Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

”

Alafair pushed her drink back toward the edge of the bar. She touched her lip. “I think I’ve stopped bleeding.”

“Do you have a formal situation with Levon?”

“Maybe you should ask him.”

“I would except for that Australian bitch he calls a wife.”

Alafair looked at her watch. “I’d better be going.”

Emmeline moved her hand on top of Alafair’s. “?‘Bitch’ is kind. She’s trying to ruin my cousin’s life.”

“I’ll be leaving now, Miss Emmeline.”

Emmeline worked her fingers around Alafair’s hand. Her skin felt moist and hot, her fingers squeezing like tentacles. “Hear me out. Regardless of what people say, Jimmy has a tender conscience. He worries over things other people wouldn’t give a second thought about. You ever hang around the CEOs in the oil business? They let others do their dirty work.”

“I’m not sure what we’re talking about. Please release my hand.”

“Sorry. Meet this collection of shits and tell me how you like it. You have no idea what they do in the third world.”

Alafair couldn’t track the sequence. She got off the stool. “Dave worries about me.”

“Then call him.”

“Be seeing you around, I’m sure.”

Emmeline’s eyes seem to take Alafair’s inventory. “Top of your class at Stanford Law. That’s impressive. But somebody has to do it, right?”

“Not necessarily.”

Alafair went out the glass doors and didn’t look back; she felt a rivulet of blood running from one nostril. When she started her car, her heart was thudding in her ears, as though evil could insinuate its way into a person’s life without consent.

* * *

IN THE MORNING, I received a call from the coroner, Cormac Watts.

“What’s with your colleague?” he said.

“Which colleague?”

“Spade Labiche.”

I looked through the glass on my office door. As coincidence would have it, Labiche was passing by. He cocked his thumb and index finger like a pistol and aimed it at me, winking.

“What about him?” I asked.

“I called him twice and left messages he didn’t bother to answer. I had additional information to give him on the T. J. Dartez autopsy. Maybe it’s insignificant, maybe not.”

“What kind of information?”

“I know there’s a bull’s-eye painted on your back, Dave. I wanted to get all the information right, including the possibility that Dartez was a bad guy and responsible for your wife’s death, even though that’s not my job.”

“Go on,” I said.

“The bloodwork showed he was legally drunk when he expired. His wife said he was an epileptic and took anti-seizure medication and wasn’t supposed to drink, but he drank anyway, and a lot. She also said he knocked her around. Anyway, I wanted to pass on the info, but the department’s affirmative-action homophobe doesn’t seem interested.”

“You left this on his machine?”