"Lay your weapon on the ground and step back from the car," the driver said, aiming his revolver at me between the door and the jamb.

I held my right arm at a ninety-degree angle, the barrel pointing into the sky.

"I'm Detective Dave Robicheaux, Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department," I said. "I'm complying with your request."

I crouched in the beam of their headlights, laid my.45 by the front tire of the Buick, and raised back up again.

"Step away from it," the driver said.

"You got it," I said, and almost lost my balance in the rain ditch.

"Walk this way. Now," the driver said.

People were standing on their front porches and the rain was coming down harder in big drops that stung my eyes. I kept my badge turned outward toward the two Lafayette city cops.

"I've identified myself. Now how about jacking it down a couple of notches?" I said.

The cop with the shotgun pulled my badge holder out of my hand and looked at it. Then he flexed the tension out of his shoulders, made a snuffing sound in his nose, and handed me back my badge.

"What the hell's going on?" he said.

"Somebody took two shots at me. In that Buick. I think maybe he's still inside."

They both looked at each other.

"You're saying the guy's still in there?" the driver said.

"I didn't see him go anywhere."

"Fuck, why didn't you say so?"

I didn't get a chance to answer. Just then, Lou Girard pulled abreast of the police car and got out in the rain.

"Damn, Dave, I thought you'd gone home. What happened?"

"Somebody opened up on me," I said.

"You know this guy?" the cop with the shotgun said.

"Hell, yes, I do. Put your guns away. What's wrong with you guys?" Lou said.

"Lou, the shooter fired at me twice," I said. "I put eight rounds into the Buick. I think he's still in there."

"What?" he said, and ripped his.357 from his belt holster. Then he said to the two uniformed cops, "What have you fucking guys been doin' out here?"

"Hey, Lou, come on. We didn't know who this-"

"Shut up," he said, walked up to the Buick, looked inside, then jerked open the passenger door. The interior light went on.

"What is it?" the cop with the shotgun said.

Lou didn't answer. He replaced his revolver in his holster and reached down with his right hand and felt something on the floor of the automobile.

I walked toward him. "Lou?" I said.

His hands felt around on the seat of the car, then he stepped back and studied the ground and the weeds around his feet as though he were looking for something.

"Lou?"

"She's dead, Dave. It looks like she caught one right through the mouth."

"She?" I said. I felt the blood drain from my heart.

"You popped Amber Martinez," he said.

I started forward and he caught my arm. The headlights of the city police car were blinding in the rain. He pulled me past the open passenger door, and I saw a diminutive woman in an embryonic position, a white thigh through a slit in a cocktail dress, a mat of brown hair that stuck wetly to the floor carpet.

Our faces were turned in the opposite direction from the city cops'. Lou's mouth was an inch from my ear. I could smell cigarettes, bourbon, and mints on his breath.

"Dave, there's no fucking gun," he whispered hoarsely.

"I saw the muzzle flashes. I heard the reports."

"It's not there. I got a throw-down in my glove compartment. Tell me to do it."

I stared woodenly at the two uniformed cops, who stood in hulking silhouette against their headlights like gargoyles awaiting the breath of life.

Chapter 13

The sheriff called me personally at 5 a.m. the next morning so there would be no mistake about my status with the department: I was suspended without pay. Indefinitely.

It was 7 a.m. and already hot and muggy when Rosie Gomez and I pulled up in front of Red's Bar in her automobile. The white Buick was still parked across the street. The bar was locked, the blinds closed, the silver sides of the house-trailer entrance creaking with heat.

We walked back and forth in front of the building, feeling dents in the tin, scanning the improvised rain gutters, even studying the woodwork inside the door jamb.

"Could the bullets have struck a car or the pickup truck you took cover behind?" she said.

"Maybe. But I didn't hear them."

She put her hands on her hips and let her eyes rove over the front of the bar again. Then she lifted her hair off the back of her neck. There was a sheen of sweat above the collar of her blouse.

"Well, let's take a look at the Buick before they tow it out of here," she said.

"I really appreciate your doing this, Rosie."

"You'd do the same for me, wouldn't you?"

"Who knows?"

"Yeah, you would." She punched me on the arm with her little fist.

We walked across the dirt street to the Buick. On the other side of the vacant lot I could hear freight cars knocking together. I opened all four doors of the Buick and began throwing out the floor mats, tearing up the carpet, raking trash out from under the seats while Rosie hunted in the grass along the rain ditch.

Nothing.

I sat on the edge of the backseat and wiped the sweat out of my eyes. I felt tired all over and my hands were stiff and hard to open and close. In fact, I felt just like I had a hangover. I couldn't keep my thoughts straight, and torn pieces of color kept floating behind my eyes.

"Dave, listen to me," she said. "What you say happened is what happened. Otherwise you would have taken up your friend on his offer."

"Maybe I should have."

"You're not that kind of cop. You never will be, either."

I didn't answer.

"What'd your friend call it?" she asked.

"A 'throw-down.' Sometimes cops call it a 'drop.' It's usually a.22 or some other piece of junk with the registration numbers filed off." I got up off the seat and popped the trunk. Inside, I found a jack handle. I drove the tapered end into the inside panel of the back door on the driver's side.

"What are you doing?" Rosie said.

I ripped the paneling away to expose the sliding frame and mechanism on which the window glass had been mounted.

"Let me show you something," I said and did the same to the inside panel on the driver's door. "See, both windows on this side of the car were rolled partially up. That's why my first rounds blew glass all over the place."

"Yes?"

"Why would the shooter try to fire through a partially opened window?"

"Good question."

I walked around to the passenger side of the Buick. The carpet had a dried brown stain in it, and a roach as long and thick as my thumb was crawling across the stiffened fibers.

"But this window is all the way down," I said. "That doesn't make any sense. It had already started to rain. Why would this woman sit by an open window in the rain, particularly in the passenger seat of her own car?"

"It's registered to Amber Martinez?"

"That's right. According to Lou Girard, she was a hooker trying to get out of the life. She also did speedballs and was ninety pounds soaking wet. Does that sound like a hit artist to you?"

"Then why was she in the car? What was she doing here?"

"I don't know."

"What did the homicide investigator have to say last night?"

"He said, 'A.45 sure does leave a hole, don't it?' "

"What else?"

"He said, 'Did you have to come over to Lafayette to fall in the shithouse?' "

"Look at me," she said.

"What?"

"How much sleep did you get last night?"

"Two or three hours."

I threw the tire iron on the front seat of the Buick.

"What do you feel now?" she said.

"What do you mean?" I was surprised at the level of irritation in my voice.