Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux 14)

In Wichita, Kansas, a psychopath who called himself BTK, for "bind, torture, and kill," had committed crimes against whole families that were so cruel, depraved, and inhuman that police reporters as well as homicide investigators refused to reveal specific details to the public, even in the most euphemistic language.

Baton Rouge P.D. received inquiries from Miami and Fort Lauderdale about a series of silk stocking strangulations back in the 1970s that came to be known as the "Canal Murders," which may have been committed by one or several persons.

Years ago, in Texas, a demented man by the name of Henry Lucas confessed to whatever crime police authorities wished to feed him information about. Now some of those same cops who had closed their files at Lucas's expense privately acknowledged over the phone the real killer was probably still out there or, worse, in their midst.

The names of celebrity monsters reentered our vocabulary, perhaps because they put a human face on a level of evil most of us cannot comprehend. Or perhaps, like Dahmer or Gacy or Bundy, they're safely dead and their fate assures us that our legal apparatus will protect us against our present adversaries.

But what troubled me most about this investigation, as well as two other serial killer cases I had been involved with, was the lack of collective knowledge we possess about the perpetrators. They take their secrets to the grave. In their last moments, with nothing to gain, they refuse to tell the victims' families where their loved ones are buried. When a family member makes a special appeal to them, they gaze into space, as though someone is speaking to them in a foreign language.

None I ever interviewed showed anger or resentment. Their sp

eech is remarkably lucid and their syntax shows no evidence of a thought disorder, as in the case of paranoids and schizophrenics. They're polite, not given to profanity, and disturbingly normal in appearance. Invariably they tell you their victims never had a clue as to the fate that was about to befall them.

They look like your next-door neighbor, or a man selling Fuller brushes, or a hardware store employee grinding a spare key for your house. I believe their numbers are greater than we think. I believe the causes that create them are theological in nature rather than societal. I believe they make a conscious choice to erase God's thumbprint from their souls. But that's just one man's opinion. The truth is, nobody knows.

It was raining when I went to lunch. Our drought was broken and Bayou Teche was running high and dark under the drawbridge, and black people were fishing with bamboo poles in the lee of the bridge. Even though it was early summer, the wind was cool and smelled of salt and wet trees. When I got back to the office, I temporarily put away my expanding file on the murder of Fontaine Belloc and kept my promise to Clete, namely, to determine the fate of Billy Joe Pitts after Clete bounced one hundred and seventy-five pounds in iron weights off his sternum.

I knew the police chief in Lake Charles, where Pitts evidently moonlighted as a pimp, but I decided to take the problem straight to its source and called the sheriff's department in the parish north of Alexandria where Pitts lived and worked. The dispatcher said Pitts was off that day.

"Give me his home number, please. This is in reference to a murder investigation," I said.

"I can't do that," the dispatcher said.

"Call him and give him my number. I need to hear from him in the next half hour or I'll go through the sheriff," I said.

Ten minutes later, my extension rang. "What do you want, Robicheaux?" Pitts said.

"Sounds like you have an obstruction in your throat," I said.

"I said what do you want."

Actually his response had already given me the information I needed. Pitts was alive, not in a hospital, and he probably wasn't filing charges against Clete. "I think Troy Bordelon may have been witness to the murder of a prostitute by the name of Ida Durbin. But I hit a dead end every time I mention her name. So I talked to Val Chalons, you know, the newsman? He told me you might have some helpful information."

"Me?"

"He mentioned your name specifically," I lied.

"I see Val Chalons when he fishes up here on my dad's lake. I don't talk police business with him. He doesn't give me tips on the stock market."

"But you know Val Chalons, right?"

"Listen, I don't know what you're up to, but you tell rhino-butt it's not over between us."

"Who would rhino-butt be?" I asked.

"Duh," he replied.

"It's been good talking with you, Billy Joe. Try gargling with some warm salt water. And the next time you come around my house with a weapon in your hand, be advised I'm going to blow your fucking head off," I said.

Then I made a call to my half brother, Jimmie, in New Orleans, where he owned one restaurant in the Quarter and another uptown, in the Carrollton district. Jimmie had never married, although any number of attractive and interesting women drifted in and out of his life. He was known in the life as "Jimmie the Gent" and over the years had acquired a kind of benign notoriety as a player in the city's traditional vices — video poker machines, offtrack betting, card clubs, and trafficking in large amounts of illegal Mexican rum and gin. By their nature, all these enterprises took Jimmie into a working relationship with the Giacano family, who had run New Orleans since Governor Huey Long made a present of the state to Frank Costello.

But the patriarch of the Giacanos, a Dumpster load of whaleshit by the name of Didi Gee, paid back Jimmie's trust by putting a contract on me, except the button man mistakenly shot Jimmie and blinded him in one eye.

"This guy Bordelon saw Ida die?" Jimmie said.

"I didn't say that," I replied.

"Then what did you say?"