Sunset Limited (Dave Robicheaux 10)

IT WAS STILL DARK when I parked my truck by the stucco cottage Clete had rented outside Jeanerette. I pushed back the seat and slept through a rain shower and did not wake until dawn. When I woke, the rain had stopped and the air was heavy with mist, and I saw Clete at his mailbox in a robe, the Morning Advocate under his arm, staring curiously at my truck. I got out and walked toward him.

"What's wrong?" he said, lines breaking across his brow.

I told him of everything that happened at Cisco's house and of Megan's status at Iberia General. He listened and didn't speak. His face had the contained, heated intensity of a stainless-steel pan that had been left on a burner.

Then he said, "She's going to make it?"

"You bet."

"Come inside. I already have coffee on the stove." He turned away from me and pushed at his nose with his thumb.

"What are you going to do, Clete?"

"Go up to the hospital. What do you think?"

"You know what I mean."

"I'll fix eggs and sausage for both of us. You look like you got up out of a coffin."

Inside his kitchen I said, "Are you going to answer me?"

"I already heard about you and Helen visiting Ricky Scar. He's behind this shit, isn't he?"

"Where'd you hear about Scarlotti?"

"Nig Rosewater. He said Rick

y went berserk after you left his office. What'd y'all do to jack him up like that?"

"Don't worry about it. You stay out of New Orleans."

He poured coffee in two cups and put a cinnamon roll in his mouth and looked out the window at the sun in the pine trees.

"Did you hear me?" I said.

"I got enough to do right here. I caught Swede Boxleiter in the Terrebonne cemetery last night. I think he was prizing bricks out of a crypt."

"What for?"

"Maybe he's a ghoul. You know what for. You planted all that Civil War stuff in his head. I'd love to tell Archer Terrebonne an ex-con meltdown is digging up his ancestors' bones."

But there was no humor in his face, only a tic at the corner of one eye. He went into the other room and called Iberia General, then came back in the kitchen, his eyes filled with private thoughts, and began beating eggs in a big pink bowl.

"Clete?"

"The Big Sleazy's not your turf anymore, Streak. Why don't you worry about how this guy Scruggs got off his leash? I thought y'all had him under surveillance."

"He lost the stakeout at the motel."

"You know the best way to deal with that dude? A big fat one between the eyes and a throw-down on the corpse."

"You might have your butt in our jail, if that's what it takes," I said.

He poured hot milk into my coffee cup. "Not even the perps believe that stuff anymore. You want to go to the hospital with me?" he said.

"You got it."

"The nurse said she asked for me. How about that? How about that Megan Flynn?"