The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

His eyes closed and opened.

“Answer me. What did you do to her?”

He shook his head. His teeth were red. A guttural word was trying to climb out of his voice box.

Sean was standing beside me. “Dave, I didn’t want to do it.”

I pulled him away from Tillinger. “Now’s not the time for it.”

“I begged him to drop it. I never drew down on anybody.”

“Put your piece away.”

“Yes, sir.”

“There’s an emergency kit behind my front seat. Get the reflectors and the flashlight and flares and light up the street. The first-aid kit is under the seat. I’m going inside.”

“Dave, I didn’t want to. You know that, right? He’s gonna make it, isn’t he?”

“Listen to me. He dealt it. It was a righteous shoot,” I said. “I saw him raise the gun. You identified yourself and told him to drop his weapon. He refused the command. Your life was in danger. Say that last part back to me.”

“My life was in danger?”

“Say it again.”

“My life was in danger.”

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“End of story. You copy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get a bandage on his throat.”

I got out my cell and called in the ambulance request and the shots-fired as I walked around to Bella’s back door. I draped a handkerchief over my hand and, with my thumb and one finger, turned the knob. The door was unlocked. Gas was hissing from the burners and oven. I clicked on my penlight. Bella’s acoustic guitar was on the floor, the sound box stomped into kindling, the neck broken in half, the bridge and strings a rat’s nest. A candle in a red votive was flickering in an open cupboard. I pinched out the candle, turned off the gas, and broke out the windows with a skillet.

I walked into the living room and picked up the lamp on the table by the couch and held it above my head, sending the shadows back into the walls. Bella was sitting on the far end of the couch, her hands in her lap, her wrists fastened with ligatures, each of her eyes X-ed with tape. Her head rested on her shoulder as though she had dozed off on a streetcar in New Orleans at the end of the day. Except this was not New Orleans and she was not on a streetcar and her neck had been broken and a long-stemmed brass chalice with a rose in it had been fitted into her hands.

I called Bailey on my cell phone. “Need you in St. Martinville, two blocks south of the square. Bella Delahoussaye has been murdered. Sean McClain put at least four rounds in Hugo Tillinger.”

“How did this happen? I mean, about Sean.”

“I’ll tell you when you get here.”

“Tillinger is the perp?” she said.

“I don’t know. The gas was on. A candle was burning ten feet away.”

“You think he did burn his family to death and was doing a repeat?”

“That’s why I need you up here.”

“You okay?”

“The killer put her in ligatures, taped her eyes so she looks like a cartoon character, and broke her neck.”

Bailey arrived twenty minutes later. The medics were loading Tillinger in the back of their unit. Bailey came up the steps, wearing khakis and half-topped boots and a kerchief tied on her head, her badge hanging from a cord around her neck. The St. Martin detectives had already been through the cottage. The coroner was out of town. Bailey pulled on her latex and squatted down so she could look directly into Bella’s face. She stood up and lifted the hair off the back of Bella’s neck.