Purple Cane Road (Dave Robicheaux 11)

“Not when you kill people,” I said.

“I’ll ask you a better question. Why didn’t you stay where you were?” the sheriff said.

Johnny Remeta’s eyes lifted into the sheriff’s face, then they emptied of any perception or thought. He looked at the wall, stifling a yawn.

“Get him processed. I want those detectives from New Orleans to have him out of here by noon tomorrow,” the sheriff said, and walked down the corridor and banged the heavy door behind him.

“What’s his problem?” Remeta said.

“Our space is full up with local wise guys. We don’t need imports. Why’d you come to New Iberia?”

“A guy looks for friends where he can.”

“I’m not your friend. You were hanging around New Orleans to pop the guys who took a shot at you, weren’t you?”

“You blame me?”

“You know who they are?”

“No. That’s why I hung around.”

I looked at him a long time. He dropped his eyes to the floor.

“You told the cop at the museum you were an artist,” I said.

“I paint ceramics. I’ve done a mess of them.”

“Good luck, kid. I think you’re going to need it,” I said, and started to go.

He rose from the bunk and stood at the bars. His face was no more than three inches from mine.

“I’ve got money put away for a lawyer. I can beat the beef on Zipper Clum,” he said.

“So?”

“I have a feeling my kite’s going down before I ever see that lawyer.”

His breath was like the stale odor of dead flowers.

His grief was his own, I told myself as I went home later that evening.

But I couldn’t rest. Zipper Clum’s dying statement, taped on the boom box in the lawn-mower shop off Magazine, said Johnny Remeta was the trail back to my mother’s death.

I ate a late supper with Bootsie on the picnic table in the backyard and told her about Johnny Remeta’s fears. I expected her to take issue with my concerns, which I seemed to bring home as a matter of course from my job. After I stopped talking, she was pensive, one tooth biting into her bottom lip.

“I think Remeta’s right. Zipper Clum was killed because of what he knew about your mother’s death. Now Connie Deshotel has taken a special interest in you. She called again, by the way.”

“What about?”

“She said she wanted to tell you Clete Purcel’s license problems have been straightened out. How nice of her to call us rather than him.”

“Forget her.”

“I’d like to. Dave, I didn’t tell you everything about my relationship with Jim Gable. He’s perverse. Oh, not with me. Just in things he said, in his manner, the way he’d stand in his undershorts in front of the mirror and comb his hair, the cruelty that was threaded through his remarks.”

The blood had risen in her face, and her eyes were shiny with embarrassment.

“You didn’t know what he was like, Boots.”