Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux 13)

"I guess that sums it up."

"I can see that might piss him off. Particularly when he knows you bopped her."

"Can't you show some subtlety, just a little, once in a while?"

"You bump uglies with a guy's wife, then tell him she's an ice cube, but it's me who's got a problem with language?"

"She was drunk. We both were. Stop harping on it."

He looked at me, then turned into the parking lot across from Victor's. The old convent across the bayou was still in shadow, the live oaks speckled with frost. "Why get into Flannigan's face about his wife's sex life?" he said.

"A psychiatrist would probably say she has trouble with intimacy. So she gets it on when she's drunk, usually with strangers or people she doesn't care about. It's characteristic of women who were molested as children," I replied.

"You're really going to hang Lejeune's cojones over a fire, aren't you?"

"You better believe it," I said.

Later I signed out a cruiser and drove to the Lafayette Police Department to see my old friend Joe Dupree, the homicide cop and airborne veteran who had investigated the gunshot death of Theo Flannigan's psychiatrist. While I talked he sat behind his desk, picking one aspirin, then another, then a third out of a tin container, swallowing them with water he drank from a cone-shaped paper cup. His tie was configured to the shape of his pot stomach, his hair combed like strands of wire across the bald spot on top of his head.

"So you think this guy Will Guillot is blackmailing Castille Le-Jeune and it has something to do with Lejeune's daughter?" he said.

"Right."

"About what?"

"Molestation."

Joe leaned back in his chair and rubbed his mouth. Through the window I could see a chained-up line of black men in orange jumpsuits being placed in a jail van. "Well, Ms. Flannigan's file was missing from Dr. Bernstine's office. But I found out several other files were missing, too. Maybe Bernstine took them home and they got lost somehow. Or somebody could have stolen several files to throw off the investigation. Anyway, it's been a dead-end case," he said.

"You checked out the secretaries, any reports of forced entry?" I said.

"If Bernstine was burglarized, he didn't report it. The alarm company never had to do a 911, either. The secretary is a church-going, family woman, with no reason to steal files from her employer."

"How long was she there?"

He looked down at the torn notebook pages that were clipped inside a case folder. "Seven months," he said.

"Who was the secretary before this one?" I asked.

He looked again at his notes. "A woman named Gretchen Peltier. But she quit before Ms. Flannigan starting seeing Bernstine."

"What was that name again?"

I drove to the alarm company that had serviced Dr. Bernstine's office. Like most alarm companies, it was an electronic shell that didn't provide security but instead relayed distress signals to the fire department or a law enforcement agency. In other words, the chief expense of home security was passed on to the taxpayers and the alarm company was able to maintain its entire system, which monitored several parishes, with no more than a half dozen technicians and sales and clerical employees.

But the assistant director of the company, a black woman named Dauterive who had been an elementary school teacher, did her best to help me. A computer record of all electronic warning signals originating during the last year at Dr. Bernstine's office was laid out on the desk. "See, there were a number of power failures. Those were either during an electrical storm or when a power line was knocked down. These other dates are the times the customer didn't disarm the system fast enough. The dispatcher had to call and get the password."

She was heavyset and wore glasses and a pink suit with a small corsage on the lapel. She glanced at her watch.

"Am I taking up too much time?" I asked.

"Oh, no. It's my anniversary. My husband's meeting me for lunch," she replied.

"Who's the dispatcher?"

"We use the Acadiana Ambulance Service. When they receive an emergency signal, they call the residence or the business and clear it up, or they notify the appropriate response service," she replied.

"When was the last time you received an alarm that could have indicated an unauthorized entry?" I asked.