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“Tell me what you want,” Bill Pepper said, straining to see the face. “Who sent you here? I can’t fix anything unless you tell me what you want.”
He heard a sound that made him think of metal snipping against metal. “No, please,” he said. “I haven’t done anything to deserve that. Please don’t do that. Listen to me. There’s no reason for this.”
He stared up at the face coming closer to his own, his viscera turning to water, the music of George Gershwin disappearing inside a voice he hardly recognized as his own.
THE PHONE RANG at six-fifteen Saturday morning. Everyone else was still asleep. I picked up the receiver and went out on the balcony and closed the door behind me. In the east, the light behind the mountains was cold and weak, hardly more than a flicker touching the bottom of the clouds. Gretchen’s hot rod was parked by the creek bed, the top white with frost. The Caddy was gone. “Hello,” I said.
“This is Sheriff Bisbee, Detective Robicheaux. I need to confirm some information. You know a man named Clete Purcel?”
“I’ve known him for forty years. He’s staying with us at Albert Hollister’s place.”
“Right now he’s staying in a jail cell in Big Fork. Do you know any reason why he’d be in the Swan Lake area?”
“Maybe he went fishing. He didn’t tell me. What’s he charged with?”
“He got stopped at a roadblock at twelve-fifteen this morning.”
“That’s not what I asked. Why are you calling me about a traffic stop in Lake County?”
“I didn’t say anything about a traffic stop. He was carrying a cut-down pump in his car. He also had burglar tools in his possession, along with latex gloves, a throw-down, a blackjack, plastic ligatures, brass knuckles, and a boxful of buckshot. I almost forgot. He had some nylon fishing line with a hoop tied on the end. The kind of rig home invaders stick through a window to turn the latch.”
“He’s a private investigator, and he runs down bail skips for a couple of bondsmen in New Orleans.”
“He told me that. Otherwise, I might have thought he was planning to break into someone’s residence. He wouldn’t do that, would he?”
“No.”
“Glad we got that out of the way. What’s the worst homicide you ever investigated?”
“I never got around to ranking them.”
“You must have been a busy man. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Bill Pepper had his problems, but nothing that would warrant the mess I saw in his cottage this morning. Do you read me?”
“I’m trying to be helpful. To my knowledge, Clete never met Detective Pepper.”
“Then I wonder why he was at Pepper’s cottage. Just passing by, I guess. Maybe you should come up here. Pepper died with a plastic bag over his head. With luck, he died of asphyxiation. The blood loss is like nothing I’ve ever seen. Are you starting to get the picture?”
“No, not at all,” I said.
“When it’s this bad, it’s usually sexual. Does your friend have problems along those lines?”
“Pepper was mutilated?”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“You’re looking at the wrong guy.”
“Somebody called in a 911 and reported a maroon Cadillac convertible with a Louisiana tag leaving the crime scene.”
“Who was the caller?”
“The issue is your friend, not the caller. He seems to have an extraordinary capacity for getting into trouble.”
“He’s the best guy I’ve ever known.”
“Pepper was dead when Purcel left the cottage. Why didn’t he report it?”
I didn’t have an answer. “Ask him.”
