Light of the World (Dave Robicheaux 20)

“I know you have every reason to distrust me. But I’m telling you the truth. There is something truly evil happening in our lives.”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Not far. We have a camp on Sweathouse Creek.”

“I got to ask you something. Your husband came to our place and said some ugly things. Did you know the governor of Louisiana, the one who went to prison?”

“I met him once at a political event. Why?”

“Your husband said you got it on with him.”

“That’s because my husband is paranoid and a liar.”

His head was bursting. He let out his breath, widening his eyes, unable to sort out his thoughts. “He said you were a trophy hunter.”

“Believe what you want. Caspian is a sick, sad man. I’m afraid, and I need help.”

He hesitated, his head throbbing. “Give me directions,” he said.

THE CABIN WAS built of field stones on a whiskey-colored, tree-shaded creek at the base of the Bitterroot Mountains. The smoke from the chimney flattened in the breeze and disappeared inside the blueness of a canyon that didn’t see full sunlight until midday. Sometimes there were bighorn sheep high up on the cliffs of the canyon, and in the fall, the sky would have the radiance and texture of blue silk and be filled with red and yellow leaves blowing from a place on the mountaintop that no one could see.

Clete thought about all these things as he parked the Caddy and walked up on the wood porch of the cabin and knocked, his heart beating hard.

She had a hairbrush in her hand when she opened the door. “You found it okay?” she said.

“I fish down here a lot. Dave and I fish here together. It’s always cool in the summer. One time in the fall, I backpacked way up that trail and saw a moose.”

Her eyes went past him, then came back on his. She touched the hair on her neck with the brush. “Your car looks like you just had it waxed.”

He turned around and looked at it as though observing it for the first time, wondering if the disingenuous nature of their conversation was as embarrassing to her as it was to him. “I just got it out of the shop. It got shot up when this guy from Kansas tried to kill my daughter. You want to sit out here?”

“No, come in. What did you say? A man from Kansas?”

“He was driving a truck with a Kansas tag. Maybe he’s Asa Surrette.”

“The psychopath that Mr. Robicheaux’s daughter interviewed in prison?”

“Yeah, he’s a bad guy. You told me you were afraid. What are you afraid of?”

She looked beyond him at an old red boxcar that lay desiccated and half-filled with rotting hay inside a grove of cottonwoods. “I don’t know what I’m afraid of. I feel a sense of loss I can’t get rid of. I think about Angel and how she died and what the killer probably did to her before he put a plastic bag over her head. I can’t get those images out of my mind. I hate my husband. I’d like to kill him.”

“Why?”

“Will you come in, please?”

He stepped inside. She closed the door behind him and turned the key in an old-fashioned lock. Then she went to the windows and pulled the curtains closed.

“Who do you think is out there?” he asked.

“I can’t be sure. Caspian is afraid of someone. More so than I’ve ever seen him. When he’s afraid, he’s cruel.”

“To you?”

“To anyone. I never knew a coward who wasn’t cruel. I had to make him bathe. No, I had to get Love to make him bathe.”

“I’m losing the picture here.”

“He wouldn’t take a bath or get in the shower. I told him I didn’t want him in our bedroom. Maybe he’s depressed. When people get depressed, they behave like that, don’t they?”