Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

10

That evening I called Dan Nygurski at his house in Great Falls.

“Where’ve you been? I called you three times today,” he said.

“Over here, east of the Divide.”

“Now? Where?”

“Right outside of Great Falls.”

“What are you doing right now?”

“Nothing. Going to a motel. I don’t feel like driving back tonight.”

“We’re fixing to cook out in the backyard in a few minutes. You want to come over?”

“My little girl’s with me.”

“Bring her. We’ve got three kids she can play with. I’ve got some heavy stuff on Mapes that you ought to know about.”

“The DEA had a file on him?”

“FBI. He was part of a kidnap investigation. You better come over.”

He gave me his address and directions, and Alafair and I drove in the twilight to a 1950s suburb of split-level ranch homes, maple-lined streets, sprinklers twirling on the lawns, flower beds full of blue clematis, yellow and red roses, with tree bark packed on the dirt to prevent the growth of weeds. We sat on the redwood deck built out back, behind sliding glass doors, while Alafair played on a small seesaw with two of his little girls. The coals in his hibachi had already turned gray and hot before we arrived, and his wife brought out a tossed salad and a pitcher of iced tea on a tray, then laid a row of venison and elk steaks on the grill. The grease hissed and steamed off the coals and the smell was wonderful.

His wife was attractive and polite and had the same accent as he. She wore makeup and a dress, and her eyes were shy when you looked too closely at them. She went back into the kitchen and began slicing a loaf of French bread on a cutting board.

“You’re wondering why a woman who looks like that married a guy who looks like me,” he said.

“Not at all.”

“Come on, Robicheaux.”

“Women have kind hearts.”

“Yeah, they do,” he said, and got up from his chair and closed the sliding glass door. “So let’s walk around the side of the house so nobody else has to hear what I have to tell you. In fact, maybe we ought to wait until after you’ve eaten.”

“Let’s do it.”

We walked into his side yard, which was planted with apple trees and climbing red roses on trellises set in small circular beds. There were small, hard green apples in the leaves of the trees. A picket fence separated his yard from his neighbor’s swimming pool. It was dusk now, and the reflection of the neighbor’s porch light looked like a yellow balloon under the pool’s surface. He picked up two metal chairs that were leaned against the side of his house and shook them open. His mouth twitched when he started to speak, and I saw the web of vein and sinew flex and pulse in his throat.

“Where’d your lawyer get his information on Mapes?”

“He hired a PI.”

“Tell him to get your money back. The PI blew it. I suspect he checked the sheriff’s and city police’s office in Mapes’s hometown, came up with the assault arrest, the golf club deal, when Mapes was seventeen, then sent your lawyer a bill for two days’ services, which is usually about six hundred dollars. In the meantime he didn’t check anything else.”

“What’s the story?”

“Look, you were a cop a long time. You know that once in a while you run

across a guy, a guy who everybody thinks is normal, maybe a guy with an education, a good job, service record, a guy who doesn’t focus much attention on himself. At least he doesn’t give cops reason to think about him. But there’s something wrong with him. The conscience isn’t there, or maybe the feelings aren’t. But he’s out there, in suburbs just like this, and he’s the one who commits the murders that we never solve. I think that’s your man Harry Mapes.

“In 1965 an eighteen-year-old soldier on leave from Fort Polk picked up his girlfriend in Tyler, Texas, and took her to a drive-in movie. Then it looks like they went out on a back road and parked behind an old greenhouse where somebody used to grow roses. At least that’s where the sheriff’s department found the girl’s dress and underwear. They found the car five miles away in a creek bed. Somebody had torn the gas line loose and set it on fire. Both those kids were in the trunk. The pathologist said they were alive when it burned.”

I leaned forward on the folding metal chair and picked a leaf from a rosebush. My throat felt tight. I could hear the children playing on the seesaw in the backyard.