Pegasus Descending (Dave Robicheaux 15)

I ARRIVED AT the department shortly after noon. Helen had just returned from New Orleans, where she had been attending a meeting of Louisiana law enforcement administrators on civil preparedness. She caught me in the hallway and walked with me to my office. “What did you get on Bello’s homicide?” she asked when we were inside.

She had not yet had a chance to talk with Koko Hebert or Mack Bertrand. I told her everything I knew about the initial investigation at the crime scene, then told her about Monarch Little overdosing.

“You’re excluding him?” she said.

“At least for the time being. He may have had a window of opportunity, but there’s no evidence to put him at the crime scene.”

“But Valerie Lujan thinks Monarch did it?”

“If there weren’t people of color around for her to blame her problems on, she’d probably kill herself.”

“You’ve got somebody in mind for this, Dave. I can see it in your face.”

“I stoked Whitey Bruxal up. I told him Bello was going to roll over on him. The possibility that Whitey took him out doesn’t make me feel very good.”

“Before you climb on a cross, you might consider this. It was a premeditated act. The killer hated Bello and wanted him to suffer. The killer also knew Bello’s routine. Maybe the perp nursed a grudge for years. Bello had that kind of influence on people. Maybe Bruxal didn’t have anything to do with it.”

The phone on my desk rang. It was Mack Bertrand, calling from the crime lab.

“We have prints from several areas on the pick, some good, some bad,” he said. “Most of them were probably left there by the same individual. Regardless, we got no hits with AFIS.”

“Not even possibilities?”

“Nothing.”

I had felt my hopes rise, then fade. “So maybe our suspect is a local with no record,” I said.

“Could be. Bello was a sexual predator.”

“You think this is a revenge killing, pure and simple?”

“I’m at a loss on this whole investigation, Dave, I mean, into the Lujan boy’s death and Crustacean Man and the suicide of the Darbonne girl. I’ve come around to your way of thinking. It’s all part of one piece, but I don’t see the key.”

“Helen’s in my office now. I’ll bring her up to date and get back to you later,” I said.

“Something bothers me about the prints on the pick,” Mack said. “The steel head looks like it’s been partially wiped off. The same with the bottom of the handle. But the prints on the middle of the handle are defined and unsmudged. You following me?”

“I’m not sure.”

“If someone wanted to wipe fingerprints off a murder weapon, in this case a pick, wouldn’t he want to wipe off

the entire weapon—both the handle and the head? I think an individual wearing gloves sharpened the pick and later used it to kill Bello. When he swung the pick, he smudged the prints on the bottom of the handle. That’s just speculation, of course. My wife says I spend too much time in my head with this stuff.”

No, you don’t, Mack, I thought.

Helen had been sitting on the corner of my desk, on one haunch, as she always did when she was in my office. After I hung up, I told her what Mack had said. I could see the frustration grow in her face. “Lonnie Marceaux is going to have a field day with this,” she said.

“What does this have to do with Lonnie?”

“He’s hired an ad firm in Baton Rouge to build him up as a crusading prosecutor surrounded by drunken and corrupt flatfeet. I think he also wants to hand me my ass.”

“Maybe I should have a talk with him.”

She pointed a finger at me. “That’s the last thing you’re going to do. You copy that, bwana?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Because if bwana not copy, bwana gonna have the worst experience in his life.”