The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

“He’s on the spike. Don’t ask me what goes into his veins, because I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s a cocktail from hell.”

Our table was spangled with sunshine, the moss waving overhead, the wind cool off Bayou Teche. The petals of the camellia bushes were scattered on the grass like drops of blood. As a cop, you hear everything that human beings are capable of doing. That doesn’t mean you get used to it. Evil has a smell like copper coins on a hot stove, like offal burning on a winter day, like a gangrenous-soaked bandage at a battalion aid station in a tropical country. It violates your glands and your senses. Its odor stays in your dreams, and you never fail to recognize it in your waking day. I swore I smelled it on Butterworth’s skin.

“No comment?” Butterworth said.

“You’re diming your friend and doing it without shame,” I said. “It’s a bit embarrassing to witness.”

He looked at Bailey. “He’s obsessed with you.”

“Who is?” she said.

“Desmond,” Butterworth said. “Be careful. A great artist is just this side of mad. If you doubt me, thumb through the bios of those who torment themselves for months trying to paint a starry night or the likeness of God. Desmond uses chemicals not to escape reality but to find it. How insane can one man be?”

Chapter Thirty-Three

I PICKED UP BAILEY at six o’clock. Or tried to pick her up. She came to the front door in a gingham dress. I was wearing a suede sport coat and freshly pressed slacks and a light blue shirt and a plum-colored necktie. “Ready?”

“Where are we going?” she said, as though surprised.

“Dinner and a movie.”

“I already fixed something.”

“Then a film?”

“Whatever you like. Are you turning into a monk?”

“If so, I’m not aware of it.”

“Come in, Dave. We need to talk.”

I didn’t want to come in or to talk. If someone had pointed a gun at me and asked me to state my honest feelings about Bailey, I wouldn’t have known what to say. My obsession with her was probably as great as Desmond’s. Maybe I was trying to reclaim my youth; maybe I wanted to be her protector. It was hard for me to separate her from the image of Cathy Downs standing by the road while Henry Fonda tells her that one day he may return to Tombstone, although he knows full well that his business with the Clantons is not over and he will never be back.

Yes, it was hard for me to separate Bailey from Clementine Carter, until I thought about the three men Bailey had set on fire.

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. She had set the dining room table and lit a candelabra in the center. “You’re looking at me that way again. It makes me very uncomfortable,” she said.

“That’s a pretty dress. You look beautiful in it. You’re beautiful in anything, Bailey.”

“I wish I hadn’t told you about what I did in Montana. You think I should resign my job?”

“For what purpose?”

“Maybe I should report myself to the authorities in Montana.”

I could feel my heart thudding, my stomach churning. “This is the reality. The case was closed years ago. In the eyes of the law, three meth dealers blew themselves up. Probably all three had records as dealers and predators. Their deaths were marked off as good riddance. If you reopen the case, you will be involved with the courts for two or three years and then probably be given probation. Everybody involved with the case will secretly wish you stayed in Louisiana. In the meantime you will be financially destitute and ruined professionally. What good would come out of it?”

“I’d sleep again,” she said.

I had tried. But I couldn’t even convince myself. And I had not addressed the arson investigation at the school in Holy Cross, even though I had discussed it with Clete, for which I felt another layer of guilt.

“Desmond hired a PI to dig up dirt on you,” I said. “Or rather, he got Lou Wexler to hire the PI who dug up your past.”

“Pardon?”

“You were part of an arson investigation when you were thirteen. The fire was at a Girl Scout meeting in Holy Cross.”

“Yes, it was an accident.”