Read Online Light of the World by James Lee Burke - Free Book Online Page B

of biker saloons or shoot at people with hunters’ bows.”
    “Some of them are deranged and dangerous, Albert.”
    “There’s nothing like fearing a man with a hole in his shoe.”
    I didn’t feel like arguing with Albert’s proletarian views. “I’m going to walk up on the ridge. I’ll see you inside.”
    “Tell that bunch I’d better not find their nasty cigarette butts on the property,” he replied.
    As I worked my way up the slope, I could hear people talking on the far side of the trees. Then I saw a deputy in uniform, a second man in a baggy brown suit, a man in a checkered shirt I figured for a crime scene technician, and Wyatt Dixon, who was barefoot and hatless and sitting against the hillside, wrists manacled behind his back, clothes mud-streaked and sticking wetly to his skin. Gretchen Horowitz had just started back down the slope, her face as hot as a woodstove.
    “What’s wrong?” I said.
    “Don’t ask,” she said. She went past me as though I were a wood post.
    I gained the road and looked down at Dixon. His teeth were red when he grinned. “Howdy-doody, Mr. Robicheaux,” he said.
    “You all right, Mr. Dixon?”
    The mud in his hair and the drip from the trees were running into his eyes, and he had to squint to look up at me. “Do not misinterpret the situation of this poor rodeo cowboy. I am honored to once again find myself surrounded by such noble men as yourselves. God bless America and the ground that men such as yourselves walk on.”
    “Where are your boots?”
    He studied the bloodied tops of his feet as though seeing them for the first time. “The detective stomped my toes proper and told me I wouldn’t need no foot covering for a while.”
    “What do you want here?” the man in the baggy suit said.
    I opened my badge holder. “I’m Dave Robicheaux. I’m a homicide detective in New Iberia, Louisiana. What did y’all do to this fellow?”
    “Nothing. He slipped down the slope,” the man in the suit said.
    “He must have slid a long way. Did you say something to Miss Gretchen?”
    “What are you talking about?” he said.
    “The woman who just left here. She was angry about something.”
    “I don’t know anything about that.”
    “Right. What’s your name?”
    “Detective Bill Pepper. I told the woman not to contaminate a possible crime scene. If she got her nose bent out of shape, that’s her problem.”
    The crime scene technician was standing in the background. “Come on up to the cave with me. I want to show you a couple of things,” he said.
    I grabbed hold of a pine sapling and pulled myself up on a footpath and followed the crime scene tech to the entrance of the cave. He was a rotund man with a florid face and the small ears and scar tissue of someone who might have been in the ring. He had put rubber bands around the cuffs of his cargo pants. “How you doin’?” he said.
    “Better than that cowboy.”
    “Here’s what we’ve got going on. The rain didn’t do us any favors. There was supposed to be a bunch of scat here, but I can’t find it. Same with the fingernail clippings. The boot prints are wiped out, too. Maybe somebody got here before we did.”
    “Is Dixon lying about getting his feet stomped?”
    “Detective Pepper said he wanted Dixon’s boots to be clean when he tried to match them with the tracks of the guy who was holed up in the cave. Sometimes Bill’s way of doing things is a problem for the rest of us.”
    “Why is Dixon in cuffs? I thought he was coming in on his own.”
    “He didn’t know the Indian girl’s purse was found last night behind a hay bale in the barn where she was killed. There was a receipt in it for a bracelet she bought from Dixon. The bracelet wasn’t on her body. The date on the receipt was the same day she disappeared.”
    “What does Dixon say?”
    “He weaves bracelets out of silver and copper wire and was wearing one in the Wigwam, and she saw it and wanted to buy it. He says he sold it to her