Pegasus Descending: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page B

the right side of his head. How do you reconcile that?”
    “‘Reconcile,’” he said thoughtfully. “Let me write that down and look up the various definitions. ‘Reconcile.’ I like that word.”
    Koko, you are the most obnoxious human being I’ve ever had the misfortune to work with, I said to myself.
    “What did you say?” he asked.
    “Nothing,” I said.
    “Crustacean Man probably got hit broadside and slammed to the road, then he raised up as the vehicle went over him.”
    “Wouldn’t he have been busted up all over?”
    “Not necessarily.”
    “Was there any indication he was dragged?”
    “I’m supposed to know this about a guy wild animals and the crawfish ate down to the bone?”
    “I just don’t understand how a guy could receive two massive injuries to two separate areas of the body but none anywhere else.”
    “Maybe the guy’s head was smashed against the asphalt after he was broadsided. Or maybe against a post or telephone pole.”
    “There’s no post or telephone pole near where he was found.”
    “Maybe a second vehicle ran over him.”
    “Two hit-and-run drivers on the same isolated road on the same night?”
    He didn’t reply. I could hear him breathing against the receiver. “Koko?” I said.
    He hung up. I punched in his number again. “Your attitude sucks,” I said.
    “Maybe I’ve got some questions about this one, too,” he said. “But you and I both know the guy is going into eternity as John Doe, killed by a person or persons unknown. Nobody cared about him when he was alive. Nobody gives a shit about him now. Now, stop jerking off at other people’s expense.”
    Five minutes later, Wally, our hypertensive dispatcher and self-appointed departmental comic, buzzed my extension. “I got an FBI gal out here in shades and a suit and wit’ top-heavy knockers. What you want me to do wit’ her?” he said.
    “Wally, what in God’s name—” I began.
    “She’s in the can. She cain’t hear me.”
    “That’s not the point. This is supposed to be a professional—”
    “She backed her car into a cruiser in the parking lot. Helen’s outside looking at it now. I’ll send her up to your office.”
    I walked to the window and looked down on Helen Soileau and a group of uniformed deputies staring at the crushed front end of a cruiser. A stream of green radiator fluid was draining into a pool on the asphalt. Behind me, someone tapped on my door. I looked through the glass at a tall woman in a powder-blue suit with hair the bright color of straw. She had propped one hand against the wall and was pulling off her shoe. When I opened the door, she looked up at me awkwardly, her left shoe gripped in her hand, the sole splayed with a flattened piece of pink bubble gum. “Yuck, I hate it when that happens,” she said.
    “Can I help you?” I said.
    “I’m Special Agent Betsy Mossbacher. Phew, what a day,” she replied, straightening up, then walking past me to the window, one shoe on, one shoe off. She looked down at the parking lot. “Oh, jeez.”
    “You’re here about the bills from the Mobile savings and loan job?”
    “Yeah, I’m getting off to kind of a bad start here. I just interviewed the Klein woman. You knew her father was killed in an armored car robbery? Can I sit down?”
    “Yes,” I said, uncertain as to which question I had just answered.
    She sat in a chair by the side of my desk and began prying gum off her shoe with a pencil and wiping it onto a piece of paper over my wastebasket. “The Klein woman talked with you about her father?”
    “She didn’t have to. He was a friend of mine. I saw him killed.”
    Her face became thoughtful, her eyes looking into space, even though she kept digging gum off her shoe with her pencil. “You were the off-duty cop in front of the bar, right?”
    I felt myself swallow. “You obviously ran my sheet, so why do you ask?”
    “You were pinned down while these guys were shooting at you?”
    “I was