Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux 14)

"It's a bit complicated, Your Honor," I said.

"Why don't you enlighten me?"

"I guess there are some occasions when words are not quite adequate, Your Honor. I guess there are occasions when you just have to say, 'Fuck it,' " I replied.

"I don't think you're a wise man, Mr. Robicheaux. Bail is set at fifty thousand dollars," the judge said. He snapped his gavel down on a wood block.

I put up my house as a property bond an

d was back at the department at 1:00 p.m. Helen was waiting by my office door. I started to recount my experience in court, but she held up a hand to stop me.

"I've already heard about it. You'd better pray Cecil Gautreaux doesn't preside over your trial," she said.

I waited for her to go on. Instead, she looked into space, a sad light in her eyes.

"Come on, Helen. Say it."

"I tried to get you modified duty. Suspension without pay was as good as I could do. The D.A. and others want you canned."

"Without an I.A. review?"

"The problem isn't just the beef at Clementine's. It's you, Dave. You don't like rules and you hate authority. You wage a personal war against guys like Val Chalons and take the rest of us down with you. No amount of pleading with you works. People are tired of following you around with a dustpan and broom."

My face felt small and tight, my throat constricted, as though a chicken bone were caught in it. Helen snuffed down in her nose and touched at one nostril, her jawbone flexing.

"I'll clean out my desk," I said.

"I got a call from a TV producer who does exposes on small cities," she said. "They're doing one on New Iberia and you're the centerpiece. They've got you on tape at Clementine's. I also got the feeling your wife is going to be portrayed as a bleeding-heart nun pumping it with a rogue cop."

"We've always wanted film careers," I said.

"You force your friends to hurt you, Dave. I think that's a sickness. But you act like it's funny," she said.

"My lawyer says I'm about to be charged with child molestation. I'm also going to be sued. The lawyer for the plaintiff is a stooge for Val Chalons."

"Shit," she said. She walked away, her fists on her hips, breathing through her nose. Then she walked back toward me, her expression set. "I'm not going to be party to this. You're on the desk, full pay, until I say otherwise."

"I don't think you should —"

She pressed her finger against my lips. "You got that?" she said.

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"Good," she said.

Two hours later a woman detective who worked sex crimes notified me that Mrs. Mabel Poche had filed molestation charges against me. The location of the alleged crime was the restroom inside Molly's administrative offices. The date was the day Molly's agency had sponsored a hot dog roast and a race of hundreds of plastic ducks down Bayou Teche. An incident I hardly remembered — a lost child about to wet his pants, needing someone to take him into the restroom — was now aimed at my breast like a crossbow. The woman detective scheduled an interview with me for Friday morning. The Daily Iberian had already picked up the story.

I signed out of the office early and drove to Molly's agency. She was under the pole shed, a gunnysack in one hand, picking up chicken heads that had been lopped off on a butcher stump.

"Who's the ax murderer?" I said.

"We're going to have a chicken fry tomorrow night. I think one of the kids hijacked my weed cutter. Look at that." She nodded at a machete that lay across the stump, its blade matted with blood and feathers.

"You remember a white woman by the name of Mabel Poche?" I asked.

"I haven't seen her in a while. I think she stopped coming around."

"She says I molested her child in your office building. She's filing criminal charges as well as a civil suit."