Sunset Limited (Dave Robicheaux 10)

"Y'all want to go out to his house with us?" he asked, and dropped the match in the wastebasket.

"I don't," I said.

He studied me. "You got some kind of objection, something not getting said here?" he asked.

"I don't see how you make Broussard for this guy's, what's his name, Anthony Pollock's murder," I replied.

"He's got a hard-on for the Terrebonne family. There's a good possibility he started the fire on their movie set. He's a four-time loser. He shanked a guy on Camp J. He mangled a guy on an electric saw in your own jail. You want me to go on?" Daigle said.

"You've got the wrong guy," I said.

"Well, fuck me," he said.

"Don't use that language in here, sir," the sheriff said.

"What?" Daigle said.

"The victim was an addict. He had overseas involvements. He didn't have any connection with Cool Breeze. I think you guys have found an easy dart-board," I said.

"We made up all that stuff on Broussard's sheet?" the other detective said.

"The victim was stabbed in the throat, heart, and kidney and was dead before he hit the floor. It sounds like a professional yard job," I said.

"A yard job?" Daigle said.

"Talk to a guy by the name of Swede Boxleiter. He's on lend-lease from Canon City," I said.

"Swede who?" Daigle said, taking a puff off his cigarette with three fingers crimped on the paper.

The sheriff scratched his eyebrow.

"Get out of here," he said to the detectives.

A FEW MINUTES LATER the sheriff and I watched through the window as they got into their car.

"At least Pollock had the decency to get himself killed in Lafayette Parish," the sheriff said. "What's the status on Harpo Scruggs?"

"Helen said a chippy came to his room in a taxi. She's still in there."

"What's Alex Guidry's tie-in to this guy?"

"It has something to do with the Terrebonnes. Everything in St. Mary Parish does. That's where they're both from."

"Bring him in."

"What for?"

"Tell him he's cruel to animals. Tell him his golf game stinks. Tell him I'm just in a real pissed-off mood."

TUESDAY MORNING HELEN AND I drove down Main, then crossed the iron drawbridge close by the New Iberia Country Club.

"You don't think this will tip our surveillance on Harpo Scruggs?" she said.

"Not if we do it right."

"When those two brothers were executed out in the Basin? One of the shooters had on a department uniform. It could have come from Guidry."

"Maybe Guidry was in it," I said.