Jolie Blon's Bounce (Dave Robicheaux 12)

“He didn’t come home after y’all turned him loose. Y’all put the fear of God in him, if that make you feel good,” she replied.

“We tried to help him. He chose not to cooperate. He also showed no feeling at all over the rape and murder of an innocent young girl,” I said.

She wore a white cotton dress with a gold chain and religious medal around her neck. A perforated gold-plated dime hung from another chain on her anklebone.

“No feeling, huh?” Then she brushed at the air and said, “Go on, go on, take care of your bidness and be done. The grave’s waiting for me. I just wish I didn’t have to deal with so many fools befo’ I get there.”

“I always respected you, Miss Ladice,” I said.

She put one hand on the arm of her chair and pushed herself erect.

“He’s gonna run from you. He’s gonna sass you. It’s ’cause he’s a scared li’l boy inside. Don’t hurt him just ’cause he’s scared, no,” she said.

I started to speak, but Helen touched me on the arm. The plainclothes in back was waving at us, a dirty black watch cap on a stick in his right hand.

CHAPTER 3

One week later an assistant district attorney, Barbara Shanahan, sometimes known as Battering Ram Shanahan, came into my office without knocking. She was a statuesque, handsome woman, over six feet tall, with white skin and red hair and green eyes. She wore white hose and horn-rim glasses and a pale orange suit and a white blouse, and she seldom passed men anywhere that they did not turn and look at her. But her face always seemed enameled with anger, without cause, her manner as sharp as razor wire. Her dedication to destroying criminals and defense attorneys was legendary. However, the reason for that dedication was a matter of conjecture. I looked up from the newspaper that was spread on my desk.

“Excuse me for not getting up. I didn’t hear you knock,” I said.

“I need everything you have on the Amanda Boudreau investigation,” she said.

“It’s not complete.”

“Then give me what you have and update me on a daily basis.”

“You caught the case?” I asked.

She sat down across from me. She looked at the tiny gold watch on her wrist, then back at me. “Is it always necessary that I say everything twice to you?” she said.

“The forensics just came in on the watch cap we dug up at Tee Bobby’s place. The rouge and skin oils came off Amanda Boudreau,” I said.

“Good, let’s cut the warrant.” As she got up to go, her eyes paused on mine. “Something wrong?”

“This one doesn’t hang together.”

“The victim’s DNA is on the suspect’s clothes? His prints are on a beer can at the murder scene? But you have doubts about what occurred?”

“The semen on the girl wasn’t Tee Bobby’s. The man who called in the ‘shots fired’ said there were three people in the car. But Amanda’s boyfriend said only two men accosted him. Where was the other one? The boyfriend said he was tied up with a T-shirt. Why didn’t he try to get away?”

“I have no idea. Why don’t you find out?” she said.

I hesitated before I spoke again. “I have another problem. I can’t see Tee Bobby as a killer.”

“Maybe it’s because you want it both ways,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Some people always need to feel good about themselves, usually at the expense of others. In this case at the expense of a dead girl who was raped while she had a sock stuffed down her throat.”

I folded my newspaper and dropped it in the trash can.

“Perry LaSalle is representing Tee Bobby,” I said.

“So?”

I got up from my chair and closed the Venetian blinds on the corridor windows.