Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“When are you going to do that?” she asked.

“First thing in the morning.”

“Don’t blame yourself for this, Dave. You thought you were helping Clete. It’s time he becomes responsible for his choices.”

“I don’t think choice enters into it. He didn’t have a lot of alternatives.”

“Helen is probably going to have something to say about that,” Molly said.

I didn’t want to think about my conversation with Helen Soileau. She had given great latitude to Clete and me, and I was about to repay the favor by telling her that Clete’s daughter had been ordered to kill the department’s senior homicide investigator as well as his family.

“Somebody thinks Clete and I have information that, in reality, we don’t possess,” I said. “I don’t think this contract is about revenge or that it came from the Duprees or Varina Leboeuf. I believe the guys behind it are people we never met.”

“Gretchen was getting off her leash,” Alafair said. Molly and I looked at her. She went on, “This is how the people she works for are getting rid of her. In the meantime, they use her to cause a lot of trouble for Clete and Dave and keep all of us running in circles for a long time.”

“Who?” I said.

“Somebody who’s about to lose a great deal of money,” she replied.

This is what happens when your kid graduates with a degree in forensic psychology.

“Remember what Tee Jolie told you originally?” Alafair said. “She said she knew dangerous men who were talking about centralizers.”

“Yeah, they’re used inside the drill casing on a rig. Everybody knows that,” I said. “That’s part of the suit against two or three companies responsible for the blowout.”

“I think this is about oil, all of it,” she said.

That was my kid.

“They’re underestimating Gretchen Horowitz,” she went on. “I th

ink they’ve made an enemy with the wrong person.”

“Don’t let Gretchen Horowitz anywhere near this house,” Molly said. “If I see her, I’m going to pull her hair out. Please tell her that for me.”

And this is where we ended up, arguing among ourselves, letting the evil of others invade our home and family.

It was dark in the trees, and the electric lights in the park were shining on the surface of the bayou, which was high and muddy and filled with broken tree branches. In the quiet, I could hear geese honking overhead and smell gas pooling in the yard. The wind had shifted out of the north, and inside it was a tannic coldness that only minutes ago had not been there.

I drove to Clete’s motor court. Gretchen’s hot-rod truck was gone, and I was glad I did not have to see her. Her childhood had been terrible, but that was true of many people who had not become contract killers. This kind of conclusion about human behavior is one that almost every man and woman in law enforcement eventually comes to, although the reason behind it is ultimately pragmatic. If a cop begins to think of morality in relative terms, he will quickly find himself in a quandary. Prisons are bad places. We put away eighteen-year-old kids who weigh 120 pounds soaking wet and leave them to their fate. In other words, does a kid like that deserve to be spread-eagled and split apart and forced to his knees in the shower by any swinging dick who wants an easy bar of soap? Did the kid deal his own play? Is he receiving the same treatment a rich kid would? Does the system serve and treat everyone equally? Does anyone in his right mind believe that?

I’ve seen five people executed, three by electrocution, two by injection. I did not refer to them as inmates or killers. When you watch them die, they become people. Maybe they deserve an even worse fate than the one you are witnessing. But when you see it take place, when you smell the stink in their clothes and see the sheen of fear in their eyes and the jailhouse iridescence on their skin and the nakedness of their scalps where the hair has been shaved away, they become human beings little different from you and me, unless something in us has already died and made us into people we never wanted to be.

I guess what I’m saying is that deep down inside, I believed Clete’s protective feelings for his daughter were justified, that with a different shake of the dice, I could have turned out just like her.

When he opened his door, he was eating a cheese and lettuce and tomato sandwich, his jaw packed like a baseball.

“What was the Brit doing in Lafayette?” I said.

“Telling people that sweet crude tastes like chocolate syrup,” Clete replied.

I went inside the cottage and sat down. I felt as though I’d aged a decade in the last hour. “Where’s Gretchen?”

“Search me.”

“That’s not a good answer.”

“I’ve thought some things over,” he said. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to protect her, but maybe it’s too late. Maybe she’s too damaged, and so am I. Same with you, Streak. You’re sober, but you’ve got more of me in you than you want to admit. We don’t fit in, and everybody knows it except us. Maybe we should have bought it in the shootout on the bayou.”