The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

I went into a tiny side room where a baby of about nine or ten months lay on her side in a crib. I removed the dirty diaper and wiped her down and replaced it with a clean one. She looked curiously into my face and smiled when I rattled a toy and put it in her hand. A piece of red twine with an eight-point cross on it, stamped from brass, was knotted around her ankle.

I went back into the kitchen and sat down at the table without being asked. “That’s a sweet baby.”

“T’ank you.”

“Where’d you get that charm on her ankle?”

“Mine to know.”

“Don’t put it on the child’s neck.”

“I ain’t gonna do somet’ing like that.”

?

??You believe in the gris-gris?” I asked.

“I seen dead people. They got hungry eyes. It’s ’cause they cain’t eat or drink till they get inside someone and do it t’rew them.”

“You see these dead people at night?” I said.

“In the daylight. Standing right next to me in the grocery store. A lot of people ain’t what they look like. There’s a second person inside them.”

She did not speak like an ignorant person or even one who was superstitious. And for that reason she really bothered me. She looked through the window. “There’s my gran’mama.”

“The charm is called the Maltese cross. You won’t tell me where you got it?”

“A bubblegum machine,” she said.

“Who’s your pimp, Miss Hilary?”

“Like I’m gonna tell you?”

“Here’s my business card. If you want to get out of the life, call me. Don’t let Axel push you around. He’s a bully and a coward.”

“So how come he’s a deputy sheriff?”

• • •

HELEN CALLED ME into her office the next afternoon. “Somebody poisoned Sean McClain’s pets.”

“When?” I said.

“He fed them last night. This morning they were dead. Whoever did it wanted to get both the cat and the dog. There was butcher paper with ground meat in the kennel, and a sardine can on the grass.”

“Did Sean have trouble with his neighbors?”

“Sean doesn’t have trouble with anyone. Except for a couple of wiseasses in the department.”

“Axel Devereaux is one of those wiseasses?”

“Devereaux knows you’re protective of Sean.”

“It goes deeper than that,” I said. “Sean slammed Devereaux in the head with a napkin dispenser at Victor’s.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It doesn’t matter. Devereaux shouldn’t be a member of the department.”