“Take your hand out from under the seat and step back from your vehicle,” Clete said.
“Or?”
“I’ve got enough room to get my Caddy out,” Clete said. “When I’m gone, you can call the locals or go about your business. No fuss, no muss.”
“You asked about stuffing cotton up their ass. I never did that. I shaved their head and put the electrode paste on and strapped the mask on their face. I strapped it so tight they couldn’t breathe. I think some of them suffocated before the electricity cooked their insides. I know for sure blood ran out of their nose and mouth and sometimes their eyes. And I hope every one of them suffered. Why? Because they deserved it. What do you think of that?”
Clete didn’t answer. Andy Swan straightened up and turned around, the stun gun in his hand buzzing with a blue-white arc. “Let’s trim a little of that fat off you,” he said.
“Why don’t we do this instead?” Clete said. With all his weight, he rammed the branch he had been using as a rake into Andy Swan’s face, the dried, sun-hardened tips spearing into the man’s eyes and nostrils and mouth and cheeks. Andy Swan crashed against the side of his truck, dropping the stun gun, pressing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. Clete grabbed him by the back of the collar and spun him around and drove his face against the truck cab. Then he did it again and again, his fingers sunk deep into the back of Swan’s neck, Swan’s nose bursting against the metal. When Clete stopped, Andy Swan could barely stand.
He stepped back, his hands at his sides. The blue Dumpster, the garbage on the ground, the persimmon trees and the Caddy and the pickup truck were all spinning around him now. Andy Swan’s face resembled a red-and- white balloon floating in front of him.
“I’m done,” Swan said. He tried to cup the blood running from his nose. “I take back what I said. I don’t want any more trouble.”
“Who killed the girls?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who tried to kill Dave Robicheaux?”
Andy Swan shook his head and spat a broken tooth into his palm.
“Are you deaf? Do you think I enjoy this? Answer me,” Clete said.
“I don’t know anything, man. I just do security.”
“You dissing me again? You think I’m stupid? You think I get off knocking around gumballs?”
“Suck my dick.”
Clete drove his fist into Swan’s stomach, doubling him over, dropping him to his knees. Strings of blood and saliva hung from Swan’s mouth. His back was shaking. He raised his left hand in the air, signaling Clete not to hit him again. “I got here three days ago from Florida. Check me out. I work for a security service in Morgan City. I’m just an ex-cop. I’m no different from you.”
“You ever say that last part again, you’re going to have some serious problems.”
Clete picked up the stun gun, walked out into the trees, and threw it into a pond. When he returned to the Dumpster area, Andy Swan was still on his knees. Clete lifted him up by one arm.
“What are you doing?” Swan said.
“Nothing. And neither are you. You’re going to get a lot of track between you and Louisiana. And you’re going to do that now. You’re not going back to the Abelard house and give that black woman a lot of grief. You’re changing your zip code as we speak.”
“If that’s what you say.”
Clete’s gaze lifted into the trees, his eyelids fluttering. “I don’t recommend equivocation and a lack of specificity at this time. Are we connecting here?”
“Yeah.”
“Say again?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good man. Take this in the right spirit. Those guys you fried at Raiford? You’ll see them again.”
“They’re dead. We electrocuted them.”
“That’s the point,” Clete said. “Turn east at the four-lane. You got a straight shot all the way to Pensacola.”
CHAPTER 20
CLETE’S CALL ASKING me to run the tag of the Florida pickup had come in before Helen and I left the department for Carolyn Blanchet’s house outside Franklin. It had been no problem to run the tag; nor had it been a problem to call a friend in the state attorney’s office in Tallahassee and ask for a background check on Andy Swan. But I did not tell Helen what I had done until we were almost at the Blanchet home. My timing was not only bad, I think it contributed in the worst possible way to the events that were about to follow.
“Not only is Clete conducting his own investigation in St. Mary Parish, but you’re helping him, even asking a personal favor from the Florida state attorney’s office?” Helen said.
Her knuckles had whitened on the steering wheel. When I didn’t reply, she shot me a look, the cruiser slipping over the yellow stripe.
“We’re all on the same side, Helen.”
“Clete’s on his own side, and so are you.”
“Not so.”
“I’m really pissed off, Dave.”
“I gather that.”
“Not adequately. Believe me, we’ll talk more about it later.”
She turned off the four-lane and drove down a service road to the Blanchet property and the lovely green arbor in which Layton’s tribute to himself still rose through the oaks like a Tudor castle covered with cake icing. We were not the only people there. Two SUVs and a silver sedan with a United States government plate were coming toward us through the two columns of oaks that lined the driveway, the sedan out in front. Helen stuck her hand out the window and signaled the driver to stop.
“Helen Soileau, Iberia Parish sheriff,” she said. “What’s going on?”
The driver of the sedan was young and wore a white shirt and tie and had a fresh haircut. “Nothing now,” he said. “We just got served. Somebody ought to explain to you people that this isn’t 1865.”
“Carolyn Blanchet got an injunction against the United States government?” Helen said.
“You got it. We’ll be back later. Have fun, Sheriff,” the driver said.
I watched the convoy drive onto the service road. “She probably got a local judge to create some temporary obstacles for the IRS or the SEC. But they’ll cut through it with a couple of phone calls,” I said.
“Anything these guys wanted from her has already gone through a shredding machine. Carolyn Blanchet gets what she wants and makes few mistakes.”
I hated to ask the question that had been hanging in the air every time Carolyn Blanchet’s name was mentioned. “Helen, how well do you know her?”
“If you haven’t heard, Pops, when we’re on the job, I’m your boss. You don’t question your boss about her personal life. That said, when we’re off the job, you still do not question me about my personal life. Understood?”
“No.”
“You want to explain that?”
We were still stationary in the driveway, the sunlight spangling inside the oak canopy overhead. I kept my eyes straight ahead, the side of my face almost wrinkling under Helen’s gaze. “I think you know more about Carolyn than you’ve let on,” I said.
When I looked at her, I saw a level of anger in her face that made me wince. “I have a circle of friends in New Orleans you probably haven’t met,” she said. “Carolyn Blanchet has had relationships with some of them. All of them were the worse for it. She uses people and throws them away like Kleenex. She’s also a degenerate. Black
