James Burke - In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

"No, he said the officer's name." I opened the nightstand drawer and took out a small magnifying glass. "He said it had belonged to a Major Moss."

"So what?"

"Boots, there's a name cut into the trigger guard. I haven't thought about it in years. I couldn't have mentioned it to him."

I rested the revolver across my thighs and looked through the magnifying glass at the soft glow of light off the brass housing around the trigger. The steel felt cold and slick with oil against my thighs.

"Take a look," I said, and handed her the glass and the revolver.

She folded her legs under her and squinted one eye through the glass. "It says 'CSA,' " she said.

"Wrong place. Right at the back of the guard."

She held the pistol closer to the glass. Then she looked up at me and there were white spots in her cheeks.

"J. Moss." Her voice was dry when she said it. Then she said the name again. "It says J. Moss."

"It sure does."

She wrapped the blackened oil cloth around the pistol and replaced it in the shoe box. She put her hand in mine and squeezed it.

"Dave?"

"Yes?"

"I think Elrod Sykes is a nice man, but we mustn't have him here again."

She turned out the light, lay back on the pillow, and looked out at the moonlight in the pecan trees, her face caught with a private, troubled thought like the silent beating of a bird's wings inside a cage.

Early the next morning the sheriff stopped me in the corridor as I was on my way to my office.

"Special. Agent Gomez is here," he said. A smile worked at the corner of his mouth.

"Where?"

"In your office."

"So?"

"I think it's a break the FBI's working with us on this one."

"You told me that before."

"Yeah, I did, didn't I?" His eyes grew brighter, then he looked away and laughed out loud.

"What's the big joke?" I asked.

"Nothing." He rubbed his lips with his knuckle, and his eyes kept crinkling at the corners.

"Let me ask you something between insider jokes," I said. "Why is the FBI coming in on this one so early? They don't have enough work to do with the resident wiseguys in New Orleans?"

"That's a good question, Dave. Ask Agent Gomez about that and give me feedback later." He walked off smiling to himself. Uniformed deputies in the corridor were smiling back at him.

I picked up my mail, walked through my office door, and stared at the woman who was sitting in my chair and talking on my telephone. She was looking out the window at a mockingbird on a tree limb while she talked. She turned her head long enough to point to a chair where I could sit down if I wished.

She was short and dark-skinned, and her thick, black hair was chopped stiffly along her neck. Her white suit coat hung on the back of my chair. There was a huge silk bow on her blouse of the sort that Bugs Bunny might wear.

Her eyes flicked back at me again, and she took the telephone receiver away from her ear and slipped her hand over the mouthpiece.

"Have a seat. I'll be right with you," she said.

"Thank you," I said.

I sat down, looked idly through my mail, and a moment later heard her put down the phone receiver.

"Can I help you with something?" she asked.

"Maybe. My name's Dave Robicheaux. This is my office."

Her face colored.

"I'm sorry," she said. "A call came in for me on your extension, and I automatically sat behind your desk."

"It's all right."

She stood up and straightened her shoulders. Her breasts looked unnaturally large and heavy for a woman her height. She picked up her purse and walked around the desk.

"I'm Special Agent Rosa Gomez," she said. Then she stuck her hand out, as though her motor control was out of sync with her words.

"It's nice to know you," I said.

"I think they're putting a desk in here for me."

"Oh?"

"Do you mind?"

"No, not at all. It's very nice to have you here."

She remained standing, both of her hands on her purse, her shoulders as rigid as a coat hanger.

"Why don't you sit down, Ms… Agent Gomez?"

"Call me Rosie. Everyone calls me Rosie."

I sat down behind my desk, then noticed that she was looking at the side of my head. Involuntarily I touched my hair.

".You've been with the Bureau a long time?" I said.

"Not really."

"So you're fairly new?"

"Well, just to this kind of assignment. I mean, out in the field, that sort of thing." Her hands looked small on top of her big purse. I think it took everything in her to prevent them from clenching with anxiety. Then her eyes focused again on the side of my head.

"I have a white patch in my hair," I said.

She closed then opened her eyes with embarrassment.

"Someone once told me I have skunk blood in me," I said.

"I think I'm doing a lot of wrong things this morning," she said.

"No, you're not."

But somebody at Fart, Barf, and Itch is, I thought.

Then she sat erect in her chair and concentrated her vision on something outside the window until her face became composed again.

"The sheriff said you don't believe we're dealing with a serial killer or a random killing," she said.

"That's not quite how I put it. I told him I think she knew the killer."

"Why?"

"Her father appears to have been a child molester. She was streetwise herself. She had one prostitution beef when she was sixteen. Yesterday I found out she was still hooking-out of a club in St. Martinville. A girl like that doesn't usually get forced into cars in front of crowded jukejoints."

"Maybe she went off with a john."

"Not without her purse. She left it at her table. In it we found some-"

"Rubbers," she said.

"That's right. So I don't think it was a john. In her car we found a carton of cigarettes, a brand-new hairbrush, and a half-dozen joints in a Baggy in the trunk. I think she went outside to get some cigarettes, a joint, or the hairbrush, she saw somebody she knew, got in his car, and never came back."

"Maybe it was an old customer, somebody she trusted. Maybe he told her he just wanted to set something up for later."

"It doesn't fit. A john doesn't pay one time, then come back the next time with a razor blade or scalpel."

She put her thumbnail between her teeth. Her eyes were brown and had small lights in them.

"Then you think the killer is from this area, she knew him, and she trusted him enough to get in the car with him?"

"I think it's something like that."

"We think he's a psychopath, possibly a serial killer."

"We?"

"Well, actually I. I had a behavioral profile run on him. Everything he did indicates a personality that seeks control and dominance. During the abduction, the rape, the killing itself, he was absolutely in control. He becomes sexually aroused by power, by instilling fear and loathing in a woman, by being able to smother her with his body. In all probability he has ice water in his veins."

I nodded and moved some paper clips around on my desk blotter.

"You don't seem impressed," she said.

"What do you make of the fact that he covered her face with her blouse?" I said.

"Blindfolding humiliates the victim and inspires even greater terror in her."

"Yeah, I guess it does."

"But you don't buy the profile."

"I'm not too keen on psychoanalysis. I belong to a twelve-step fellowship that subscribes to the notion that most bad or evil behavior is generated by what we call a self-centered fear. I think our man was afraid of Cherry LeBlanc. I don't think he could look into her eyes while he raped her."

She reached for a folder she had left on the corner of my desk.

"Do you know how many similar unsolved murders of women have been committed in the state of Louisiana in the last twenty-five years?"