Bring Him Back Dead by Day Keene Read Free Book Online

flesh had touched hers, he’d
had
to have her.
    Latour pursued his trend of thought.
    At least fifty men had witnessed the scene in front of the Tarpon Bar. Viewed from a practical angle, Lacosta’s drunken admission of his inability to satisfy his young wife and his expressed doubt as to her fidelity were an open invitation for every randy young buck in town to try his luck with the red-haired girl.
    “How was she?” Jack Pringle had asked him.
    Pringle thought he’d stayed with Rita. Probably every man in the crowd who’d seen him drive away with her thought the same thing.
    To keep from going back to bed and having to face Olga, Latour stayed where he was, looking out into the night.
    Most of the men in French Bayou were good joes. They worked hard and they played harder, but they paid for their fun and they kept it inside the established romantic or commercial channels. As in every town, however, there were a few heels.
    During the two years he’d served as a deputy sheriff, there’d been three cases of criminal rape, one perpetrated on the person of a pretty young Negress, the other two onattractive girls of high-school age. Fortunately all three girls had lived. In addition to being raped, all three girls had been beaten unmercifully and forced to endure unspeakable indignities. One of them, in fact, was still in a mental hospital.
    Latour gave the sheriff’s office the credit due it. In all three cases Sheriff Belluche and First Deputy Tom Mullen had reverted to being capable and conscientious officers of the law.
    They and the deputies under them had worked around the clock, following up every lead, however remote. The cell block had been filled with suspects. Every known sex offender had been brought in and his movements on the night in question had been gone into minutely. But the rapist, suspected to be the same man in all cases, had never been apprehended. Unfortunately, the assaults had taken place in the dark, and the terrified girls were unable to give even a vague description of the man.
    Latour was suddenly brought back to the present.
    “What are you looking at?” Olga asked.
    He turned from the window. “The night.”
    He gathered his clothes from the chair and dressed. It might be wise to drive out to the trailer and make certain that Rita was all right. With Lacosta lying in a drunken stupor, she would be vulnerable. Few women could fight off a man who didn’t care how rough he became.
    Olga pleated her nightdress. “You are going out again?”
    “Yes.”
    “At this time of night?”
    “I just happened to think of something.”
    He sat beside her to lace his shoes. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. He could kill two birds with one stone. It was unlikely that the party who’d shot at him from the cane brake had bothered to pick up the ejected shell casings. Jack Pringle was money-hungry, but he was also an F.B.I.-trained expert in ballistics. With the shell casings in his possession, Pringle could easily establish the make and model of the rifle from which the shots had been fired. That would narrow the field considerably.
    Olga stopped pleating the fabric of her gown. “Where are you going, if I am privileged to ask?”
    Latour looked for his hat and realized he’d left it in the living room. “On police business.”
    Olga made a futile gesture. Then, fluffing her pillow, she said something in her native tongue and lay back and composed herself for sleep.
    Latour turned in the doorway of the bedroom. “What does that mean? What you just said?”
    Olga told him. “In this country — I give up.”
    Latour closed the door of the bedroom behind him.
She
gave up? After the way she’d treated him for two years?
    Georgi had turned off the television set and was standing in the den, regarding the small amount of whisky left in the bottle.
    Latour studied the youth’s face. Georgi was as blond as his sister, but huge and muscled like a professional athlete. What he did with