Purple Cane Road (Dave Robicheaux 11)

“It’s a primitive form of sacrifice. He believes he saw the loupgarou in the swamp,” I said.

“Sacrifice?”

“It keeps the monster back in the trees.”

“You thinking about Letty Labiche?”

“About all of us, I guess,” I said.

30

The next day was Wednesday. I don’t know why, but I woke with a sense of loss and emptiness I hadn’t experienced in many years. It was like the feelings I had as a child that I could never explain to priests or nuns or any other adults who tried to help me. But when that strange chemical presence would have its way with my heart, like weevil worms that had invaded my blood, I was convinced the world had become a gray, desolate place without purpose, with no source of heat other than a perpetual winter sun.

I walked down through the mist in the trees to the road and took the newspaper out of the metal cylinder and opened it on the kitchen table.

The lead story had a three-column headline that read: “Governor Sets Execution for Labiche.”

Unless Belmont Pugh commuted her sentence, Letty had exactly three weeks to live.

I drove to the department in the rain and talked to the sheriff, then went to the prosecutor’s office.

The district attorney was out of town and would be gone for a week, and the ADA I caught was Barbara Shanahan, sometimes known as Battering Ram Shanahan. She was over six feet tall and had freckles and wore her light red hair cut short and wore a blue suit with white hose. She worked hard and was a good prosecutor, and I had always wanted to like her. But she seldom smiled and she went about her job with the abrasiveness of a carpenter building coffins with a nail gun.

“Passion Labiche has confessed she participated in the murder of Vachel Carmouche?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Where is it?” she asked.

“Where’s what?”

“The statement, the tape, whatever.”

“I didn’t take a formal statement from her.”

“So what is it you want from us?” she asked.

“I’m apprising you of the situation.”

“It sounds like you’re getting your chain jerked.”

“The weed sickle she used is still under the house.”

“I think you should get out of law enforcement. Become a public defender. Then you can clean up after these people on a regular basis. Talk to the D.A. when he gets back. He’s going to tell you the right perso

n is going to be injected three weeks from now. I suggest you learn to live with it,” she said.

It was still raining outside, and through the window I could see the old crypts in St. Peter’s Cemetery and the rain dancing on top of the bricks and plaster.

“Passion was telling the truth,” I said.

“Good. Make the case and we’ll indict for capital murder. Anything else you want?” she replied, and began sticking files in a cabinet, her back to me.

But Barbara Shanahan surprised me. And so did Connie Deshotel, who rang my phone just before 5 P.M.

“Your ADA called me. She says you have new evidence in the Carmouche case,” she said.

“Both sisters killed him,” I said.