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"Oh my God," she breathed, bolting out from under the grisly shower.
"Christ Almighty," Pitre muttered, backing up.
The crushed shell beneath the staircase was red with it, as if someone had rolled an open can of paint down the steps. And hanging down between the treads like ghoulish tinsel were animal entrails.
A
"Oh my God," she said again.
A memory surfaced from a dark corner of her mind: Pam Bichon-stabbed and eviscerated. Then a possibility struck her like a bolt of lightning and the horror was magnified tenfold. Sos. Fanchon.
"Oh, God. Oh, no. No!" she screamed.
She wheeled away from Pitre and ran, feet slipping and skidding on the crushed shell, down the slope toward the dock. The beam of the flashlight waved erratically in front of her. Sos. Fanchon. Her family.
"Broussard!" Pitre shouted behind her.
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"Oh God! Oh God!" she stammered, wrapping her arms around him in a frantic embrace. "Oh, thank God!"
"It's pig i
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"I wa
"What? Why?"
"Because if a human body turns up two days from now missing its plumbing, someone's go
Pitre made a disgruntled sound. If it was evidence, he would have to deal with it, scrape it back into the bucket, and haul it away in his car.
"It's pig i
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"I don't know nothin'," he grumbled.
"If Mullen is behind this, you tell him I'll kick his ass all the way to Lafayette!"
"I don't know nothing about it!" Pitre griped. "I answered your call. That's all I did!"
"Who's this Mullen, chère?" Sos demanded. "Why for he'd do somethin' like dis to you?"
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"A bad joke, Uncle Sos."
"A joke?" he huffed, incredulous. "Mais non. You didn' come laughin' to me, chérie. Ain' nothin' fu
"No, there isn't," A
Fanchon looked up the stairs where half a dozen cats had come to feast on the entrails. "Dat's some mess, dat's for sure."
"Deputy Pitre and I will clean it up, Tante. It's evidence," A
It took another five minutes of arguing to convince them to go home and leave the mess. A
She wished for more reasons than one that she could pin this undeniably on Mullen. But the more she thought on it, the less certain she felt. Keying her out on the radio was simple, anonymous. The snake in her Jeep had been easily managed, but this… Too much chance of being caught red-handed, literally. And the correlation to Pam Bichon was u
At A
It was nearly three A.M. by the time A
She pulled another Abita from the fridge, washed down some Tylenol, and plopped down in a chair at the kitchen table, where her own notes on Pam Bichon's homicide were still spread out.
She picked up the chronology and glanced over the entries.
10/9 1:45 A.M.: Pam again reports a prowler. No suspect apprehended.
10/10: On leaving house for school bus, Josie Bichon discovers the mutilated remains of a raccoon on the front step.
Marcus Renard wanted to be her friend. He had wanted to be Pam Bichon's friend, too. Pam had rejected him. A
She had never imagined she might run the risk of ending up there herself.
25
"I was thinking maybe I could go into Records and Evidence," A
The sheriff had apparently spent Sunday recuperating from the lousy past week. His cheeks and nose were sunburned, evidence of a day in his bass boat. He looked up at her as if she'd volunteered to clean toilets.
"Records? You want to go to Records?"
"No, sir. I want to stay on patrol. But if I can't do that, I'd like to go somewhere I haven't been. Learn something new."
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"I suppose you can't hardly cause any trouble there," he muttered, petting his coffee mug.
"No, sir. I'll try not to, sir."
He mulled it over while he took a bite out of his blueberry muffin, then nodded. "All right, A
"McGruff the Crime Dog?"
A
Valerie Comb smirked. "Tony Antoine usually does it, but he called in sick."
"Yeah, I bet he did."
Noblier's secretary handed her a schedule. "Two appearances this morning and two this afternoon. Deputy York will do the presentation. All you have to do is stand around."
"Dressed up like a giant dog."
Valerie sniffed and fussed with the chiffon scarf she had tied around her throat in a poor attempt to hide a hickey. "You're lucky you got a job at all, you ask me."