Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

“Spade Labiche.”

“What’s he doing out here?”

“He was investigating a domestic battery charge. He got patched in.” She waited for me to reply. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t like him?”

“I don’t have an opinion.”

“Dave, what is wrong with you? Why not put one in your mouth and be done with it?”

“I’m going to hit a noon meeting.”

“What you’re going to do is your goddamn job.”

“Whatever you say.”

“I’ll stop the cruiser and stomp the shit out of you.”

“I believe you. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t have words for how I feel. You break my heart.”

I knew I would hear that last one in my sleep.

We turned onto a road that made a wide bend through sugarcane fields and cattle pasture, and passed clumps of pecan and oak trees and boxlike farmhouses and trailers and a convenience store that sold live bait. Just past the convenience store, a pale blue pickup truck was parked in knee-high weeds thirty feet beyond a broken wire fence. Both doors were shut. Crime scene tape had been strung from the fence posts to a solitary oak beyond the truck. The tape was bouncing in the wind.

Spade Labiche came from a big family in New Orleans that made a living out of law enforcement and jails. They were either cops, chasers in the Marine Corps, hacks in Angola or Huntsville or Parchman, or bail bondsmen. Without criminals, they would not have had a livelihood. Spade Labiche had worked vice at Miami-Dade and claimed he had resigned because he was homesick for Louisiana.

He had started off in uniform with our department and only recently made plainclothes. Twice, women of color had filed sexual complaints against him, but the complaints were dropped without explanation. Labiche was standing just outside the tape, wearing an ink-blue tie sprayed with tiny white stars and a suit that was as bright as tin. A pair of latex gloves hung out of his side pocket. He lit a cigarette with a match, cupping the flame in the wind; normally, he carried a gold lighter, because there was little he did that wasn’t ostentatious. He was blond and trim and worked out every night at Baron’s Health Club; his eyes were almost colorless, like glass with a tinge of blue.

“The body is on the other side,” he said. “You might check the window on the driver’s side first.”

“Where’s the coroner?” Helen said.

“Taking a whiz in the convenience store,” he said.

“Did he examine the body?”

“Yeah,” Labiche said.

“What did he say?” Helen asked.

“Nothing. He went blank on me. The way guys like that do.”

“Which kind of guys?” I asked.

He fixed his gaze on my face, a curl at the edge of his mouth. “Unusual ones.”

Helen and I put on latex gloves. I kept my hands down, out of sight, and tried not to flinch when I pulled the latex over my knuckles. The glass had been knocked out of the window. There was a ragged line of shards sticking out of the jamb, like shark’s teeth.

“There’s glass all over the dashboard and seat and on the weeds,” Labiche said. “There’s some pieces in the vic’s hair, too.”

“Did you run the tag?” Helen said.

“The truck is registered to T. J. Dartez,” he said.