They both looked at me. “Where’d you get this information?” Helen said.

“A friend of Clete’s,” I said. “A waitress.”

“Why didn’t she tell the investigator at the scene?” Helen said.

“Because the investigator is a troglodyte,” I replied.

“How bad is Wimple hurt?” Helen said.

“From what the waitress said, he was bleeding from his side.”

“I don’t get any of this,” Helen said.

“Wimple is a psychopath, but he’s protecting Clete? And Jaime O’Banion was taking orders from an amateur who cost him his life?”

“That about sums it up,” I said.

“And?” she said.

“The guy in the mask is not a noun,” I said.

“I’m not in the mood, Dave,” she said.

“Read it like you want,” I said. “Nothing we do is going to change what’s happening.”

Helen looked at Bailey. “Do you have any idea what he’s saying?”

Bailey shook her head. But I saw it in her eyes. She knew exactly what I was saying, and I knew at that moment that neither of us would ever be able to separate entirely from the other, no matter how great our differences.

“Let me know if I can help you with anything else, Helen,” I said.

I got up and walked down the corridor to my office. I knew it was probably a self-indulgent act and stupid on top, but I didn’t care. I stood at my window and gazed at the Teche. It was high and yellow and running fast, a cluster of red swamp-maple leaves spinning in the current and disappearing around a corner as though dropping into infinity. I wondered if I wasn’t watching a message, one requiring us to acknowledge not only the lunar influences on the tide but the place to which we all must go.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

FIVE MINUTES LATER, Bailey came through my door without knocking. “You just walk out? On the case? On you and me? On everything?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” I said.

“Oh, really?”

“I’m not right for you, Bailey. I was deceiving you and myself.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

I looked at the bayou again. The light was gold in the trees along the bank, the grass a pale green, the camellia bushes swelling in the wind. The surface of the water seemed to shrivel like old skin. When I turned around, she was six inches from my face. “I want to pound you with my fists,” she said.

“I don’t blame you.”

“Are you having a psychotic break?”

“You knew what I was talking about with Helen.”

“About the guy in the mask not being a noun?”

“Yes.”

“You’re saying he’s a symbol? Something we turned loose on ourselves? So what?”

Tags: James Lee Burke Dave Robicheaux Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net