Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

Clete closed the phone and handed it back to me. He looked at my expression. “What?” he said.

“We need these guys on our side. I thought I was making some progress,” I replied.

“With St. Mary Parish? Progress for those guys is acceptance of the Emancipation Proclamation,” he said.

“Bring your car around. You’re going to catch pneumonia.”

“You coming?”

“You’ve got to give me a minute, Clete.”

He looked at his watch. “We need to do this together, Streak. Don’t depend on the locals. We’re the guys with the vested interest. We take Pierre Dupree into Henderson Swamp.”

His skin was prickled, and he was jiggling up and down, but it wasn’t because of the cold. His eyes were wider than they should have been, his breath sour. He rotated his head on his neck and straightened his back, his shoulder rig tightening across his chest. When I touched his back, I could feel his body heat through the fabric.

An ambulance pulled to the rear of the Sugar Cane Festival Building, and two paramedics got out and removed a gurney from the back. Three cruisers pulled in behind the ambulance, the light from their flashers bouncing off the buildings and the oak trees. I looked for Helen Soileau but didn’t see her. A moment later, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I was surprised. It was the deputy Clete had threatened. “Robicheaux?” he said.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“I had a deputy do a check at the Dupree place. Nobody is home. The only light on is the porch light. The deputy walked around back. Nobody is home.”

“You’re sure?”

“What did I just say?”

“One of the abduction victims is my daughter. If I don’t get her back, I’m going to be looking you up,” I said. I broke the connection. I looked at Clete. “That was St. Mary Parish. Nobody is home at Croix du Sud.”

“I don’t buy it,” he said.

“Because you don’t want to,”

I said.

“No, I scoped the place out. There was a guard standing in back by the gazebo. I took my eyes off him for two seconds and he was gone, and I mean gone. There was no way he could have entered the house or walked around the side without me seeing him. He never moved ten feet from that gazebo.”

“So what are you saying?”

“There’s got to be a subterranean entrance somewhere close to the gazebo. You ever hear stories about tunnels or basements in that place?”

“No. But the house is over a hundred and fifty years old. There’s no telling what’s under it.”

“I’m going out there. You coming or not?”

I knew what would happen if I stayed at the Sugar Cane Festival Building. I would have to take charge of the crime scene and wait on the coroner and coordinate with Helen and make sure all the evidence was bagged and tagged and the scene secured and the body removed and taken to Iberia General. Then I would have to send someone, if not myself, to notify Julie’s family. In the meantime, word would leak out that a woman had been murdered in the building, and the next problem on my hands would be crowd control. While all this was taking place, my daughter would be in the hands of men who had the mercy of centipedes.

A deputy got out of a cruiser holding a video camera and a Steadicam. “I found these by the entrance to the park, Dave. They’d already been run over. Does this have anything to do with Alafair being kidnapped?”

“Give them to the tech. We need any prints we can lift off them,” I said. Clete was already walking toward his Caddy. “Wait up!” I said.

WE HEADED OUT of the park and, in some ways, I suspected, out of my career in law enforcement. At a certain age, you accept that nothing is forever, not even the wintry season that seems to define your life. I began dialing Molly’s cell number to tell her where I was.

“Don’t tell anyone where we’re going, Dave,” Clete said.

“That makes no sense.”

“If nobody is at the Dupree place, if I’m all wrong, we come straight back. But if we can get our hands on Pierre or Alexis or any of their hired help, we can get the information we need. We can’t blow this one, partner. Rules are for people who want to feel good about themselves in the morning. They’re not for people who want to save their children’s lives.”

Clete had turned on the heater but was still shivering. I took off my coat and put it over his shoulders.