Read Online DR10 - Sunset Limited by James Lee Burke - Free Book Online

that's why."
    She stared hard into my face, as though searching for the
right dials, her back teeth grinding softly, then said, "I want you to
look at a few more photos."
    "No."
    "What's the matter, you don't want to see the wreckage your
gal leaves in her wake?"
    She pulled the elastic cord loose from the cardboard satchel
and spilled half the contents on a spool table. She lifted up a glossy
eight-by-ten black-and-white photo of Megan addressing a crowd of Latin
peasants from the bed of a produce truck. Megan was leaning forward,
her small hands balled into fists, her mouth wide with her oration.
    "Here's another picture taken a few days later. If you look
closely, you'll recognize some of the dead people in the ditch. They
were in the crowd that listened to Megan Flynn. Where was she when this
happened? At the Hilton in Mexico City."
    "You really hate her, don't you?"
    I heard her take a breath, like a person who has stepped into
fouled air.
    "No, I don't hate her, sir. I hate what she does. Other people
die so she can feel good about herself," she said.
    I sifted through the photos and news clippings with my
fingers. I picked up one that had been taken from the
Denver
Post
and glued on a piece of cardboard backing. Adrien
Glazier was two inches away from my skin. I could smell perspiration
and body powder in her clothes. The news article was about
thirteen-year-old Megan Flynn winning first prize in the
Post's
essay contest. The photo showed her sitting in a chair, her hands
folded demurely in her lap, her essay medal worn proudly on her chest.
    "Not bad for a kid in a state orphanage. I guess that's the
Megan I always remember. Maybe that's why I still think of her as one
of the most admirable people I've ever known. Thanks for coming by," I
said, and walked up the slope through the oak and pecan trees on my
lawn, and on into my lighted house, where my daughter and wife waited
supper for me.
     
    MONDAY MORNING HELEN SOILEAU came into
my office and sat on
the corner of my desk.
    "I was wrong about two things," she said.
    "Oh?"
    "The mulatto who tried to do Cool Breeze, the guy with the
earring through his nipple? I said maybe I bought his story, he thought
Breeze was somebody else? I checked the visitors' sheet. A lawyer for
the Giacano family visited him the day before."
    "You're sure?"
    "Whiplash Wineburger. You ever meet him?"
    "Whiplash represents other clients, too."
    "Pro bono for a mulatto who works in a rice mill?"
    "Why would the Giacanos want to do an inside hit on a guy like
Cool Breeze Broussard?"
    She raised her eyebrows and shrugged.
    "Maybe the Feds are squeezing Breeze to bring pressure on the
Giacanos," I said, in answer to my own question.
    "To make them cooperate in an investigation of the Triads?"
    "Why not?"
    "The other thing I was going to tell you? Last night Lila
Terrebonne went into that new zydeco dump on the parish line. She got
into it with the bartender, then pulled a .25 automatic on the bouncer.
A couple of uniforms were the first guys to respond. They got her purse
from her with the gun in it without any problem. Then one of them
brushed against her and she went ape shit.
    "Dave, I put my arm around her and walked her out the back
door, into the parking lot, with nobody else around, and she cried like
a kid in my arms… You following me?"
    "Yeah, I think so," I said.
    "I don't know who did it, but I know what's been done to her,"
she said. She stood up, flexed her back, and inverted the flats of her
hands inside the back of her gunbelt. The skin was tight around her
mouth, her eyes charged with light. My gaze shifted off her face.
    "When I was a young woman and finally told people what my
father did to me, nobody believed it," she said. "'Your dad was a great
guy,' they said. 'Your dad was a wonderful parent.'"
    "Where is she now?"
    "Iberia General. Nobody's pressing charges. I think her old
man already greased the owner of the bar."
    "You're a good cop, Helen."
    "Better get her some help.