Read Online Creole Belle by James Lee Burke - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: James Lee Burke
Tags: Dave Robicheaux
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ain’t give back the chocolate bars, either.”
She wanted to say something to him, but she couldn’t catch her breath or even remember what she had planned to say.
“Your cat just run out the door. I’ll go catch him.”
“No, he’ll come back.”
“You ain’t gonna hit nobody else wit’ that wrench, are you?”
The world was spinning around her, and she had to hold on to a tree limb so she would not fall down. Nor could she find breath enough or the right words to answer the boy’s question.
I WENT BACK to work at the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department on a half-day schedule the morning after the thundershower, primarily because we needed the income. But in all honesty, I loved my job and the place where I worked. The department had been consolidated with the city police and had moved from the courthouse to a big brick colonial-style building behind the library, with a lovely view of a tree-shaded religious grotto and Bayou Teche and City Park on the far side of the water. It was a sunny, cool, rain-washed morning my first day back, and the sheriff, whose name was Helen Soileau, and some of my colleagues had placed flowers on my desk, and as I sat down in my swivel chair and looked at the glaze of sunlight on the bayou and the wind blowing hundreds of arrowpoints across the water’s surface, I felt that perhaps Indian summer would never end, that the world was a grand place after all, and that I should never let the shadows of the heart stain my life again.
Then Clete Purcel came in at ten A.M . and told me he had just gotten a phone call from Alice Werenhaus and that she had been attacked in her house by a masked intruder she believed was Waylon Grimes.
“How does she know it was Grimes?” I said.
“He scalded both of her legs with a teakettle and talked about stuffing her cat in the microwave. Know a lot of guys with an MO like that?” He was pacing up and down, breathing through his nose.
“What are you planning to do?” I asked.
“Guess.”
“Clete, something isn’t adding up here. One, there’s no explanation for your marker being found in a safe owned by Didi Giacano. Didi has been dead for almost twenty-five years. Where has the safe been all this time? His office was on South Rampart, but I thought it caught fire or something.”
“It did. Some PR or marketing guy restored it. He’s from around here. Pierre something. Look, that’s not the point. Alice Werenhaus was tortured by a degenerate who has already killed a child and done four or five contract hits I know of. Waylon Grimes and Bix Golightly have been on the planet far too long.”
My office door was closed. Through the glass, I saw Helen Soileau smile and pass in the corridor. “I won’t be party to this,” I said.
“Who asked you to?”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I don’t know what to do. Grimes couldn’t get to my sister or niece, so he went after an old woman, an ex-nun, for Christ’s sakes, the same woman who stopped me from tearing him apart. You think Golightly or Grimes is going to be shaken up by NOPD? That’s like warning the devil about his overdue library books.”
“We were born in the wrong era, Cletus.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We don’t get to blow up their shit at the O.K. Corral.”
“That’s what you think,” he replied.
I wished I hadn’t heard that last remark.
I COULDN’T SLEEP that night. Clete had gone off to New Orleans on his own, leaving me with the choice of either dropping the dime on him with my boss or NOPD or letting him founder in the chaos and trail of destruction that had come to be his logo across the entire state. I slipped on my khakis and sat on the back steps and drank a glass of milk in the dark. Tripod, our pet raccoon, was sleeping under a big live oak in a hutch we had recently rain-proofed. His buddy Snuggs, our unneutered warrior cat, lay on his side next to me, his thick white short-haired tail flopping up and down on
She wanted to say something to him, but she couldn’t catch her breath or even remember what she had planned to say.
“Your cat just run out the door. I’ll go catch him.”
“No, he’ll come back.”
“You ain’t gonna hit nobody else wit’ that wrench, are you?”
The world was spinning around her, and she had to hold on to a tree limb so she would not fall down. Nor could she find breath enough or the right words to answer the boy’s question.
I WENT BACK to work at the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department on a half-day schedule the morning after the thundershower, primarily because we needed the income. But in all honesty, I loved my job and the place where I worked. The department had been consolidated with the city police and had moved from the courthouse to a big brick colonial-style building behind the library, with a lovely view of a tree-shaded religious grotto and Bayou Teche and City Park on the far side of the water. It was a sunny, cool, rain-washed morning my first day back, and the sheriff, whose name was Helen Soileau, and some of my colleagues had placed flowers on my desk, and as I sat down in my swivel chair and looked at the glaze of sunlight on the bayou and the wind blowing hundreds of arrowpoints across the water’s surface, I felt that perhaps Indian summer would never end, that the world was a grand place after all, and that I should never let the shadows of the heart stain my life again.
Then Clete Purcel came in at ten A.M . and told me he had just gotten a phone call from Alice Werenhaus and that she had been attacked in her house by a masked intruder she believed was Waylon Grimes.
“How does she know it was Grimes?” I said.
“He scalded both of her legs with a teakettle and talked about stuffing her cat in the microwave. Know a lot of guys with an MO like that?” He was pacing up and down, breathing through his nose.
“What are you planning to do?” I asked.
“Guess.”
“Clete, something isn’t adding up here. One, there’s no explanation for your marker being found in a safe owned by Didi Giacano. Didi has been dead for almost twenty-five years. Where has the safe been all this time? His office was on South Rampart, but I thought it caught fire or something.”
“It did. Some PR or marketing guy restored it. He’s from around here. Pierre something. Look, that’s not the point. Alice Werenhaus was tortured by a degenerate who has already killed a child and done four or five contract hits I know of. Waylon Grimes and Bix Golightly have been on the planet far too long.”
My office door was closed. Through the glass, I saw Helen Soileau smile and pass in the corridor. “I won’t be party to this,” I said.
“Who asked you to?”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I don’t know what to do. Grimes couldn’t get to my sister or niece, so he went after an old woman, an ex-nun, for Christ’s sakes, the same woman who stopped me from tearing him apart. You think Golightly or Grimes is going to be shaken up by NOPD? That’s like warning the devil about his overdue library books.”
“We were born in the wrong era, Cletus.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We don’t get to blow up their shit at the O.K. Corral.”
“That’s what you think,” he replied.
I wished I hadn’t heard that last remark.
I COULDN’T SLEEP that night. Clete had gone off to New Orleans on his own, leaving me with the choice of either dropping the dime on him with my boss or NOPD or letting him founder in the chaos and trail of destruction that had come to be his logo across the entire state. I slipped on my khakis and sat on the back steps and drank a glass of milk in the dark. Tripod, our pet raccoon, was sleeping under a big live oak in a hutch we had recently rain-proofed. His buddy Snuggs, our unneutered warrior cat, lay on his side next to me, his thick white short-haired tail flopping up and down on
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