DR10 - Sunset Limited by James Lee Burke Page A

It don't
bother me. Long as it's legal," he said.
    Helen's cheeks were flushed, the back of her neck damp in the
heat. I touched her wrist and nodded toward the cruiser. Just as she
turned to go with me, I saw Boxleiter draw one stiff finger up his rib
cage, collecting a thick dollop of sweat. He flicked it at her back.
    Her hand went to her cheek, her face darkening with surprise
and insult, like a person in a crowd who cannot believe the nature of
an injury she has just received.
    "You're under arrest for assaulting a police officer. Put your
hands behind you," she said.
    He grinned and scratched at an insect bite high up on his
shoulder.
    "Is there something wrong with the words I use? Turn around,"
she said.
    He shook his head sadly. "I got witnesses. I ain't done
anything."
    "You want to add 'resisting' to it?" she said.
    "Whoa, mama. Take your hands off me… Hey, enough's
enough… Buddy, yeah, you, guy with the mustache, you get this
dyke off me."
    She grabbed him by the shoulders and put her shoe behind his
knee. Then he brought his elbow into her breast, hard, raking it across
her as he turned.
    She slipped a blackjack from her pants pocket and raised it
over her shoulder and swung it down on his collarbone. It was weighted
with lead, elongated like a darning sock, the spring handle wrapped
with leather. The blow made his shoulder drop as though the tendons had
been severed at the neck.
    But he flailed at her just the same, trying to grab her around
the waist. She whipped the blackjack across his head, again and again,
splitting his scalp, wetting the leather cover on the blackjack each
time she swung.
    I tried to push him to the ground, out of harm's way, but
another problem was in the making. The two off-duty sheriffs deputies
were pulling their weapons.
    I tore my .45 from my belt holster and aimed into their faces.
    "Freeze! It's over!… Take your hand off that piece!
Do it! Do it! Do it!"
    I saw the confusion and the alarm fix in their eyes, their
bodies stiffening. Then the moment died in their faces. "That's
it… Now, move the crowd back. That's all you've got to
do… That's right," I said, my words like wet glass in my
throat.
    Swede Boxleiter moaned and rolled in the dirt among the power
cables, his fingers laced in his hair. Both my hands were still
squeezed tight on the .45's grips, my forearms shining with sweat.
    The faces of the onlookers were stunned, stupefied. Billy
Holtzner pushed his way through the crowd, turned in a circle, his
eyebrows climbing on his forehead, and said, "I got to tell you to get
back to work?" Then he walked back toward his trailer, blowing his nose
on a Kleenex, flicking his eyes sideways briefly as though looking at a
minor irritant.
    I was left staring into the self-amused gaze of Archer
Terrebonne. Lila stood behind him, her mouth open, her face as white as
cake flour. The backs of my legs were still trembling.
    "Do y'all specialize in being public fools, Mr. Robicheaux?"
he asked. He touched at the corner of his mouth, his three-fingered
hand like that of an impaired amphibian.
     
    THE SHERIFF PACED IN his office. He
pulled up the blinds, then
lowered them again. He kept clearing his throat, as though there were
an infection in it.
    "This isn't a sheriff's department. I'm the supervisor of a
mental institution," he said.
    He took the top off his teakettle, looked inside it, and set
the top down again.
    "You know how many faxes I've gotten already on this? The St.
Mary sheriff told me not to put my foot in his parish again. That
sonofabitch actually threatened me," he said.
    "Maybe we should have played it differently, but Boxleiter
didn't give us a lot of selection," I said.
    "Outside our jurisdiction."
    "We told him he wasn't under arrest. There was no
misunderstanding about that," I said.
    "I should have used their people to take him down," Helen said.
    "Ah, a breakthrough in thought. But I'm suspending you just
the same, at least until I get an IA finding," the