James Burke - Last Car to Elysian Fields

The window on my cell phone cleared. Donna Parks was off the line now, but either because of the weather or my location I was losing service as I tried to punch in a 911 call. I heard someone’s feet crunch on the hailstones behind me.

“You must have been a Marine, Mr. Robicheaux. I think you’re the most determined man I’ve ever met.”

I turned and looked into the face of Castille LeJeune. He wore a silver shooting jacket, one with ammunition loops sewn on the sleeves, a flat-brimmed, pearl-gray Stetson hat, and khaki trousers tucked inside fur-lined, half-topped boots. In his right hand he held a blue-black revolver with walnut grips. But he did not point it at me.

Up on the slope, by the carriage house, I could see Merchie Flannigan’s Mercedes.

“You got the jump on me, Mr. LeJeune. You and your son-in-law just pull in?” I said.

“The question is what do I do with you, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“You didn’t just pop ole Max, did you? You executed him.”

“Could I see your search warrant?”

“Don’t happen to have it with me.”

“Ah.”

“Merchie has been screwing both you and your daughter, Mr. LeJeune. He stole a single-action Army colt from Will Guillot and used it to kill the daiquiri store operator. Then he threw the gun down so we’d put it on Guillot and by extension on you and your enterprises.”

“Why would he kill a liquor salesman?”

“Merchie was banging a seventeen-year-old girl by the name of Lori Parks. She died in a car wreck after she bought booze from a drive-by store you own.”

I could see the connections coming together in LeJeune’s eyes. Behind him Merchie Flannigan was walking down the slope, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, his shoulders hunched under an Australian flop hat.

LeJeune glanced over his shoulder, then focused on my face again. “You uncovered evidence in a homicide without a warrant, which destroys the probative value of the discovery,” he said. “But you’re not a stupid man. Something else is going on here. You quit the sheriff’s department, didn’t you?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “We’ve got your ass in the bear trap, Mr.

LeJeune. How’s it feel?” I said, and actually laughed.

Up on the slope I saw Theodosha Flannigan park her Lexus and walk into the front of the house, carrying a guitar case.

“Open your coat,” LeJeune said, raising his pistol toward my chest.

“Use your left hand, unsnap the strap on your sidearm, and drop it on the ground.”

“Nope,” I said.

“Say again?”

“A police officer never surrenders his weapon.”

“You’re not a police officer anymore.”

“Old habits die hard.”

I’d like to say my behavior was brave, my principles inviolate, but in reality I didn’t feel personally threatened by Castille LeJeune. He didn’t care enough about me or the social class I represented to hate or fear me, and in all probability he still retained some of the fatalistic views that had allowed him to survive the Korean War as a decorated combat pilot. The system had served him for a lifetime — why should it fail him now?

But on another level I misjudged him. He could abide a professional enemy such as myself, but treachery inside the castle walls was another matter. He pulled back my coat, removed my .45 from the clip-on holster I wore, and tossed it in the mud.

Merchie Flannigan was standing now on the rim of the depression, his face disjointed as he stared down at the half-exhumed body of Max Coll.

“Who’s this dead guy? What’s happening here?” he said.

“You were having an affair with a seventeen-year-old girl?” LeJeune said.

“Hold on, there, Castille,” Merchie said.

“I always told Theo you were trash, with your blow-dried hair and Thesaurus vocabulary. You shot my sales person at the drive-by window?”

“I think I’m going to boogie and let you and Dave work it out. Maybe y’all can tell each other war stories. But I’d say from the looks of things here, you’re genuinely fucked, Castille,” he said, and began walking back up the slope.

The temperature had dropped, and the air was bitter, like the taste of copper coins, the tin roofs of the old convict cabins speckled with frost. I could see a lump of cartilage working in LeJeune’s jaw.

Merchie was halfway up the slope when LeJeune raised the revolver and fired three times, pop, pop, pop.

Either his hand shook from cold or anger or he was simply not a good shot, because he missed with all three rounds, and I heard the bullets break glass in the French doors that gave onto his patio.

Merchie ran past the carriage house and down the drive, hunkered low, the brim of his Australian flop hat angled down over his neck. I walked up behind LeJeune, slipping my hand down his forearm, removing the revolver from his grasp.

“You killed Will Guillot and were going to put it on Max Coll?” I said.

“I have nothing more to say,” he replied.

“Guillot killed both Bernstine and Sammy Figorelli and took a shot at me, didn’t he?”

“Can’t help you, sir,” he replied.

Up at the house there was no sound or any movement behind a window or the French doors. I snicked open the cylinder on LeJeune’s revolver, ejected all the shells into my palm, then retrieved my .45 from the mud.

“My vision isn’t very good anymore. You know I tied Ted Williams’ gunnery record? Highest ever set by a Marine or Navy aviator. That’s God’s honest truth,” he said.

“I believe you. Better take a walk with me,” I said, punching in 911 on my cell with my thumb.

“Of course. We’re going up to my house. I’ll fix coffee for us. I have no personal feelings about this,” he said.

He walked up the slope beside me, his chin lifted, his hands stuck in the pockets of his silver shooting jacket, his nostrils flaring as he breathed in the fresh coldness of the afternoon. I studied the back of the house, but still there was no movement inside. I felt LeJeune’s attention suddenly refocus itself on the side of my face.

“Why are you so somber, Mr. Robicheaux? It should be a red-letter day for you,” he said.

“My father taught me to hunt, Mr. LeJeune. He used to say, “Don’t be shooting at nothin’ you cain’t see on the other side of, no.” He was a simple man, but I always admired his humanity and remembered his words.”

“As always, your second meaning eludes me.”

“Is that Theo’s car in the driveway?”

He stared at the rear end of the Lexus that protruded just past the edge of the carriage house. His eyes began to water and he rushed across the patio through a cluster of winter-killed potted plants and tore open the French doors.

Theodosha Flannigan sat in an antique chair, with a crimson pad inset in the back, her guitar perched on her lap, her trimmed fingernails like shavings from seashell, her knees close together, at a slight ladylike angle, her mouth parted in mild surprise, a hole with a tiny trickle running from it in the center of her forehead.

Through the front window I saw a half dozen emergency vehicles turn off the state road and come roaring up the drive through the long tunnel of live oaks, their flashers beating with light and color, their sirens muted, as though the drivers were afraid they might wake the dead.

My daughter Alafair and I flew to Key West for Christmas and hired a charter boat I could scarcely afford and scuba-dived Seven Mile Reef. The water was green, like lime Jell-O, with patches of hot blue floating in it, the reef swarming with bait fish and the barracuda that fed off them. At sundown we set the outriggers and trolled for a stray marlin or wahoo as we headed back into port, the gulls wheeling and squeaking over our wake, the sun bloodred as it descended into the Gulf.