A hit man who calls you “sir”?
11
At eight o’clock Monday morning the sheriff stopped me just as I walked in the front door of the department. A small square of blood-crusted tissue paper was stuck to his jawbone where he had cut himself shaving.
“Come down the hall and talk with me a minute,” he said.
I followed him inside his office. He took off his coat and hung it on a chair and gazed out the window. He pressed his knuckles into his lower spine as though relieving himself of a sharp pain in his back.
“Close the door. Pull the blind, too,” he said.
“Is this about the other day?”
“I told you I didn’t want Clete Purcel in here. I believe that to be a reasonable request. You interpreted that to mean I have problems of conscience over Letty Labiche.”
“Maybe you just don’t like Purcel. I apologize for implying anything else,” I said.
“You were on leave when Carmouche was killed. You didn’t have to put your hand in it.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“The prosecutor asked for the death penalty. The decision wasn’t ours.”
“Carmouche was a pedophile and a sadist. One of his victims is on death row. That one just won’t go down, Sheriff.”
The color climbed out of his neck into his face. He cut his head to speak, but no words came out of his mouth. His profile was as scissored as an Indian’s against the window.
“Don’t lay this off on me, Dave. I won’t abide it,” he said.
“I think we ought to reopen the case. I think a second killer is out there.”
He widened his eyes and said, “You guys in A.A. have an expression, what is it, ‘dry drunks’? You’ve got a situation you can’t work your way out of, so you create another problem and get emotionally drunk on it. I’m talking about your mother’s death. That’s the only reason I’m not putting you on suspension.”
“Is that it?” I said.
“No. A New Orleans homicide cop named Don Ritter is waiting in your office,” he replied.
“Ritter’s Vice.”
“Good. Clear that up with him,” the sheriff said, and leaned against the windowsill on his palms, stretching out his frame to ease the pain in his lower back.
Don Ritter, the plainclothes detective Helen called the gel head, was sitting in a chair in front of my desk, cleaning his nails over the wastebasket with a gold penknife. His eyes lifted up at me. Then he went back to work on his nails.
“The sheriff says you’re Homicide,” I said.
“Yeah, I just changed over. I caught the Zipper Clum case.”
“Really?”
“Who told you and Purcel to question people in New Orleans about Johnny Remeta?”
“He’s a suspect in a house invasion.”
“A house invasion, huh? Lovely. What are we supposed to do if you scare him out of town?”
“He says that’s not his way.”
“He says?”