In The Electric Mist With The Confederate Dead Part 28

"h.e.l.l, yes, I do. Put your guns away. What's wrong with you guys?" Lou said.

"Lou, the shooter fired at me twice," I said. "I put eight rounds into the Buick. I think he's still in there."

"What?" he said, and ripped his .357 from his belt holster. Then he said to the two uniformed cops, "What have you f.u.c.king guys been doin' out here?"

"Hey, Lou, come on. We didn't know who this-"

"Shut up," he said, walked up to the Buick, looked inside, then jerked open the pa.s.senger door. The interior light went on.

"What is it?" the cop with the shotgun said.

Lou didn't answer. He replaced his revolver in his holster and reached down with his right hand and felt something on the floor of the automobile.

I walked toward him. "Lou?" I said.

His hands felt around on the seat of the car, then hestepped back and studied the ground and the weeds around his feet as though he were looking for something.

"Lou?"

"She's dead, Dave. It looks like she caught one right through the mouth."

"She?" I said. I felt the blood drain from my heart.

"You popped Amber Martinez," he said.

I started forward and he caught my arm. The headlights of the city police car were blinding in the rain. He pulled me past the open pa.s.senger door, and I saw a diminutive woman in an embryonic position, a white thigh through a slit in a c.o.c.ktail dress, a mat of brown hair that stuck wetly to the floor carpet.

Our faces were turned in the opposite direction from the city cops'. Lou's mouth was an inch from my ear. I could smell cigarettes, bourbon, and mints on his breath.

"Dave, there's no f.u.c.king gun," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

"I saw the muzzle flashes. I heard the reports."

"It's not there. I got a throw-down in my glove compartment. Tell me to do it."

I stared woodenly at the two uniformed cops, who stood in hulking silhouette against their headlights like gargoyles awaiting the breath of life.

CHAPTER 13.

The sheriff called me personally at 5 A.M. the next morning so there would be no mistake about my status with the department: I was suspended without pay. Indefinitely.

It was 7 A.M. and already hot and muggy when Rosie Gomez and I pulled up in front of Red's Bar in her automobile. The white Buick was still parked across the street. The bar was locked, the blinds closed, the silver sides of the house-trailer entrance creaking with heat.

We walked back and forth in front of the building, feeling dents in the tin, scanning the improvised rain gutters, even studying the woodwork inside the door jamb.

"Could the bullets have struck a car or the pickup truck you took cover behind?" she said.

"Maybe. But I didn't hear them."

She put her hands on her hips and let her eyes rove over the front of the bar again. Then she lifted her hair off the back of her neck. There was a sheen of sweat above the collar of her blouse.

"Well, let's take a look at the Buick before they tow it out of here," she said.

"I really appreciate your doing this, Rosie."

"You'd do the same for me, wouldn't you?"

"Who knows?"

"Yeah, you would." She punched me on the arm with her little fist.

We walked across the dirt street to the Buick. On the other side of the vacant lot I could hear freight cars knocking together. I opened all four doors of the Buick and began throwing out the floor mats, tearing up the carpet, raking trash out from under the seats while Rosie hunted in the gra.s.s along the rain ditch.

Nothing.

I sat on the edge of the backseat and wiped the sweat out of my eyes. I felt tired all over and my hands were stiff and hard to open and close. In fact, I felt just like I had a hangover. I couldn't keep my thoughts straight, and torn pieces of color kept floating behind my eyes.

"Dave, listen to me," she said. "What you say happened is what happened. Otherwise you would have taken up your friend on his offer."

"Maybe I should have."

"You're not that kind of cop. You never will be, either."

I didn't answer.

"What'd your friend call it?" she asked.

"A 'throw-down.' Sometimes cops call it a 'drop.' It's usually a .22 or some other piece of junk with the registration numbers filed off." I got up off the seat and popped the trunk. Inside, I found a jack handle. I drove the tapered end into the inside panel of the back door on the driver's side.

"What are you doing?" Rosie said.

I ripped the paneling away to expose the sliding frame and mechanism on which the window gla.s.s had been mounted.

"Let me show you something," I said and did the same to the inside panel on the driver's door. "See, both windows on this side of the car were rolled partially up. That's why my first rounds blew gla.s.s all over the place."

"Yes?"

"Why would the shooter try to fire through a partially opened window?"

"Good question."

I walked around to the pa.s.senger side of the Buick. The carpet had a dried brown stain in it, and a roach as long and thick as my thumb was crawling across the stiffened fibers.

"But this window is all the way down," I said. "That doesn't make any sense. It had already started to rain. Why would this woman sit by an open window in the rain, particularly in the pa.s.senger seat of her own car?"

"It's registered to Amber Martinez?"

"That's right. According to Lou Girard, she was a hooker trying to get out of the life. She also did speedb.a.l.l.s and was ninety pounds soaking wet. Does that sound like a hit artist to you?"

"Then why was she in the car? What was she doing here?"

"I don't know."

"What did the homicide investigator have to say last night?"

"He said, 'A .45 sure does leave a hole, don't it?' "

"What else?"

"He said, 'Did you have to come over to Lafayette to fall in the s.h.i.+thouse?' "

"Look at me," she said.

"What?"

"How much sleep did you get last night?"

"Two or three hours."

I threw the tire iron on the front seat of the Buick.

"What do you feel now?" she said.

"What do you mean?" I was surprised at the level of irritation in my voice.

"You know what I mean."

My eyes burned and filmed in the haze. I saw the three oaks in the vacant lot go out of focus, as though I were looking at them inside a drop of water.

"Everyone thinks I killed an unarmed woman. What do you think I feel?" I said. I had to swallow when I said it.

"It was a setup, Dave. We both know it."

"If it was, what happened to the gun? Why aren't there any holes in the bar?"

"Because the guy behind this is one smart perp. He got a woman, probably a chippy, to make calls to your dispatcher to give the impression your fly was open, then he got you out of your jurisdiction and involved you in another hooker's death. I think this guy's probably a master at control."

"Somehow that doesn't make me feel a lot better, Rosie."

I looked at the stain on the Buick's carpet. The heat was rising from the ground now and I thought I could smell a salty odor like dead fish. I closed the pa.s.senger door.

"I really walked into it, didn't I?" I said.

"Don't worry, we're going to bust the guy behind this and lose the key on him." Her eyes smiled, then she winked at me.

I had brought a garden rake from home. I took it out of Rosie's car and combed a pile of mud and soggy weeds from the bottom of the ditch next to the Buick. Then Rosie said, "Dave, come over here and look at this."

She stood next to the vegetable patch that was located on the edge of the vacant lot. She pointed at the ground.

"Look at the footprints," she said. "Somebody ran through the garden. He broke down the tomato stakes."

The footprints were deep and wide-s.p.a.ced in the soft earth. The person had been moving away from the street toward the three oak trees in the center of the lot. Some of the tomato and eggplant bushes were crushed down flat in the rows.

A wrecker came around the corner with two men in it and stopped behind the Buick. The driver got out and began hooking up the rear end of the Buick. A middle-aged plain-clothes detective in short sleeves with his badge on his beltgot out with him. His name was Doobie Patout, a wizened and xenophobic man, with faded blue tattoos on his forearms; some people believed he'd once been the official executioner at Angola.

He didn't speak. He simply stared through the heat at me and Rosie.

"What's happening, Doobie?" I said.

"What y'all doin' out here?" he said.

"Looking for a murder weapon," I said.

"I heard you were suspended."

"Word gets around."

"You're not supposed to be messin' 'round the crime scene."

"I'm really just an observer."

"Who's she?" He raised one finger in Rosie's direction.

"Special Agent Gomez," Rosie said. "This is part of an FBI investigation. Do you have a problem with that?"

"You got to coordinate with the city," he said.

"No, I don't," she said.

The driver of the wrecker began winching the Buick's weight off its back wheels.

"I wouldn't hang around here if I was you," Doobie said to me.

"Why not?" Rosie said.

"Because he don't have legal authority here. Because he made a mistake and n.o.body here'll probably hold it against him. Why p.i.s.s people off, Rob.i.+.c.heaux?"

"What are you saying, Doobie?"

"So you got to go up against Internal Affairs in your own department. That don't mean you're gonna get indicted in Lafayette Parish. Why put dog s.h.i.+t on a stick and hold it under somebody's nose?"