Pegasus Descending (Dave Robicheaux 15)

“I’m happy you came by.”

“Right. The lab call you yet?”

“Nope.”

“We swabbed both her hands. She was the shooter. It’s down as a suicide.”

“You’re sure?”

“You don’t have confidence in the atomic absorption test?”

“Let’s get something straight on this one, Koko. I appreciate the work you do. But I want the abrasive rhetoric out of my face.”

I could hear the hum of the air conditioner in the silence. “There is no false positive here. She had powder residue on both hands. She inverted the pistol and fired it straight into her forehead. It’s a suicide, plain and simple.”

“Her father said she didn’t drink or use. She was planning to start college. Why does a kid like that want to blow herself away? How did she end up in her own yard with a revolver her father never saw before?”

“Maybe I was looking at the wrong tox screen. The one that had Yvonne Darbonne’s name on it showed she was loaded on alcohol, weed, and Ecstasy. When I opened her up, I thought I’d put my hand in a punch bowl, burgundy and fruit, to be exact. She had also engaged in recent sexual intercourse, with multiple partners. In my opinion, there was not forced penetration, either. There was one bruise on the thigh, but considering the number of partners she had, that’s not unusual. I suspect she got stoned and loaded and was pumping it in four-four time.”

“What do you get out of it, Koko?”

“Out of what?”

“Offending people, testing them.”

He scratched the inside of his thigh, as though a mosquito bite were itching him beyond any level of tolerance. “If I go to meetings, can I learn how to use psychobabble like that?” he said.

I let out my breath and rubbed my temples. “What’s the rest?” I asked.

“There is no ‘rest.’ She was drunk and stoned and she balled a bunch of guys who didn’t bother to use rubbers,” he said. “You’re wondering why a kid like that would kill herself?”

RIGHT AFTER KOKO left the office, our forensic chemist, Mack Bertrand, called from the Acadiana Crime Lab. Mack was a decent, cheerful, pipe-smoking family man and one of the best crime scene investigators I had ever known. “We ran the weapon in the Darbonne shooting,” he said. “It was reported stolen out of a fraternity house at Ole Miss in 1999.”

“Any other prints besides the DOA’s?”

“It was oiled and cleaned recently. There were a couple of smears, but not enough to run through AFIS. Where you going with this, Dave?”

“Probably nowhere.”

“It’s a suicide, podna. Her thumb pulled the trigger. Her fingerprints were on the back of the frame. I think she turned the pistol around and squeezed off one right into her face.”

“What’d you get out of her cell phone?”

“Mostly numbers of kids at New Iberia High. Nothing unusual. Except…”

“Go ahead, Mack.”

“She made two calls during the week to the home of Bello Lujan.”

In my mind’s eye I saw a sun-browned man wearing white jodhpurs, with swirls of black hair on his arms. At least that was Bello’s image today, although I had known him in an earlier and much different incarnation. “Why would she be calling a guy like that?” I said.

“He’s got a kid at UL. Maybe Bello’s kid and the vic knew each other.” Then Mack paused. “Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“The girl took her life. Nothing will undo that. Bello wasn’t born. He was poured out of a colostomy bag. Leave him alone.”

“That’s strong for you, Mack.”