Alligator Moon. Joanna Wayne

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СКАЧАТЬ I were you, Ms. Pierson, I’d get in that car and drive back to New Orleans, find some nice little story about the mayor or concentrate on the city’s plague of potholes.”

      “What is it you want from me, Mr. Robicheaux?”

      “Nothing. I’m only suggesting you not become one of Dr. Guilliot’s pawns.”

      “You surely aren’t accusing Dr. Guilliot of killing your brother.”

      “Look around you,” he said, motioning toward the broad estate beyond the ornate gate. “The gold mine of the patron saint of the scarred and wrinkled rich. My brother was a lowly, dispensable anesthetist, a nice scapegoat for Ginny Flanders’s death. You figure it out from there.”

      Finally he released her from the power of his hypnotic stare and walked back to his pickup truck. He climbed behind the wheel and drove away without a backward glance.

      She stared after him, feeling as if something more than a conversation had passed between. The guy had uncanny powers, a prowess at seducing the mind that bordered on the paranormal, but that didn’t mean his accusations were on target.

      Still when she turned to stare once again through the massive iron gates, she felt a sense of foreboding creep into her bloodstream and raise the hairs on the back of her neck. This had nothing to do with her, but deadly secrets had a way of entangling anyone who stumbled into their path.

      And if there were secrets, she was certain John Robicheaux of the dark eyes and fiery Cajun blood was part of the mystery.

      Either way Cassie felt sure she hadn’t seen the last of the man. She’d reserve judgment until later on, whether that was good or bad.

      JOHN HAD KNOWN the reporters would start pouring into Beau Pierre before Dennis’s body was good cold. That’s why he’d done his homework, picked out the best one to pull into his murder theory. He knew the sheriff would try to downplay it, and Guilliot’s lawyers in the Flanders’s trial definitely would, but John had no intention of letting that happen.

      He’d decided the Crescent Connection was the way to go. The magazine had clout and they’d eat up a controversy like this, gnaw on it and give it so much attention, the sheriff would have to conduct a real investigation. That’s why he’d asked Lily Robert down at the café to let him know if someone from the Connection showed up asking questions. Not much went on in Beau Pierre that Lily didn’t hear about.

      He hadn’t expected the reporter to be female—or pretty—but it didn’t matter to John. He’d said his piece, planted the thought, and that should do it.

      Cassie Pierson. The name sounded familiar. Pierson. As in Drake Pierson, Flanders’s high-priced, fancy talking attorney. Damn. That’s why her name sounded familiar. He’d read an article on the infamous attorney not long ago, and it had mentioned that his ex-wife was a reporter, even called her by name.

      All the better. Drake Pierson would surely notice his ex’s article and he’d play the suspicion of murder to the hilt.

      I’ll make Guilliot pay, Dennis. I’ll make the sonofabitch pay. And if it’s not him that killed you, I’ll find the man who did.

      He’d see that justice was done. But that wouldn’t bring Dennis back. The pain of that hit again, the force of it almost doubling him over.

      “MURDER.” The word rolled off of Olson’s tongue at their Monday morning meeting, and his lips settled into the kind of thoroughly satisfied smile some men might link to sliding their tongue over a dip of Häagen-Dazs ice cream.

      Cassie stared at him, amazed once again at the way he transformed from a dull, robotlike creature into a canty, euphoric dynamo the second the possibility of a juicy story made an appearance. Patterson Olson was nearing forty but possessed that nondescript agelessness that let him pass for any age between thirty and fifty.

      His muscles were no more defined than Cassie’s, though he was lean with thick, brown hair and a classic nose. None of his features set him aside as particularly handsome or unattractive, his most noticeable flaw being a chin that seemed to collapse into his neck.

      He picked up a pen, drew a page-size question mark on the top of a yellow legal pad, then pushed the pad across his desk and toward her. “There’s your story!”

      “A question mark?”

      “The question. Suicide or murder?”

      “There are no facts to back up a murder claim.”

      “We’re not trying the case, Cassie. We’re giving our readers information to arouse their curiosity and titillate their minds. They can make their own judgements.”

      “Based on unfounded rumors.”

      “Based on facts you’re going to gather for us and on information provided by the brother of the victim—a man with his own fascinating story and shaded past.”

      “Are you sure we’re talking about the same John Robicheaux?”

      “Don’t tell me you don’t know who he is?”

      “Would I be asking if I did?”

      “He was a brilliant trial lawyer. He almost convinced me once a guy was innocent, and I knew for a fact he was guilty.”

      “Then you know John Robicheaux personally?”

      “Professionally. I was working for the Times Picayune when he was practicing. I interviewed him a few times.”

      “What was he like then?”

      “Abrupt when it suited him. Persuasive when he needed to be.”

      “Manipulative?”

      “Do you know a trial lawyer worth his fee who isn’t?”

      “Why did he quit practicing?” she asked, still finding it hard to imagine the guy had practiced criminal law.

      “Ever heard of Gregory Benson?”

      She tossed the name around in her mind. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

      “It was eight years ago.”

      “I was twenty-four and finishing up my master’s in journalism at the University of Texas back then.”

      “Benson kidnapped a ten-year-old girl in south Mississippi and killed her. Only he kept her alive for a few days, raped and tortured her repeatedly before he finally drowned her in the Pearl River.”

      “Don’t tell me John Robicheaux got that guy off.”

      “Not that time, but he had just six months earlier—won an innocent verdict on rape and murder charges against Benson in the death of a young teenager in Slidell.”

      “Sonofabitch.”

      “Yeah. That’s what a lot of people said. John didn’t say anything in his own defense, just gave up his practice and left town.”

      “I don’t blame him for taking down his shingle and moving back to the swamp. I don’t СКАЧАТЬ