Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux 13)

I put aside the letter and stared at the guns mounted on the gun-rack I had screwed into the wall: an AR-15, a sporterized '03 Springfield, and my old Remington twelve-gauge, the barrel sawed off even with the pump, the sportsman's plug long ago removed from the magazine.

I knew what had been on my mind all afternoon and evening. Since I had interviewed Gretchen Peltier at the insurance office in Abbeville I'd had little doubt about Will Guillot's involvement in the burglary of Dr. Bernstine's office and Bernstine's death by gunshot in Lafayette's Girard Park. I also had no doubt he was mixed up in pornography and narcotics and the blackmail of Castille Lejeune. The problem was his crimes had all been committed in other parishes, and there was no way to hang the killing of either Sammy Fig-orelli or the drive-by daiquiri store operator in New Iberia on him.

In order to get at him and subsequently Castille Lejeune, I would have to work with at least three other law-enforcement agencies. Then the legal processes of indictment and prosecution would be turned entirely over to others, perhaps in a parish Castille Lejeune controlled.

I turned off the light and sat in the darkness with the twelve-gauge across my lap. The steel and the wood of the stock felt cool against my palms. I opened the breech and smelled the odor of the machine oil I had used to clean the chamber and the magazine, then set the stock butt-down between my legs, moving my thumb along the edges of the barrel where I had sawed it off and sanded it smooth with emery paper. I thought about my dead wife Bootsie and the systemic corruption of the place I loved and the inhumanity and cruelty that had been visited upon a great blues artist like Junior Crudup.

I removed a box of double-ought buckshot from my closet shelf and bega

n pressing a handful of shells one at a time into the magazine of my Remington. I sat in the darkness a long time, the gun resting on my knees, my mind free of all thought, a strange numbness in my body. Then I ejected the shells and replaced them one by one in their box, set the shotgun back in the rack, and took a walk down by the drawbridge. A lighted tug was waiting for the bridge tender to raise the bridge. I waved at him in the pilot house and he waved back at me, then I walked back home and went to bed, with Snuggs sleeping at the foot.

The next day, Friday, I contacted Joe Dupree in Lafayette, and we went to work on getting a search warrant on Will Guillot's home and place of business. But it was going to be a long haul. The warrant request was based on statements made by Gretchen Peltier, the psychiatrist's former secretary, about a break-in committed in Lafayette by a man who lived in Franklin. Also, Will Guillot was probably many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. It was highly unlikely he would keep the stolen case file, which he was using to blackmail Castille Lejeune, in either his home or office.

There are days in law enforcement, just like those at the craps table, when you think the dice have no combinations on them except treys and boxcars. Then suddenly they magically bounce off the backboard, all elevens and sevens.

Just before quitting time Helen opened my door and leaned inside. "The sheriff in St. Mary just called. Will Guillot made a prowler report last night. The city cops who responded told him there'd been a peeping Tom in the neighborhood, but Guillot seemed to think it was someone else."

"Who?"

"He was walking around in the yard with a gun and not saying."

"Thanks for passing it on," I said.

I continued with the paperwork I was doing, my expression flat. I thought she was about to close the door and go back to her office but instead she approached my desk, her eyes on mine.

"My words don't have much influence on you. But be careful, Dave. Don't give power to a guy like Castille Lejeune," she said.

"I hear you," I said.

"Yeah," she said.

At 5 p.M. I went home, reloaded my cut-down twelve-gauge, locked it in the steel box that was welded to the bed of my pickup truck, and drove to Clete's cottage at the motor court.

He was outside, grilling a chicken, drinking from a quart bottle of beer, his eyes watering in the smoke, the collar of his jacket pulled up around his neck, his utility cap cocked sideways.

"What's shakin', big mon?" he said.

"Think the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide should make a house call down in Franklin?" I said.

"Oh my, yes indeedy," he replied, as though the statement were one word.

The shrubs and gazebo and wide gallery of Will Guillot's house were threaded with Christmas lights, and sequined cutouts of reindeer,

with tinted flood lamps aimed at them, were spiked into the lawn. We pulled into the driveway and parked just inches from where Dr. Parks had bled to death on the cement. I unlocked the steel box in the truck bed, removed my cut-down twelve-gauge, and tossed it to Clete. He went into the shrubbery with it, deliberately silhouetting against the Christmas lights and tinted flood lamps the barrel held at an upward angle. As I walked up on the gallery I saw Will Guillot pull aside a curtain on a tall window and look outside. I hung my badge holder on the breast pocket of my sports coat and banged hard on the door with the flat of my fist.

Everything I did in the next few minutes would be based on my belief that Gretchen Peltier had truly been sickened by her experience with Will Guillot and had not gone back to him or confessed she had given him up.

He jerked open the door and stared into my face. He wore a burgundy corduroy shirt and gray slacks and loafers, and in the dim light the birthmark on his face looked like a scar from a hot iron. Behind him I saw a woman get up from the couch and go into the back of the house. "Do I need to call the cops?" he said.

"I'm the least of your troubles, Mr. Guillot. I think your electrician wants to park one in your brainpan," I said.

"What?" he said, his eyes shifting from me to Clete, who had just walked out of the yard, stepping up on the gallery with the twelve-gauge resting in the crook of his arm.

"It's clear," Clete said to me.

"What's clear? Why are you walking around in my yard with that shotgun?" Guillot said.

"Your electrician, Herbert Vidrine, gave you up. But I guess that wasn't enough for him. Evidently he hates your guts. What'd you do to the poor guy?" I said.