AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"This pepper-belly bitch is in on it, isn't she?" he said.
I tapped him on the cheek with the flat of my hand. "You say anything else, your day is going to deteriorate in a serious way," I said.
Mistake.
He leaped into my face, his left hand like a claw in my eyes, his right fist flailing at my head, his knees jerking at my groin. I lost my balance, tried to turn away from him and raise my arm in front of my face; his fists rained down on the crown of my skull.
Rosie pulled her .357 from her purse, extended it straight out with both hands, and pointed the barrel into his ear.
"Down on the ground, you understand me?" she shouted. "Do it! Now! Don't look at me! Get your face on the ground! Did you hear me? Don't look at me! Put your hands behind your head!"
He went to his knees, then lay prone with the side of his face in the grass, his lined, deeply tanned neck oozing sweat, his eyes filled with the mindless light that an animal's might have if it were pinned under an automobile tire.
I slipped my handcuffs from the back of my belt and snipped them onto his wrists. I pulled his revolver and can of Mace from his gunbelt, then raised him to his feet. His arm felt like bone in my hand.
"You're under arrest for assaulting an officer of the law, Murph," I said.
He turned toward me. The top button of his shirt was torn and I could see white lumps of scar tissue on his chest like fingers on a broken hand.
"It won't stick. You've got a bum warrant," he said.
"That knife is the one you used on Cherry LeBlanc, isn't it?" I said.
Rosie walked behind me into his office and used his phone to call for a sheriff's car. His eyes watched her, then came back onto me. He blew pieces of grass out of his mouth.
"She let you muff her?" he said.
We brought him in through the back door of the sheriff's department, fingerprinted and booked him, let him make a phone call to an attorney in Lafayette, then took him down to our interrogation room. Personnel from all over the building were finding ways to get a look at Murphy Doucet.
"You people get back to work," the sheriff said in the hallway. "This man is in for assaulting an officer. That's all he's charged with. Have y'all got that?"
"There's three news guys outside your office, sheriff," a deputy said.
"I'd like to know who called them down here, please," he said.
"Search me," the deputy said.
"Will you people get out of here?" he said again to the crowd in the hall. Then he pushed his fingers through his hair and turned to me and Rosie. "I've got to talk to these reporters before they break a Jack the Ripper story on us. Get what you can from this guy and I'll be right back. Who's his lawyer?"
"Jeb Bonin," I said.
"We'll still have Doucet till his arraignment in the morning. When are y'all going to search his place?"
"This afternoon," Rosie said. "We already sent a deputy over there
to sit on it for us."
"Was the blue Merc out at Spanish Lake?" the sheriff said.
"No, he drives a pickup to work. The Merc must be at his house," I said.
"All right, get on it. Do it by the numbers, too. We don't want to blow this one."
The sheriff walked back toward his office. Rosie touched me lightly on the arm.
"Dave, talk with me a second before we go inside," she said.
"What is it?"
