“You put my gold pen in Stanga’s pool?”
She shrugged and raised her face to his. “You got a drink?”
“No.”
She stepped around him, forcing him to either close the door behind her or push her back outside. “Can I look in your refrigerator? You must have a beer.”
“You clipped Stanga?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you did?”
“Is the world the less for it?”
“You clipped him for Carolyn Blanchet?”
“Don’t get me started about Carolyn.”
“We’re not talking about your love affairs, Emma. The two of you capped her poor dumb bastard of a husband.”
“It didn’t have anything to do with you. That’s the only reason I’m here. I really did a number on you, Clete. It’s the worst thing I ever did in my life.”
“Now you’re blowing town? See you around Crime Stoppers and all that sort of jazz?”
“No, I’m gonna hang around so I can do Carolyn’s time in Gonzales. I always wanted to be an ex-cop in a prison population full of bull dykes. You gonna give me a beer?”
“I think there’s one behind the mayonnaise.”
She opened the icebox and removed a bottle of Bud and twisted off the cap. She put the cap on top of the breakfast table rather than in the trash basket. She lifted the bottle to her mouth and drank, her eyes on his, two curls of hair hanging down on her brow.
“Who killed the girls?” Clete said.
“I don’t know. That’s the truth. Carolyn was in business with the Abelards and looking out for her own interests. Stanga was in the way, and so was her husband. But I don’t know who killed the girls. I think they got a rotten deal.”
“A rotten deal?” he repeated.
“That’s what I said,” she replied, not comprehending his bemusement.
He looked into her face for a long time, to the point that she broke and glanced away. “Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked.
“Because I can never tell when you’re lying.”
“That’s a lousy thing to say. Dave Robicheaux said I wouldn’t ever have any peace unless I owned up to you. So I’ve done that.”
“Yeah, you have. You got anything else to say?”
“It’s kind of outrageous.”
“So tell me.”
She lowered her eyes, then looked up into his face again, her flop hat tilted on the back of her head, the leather cord swinging under her chin. “How about a mercy fuck for a girl on her way out of town?”
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around and led her to the door. “Get some coffee down the road. Don’t tell me where you’re going. Never contact me again, not for any reason. You find my name on anything in your possession, destroy it. I hope things work out for you, but I think you did the big flush on yourself a long time ago. Adios, babe.”
Her face seemed to recede in the darkness and rain, the disbelief and injury in her expression shaping and reshaping itself in the overhead light. He closed the door and bolted it behind her.
He heard thunder in the south and through his side window saw a sheet of rain sweep across the water and slap the trees against the roof of his cottage. He watched her drive out of the motor court, her car leaking oil smoke, one taillight burned out, and he wondered if he had developed a capacity for cruelty that, in the past, he had only feigned. Then he realized the phone on his nightstand was ringing.