Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux 14)

"He said his old man screwed you."

"Val Chalons said that?"

"I just told you." I watched her face, my heart beating.

"Did you believe him?" she asked.

"Of course not."

"Then why did you tear him apart?"

"Because that's what I'll do to any sonofabitch who insults my wife."

In the silence I could hear the creak of the trees in the yard. Snuggs rubbed himself against my leg, his tail stiff, his head butting into my calf. I picked him up, my hands numb from the ice water in the pan. I flipped him on his back and scratched him under the chin. "What do you think about it, Snuggs?" I said.

Molly took him from my lap and set him on the floor. Then she leaned over me and held my head tightly against her breasts, squeezing so hard it hurt, her mouth pressed into my hair. "I love you, Dave Robicheaux," she said.

I felt Bootsie step inside her skin.

At 8:00 a.m. the next day I went directly into Helen Soileau's office. The arrest report from the Iberia city police was already on her desk. "I just can't believe this," she said, picking up the typed pages and dropping them as though they were smeared with an obscene substance.

"Why not?" I said.

"You want to look at the photos of your handiwork? Val Chalons looks like he was chain-dragged behind a car."

"He threw a glass of gin in my face. He made a filthy statement about my wife. I think he got off easy."

"He set you up, bwana."

"Am I on the desk?"

"Guess," she said.

It was 8:16 a.m. My arraignment was at eleven. I knew my time as a viable member of the sheriff's department was running out. I picked up my desk phone and called Mack Bertrand at the crime lab. "I got into some trouble last night," I said.

"I heard about it," he replied.

"I think I'm about to go on suspension. You remember those casts you made under my bedroom window?"

"Sure," he said.

"Can you run some comparisons between them and the casts you made at the Chalons crime scene?"

"I already did. Your prowler wore workboots, size ten and a half. Our person of interest at the Chalons guesthouse probably had on rubber boots., around size eleven. No help there, Dave."

"Why'd you make the comparison?"

"Probably for the same reason you wanted it done. We don't have one clue indicating who might have gone into the Chalons guesthouse and chopped that sad girl to death. Let me run something else by you a second."

"Go ahead," I said.

"Raphael Chalons has called me three times. But I'm not quite sure what he wants."

"I'm not following you."

"In one breath, he wants to know if there's any evidence the Baton Rouge serial killer murdered his daughter. When I tell him no, he seems relieved, then he gets upset again."

"Why did you call Honoria Chalons a 'sad girl'?"