Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)

“I see, well, let me know when you're finished, sir.” He walked toward his car, averting his eyes to hide the anger in them.

“You're Emile Pogue,” I said.

“Why not?” The voice sounded like it came from rusted pipe.

“You get around a lot. Exercising out at Pecan Island, showing up at the house next door. What's your interest, Mr. Pogue?”

“I'm retired, I like the weather, I like the price on this house.”

“Why is it I think you're full of shit?”

“Be fucked if I know.” He grinned.

“I'd like to ask a favor of you, take a ride down to our jail with me, we had a little problem there.”

“I was planning on having an early dinner with a lady friend,” he said.

“Change it to candlelight. Put your hands behind your head, please.”

“You got to have a warrant, don't you, chief?”

“I'm not big on protocol. Turn around.”

When he laced his fingers behind his neck his muscles almost split his coat. I rotated his left hand counterclockwise to the center of his back and pushed it into a pressure position between his shoulder blades. His upper arm had the tension and resistance of a wagon spring.

“Move your right hand higher, no, no, up behind your ear, Mr. Pogue.

That's right,” I said.

I cuffed his right wrist and moved it clockwise to his spine and then hooked it up to his left. I could see the cruiser coming up the road under the oak trees. I walked him down the sloping lawn to meet it, past the realtor, who stared at us open-mouthed.

“Is it true Sonny Marsallus popped a cap on your brother?” I said.

“Sounds like you left your grits on the stove too long,” he answered.

I rode in the back of the cruiser with him to the department, then took him down to my office and hooked him to the D-ring inset in the floor.

I called the sheriff and Kelso, the jailer, at their homes. When I hung up the phone, Pogue was staring at me, his eyes taking my measure, one shoulder pulled lopsided by the D-ring. He gave off a peculiar smell, like testosterone in his sweat.

“We're going to have to wait a little bit,” I said.

“For what?”

I took out my time sheet from my desk drawer and began filling it in.

We'd had a power failure earlier and the air-conditioning had been off for two hours.

“Wait for what?” he said.

I heard him shift in his chair, the handcuff clink against the steel D-ring. Five minutes later, he said, “What's this, Psy Ops down in Bumfuck?” His sports coat was rumpled, his face slick with heat.

I put away my time sheet and opened a yellow legal pad on my desk blotter. I uncapped my fountain pen and tapped it idly on the pad.

Then I wrote on several lines.

“You were an instructor at an Israeli jump school?” I said.

“Maybe. Thirty years in, a lot of different gigs.”