James Burke - Light of the World

“You’ll call me back? In case you’ve forgotten, you approached me, Mr. Robicheaux. Do you want to talk or not?”

“I want to bring somebody with me. He’s the best investigator I’ve ever known. His name is Clete Purcel,” I said.

“I don’t care who you bring with you. If you’ve got information about my granddaughter’s death, I want to hear it. Otherwise, let’s stop this piffle.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

I put on a pair of khakis and a heavy long-sleeved shirt and brushed my teeth and shaved and went downstairs. Albert was putting a coffeepot and cups on the breakfast table. “Who was that on the phone?” he said.

“I picked up because I thought it might be Gretchen.”

“She’s back home. I saw her pickup by the cabin. Who were you talking to?”

“Love Younger.”

His face showed no reaction.

“I’m going out to his place,” I said. “I think the murder of his granddaughter might be connected to the guy who shot at Alafair.”

“You watch out for Love Younger,” he said, the cup in his hand rattling when he set it on a saucer. “He’s a son of a bitch from his hairline to the soles of his feet.”

“He donated three million dollars to a scholarship fund at the University of Louisiana.”

“The devil doesn’t charge his tenants for central heating, either.”

“You’re a closet Puritan, Albert.”

“Let me start the day in peace, would you, please?” he said.

I walked down to Clete’s cabin at the far end of the north pasture. Gretchen’s hot rod was parked in the cottonwoods by the creek; in the east there was a blush on the underside of the clouds. Two white-tailed deer bounced through the grass and bounded over a fence railing into a stand of untended apple trees that Albert never picked, so food would always be available for the herbivores on his property. I tapped lightly on the cabin door. Clete stepped out on the gallery and eased the screen shut behind him. “Gretchen came in about three this morning,” he whispered.

“Is everything okay?”

“She spent a lot of time in the shower, then went to bed with a piece under her pillow. It’s an Airweight .38.”

“Did she say where she’d been?”

“She told me to mind my business.”

“Take a ride with me to Love Younger’s home.”

I could tell he didn’t want me to change the subject, but I didn’t believe that Clete or I or anyone else could resolve the problems of Gretchen Horowitz.

“I don’t like the way that guy operates,” Clete said.

“Who likes any of the people we deal with?”

“There’s a difference. He hires other people to do his dirty work.”

The story was political in nature and well known and, like most political stories, had already slipped into history and wasn’t considered of importance by most Americans. A United States senator got in Love Younger’s way and discovered that his citations in the brown-water navy were somehow manufactured. Like many of my fellow voters, I had lost interest in taking up other people’s causes. Someone had almost killed my daughter with a razor-edged hunting arrow, and I was determined to find out who it was.

“You coming or not?” I said.

“Let me check on Gretchen,” Clete replied.

Younger’s summer home was a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion located west of Missoula on a pinnacle high above the Clark Fork. It was beige-colored and Tudor in design, the tall windows and breezy front porch trimmed with purple rock, the lawn planted with sugar maples and blue spruce and ornamental crab apple trees that took on a sheen like melted red candy in the sunlight. There was a circular gravel driveway in front, a porte cochere on the side, and a restored Lincoln Continental parked in back. When I lifted the door knocker, electronic chimes echoed through the interior. Clete had lit a cigarette when we got out of his Caddy. “Will you get rid of that?” I said.

“No problem,” he replied. He took two more puffs and flicked the butt over the porch wall onto the lawn just as a woman answered the door. Her skin was so pale it looked bloodless, to the degree that the moles on her shoulders and the one by her mouth seemed to be individually pasted on her body. Her hair had a dark luster with brown streaks, and her eyes possessed a liquescence I normally would associate with hostility or an invasive curiosity about others that bordered on disdain. I had to remind myself of the loss the Younger family had just suffered.

I introduced myself and Clete and offered our condolences, thinking that she was about to invite us in. Instead, she looked behind her, then back at us. “Who did you say you were?” she asked.

“I spoke earlier with Love Younger. He asked me to come here,” I said. “This is his house, isn’t it?”

“Tell them to come in, Felicity,” a voice called from the hallway.

A slight man walked toward us, a vague smile on his face. He did not offer to shake hands. He was unshaved and wearing slippers and a dress shirt open at the collar. “I’m Caspian,” he said. “You’re a police officer?”

“Not here. In Louisiana,” I said.

“You know something about Angel’s death?” he said.

“Not directly, but I have some information that I feel I should share with you. I think someone tried to kill my daughter. We’ve also had a stalker at the place where we’re staying. Can we sit down?”

“Wait here, please,” he said.

“Like Dave says, we were invited here,” Clete said. “I don’t think that’s getting across somehow.”

“Excuse me?” Caspian said.

“We have no obligation to be here,” Clete said. “We were trying to do you a favor.”

“I see,” said Caspian. “I know my father will be happy to see you.”

The man and the woman went to the rear of the house. Clete and I waited on a leather couch by a huge fireplace filled with ash and crumpled logs that gave no heat. The windows reached almost to the ceiling and were hung with velvet curtains, the walls with oil paintings of individuals in nineteenth-century dress. The carpets were Iranian, the furniture antique, the beams in the cathedral ceiling recovered from a teardown, the wood rust-marked by iron spikes and bolts. In a side hallway, I could see a long glass-covered cabinet lined with flintlock and cap-and-ball rifles.

Clete glanced at his watch. “Do you believe these fucking people?” he said.

“Take it easy.”

“They’re all the same.”

“I know it. You can’t change them. So don’t try.”

I knew that the Younger family and their ingrained rudeness were not the source of Clete’s discontent.

“Gretchen’s never slept with a piece,” he said. “She’s never been afraid of anything. She stayed in the shower so long that she ran all the hot water out of the tank. I saw a bruise on her neck. She said she slipped while she was hiking up the hill behind the house.” He leaned forward, hands cupped on his knees. “I don’t like being here, Dave. These are the same people who used to treat us like their garbage collectors.”

“We’ll leave in a few minutes. I promise.”

“The guy was a guest at the White House. He says he’s into wind energy. Does anybody buy crap like that? I say screw this.”

I believed I understood Clete’s resentment toward the world in which he grew up, and I didn’t want to argue with him. The most telling story about his background was one he told me when he was drunk. As a boy, during the summer, he sometimes went on the milk-delivery route with his father, a brutal and childlike man who loved his children and yet was often cruel to every one of them. One day a wealthy woman in the Garden District saw Clete sitting by himself on the rear bumper of the milk truck, barefoot and wearing jeans split at the knees and eating a peanut-butter sandwich. The woman stroked his head, her eyes filling with the lights of pity and love. “You’re such a beautiful little boy,” she said. “Come back here at one P.M. Saturday and have ice cream and cake with me.”