Read Online A Stained White Radiance by James Lee Burke - Free Book Online

it?”
    â€œThe bottom line is I should have figured someone was in that bedroom. He’d just started to toss it when he heard me in the hallway. I’m lucky I didn’t get my eggs scrambled.”
    â€œIf it’s any consolation, the guy you wounded probably has a sizable slice of wood in his neck or face. He might show up at a hospital. My experience has been that most of these guys are crybabies when it comes to pain.”
    â€œMaybe so. Goodnight, doctor.”
    â€œGoodnight, Dave. Drive carefully.”
    The fields were white with mist as I drove back toward New Iberia. My collarbone throbbed and felt swollen and hot when I touched it. The pink neon sign over the roadside bar gleamed softly on the oyster-shell parking lot. In my mind I kept repeating something told me by a platoon sergeant during my first week in Vietnam: don’t think about it before it happens, and never think about it afterward. Yes, that was the trick. Just put one logical foot after the other. I yawned and my ears popped like firecrackers.
    B ACK AT THE OFFICE , I called Weldon at his mother-in-law’s home in Baton Rouge. I had woken him up, and he kept asking me to repeat myself.
    â€œLook, I think it’s better that you drive back toNew Iberia in the morning and then we’ll have a long talk.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œI don’t think you listen well. The inside of your home is virtually destroyed. Three guys tore it apart because they were looking for something that’s obviously important to them. Meanwhile they murdered a sheriff’s deputy. Do you want to know how they did it?”
    He was silent.
    â€œThey shot him through the back, probably when he came down the basement stairs,” I said. “Then they put one under his chin, one through his temple, and one through the back of his head. Do you know any low-rent wiseguys named Eddy or Jewel?”
    I heard him cough in the back of his throat.
    â€œI’m tied up here with some business for the next few days,” he said. “I’m going to send some repair people out to the house. You’ve got this number if you need me.”
    â€œMaybe it’s about time you plug into reality, Weldon. You don’t make the rules in a murder investigation. That means you’ll be in this office before noon tomorrow.”
    â€œI don’t want to leave Bama by herself, and I don’t want to bring her back there, either.”
    â€œThat’s a problem you’re going to have to work out. We’re either going to be talking in my office tomorrow morning, or you’re going to be in custody as a material witness.”
    â€œSounds like legalese doodah to me.”
    â€œIt’s easy to find out.”
    â€œYeah, well, I’ll check my schedule. You want to have lunch?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou’ve sure got a dark view of things, Dave. Lighten up.”
    â€œThe warrant gets cut one minute after twelve noon,” I said, and hung up.
    As was typical of Weldon, which was to do everything possible in a contrary and unpredictable fashion, he came up the front walk of the sheriff’s department at eight o’clock sharp, dressed in a pair of khakis, sandals without socks, a green-and-red-flowered shirt hanging outside his trousers, and a yellow panama hat at a jaunty angle on his head. His jaws were clean and red with a fresh shave.
    He helped himself to a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the outer office, then sat in a chair across the desk from me, folded one leg over the other, and played with his hat on his knee. My shoulder still throbbed, down in the bone, like a dull toothache.
    â€œWhat were they after, Weldon?” I asked.
    â€œSearch me.”
    â€œYou have no idea?”
    â€œNope.” He put an unlit cigar in his mouth and turned it in circles with his fingers.
    â€œIt wasn’t money or jewelry. They left that scattered all over the