Light of the World (Dave Robicheaux 20)

“Who’s it belong to?” Clete asked.

“Rhonda Fayhee.”

“Who?”

“The waitress who went missing up by Lookout Pass.”

“That son of a bitch was here?”

“Get Elvis Bisbee on the horn and tell him what we’ve got.”

“Bisbee is a boob. I’d rather deal with Fart, Barf, and Itch. At least they don’t wear mustaches that look like rope.”

“The FBI had twenty years to pinch this guy. It took Wichita PD to do it.”

“How’d he get in and out of here without us seeing him?” he said, punching in a 911 call with his thumb.

I didn’t want to think about the wolves in the trees on the far side of the river or the wolf that was probably living somewhere behind Albert’s house. The theater of the mind was Surrette’s ally. But I had no doubt he had been here and left two of his trophies for us to find. I also felt that he represented a level of evil far greater in dimension and cunning than the machinations of one individual. I have interviewed condemned inmates on death row in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. My experience with each of them was the same. I believed they were not only dysfunctional but irreparably impaired. They were either schizophrenic or had fetal alcohol syndrome or had been neurologically damaged by severe beatings as children. Normality had never been an option in their lives. And there was no theological side to the story.

Surrette was different. Men of his ilk wish to re-create the world in their image. The evil they do is of a kind we never erase from memory. I knew I would never forget the image of the woman’s blood-spotted undergarment hanging from my rearview mirror. Nor would I ever be able to explain how a man could take pride in torturing to death an innocent young woman in the flower of her life. I wanted to confront Surrette and make him accountable, not simply for his crimes but for his existence. I think I know why Himmler and other Nazi war criminals killed themselves. They ensured their own immortality by denying us knowledge of who they really were. If I caught Asa Surrette, I was determined that he would tell us his secrets and his origins, even if the rule book got tossed over the gunwale.

Clete closed his cell phone.

“What did they say?” I asked.

“They’re sending a couple of lab guys out. We shouldn’t touch anything,” he replied. He stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth and gazed across the river. “This one really bothers me, Dave.”

“Join the club.”

Before he spoke again, he checked to see if Molly was within earshot. “When we get this guy, he’s going into a wood chipper. We’re on the same wavelength about this, right?”

“I made a mistake earlier,” I said.

“About what?”

“I should have listened to Wyatt Dixon.”

“Are you crazy?”

“That’s the point. I’m not, and neither are you. Dixon is. He probably sees a netherworld others can’t. This one doesn’t have a zip code, Clete. Surrette is the real deal.”

I thought Clete was going to dismiss me. He didn’t. His face became empty of expression, as though he had lost the thread in our conversation. He leaned over and picked up a handful of rocks and began throwing them in the river, watching them make big plopping holes in the riffle. Then he said, “If I get back to New Orleans, I’m never going to leave.”

GRETCHEN’S NOTICE IN the personals read:

Dear friend from the Yellow Brick Road,

I was impressed. I’m a filmmaker. My first documentary screened at Sundance. I think you and I could work together on a biopic. I’ve already got the financing. Someone told me you have an unpublished novel. You know how to contact me. It’s your call.

The munchkin from the ridge,

G.H.

“How’d you think up something like this?” Clete said when she told him what she had done.

“All predators troll. Even when they’re inactive or in prison, they troll.”

“That’s not the issue.”