Jolie Blon's Bounce (Dave Robicheaux 12)

“This man Legion is a sexual predator. He was given free rein to sexually exploit black women on the LaSalle plantation. That doesn’t seem like a protective attitude to me.”

“Then maybe they should have gotten jobs somewhere else.” He stared hard at me, a piece of cartilage knotted in his jaw. “You got something you want to add?”

I let my eyes slip off his face. “No, sir,” I said.

The sheriff bit a piece of loose skin on the ball of his thumb, then rose from his chair and put on his suit coat and picked up his Stetson.

“You and Helen Soileau check out shotguns,” he said.

“What?”

“We’re going out to have a talk with Joe Zeroski and his friends. Doesn’t Purcel live in that same motor court?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like he made a good choice.”

The motor court was out on East Main in a grove of live oak trees. The cottages were made of tan stucco and stayed in shade from morning to sunset, and each evening the smoke from meat fires drifted through the trees and bamboo onto Bayou Teche. Our caravan of six cruisers and a jail van slowed and turned into the motor court drive, passing a cottage at the entrance that had been converted into a barbershop, complete with a striped barber pole. At the end of the drive I saw Clete’s lavender Cadillac convertible parked across from Zerelda Calucci’s cottage.

In a dry, brittle place inside my head I could hear a persistent humming sound, like an electrical short buzzing in the rain, the same sound I’d heard when I came home from Iberia General, wired to the eyes on painkillers.

Helen parked the cruiser and looked at me. My walking cane and two sawed-down Remington pump twelve-gauge shotguns were propped on the seat between us.

“You got something eating you?” she asked.

“This is a dumb move. You don’t ’front Joe Zeroski.”

“Maybe you should tell the skipper.”

“I already did. Waste of time,” I said.

“Try to enjoy it. Come on, Streak, time to rock ’n’ roll, lock and load,” she said, opening her door.

I got out on the driveway with my cane in one hand and a shotgun propped over my shoulder with the other. The sheriff, three plainclothes, and at least ten uniformed sheriff’s deputies and a dozen city policemen were walking toward me. The wind had started to gust and leaves from the oaks spun in circles on the drive.

“You got a second, Skipper?” I said.

“What is it?” he asked, his eyes fixed on the cottages at the end of the row. A bullhorn hung from his right hand.

“Let me talk with Joe.”

“No.”

“That’s it?”

“Get with the program, Dave.”

My gaze went through the crowd of police officers and focused on a man with ash-blond hair in jeans and a

sports coat and a golf shirt and a white straw hat coned up on the sides who was getting out of a cruiser, his face filled with expectation, like a kid entering an amusement park.

“What’s that guy doing here?” I asked.

“Which guy?” the sheriff said.

“Marvin Oates. He’s got a sheet. What’s he doing here?”

“He’s a criminal justice student. We’re letting them ride with us. Dave, I think maybe you should go sit down, take it easy a while, maybe go up to the barbershop and get a haircut. We’ll pick you up on the way out,” the sheriff said.