Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)

“I shouldn't have told you that story,” I said.

“They couldn't pull him across the Styx. That's a good story to hear .. . Dave?”

“Yes?”

“I never told this to anyone except a marine chaplain. I sent three North Korean POW's to the rear once with a BAR man who escorted them as far as one hill. In my heart I knew better, because the BAR man was one of those rare guys who enjoyed what he did .. .”

I tried to interrupt, but he raised two fingers off the sheet to silence me.

“That's why I always sit on you, always try to keep the net over all of us … so we don't take people off behind a hill.”

“That's a good way to be,” I said.

“You don't understand. It's the rules get us killed sometimes. You got too many bad people circling you.”

His voice became weaker, and I saw the light in his eyes change, his chest swell, as he breathed more deeply.

“I'd better go now. I'll see you tomorrow,” I said.

“Don't leave yet.” His hand moved across my wrist. “I don't want to fall asleep. During the day I dream about trench rats. It was twenty below and they'd eat their way inside the dead. That's how they live, Dave … By eating their way inside us.”

I went home for lunch, then walked down to the dock to talk to Alafair, who had just gotten out of school for the summer. Sitting under an umbrella at one of the spool tables was Terry Serrett, Clete's secretary. She wore pale blue shorts and a halter and her skin looked as white as a fish's belly. She read a magazine behind a pair of dark glasses while she idly rubbed suntan lotion on her thighs. When she heard my footsteps, she looked up at me and smiled. Her cheeks were roughed with orange circles like makeup on a circus clown.

“You're not working today?” I said.

“There's not much to do, I'm afraid. It looks like Clete is going to move back to New Orleans in a couple of weeks.”

“Can I bring you something?”

“Well, no, but .. . Can you sit down a moment?”

itr bure.

The wind was warm off the water, and I was sweating inside my shirt even in the umbrella's shade.

“Clete's told me a little bit about this man Sonny Marsallus,” she said. “Is it true he knows something about POW's in Southeast Asia?”

“It's hard to say, Ms. Serrett.”

“It's Terry .. . We think my brother got left behind in Cambodia. But the government denies he was even there.”

“Sonny was never in the service. Anything he … knew was conjecture, probably.”

“Oh … I got the impression he had evidence of some kind.”

Her sunglasses were tinted almost black, and the rest of her face was like an orange and white mask.

“I'm sorry about your brother,” I said.

“Well, I hope I haven't bothered you,” she said, and touched my elbow softly.

“No, not at all.”

“I guess I'd better go before I burn up in this sun.”

“It's a hot one,” I said.

I watched her walk up the dock on her flats toward her car, a drawstring beach bag hanging from her wrist. The line of soft fat that protruded from her waistband was already pink with sunburn.