The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

“Hugo Tillinger. He set fire to his house and burned up his wife and ten-year-old daughter because they listened to Black Sabbath.”

“Why didn’t he get the injection table?”

“He did. He tried to kill himself. He got loose from a prison hospital. What should I do?”

“You saw a guy jump off a freight. You’ve reported it to me. I’ll take it from here. End of story.”

“Who’s the dead woman?” he asked.

“We have no idea.”

“This is eating my lunch, Dave.”

What could I say? He was the best cop I ever knew, but he’d ruined his career with dope and booze and Bourbon Street strippers and had hooked up with the Mob for a while and now made a living as a PI who ran down bail skips and looked in people’s windows.

“Come inside,” I said. “We’ll go out for supper.”

“You said you were meeting with the coroner.”

“I’ll talk to him on the phone.”

“You don’t have to babysit me. I’ll see you later.”

“Go easy on the hooch,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s the source of the problem, all right,” he replied. “Thanks for the reminder I’m a lush.”

• • •

CORMAC WATTS WAS our coroner. He had a genteel Virginia accent and wore size-fourteen shoes and seersucker pants high on his hips and long-sleeve dress shirts without a coat, and had a physique like a stick figure and a haircut that resembled an inverted shoe brush.

At Iberia General, in a room without windows, one that was too cold and smelled of chemicals, our Jane Doe lay on a stainless steel table, one with gutters and drains and tubes that could dispose of the fluids released during an autopsy. A sheet was pulled to her chin; her eyes were closed. One hand and part of the forearm were exposed; the fingers were a dark blue at the tips and had started to curl into a claw.

“Beautiful woman,” Cormac said.

“You got the cause of death?”

He lifted the sheet off her left foot. “There were three injections between her toes. She was loaded with enough heroin to shut down an elephant.”

“No tracks on the arms?”

“None.”

“Was there any sexual violation?”

“Not that I could determine.”

“Most intravenous users start on the arms,” I said. “Those who shoot between the toes usually have a history.”

“It gets weirder,” he said. He lifted her hand. “Her nails were clipped and scrupulously cleaned. Her hair had been recently shampooed and her skin scrubbed with an astringent cleanser. There were no particles of food in her teeth.”

“You can tell all that in a body that was in the water for half a day?” I asked.

“She was floating on top of the cross. The sun did more damage than the water.”

“Was she alive when the nails went in?”

“No,” he said.