadistic and possibly an addict.

He was obviously a psychopath.

His followers were recidivists.

He appeared to be con-wise, talked about 'riding the beef,' but had no criminal record that we could find.

Was he a sodomist, was he depraved, were his followers all addicts? Were they men whom he had turned out (raped) and reduced to a form of psychological slavery? Why not? It went on in every prison in the country.

Except Buchalter had never been up the road.

Maybe Clete had come up with the answer. Maybe we had been looking for Buchalter on the wrong side of the equation. Maybe he was a fireman who set fires. Maybe he was one of us.

I talked with Ben Motley at NOPD. The prints lifted from the armored vest that he and Clete had found in the marsh matched those that Buchalter had left all over my house. But there was no serial number on the fabric.

'I wouldn't spend too much time on it,' he said. 'These paramilitary groups come up with shitloads of this stuff. You know what's still the best way to nail this guy? Find one of his lowlifes, then plug his pud into a light socket.'