Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux 13)

Chapter 11.

Some people seem to be born under a bad sign.

At 8:30 A.M. the following day an arson inspector called me at the office. In the early hours of the morning a fire had broken out in Dr. Parks's game room and had quickly spread through the roof, destroying the back third of his house. "I know the guy just lost his daughter, but he's hard to take. How about coming out here, Dave?" the inspector said.

"What's the deal?" I said.

"Parks is convinced somebody tried to burn him out."

"My relationship with Dr. Parks isn't a very good one."

"You could fool me. He seems to think you're the only guy around here with a brain."

I drove up to Loreauville and crossed the drawbridge there and followed the state road to the shady knoll where Dr. Parks's home sat among the trees like a man with an angry frown. A solitary firetruck was still there and two firemen were ripping blackened wood out of a back wall with axes. Dr. Parks approached me as though somehow I were the source of all the problems and missing solutions in his life. "I want an arson investigation initiated right now," he said.

"That's a possibility, but so far there doesn't seem to be enough evidence to warrant one." I raised my hand as he started to interrupt. "No one is saying your suspicions don't have merit. These guys just haven't found an accelerant or a "

"It's connected to my daughter's death."

"No, it's not, sir." I fixed my eyes on the blackened back of his house and the roof that had caved in on the kitchen and master bedroom. It was so quiet I could hear my watch ticking on my wrist.

"Look here, Mr. Robicheaux, I asked that you come out because I know about some of the losses in your own life. I thought you would understand what's going on here," he said.

I tried to ignore the personal nature of his statement. "These firemen are good guys. You can trust what they tell you. I think you've just had a lot of bad luck," I said.

"There's no such thing as luck," he replied.

Just then an unshaved, mustached fireman in rubber pants and suspenders and a big hat walked from behind the house with a clutch of fried electrical wiring in his hand. "We got an ignition point," he said.

"What?" Dr. Parks said.

The fireman spread the wires across his palm and cracked open the insulation on them. "These were in the wall of your game room. See, they're burned from the inside out," he said.

"That's impossible. I just had that game room added on two years ago," Dr. Parks said.

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; "It's not impossible if somebody installed oversized breakers in your breaker box," the fireman said.

"Who did the work on your house, Doctor?" I said.

"Sunbelt Construction," he said.

I tried to walk away from him, as though I were preoccupied with the destruction at the back of his home. But he grabbed my arm roughly. "What do you know about Sunbelt Construction?" he asked.

"It's owned by Castille Lejeune," I replied.

"Who the hell is Castille Lejeune?"

"His company owns the daiquiri store where your daughter and her friends bought their drinks on the day they died," I said.

Had I just set up another man, in this case Castille Lejeune? I asked myself on the way back to the department. No, I had simply told the truth.

But that did not change the fact I had let Frank Dellacroce take the big exit at the hands of Max Coll.

Later I went home for lunch and found Father Jimmie on a ladder, screwing a basketball hoop to the back of the porte cochere.

"You do open-air reconciliations?" I said.