Purple Cane Road (Dave Robicheaux 11)

Helen remained seated in her chair.

“You didn’t do Gable. You want to nail Connie Deshotel yourself,” she said.

“The other side always deals the play. You coming or not?”

“Let me be honest with you, bwana. I had a bad night last night. I couldn’t get Letty Labiche out of my mind. I guess it’s because I was molested myself. So lose the attitude.”

Wally, the dispatcher, stopped us on the way out of the office. He had a pink memo slip in his hand.

“You wasn’t in your office. I was fixing to put this in your pigeonhole,” he said to me.

“What is it?”

“A cop in St. Martinville said Clete Purcel wants to talk to you. It’s suppose to be important,” Wally said.

“I’ll take care of it later,” I said.

Wally shrugged and let the memo slip float from his fingers into my box.

Helen and I towed a department outboard on the back of my truck to Loreauville, a few miles up the Teche, then drove through the sugarcane fields to the landing at Lake Fausse Pointe. The wind was blowing hard now, and I could see waves capping out on the lake and red leaves rising in the air against a golden sun.

Helen laced on a life preserver and sat down in the bow of the boat, and I handed her a department-issue cut-down twelve-gauge pump loaded with double-ought buckshot. She kept studying my face, as though she were taking the measure of a man she didn’t know.

“You’ve got to tell me, Dave,” she said.

“What?” I smiled good-naturedly.

“Don’t shine me on.”

“If Remeta’s there, we call in backup and take him down.”

“That’s it?”

“She’s the attorney general of Louisiana. What do you think I’m going to do, kill her in cold blood?”

“I know you, Dave. You figure out ways to make things happen.”

“Really?” I said.

“Let’s get something straight. I don’t like that snooty cunt. I said she was dirty from the get-go. But don’t jerk me around.”

I started to say something, then let it go and started the engine. We headed down the canal bordered by cypress and willow and gum trees, then entered the vast lily-dotted expanse of the lake itself.

It was a strange evening. In the east and south the sky was like a black ink wash, but the clouds overhead were suffused with a sulfurous yellow light. In the distance I could see the grassy slope of the levee and the live oaks that shadowed Connie Deshotel’s stilt house and the waves from the lake sliding up into the grass and the wildflowers at the foot of her property. An outboard was tied to her dock, straining against its painter, knocking against one of the pilings. Helen sat hunched forward, the barrel of her shotgun tilted away from the spray of water off the bow.

I cut the engine and we drifted on our wake into the shallows, then I speared the bottom with the boat paddle and the hull snugged onto the bank.

The lights were on inside the house and I could hear music playing on a radio. A shadow crossed a screen window. Helen stepped out into the shallows and waded out to the moored boat and placed her hand on the engine’s housing.

“It’s still warm,” she said, walking toward me, the twelve-gauge in both hands. She studied the house, the skin twitching slightly below her left eye.

“You want to call for backup?” I asked.

“It doesn’t feel right,” she said.

“You call it, Helen.”

She thought about it. “Fuck it,” she said, and pumped a round into the chamber, then inserted a replacement round into the magazine with her thumb.