Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

From a professional perspective, my investigation into the rape of Rowena Broussard was over. But I couldn’t let it go. Something was wrong. Why the continued coldness or hostility from both her and her husband? Wouldn’t they conclude that the wheels of justice were going forward? Jimmy had been charged and indicted and held up in the public eye as a rapist. Maybe his political career would be destroyed. Rowena would probably be a devastating witness at the trial. What more did they want?

I drove to their house on Loreauville Road.

* * *

LEVON AND HIS wife were eating at a dining table in their screened-in, brick-floored back porch. Even though we were in the midst of spring, the evening sky was lit incongruously with the colors of a Halloween pumpkin. Rowena’s wrists were still bandaged. Levon wore a sport shirt and slacks and Roman sandals without socks. He didn’t stand up to shake hands when I opened the screen door. For a man of his background, that message was as blunt as it got.

“Sorry I didn’t call in advance,” I said.

“What do you need, Dave?”

“You heard about the shooting of the cop in St. Mary?”

“On the roadside, something like that?”

“It happened not far from Jimmy Nightingale’s place,” I said.

“We’re eating,” Rowena said.

“I noticed,” I replied.

Levon’s eyes lifted to mine. “Say what’s on your mind.”

“Long ago I learned that hostility and fear are first cousins,” I said.

“Big breakthrough?” he said.

“It beats cancer and heart disease.”

“Let me make it easy for you,” he said. “You feel we’re ungrateful. We’re not. But we’re not happy, either. You’re too close to Nightingale. You did your job, but you did it grudgingly.”

“You’re wrong.”

I waited for his reply. Or rather, I hoped he might act like the genteel man he was and

ask me to sit down. I didn’t mention that hostility was also a first cousin of guilt. Again I noticed the leanness in his face, the pinched light in his eyes, as though an illness were taking over his body. Then I said what had probably been in my subconscious for a long time. “You saw the dark side in Latin America.”

“So?”

“The use of electrodes. People hung by their wrists with a sack of insecticide pulled over their heads.”

“Worse than that,” he said.

“How far would you be willing to go yourself?”

He set down his knife and fork and stared at the two candles burning on the table. “I don’t think I heard you right.”

“Maybe you went looking for evidence on your own. Maybe you used a PI to check out Nightingale’s employees and came up with Kevin Penny’s name. Maybe you thought he was a guy who’d have some useful information.”

“I tortured somebody to death?” he said.

“It’s the stuff of the Inquisition.”

“I can’t take any more of this,” Rowena said.

She left the table and went through the kitchen door into the house. I leaned over the table as though to speak to him and let my hand tip his wineglass. It rolled off the table and shattered on the brick. “I’m sorry.”

“You can say that again,” he said. He got up, wiping his trousers, then went in the house for a broom and dustpan. I used my handkerchief to pick up his butter knife and drop it into my pocket. He came back outside. “You’re still here?”