DR13 - Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke Page A

screen door and stepped out on the gallery. He was barefoot and wore recycled jeans without a belt and a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. A heart with a circle of thorns twisted around it was tattooed high up on his right arm. Through the screen I could see a fat woman in a print dress watching a television program.
    "You come to arrest me?" he said.
    "Not yet. Who bruised up your face?"
    He touched the yellow-and-purple discoloration below one eye.
    "Dr. Parks did. Last night. After I got off from work."
    "Lori's father?" I said.
    "Yes, sir. That's why I figured you were here."
    "He knocked you around?"
    "I went in for gas at the all-night station. He walked me out in the shadows and hit me. He was pretty mad."
    "Are you telling me you confessed something to Dr. Parks?"
    "Yeah. I mean yes, sir. I told him what I did."
    "Before you go any farther, I need to advise you of certain rights you have, the most important of which is your right to have an attorney."
    "Who is that?" the fat woman in the chair yelled through the screen.
    "Just a guy, Mom," Josh said, and walked out into the yard, out of earshot from his mother. "I told Dr. Parks I sold daiquiris to Lori and her friends. They were there three times that afternoon. It's not the only time I've sold to underage kids, either. Mr. Hebert tells us not to hold up the line 'cause somebody can't find their driver's license. But what he means is on weekend nights don't pass up any business."
    "Mr. Hebert is your employer?"
    "Yes, sir. At least till this morning. He fired me when I told him I'd served Lori and the other girls."
    "Did Lori give you an ID of any kind?"
    He shook his head. "When Lori Parks wanted something, you gave it to her. She was the prettiest girl in Loreauville."
    "Josh, I'm placing you under arrest. Turn around while I hook you up."
    "Am I going to prison?"
    "That's up to other people, partner," I said, and put him in the backseat of the cruiser, my hand on top of his head.
    As we drove away I saw his mother walk out on the gallery and look in both directions, wondering where her son had gone.
    That afternoon I called Lori Parks's father at his office. His receptionist told me he was not expected in that day.
    "Is the funeral today?" I asked.
    "It was yesterday," she replied.
    "Would you give me his home number, please?"
    "I'm not supposed to do that."
    "We can send a cruiser out there and bring him in, if you like," I said.
    When I called his home no one answered and the message machine, if he had one, was turned off. I checked out a cruiser and drove to Loreauville, nine miles up the Teche, and found his house in a wooded, hilly area on the bayou, just outside of town.
    The one-story house was long and flat and constructed of what is called South Carolina brick, torn down from nineteenth-century buildings and shipped to Louisiana for use in custom-built homes. Apple green wood shutters that were ornamental rather than operational were affixed to the walls on each side of the windows and looked as if they had been painted on the brick. The porch ran the width of the house and was intersected with a series of miniature fluted columns. With its flat roof and squeezed windows, the house looked like a constipated man crouched back in the trees. It had probably cost a half million dollars to build.
    Dr. Parks stood on a shady knoll overlooking the bayou, slashing golf balls across the water into a grove of persimmon trees. When I walked up behind him, leaves crackling under the soles of my shoes, he glanced at me for only a moment, then whacked another ball into the persimmons.
    "I arrested Josh Comeaux this morning," I said.
    "Glad to hear it," he said. His face was heated, freshly shaved, even though it was late in the day. He picked another ball out of a bucket and set it on a tee.
    "He says you knocked him around."
    "What's your business here, Detective?" He rested his driver by his foot. He wore doeskin gloves that had no fingers and a long-sleeve