Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux 14)

"What is it, 'Pod? Thunder got you scared?" I said.

I returned to his hutch and started to lift him up. The tree limbs overhead flickered with lightning, then I heard a sound or felt a presence that should not have been there, a twig snapping under the sole of a shoe, an inhalation of breath, like a man oxygenating his blood in preparation for an expenditure of enormous physical energy.

I set Tripod down and straightened up, just in time to see a man with a nylon stocking over his face swing a two-by-four at the side of my head. I caught part of the blow with my arm, but not well enough. I felt my scalp split and wood splinters bite into my ear and my cheek. I crashed against the hutch, grabbing at the air, just as he hit me again, this time across the neck and shoulders.

I tried to get to my feet, but he kicked me in the ribs with the point of his shoe, then in the armpit, and once right across the mouth. I tumbled backwards, trying to get the hutch between me and the man with the two-by-four. I could hear Tripod's paws skittering on the floor and wire sides of his hutch. I grabbed a handful of dirt and leaves, threw it blindly at my attacker's face, got my pocketknife loose from my pants, and pulled the blade open.

But when I stood erect, I was alone, the yard suddenly gone silent, as though I had stepped outside of time and the world around me had been reconfigured without my consent. Blood was leaking from my hairline and there was a bitter, coppery taste, like wet pennies, in my mouth. Tripod had scampered up into the live oak above his hutch and was peering down at me, his body trembling.

I had no idea where my attacker had gone. I walked off balance toward the house, as though a piece of membrane were torn lo

ose inside my head. In the kitchen I had to sit down to punch in a 911 call on the telephone, then had to spit the blood out of my mouth into a paper towel before I could tell the dispatcher what had happened.

In less than a minute I heard a siren coming hard down East Main. I looked through the kitchen window and saw Snuggs sitting on the outside sill, framed against the philodendron, pawing at the screen to come inside.

The emergency-room physician at Iberia General kept me overnight, and when I woke, the early-morning sun looked like pink smoke inside the oak trees. A nurse's aide brought breakfast to me on a tray, then wheeled me down the corridor for an X ray. When I returned to the room, Helen Soileau was sitting by the window, reading the Baton Rouge Advocate. The main story above the fold was about another abduction in Baton Rouge, this time the wife of a state environmental quality official who was serving time in a federal prison. Helen folded the paper and set it on the windowsill. "Bad night, huh, bwana?" she said.

"Not really," I said, sitting down on the side of the bed.

"They going to kick you loose?"

"Soon as the doc looks at my X ray."

"We couldn't find the board your attacker used, so we got nothing we can lift latents off. You think he was the same guy asking about your truck at the church?"

"Maybe."

"More specifically, you think it was one of those deputies — Shockly or Pitts?"

"Who knows?"

"I ran both of them and got a hit on Pitts. Four years back he was charged with planting coke on some Cambodians. They got pulled over at a traffic stop and their SUV and thirty thousand in cash seized. They'd saved the money to buy a restaurant in Baton Rouge."

"How'd Pitts get out of it?" I asked.

"Gave evidence against the other cops. Did you say a black man at your church got a look at the guy who was hanging around your truck?"

"He talked to him."

"I got a mug shot of Pitts for him to look at."

I nodded and waited for her to go on. But she seemed distracted, as though several things were on her mind at once. She got up from her chair and gazed out the window. The tops of her arms were round and thick, her back stiff. "Did you read the story in the Advocate about another abduction in Baton Rouge?" she asked.

"Yeah, I saw it."

"I think the perp is using Baton Rouge as his personal hunting reserve. But I don't think he's from there," she said.

"Why not?"

"I talked with Baton Rouge P.D. The DNA on the girl in Grand Coteau was just matched to DNA on at least five other victims."

"Five?"

"The locals didn't know they had a serial predator on their hands. They screwed up. It happens. I think the guy has deliberately confined himself to Baton Rouge for years, but he saw the black girl at the cemetery by herself and couldn't resist the opportunity. I think he lives in a small town, maybe in Acadiana, and gets his jollies in Baton Rouge."

"Why you telling me all this?"

"You still want your shield back?" she asked.