Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux 14)

"And Kale thinks I'm involved in a plot to blackmail him or his son, with that kind of money at stake?"

"Seems like it."

"I don't believe this."

"I'll have a talk with Kale."

"Let it slide. Rest up and try not to think. You and Purcel, both. No matter what happens, don't think," he said, then quietly hung up the phone.

In the morning I walked downtown to Koko Hebert's office and waited for him to get off the telephone. Outside, the wind was blowing in the trees on Main Street and the air was still cool and damp-smelling in the shade, but inside Koko's office the atmosphere was stifling, the odor of nicotine wrapped like cellophane on every surface in the room.

"What is it?" he said.

"Did you get the post on Johnny Wineburger from the fore

nsic pathologist in St. Mary?" I said.

"What about it?"

"We're on the same side, Koko. Can't you speak civilly to people?"

"No, you're on your own side, Robicheaux. That said, what do you want?"

I gave up. "Could the wounds on Johnny Wineburger have been made by the same instrument that killed Honoria Chalons?"

"No."

"You're sure?"

"She was cut by an instrument that was honed like a barber's razor. The hatchet Wineburger was killed with must have been used to chop bricks. You trying to make the black guy for Honoria Chalons's death?"

"It occurred to me."

He swiveled himself around in his chair and stared out a side window at a brick wall. From the back, he looked like a sad elephant humped on a circus stool. He drew in on his cigarette, then released a thick ball of white smoke from his mouth. "You're not going to win," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"You think you're going to bring down Val Chalons. But he and his people are just getting started. When they're finished with you, your name won't be worth warm spit on the sidewalk. You and your wife will be picking flypaper off your skin the rest of your lives."

"That's the breaks," I said.

"I hate talking to you," he said.

That night a hurricane watch was in effect from Pensacola, Florida, to Morgan City, Louisiana. But in New Iberia the air was dead, superheated, stained with the smell of dead water beetles, the trees traced with the wisplike patterns of fireflies. Along East Main the windows sparkled like ice with condensation. Just before 11:00 p.m. Dana Magelli called from New Orleans.

"Better turn on CNN," he said. In the background I could hear laughter, music, bottles or drink glasses tinkling.

"Where are you?" I said.

"In the Quarter. Half the Second District is here. We got him."

I had already hit the button on the remote TV control. "You've got the Baton Rouge serial killer?" I said.

"The DNA won't be in for a day or so. But he's the guy. Fibers on the clothes of Holly Blankenship match a shirt in his closet. He got stopped in his Popsicle truck at a DWI check."

On the television screen I saw a New Orleans police official talking on camera, a dilapidated house and weed-infested yard in the background.

"The guy started acting hinky at the check," Dana said. "So we got a warrant on his house. He had a fifteen-year-old hooker tied up in there."