Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

“I can handle myself,” she replied. “It’ll work out. Good-bye.”

“Don’t hang up, Carolyn.”

Too late.

* * *

I MENTIONED MY speculation that Helen Soileau may have had several people living inside her, none of them entirely normal. That afternoon, at 4:57, she buzzed my phone and told me to come to her office. I walked down the corridor and went inside.

“Shut the door and sit down,” she said.

I took a chair. She walked past me and lowered the blinds on the glass. I waited for her to return to her desk, but she didn’t. I felt her standing behind me, saw her shadow fall across mine. There was a lump in my throat. “What’s going on, boss lady?”

She placed a hand on each of my shoulders.

“I’ve wanted to do this all day,” she said.

She tucked her elbows in under my chin and pulled my head into her breasts.

“Jesus Christ, Helen!”

“Shut up. I don’t know what happened at Bayou Benoit, but you didn’t kill T. J. Dartez.” She kissed my hair. “Now go home.”

Top that.

* * *

I LOVE THE rain, whether it’s a tropical one or one that falls on you in the dead of winter. For me, rain is the natural world’s absolution, like the story of the Flood and new beginnings and loading the animals two by two onto the Ark. I love the mist hanging in the trees, a hint of wraiths that would not let heavy stones weigh them down in their graves, the raindrops clicking on the lily pads, the fish rising as though in celebration.

I took great comfort on nights like these, and on this particular night I sat down in a cloth-covered chair in the living room and began reading a novel by Ron Hansen titled The Kid, the best story I ever read about the Lincoln County cattle wars. The rain was drumming on our tin roof, pooling in the yard, shining like glass in the glow of the streetlamps. I had opened the front window to let in the cold air. I heard a loud thump and looked up to see a humped silhouette on the screen.

“How you doin’, Mon Tee Coon?” I said. “Comment est la vie?”

He tilted his head.

“You need a snack, little guy?” I said.

He pawed at the screen. His coat was glistening with water, his whiskers white at the tips.

“I’m going to open a can of tuna and get you a pan of water and set them on the gallery. Hang loose.”

Just as I got out of the chair, a sports car turned sharply into the driveway, splashing water into the yard. Mon Tee Coon dropped heavily onto the gallery and was gone. Someone ran from the car with a newspaper over his or her head and twisted the bell not once but three times. I tossed my book onto the chair and opened the door.

“Thank go

odness you’re home, Dave,” Emmeline Nightingale said, wiping the rain out of her hair. “Is Alafair here?”

“No.”

“Where is she?”

“She doesn’t tell me everywhere she goes.”

“I have some important information. I was going to tell her and let her tell you.”

Emmeline seemed to lie the way all narcissists do. Whatever they say, regardless of its absurdity, becomes the truth.

“Tell me what?”