Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux 13)

"You know either one of these girls?" I asked.

"No, sir, I can't say I do," he said. He wore khakis and a starched, print shirt, the short sleeves folded in neat cuffs on his upper arms.

His hair was black, combed back with gel, boxed on the neck, his skin tanned.

"Can't or won't?" I said, and smiled at him.

"Sir?" he said, confused.

I turned to another marked page in the yearbook and showed him a picture of Lori Parks.

"How about this girl?" I said.

He shook his head, his eyes flat. "No, sir. Don't know her. I guess I'm not much help on this. These girls do something wrong?"

"You seem out of breath. You all right?" I said.

"I'm fine," he said, and tried to smile.

"What time did you serve her?" I asked.

"Serve who?"

"Lori Parks," I said, tapping the picture of the driver.

"I haven't said I did that. I haven't said no such thing. No, sir."

"The autopsy on this girl indicates she was alive when the gasoline tank on her car exploded. She was seventeen years old. I think you're in a world of shit, partner."

He swallowed and looked at the smoke hanging in the trees from a barbecue joint. He opened his mouth to speak, but a middle-aged, balding man who wore a cowboy vest and a string tie and hillbilly sideburns that looked like grease pencil cupped his hand on the boy's shoulder and glared at me through the service window.

"You saying we served somebody under age?" he asked.

"I know you did," I said.

"Every young person who comes by this window has to show ID. That's the rule. No exceptions," he said.

"You the owner?" I said.

He ignored my question and addressed his clerk. "You serve anybody who looked like a minor yesterday?"

"No, sir, not me. I checked everybody," the clerk said.

"That's what I thought," the man in the vest said. "We're closed."

"How did you know the problem sale was yesterday?" I asked.

He pulled out the support stick from under the window flap and let it slam shut in my face.

While I had spent the afternoon questioning the employees of New Iberia's drive-by daiquiri stores, an unusual man was completing his journey on the Sunset Limited from Miami into New Orleans. He had small ears that were tight against his scalp, narrow shoulders, white skin, lips that were the color of raw liver, and emerald green eyes that possessed the rare quality of seeming infinitely interested in what other people were saying. He sat in the lounge car, wearing a seersucker suit and pink dress shirt with a plum-colored tie and ruby stick pin, sipping from a glass of soda and ice and lime slices while the countryside rolled by. An elderly Catholic nun in a black habit sat down next to him and opened a book and began reading from it. She soon became conscious that the man was watching her.

"Could I help you with something?" she asked.

"You're reading The Catholic Imagination by Father Andrew Gree-ley. A fine book it is," the man said.

"I just started it. But, yes, it seems to be. Are you from Ireland?"

He considered his reply. "Umm, not anymore," he said. "Are you going to New Orleans, Sister?"