The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke

his way out of a wet paper bag. I think Kermit is probably bisexual and in this guy’s thrall.”
    “When you figure out how that translates into the commission of a crime, let me know.”
    “Why be everybody’s punch?” I said.
    “Want to rephrase that?”
    “Bloodsuckers of every stripe come here and wipe their feet on us. We’ve turned victimhood into an art form. Weingart is a parasite if not a predator.”
    “Go back to that part about Abelard’s bisexuality. I’d like to know how that figures into all this.”
    “I wasn’t making a judgment about it.”
    Her eyes roamed over my face. “Tell Clete he’s on a short tether. I always love chatting with you, Dave,” she said. She winked at me and went out the door, closing it carefully behind her, like someone who does not want to be in the emotional debt of another.
    T WO DAYS PASSED and I began to think less and less about the deaths of the women in Jefferson Davis Parish. The absence of news coverage about their deaths and the general lack of fear or outrage that their deaths should have provoked may seem bizarre or symptomatic of inhumanity among our citizenry. But serial killers abound in this country, and they often kill scores of people for a span of several decades before they are caught, if they ever are. Most of their victims come from the great uprooted, faceless population that drifts via Greyhound or gas-guzzler or motorcycle or thumb through trailer slums, battered women’s shelters, Salvation Army missions, migrant worker camps, and inner-city areas that have the impersonality of war zones. The vagueness of the term “homeless” is unintentionally appropriate for many of the people inside this group. We have no idea who they are, how many of them are mentally ill or just poor, or how many of them are fugitives. In the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of them were dumped on the streets or refused admission by federal hospitals. The mendicant culture they established is still with us, although our problem of conscience regarding their welfare seems to have faded.
    A local bluesman by the name of Lazy Lester once said, “Don’t ever write your name on the jailhouse wall.” Today it might not be a bad idea.
    On Wednesday, just before quitting time, Helen came into my office with a back section of the Baton Rouge Advocate folded in her hand. “What was the name of the convict you interviewed in Mississippi?”
    “Elmore Latiolais.”
    “I shouldn’t do this.”
    “Do what?”
    “Help you drag somebody else’s problem into our workload.” She dropped the newspaper on my desk pad.
    I picked up the paper and read the story. It was four paragraphs in length. It was the kind of news story that any journalist or educated cop instantly recognizes as one that replicated a press handout or a statement made by a public information officer rather than an account based on an eyewitness interview. It was written in the passive voice and avoided specifics other than the fact that Elmore Latiolais, a man with a long criminal history, had been shot to death when he stole a pistol from a prison vehicle and threatened to kill a prison guard.
    “Latiolais was a check writer and a bigamist and a thief. I don’t see this guy threatening prison personnel with a stolen firearm.”
    “Pops, let the state of Mississippi deal with it.”
    “So why bring me the news story?”
    “Because you have a right to see it. That doesn’t mean you have a right to act on it.”
    “You brought it to me because you know this story sucks.”
    “Oh, boy.”
    “Listen, Helen—”
    She walked out the door, shaking her head, probably more at herself than at me.
    I called Jimmy Darl Thigpin on his cell phone, expecting my call to go immediately to voice mail. But it didn’t.
    “Thigpin,” a voice said.
    “It’s Dave Robicheaux.”
    “I figured.”
    “I just read the story on Latiolais’s death. What happened?”
    “I killed him. Somebody should have done it to that