“Hair of the Dog”

by

Chick Lang

Looking like some cannibalistic, two-headed monster that had turned upon itself, the combatants went at each other with an inbred ferocity that could be best satisfied with but one ending—the death of the loser.

I'd just turned fifteen at the time—when I first saw the dogs fight. It began with a vis-à-vis, teeth-flashing charge by both pit bulls, and concluded an hour later with the younger, stronger animal— Rue-Jean was his name—standing bloody but victorious over the lifeless and broken body of his vanquished foe. It had been a throat-ripping, fur-flying battle, and the memory of it all stayed with me, in one form or another, long after the owners, the bettors, the blood-crazed crowd had faded from view—had become mere footnotes to the darkest side of human nature.

Though over thirty years have passed, I still remember the incident as my first encounter with real fear. Looking into the eyes of Rue-Jean , I'd seen no light there, no meanness, no anger. It was like peering into a bottomless pit. Later, after I'd become a cop and sent many a criminal to his just deserts, I'd seen the same dead stare on death row—in the faces of condemned murderers.

Most inveterate killers have long since reached a point beyond redemption. Whether having once and for all chosen evil over good, or, in Rue-Jean's case, having been trained to kill, their eyes reflect the cold, lifeless nature of their souls. It's a look that strikes fear in all who behold it. I cursed the circumstances that caused me to remember.

It was Thursday evening and I'd settled in for the night, a bottle of Jack Daniels for my companion and a platter of iced-down raw oysters on the half-shell in front of me waiting to be relished. We were in the middle of the latest of several brash rainstorms that had plagued the Logan City area over the past several weeks, turning the lowlands into little more than an interconnected waterway of wading pools, sloughs, and floodplains. It was a perfect opportunity to do what I'd become very adept at lately—take inventory of my depressions.

I lamented the never-ending rain—its consequent poor fishing, the quality of my short-termed love interests, and what I deemed to be the ever-increasing encroachment of evil into the world. It was a time of philosophical introspection and a ranting against the ‘alphabet' organizations—the ACLU, the FBI, the CIA—that ostensibly were there to set things right, but somehow, whether through corruption or inefficiency, frequently made things worse. I was especially bemoaning what I saw through the bourbon-colored lens of a Jack Daniels bottle—the plight of one man trying to make a difference.

A chilly west wind had moved in and was whipping a throbbing rain against my apartment windows. My police scanner was crackling with activity and I heard a familiar voice over the airwaves. It was Lita Guidry, the Peterson cop who'd saved my life a while back during a murder investigation. Typically, she was giving somebody hell. I listened, adjusted the unit to get better reception, and listened some more. The gist of the conversation, interpreted partially by the numbers and codes of police work, was that there had been a killing at a nightclub just on the Peterson side of the Atchafalaya Bridge . When the communication turned into a muddle of unintelligible static, I reached and turned off the radio. Five minutes later, as I was fumbling with the lid on a new bottle of cocktail sauce, the phone rang.

“Yeah, Jamie Vining here.”

“Detective? Lita Guidry.”

Her breathy voice, tinged with the telltale huskiness of a veteran smoker, put the brakes on my ‘pity party'.

“Well, Miss Lita, my favorite cop. I was expecting your call,” I lied.

“That's Detective Guidry to you. Haven't you heard? I got promoted.”

Our initial relationship had been somewhat antagonistic and I couldn't resist pulling her chain.

“I suppose I should offer congratulations, huh?”

“The badge is enough for now,” she said, a characteristic gruffness in her tone. “And your flash of intuition?”

“Call it a premonition...after all, we work so well together, don't we?”

She paused, as if recalling details of the case we'd closed last year—the one where the dead man with the goat's head had been dumped on my doorstep.

“I suppose,” she said, after a pause. “I probably owe my promotion to that one, all right.”

I injected the needle. “And now you want me to solve another one for you, chere?”

She drew an audible breath. “Not my idea...it is my jurisdiction, just like the last time. But, the powers that be have seen fit, call it logistics, call it whatever—the killing happened not a hundred yards from the Logan City side of the bridge—they've seen fit to make it a joint effort—”

I could almost see her squirm at the other end of the line. It wasn't uncommon for the two departments to lend one another a hand. Logan City and Peterson were less than five minutes apart, and both police forces were relatively small and often shared resources. But, you could tell Lita Guidry, her ego inextricably intertwined with her ambition, didn't like sharing the glory.

“—not my idea, at all,” she added.

“Of course,” I said, bathing the two words in an inflection of condescension.

She muttered something I didn't quite catch; I could almost hear her mind shift into a higher gear, stripping through first, second, and beyond in a shaved second—the time it takes for a thought to register.

“Lieutenant Marquand will be calling you—”

“I'll save him the trouble,” I interjected, “I'll ring him when we hang up.”

“Then meet me at Patin's ...you know the place. It's been a hassle ever since it opened last year—trouble with the liquor license, underage drinking, reports of hookers and back rooms. Looks like they outdid themselves this time.”

“They?”

“ Patin's ...in twenty minutes. I'll fill you in then.”

Before I could translate my irritation at having my evening shot to hell, she hung up. I placed the receiver back in its cradle, twisted the lid off the cocktail sauce, and drowned the whole platter of oysters in a sea of horseradish-flavored ketchup. I slurped a dozen of the stringy little animals, barely getting the benefit of taste, and feeling as if some impatient contest judge was timing me. I washed it all down with a healthy swig of J.D. and dialed Marquand's number. He answered the phone before it had time to ring.

“Hello? Is anybody there?” he asked.

“It's me, Lieutenant.”

“Jamie. I was just about to call you. I've got—”

“I heard. Lita Guidry walks with the dead.”

“Huh?”

“Something G-String Gravois said...the old black man we arrested for murdering—”

“I remember him,” Marquand interrupted.

“—I think he was referring to zombies. He told me they never sleep.”

The lieutenant confirmed that I'd be working with the Peterson cops on this one, and that I was to give them all the help they needed. When he detected my lack of enthusiasm, he appealed to my sense of obligation.

“Didn't that Guidry save your life when the Sharp guy threw down on you with the shotgun?”

My ego wouldn't allow me to acknowledge the truth, at least, aloud. “My bullet hit him, too, Lieutenant. Let's just say that it was a mutual ‘salvation'.”

I was determined to shower, whack the stubble off my face—not so much an act of making myself presentable as it was prolonging a distasteful project. I dressed slowly, like a man who had an appointment with a dentist and I searched through the pile of clothes in the chair beside my bed and found my cleanest dirty shirt. I smoothed out some of the wrinkles and put it on, topped it off with a bright green tie with a Tabasco pepper motif, stopped at the kitchen table to down a last shot of bourbon, and headed out the door.

Outside, the rain had subsided, but a brisk wind was jousting with fierce clouds that, in the last vestiges of daylight, resembled the mercury color of dead fish. The world smelled dank, fetid, like something decaying, releasing a miasma that burned the senses. It had rained so much in the last few weeks that even the leather upholstery of my SUV gave off a musty odor. I wheeled out onto a slick Highway 90 and turned in the direction of Patin's Place.

I hadn't seen Lita Guidry in nearly six months, and even that was in passing. What I remembered about her most was the domineering demeanor, the fatuous need to control, and the commensurate attention to detail. She never missed a clue, and was often a half step ahead of both ‘perp' and partner. When on the job, and I'd never had the occasion to see her otherwise, she had the classic “butch” look—and the personality to go with it. For the most part, our relationship had been adversarial—I once described it to Lieutenant Marquand as, ‘like a cur dog and an alligator'.

In deference to my aversion for dominatrixes, and partially due to my history of poor relationships with women, I had failed to remember one thing about Lita Guidry. It came back to me as I spied her standing in Patin's parking lot, her short-cropped black hair ruffling in the wind.

When she saw me get out of the car, she quit fidgeting with a pencil in her hand, and for a moment I thought that I recognized a glint of something akin to acceptance in her eyes—not exactly affection, but a spark of confirmation that some people might call respect. She'd hinted at it the day we'd concluded the Gabriel Mouton case, when she'd actually allowed herself to laugh—a hearty, spontaneous, yet gentle thing that suggested there might be a woman on the other side of that badge. She'd lowered her feminist banner just long enough to smile and share our common victory over crime, allowing herself to compliment me on the part that I'd played. In doing so, she'd revealed a softness in the angular lines of her face, a winsome blush, and dimples that spoke of a beauty she tried so very hard to deny.

“Lose your watch? It's about time you got here,” she said, her sullen mask firmly back in place.

She motioned with a sweep of her arm, and I followed her to the spot where the crime boys were finishing up. Inside a crude chalk outline, I could see the crumpled and bloody body of the victim.

“Maglie Dugat,” she informed me, “You know him?”

“A flunky for Cap Blanchard, one of the owners of Patin's . Tip Landry busted him last year for throwing a prostitute off the Atchafalaya Bridge . She wouldn't press charges, but Tip arrested him for indecent exposure. Seems he was standing naked on the bridge rail and urinating over the side at the girl while she struggled for shore.”

“Well, he's pissed his last,” Lita snapped.

“Not intending to get into a play on words here, but who'd he piss off?”

“Not sure, yet. Too many people involved; too much left to sort out.”

“Looks like somebody tried to eat the evidence,” I said, kneeling down and glancing at the dead man's throat. It was laid open just below the jugular, the wound jagged around

the edges and surrounded by small punctures, like teeth marks.

“They were fighting dogs inside. Dugat's dog turned on him at the end.”

“A pistol-packing dog? He's got a couple of bullet wounds in the chest.”

“According to Cap Blanchard and Arpee Savoie, the club owners, they tried to shoot the dog. Missed and hit Dugat before they finally got the pit bull.”

My mind flashed suddenly back to an image of my youth, of the savage Rue-Jean , teeth bared, empty graves in his eyes. I shivered. “Where's the dog?”

“In that body bag over there,” she said, pointing to a dark clump some twenty feet away. “You want to go look inside the club? We closed it down, cordoned it off, carted everybody down to the station...in Logan City .”

“If it happened in Patin's, what's he doing out here in the parking lot?”

“You look like you could use some coffee,” she said, “and you ought to try gargling with something besides bourbon once in awhile.”

“I'm fine, Miss Lita. So what's next?”

“Well, I need some caffeine, maybe a bite to eat. Let's adjourn to The Plantation and I'll finish filling you in.” She squinted at me and tapped her chin with the pencil in her hand. “Unless you want to go back over all the gore inside?”

She glanced down at the mutilated body, then turned her hard, blue-steel eyes back toward me. She'd come a long way since she'd upchucked at the sight of Gabriel Mouton's goat-headed corpse on my back patio last year.

“That's all right. Come to think of it, I could use a shot of something strong about now,” I answered.

It was nearly eight and the restaurant was about to close when we got there. We opted to take our chances with the short order cook in the bar. I ordered a Crown and 7-Up along with a ‘fatburger'.

Lita frowned as the barmaid took our orders and walked off. “You juicing it on the job?”

“I figure it'll all get absorbed by the grease. You want to finish catching me up, or what?”

She took a napkin from in front of her and started doodling. “As I was saying back at the parking lot, they outdid themselves this time.”

“They...meaning Cap Blanchard and—”

“And the co-owner, Arpee Savoie,” she said, before I could finish.

“Good ol' Arpee. His mama got the name off a can of beans.”

“Oh?”

“R.P. It stands for Regus Patoff; his mama read it off the can—Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.? Everybody just called him R.P., as if it were one word. So, he started spelling it ‘Arpee'.”

Lita waited until after the waitress brought us our drinks. “Any more linguistic genealogies...or can I go on?” she said.

I picked up a fork; waved it in tacit assent.

“The big back room...the one where they have private parties...they've been using it for cock fights and dog fights. Seems tonight was a championship affair. Dogs from all over. And your buddy Arpee and his pencil-necked partner thought the authorities wouldn't hear about it. Hush-hush, you know...among dog breeders and owners. As if some drunk patron wouldn't eventually talk too much. Go figure.”

She took a sip of tea, then rattled on.

“Maglie Dugat had a dog in the last fight...the big one. After the match, he went to pull it off the other pit bull and, without warning, his own dog attacks him—he's knocked to the floor and pinned. Arpee Savoie and Cap Blanchard pull guns and shoot at the dog, which had Dugat by the throat and was shaking the life out of him. Only, the bullets hit Dugat, right? By the time they shot the dog, Dugat's bleeding like a slaughterhouse pig.”

I tasted the mixed drink, then stirred it with my finger.

“So you arrested the dog—posthumously—for manslaughter?”

She set the glass down hard on the table, her glare as frigid as an arctic blast. “You know, when you grin,” she said, “you look like a caricature of Jack Nicholson. That should bother you.”

While I was trying to fathom the depths of her remark, Lita continued with her narrative.

“Anyway, the whole place was in an uproar...blood everywhere, people running for cover like picnickers caught in a rain storm...and finally somebody calls the police.”

“Arpee?”

“Not a chance. It was some girl. She refused to give her name...but she called from the bar. The dispatcher sent out Pete Dozier and Pete called me at home. I got there a couple of minutes before he did. There were only a half-dozen people there by then, and we started trying to sort things out. Most everything I'm telling you is a consensus of the witnesses.”

She tapped the pencil against the table.

“The dog was dead,” she went on, “Dugat was dead, and dumbass Arpee Savoie was trying to mop up the blood. Then he got the bright idea to move the body. We caught him trying to stuff it into the trunk of his car. We arrested the whole lot of them, called in your crime scene bunch, and phoned the coroner. I saw him driving up as we left the parking lot.”

“You think it was just some tragic accident? Or a series of them...compounded by an ongoing felony—illegal dog fighting?”

“Why clean up the blood, compromise the scene?”

“Gut reaction? Choose the rock or the hard place? Even before the shooting, a crime was being committed,” I offered.

“Maybe. They all tried to sell that same story, pretty much...each one of them...almost word for word, as if they'd rehearsed it in the moments before I got there. I'm not buying.”

I took two bites of the ‘fatburger', slugged down the whiskey, and threw a twenty on the table.

“I guess we'll get an early start tomorrow, huh?” I said, sliding back my chair. “Meet you at the jail at—?”

“Seven,” she answered. “Don't be late. I want to do some more questioning before we start looking for a motive. I'll let Pete Dozier do some of the footwork. Your burger's not good?”

“I'm tired. I was just about to relax when you called,” I said. “See you in the morning.”

I left her sitting there eating her nachos and cheese, a look of concern on her face, as if Jack Daniels and I might no longer be capable of pulling our weight.

I called Tip Landry, the detective I usually partnered with, when I got to the apartment. I brought him up to date and told him to call the jail and get a list of the people Lita had arrested.

“I want you to do some checking for me tomorrow, when you get the time.”

After I hung up, I ate the last two oysters and poured myself a nightcap. I spent the rest of the night—until I dozed off in my recliner—fingering through every injustice I could recall, traipsing through every failed romance of my life, and lurking on the outskirts of a whiskied image of another dogfight—one that had shaken me unmercifully when I was fifteen. The dream unfolded sometime during the wee hours, as I struggled in the lumpy confines of my chair.

Somewhere, out beyond the winding, rain-swept bayous—in a small, clapboard house of desolation, once a home—I saw a woman mourning the loss of her firstborn. Though I'd never met her, I somehow recognized her as Mala Dugat, Maglie's mother, and she was crying out, cursing a whimsical god who was busy elsewhere when the vicious pit bull laid open her son's throat with razoric teeth and held him in a rigored grip, until his last breath escaped painfully through a rasp of blood bubbles and spittle. Her cries were of anger and despair; her memories perfect, unencumbered by truth. Still her baby boy—even at thirty-eight—he had become a victim in a suddenly black world made darker by his death. She lay sprawled across her bed, clinging desperately to a favorite, undying photograph—stared through hot, morphing tears that threatened to grotesque his picture, as she held it in a dwindling light and cloaked him once and for all in the righteousness of a mother's love.

The image faded in a flood of torrential tears, then melted into a pitch-black curtain that parted suddenly, revealing a thousand sets of dead eyes. A choking yellow mist rose up before me, and there in the center was Rue-Jean, his eyes at first vacant, unblinking, then dotted with tombstones that seemed to emerge from the depths. His mouth was gaped open in a vicious grin, his teeth like glistening, ivory spikes that dripped with bloody saliva. I watched, frozen, as the tombstones got larger, almost protruding from the eyes themselves, and I found myself leaning forward, trying to read the names on the markers.

A lone church bell began to ring, reverberate off the shifting walls of my dream, and Rue-Jean turned, searching for the source, as if the ominous tolling had special significance. I looked past him and there, looming in a drift of rusty smoke, stood a small woodframe church, its spire reaching into the dark clouds. The top of the spire brandished an angry cross, drenched in red, and it cast a light down into the shadows below where a crowd of animated silhouettes moved mechanically toward a cemetery high up on a hilltop, amidst topiary weeds and shrubbery. The bushes evidenced arms and hands that beckoned in the wind, shook fingers in the faces of all who passed. The bell tolled louder, and somewhere high above it all a murder of crows erupted into a clastic cawing reminiscent of the trumpets of Jericho . I trembled, then lurched awake, a vestigial vision filming my eyes—of Rue-Jean stalking up the hill toward the graveyard.

The raucous ringing in my ears became that of the telephone, and as I reached out a shaky hand, it stopped. I looked at my watch, then the caller i.d. display. It was already seven-thirty, and the call had come from the station. Probably Lita Guidry. She'd have to wait. I would shower, cold if I could stand it, then try to fill the gnawing void in the pit of my stomach. As I turned on the water, I made a mental note—never mix ‘fatburgers' with whiskey.

Later, when I got first shot at interrogating the suspects, Lita sat in, with her notebook turned to the scrawling she had hastily written down at the crime scene. As I grilled Cap Blanchard, she seemed to be checking his answers against what she'd already recorded.

“That's a pretty wild story, Cap,” I said, “but it doesn't even make for credible fiction.”

He tweaked the gray hairs that extended from his left nostril and pushed back in his chair.

“What—you think I'm lyin', yeah? It was an accident. Hell, I was tryin' to help. Not my fault they moved just as I fired the gun.”

Cap was a follower. His arrest record proved it. Every time he'd been picked up, he'd been involved with someone with a longer, more flagrant rap sheet. Up to this point, he'd been lucky and evaded hard time. I was out to change all that.

“What did you have against Maglie Dugat?”

“Nothing. I hardly knew him. He was just another poor slob trying to make a buck with the dogs.”

Lita pulled my coat sleeve, and I turned to see what she'd written on her pad. I turned back to Cap Blanchard.

“So, you're in the habit of loaning five grand to people you hardly know?”

Cap winced as he pulled too hard on the hair in his nose. “He was good for it. I had the papers on his car. It was just business. He'd just won half that on the fight. Why would I want him dead?”

“I didn't say that you did...but you lied about your relationship with him. What else aren't you telling me?”

He rubbed the bristled scrub on his chin. “Say...who said the guy owed me money, anyway? Is somebody talkin' out of turn? Mine wasn't the only bullet that hit him, you know.”

“It was the one that killed him,” I said, with no verification of my statement.

“Couldn't be. I only winged him. And besides, the dog bites alone would have killed him. Arpee said so.”

“And Arpee gave you all this story to tell? About how everything was an accident? And Maglie was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yeah,” Cap said, “that's it—I mean, no, it ain't a story—it's the truth.”

“Well, Arpee's singing a different song now, Cap. He says you had it in for Maglie...that he was way behind on his loan, and you wanted to make an example of him.”

Cap followed my eyes as I glanced back at Lita Guidry. She finished turning pages, checked off something on the pad, and nodded in my direction. I had hastily read through her notes before the interrogation, but for the most part, I was winging it.

“That's a lie. Arpee wouldn't say that...and if he did—” He stopped and squinted his eyes at Lita. “He didn't say that—did he?”

“Knowing Arpee...what do you think?” she answered, tapping the pencil against the pad.

“Look. Arpee's the one who had a grudge, not me. I knew I'd get my money from Maglie. If nothing else, his mama was good for it.”

“Arpee had something against Maglie?” I said.

“I-I mean...maybe it was nothing. All I know is...for a while, Penny Savoie was Maglie's girl.

And Arpee didn't like his sister foolin' around in the ‘business'.”

“In the business?”

“With folks that make their livin'—”

“Other criminals, you mean,” I said.

“I didn't say that. Maglie didn't have nothin' to offer. He owed everybody. What kind of life was that?”

“And working as a waitress in a bar that reeked of criminal activity—that was good for her?”

Cap gritted the edges of his teeth together and stared across the table. “Ain't my concern. I'm just tellin' you...if Arpee says...well, he had more reason to—”

“Did Maglie owe Arpee money?” I asked.

He grinned, as if he'd suddenly discovered a humor at my expense. “What part of everybody don't you understand, Detective? I told you the man owed everybody.”

“Who shot first?”

“Arpee did. He said he had better sense than to try to pull the dog off. Look what happened to Maglie when he tried separatin' the two pit bulls.”

“So, even if it was your bullet that killed him, it's Arpee's fault?”

“It wasn't my bullet. You don't know that.”

Beads of sweat had begun to appear all over Cap Blanchard's face, meeting at weathered crevices in his cheeks and becoming droplets. He wiped at them with stubby fingers. “I think it's about time I talked to a lawyer,” he said.

Lita slammed her notebook down on the table. “By all means, don't make it easy on yourself, Mr. Blanchard. The felonies are stacking up against you, and I'll enjoy watching the D.A. pluck your bones.”

“You strike me as the kind who would,” he mumbled, sitting back and locking his fingers behind his head.

I laid into Arpee Savoie next, twisted the truth and shuttled a few sanguine lies past him. He stuck to his story. It was an accident, he said, and he took the opportunity to lash out at the purported claims of Cap Blanchard.

“He may be my partner, but he's an idiot. If it weren't for me, he'd be on a rock pile in Angola or somewhere.”

“That may still be an option,” quipped Lita, “for both of you.”

“You're not gonna railroad me for something that ain't my fault.”

“Oh, you have a ticket on the train, all right. The only question is—does it lead to the death house.” Lita was enjoying herself.

Arpee lawyered up before I could ask him anything else. I decided to take a break and talk with Tip Landry, see what he'd come up with on the suspects, before I turned my attention to Penny Savoie.

When I walked out of the interrogation room, a lone ray of sunlight was beaming through a west window, dust particles floating in the light. I checked my desk for notes and found a list of names and phone numbers. At the bottom of the page, Tip had drawn a crude picture of a stick man sporting a badge and being urinated on by a stick dog. The dog was labeled “L.G.” and my name was above the stick man. I stifled a belly laugh, looked around to see if Lita had followed me into the room, then took my pen and scribbled through the sketch until it was no longer recognizable. Tip came out of the coffee room as I sat down.

“You see my note?” he said, his face creased with a grin.

He pulled up a chair and sat down next to me. Then, one by one he went through the lowdown on the people who'd been arrested at Patin's . He even came up with a few

more witnesses who'd fled the scene and later identified each other when confronted with arrest on suspicion. All in all, twenty additional patrons came forward. As a group, they'd

painted a picture that was nearly identical to that of the suspects. It was the background information that they offered which shed the most light on what might have happened.

“...and this one guy said dat Arpee Savoie and Maglie had an argument—I ‘tink he called it a shovin' match—rat before all hell broke loose—”

The faster Tip talked, the more his Acadian heritage manifested itself in thick brogue laced with Cajun epithets.

“—ca c'est merde! ...croche comme un baril de serpents! Dey was all crooked, yeah.”

He'd confirmed Patin's reputation for illegal gambling, drug activity, and prostitution, and the seething relationships between Cap Blanchard, Arpee Savoie, Penny Savoie, and the victim, Maglie Dugat. Still, we had little evidence of what had actually happened, or who was responsible. The argument, the shooting, the clumsy attempt to cover up after the fact—this all pointed a bloody finger at Arpee. I needed to break his sister down, get her to give up her brother, and suddenly I had an idea just how to do it.

I saw Lita Guidry walk into the coffee room, and I followed.

“Tip told me that Penny Savoie and Maglie had a real thing going,” I said, “and Arpee didn't approve.”

Lita turned and her eyes braced me as if I'd just stumbled upon a blatant common knowledge.

“Exactly what Cap Blanchard said. So what?”

“A witness says that Maglie was dumping her for a stripper. Maybe Arpee liked that even less—making a fool out of his sister.”

“So?”

“So, if Penny thinks her brother killed her lover on purpose—”

Lita finished my sentence. “Maybe she turns on him.”

Her face softened for a moment, then hinted a smile, like a hunter who's just

drawn a bead on a six-point buck. “Let's do it,” she said, walking back into the office.

“Get me the M.E. on the phone,” she told the desk clerk, “and I need Penny Savoie in

the interrogation room. I'll be there in a minute,” she added, motioning for me to go on

ahead.

Penny Savoie looked like a cross between Cher Bono and the lead singer of K.I.S.S., her

eyelids darkened in gothic makeup, her lips as red as candied cherries. Her long, black hair hung tousled and sporadic around her shoulders, adding to the image. When they ushered her in, she looked around as if bewildered.

“Have a seat Miss Savoie. I need to ask you some questions.” I pointed to a chair opposite me at the table.

She sat down and slumped over on her elbows. “I don't know why I'm here,” she said, staring up at the ceiling. “I haven't done anything.”

“Maybe. But, you were there, and we need some help sorting things out.”

Lita stepped into the room and took a chair next to me. She immediately began writing on her pad and nodded at me to proceed.

“We won't take much of your time, Miss Savoie, so I'll get right to the point. Did your brother have any reason to kill Maglie Dugat?”

Penny flicked her tongue at the edge of her mouth, her eyes pensive. “Of course not. The whole thing was just a terrible accident. Arpee was trying to save Maglie's life.”

“Then why was he cleaning up...why was he taking the body somewhere to hide it?”

“He was scared,” she said, her voice jumping three octaves, “we all were.”

“Isn't it true that your brother knew about your affair with Maglie, and argued with him...threatened him right before the shooting?”

Penny avoided looking at either of us; stared down at her hands. “They were talking about the money...Maglie owed him...it was a loan. Mag was just a little late, that's all.”

I leaned across the table and cupped her chin in my hand, jerked her head up. “Look at me, Penny. Maglie was trading you in, wasn't he—after all you'd been to each other—he was swapping you for a stripper, wasn't he?”

Her dark brown eyes flinted. She swatted away my hand. “No! That's not how it was...he loved me...we were going to get married. He promised!”

She clamped her hands to her face, spread her fingers into claws, and dug them into her cheeks.

I bored in. “And Arpee didn't like it...he changed all that. It was the perfect opportunity, and he took it, didn't he?”

“No, I told you! It was an accident. Arpee didn't mean it...Cap didn't mean it...they were

trying to help, dammit!”

Lita nudged my elbow, leaned over and showed me what she had written on her pad. It was the M.E.'s findings. I sat back, unprepared.

“Miss Savoie,” Lita began, “would it surprise you to know that Maglie died of suffocation?”

“H-he what? From...from the blood? He choked on the blood?”

“I didn't say that, Miss Savoie. He was suffocated. The coroner's report says somebody probably held their hand over his mouth and nose...until he was dead. Seems someone couldn't wait for him to bleed to death, huh?”

Lita winked at me, and I took her lead. “It'll all come out, Penny...the motives, the shooting, the suffocation...the failed attempts to cover it up. If you don't want to be convicted as an accessory, you better give Arpee up while you can.”

The girl pushed back in her chair so hard that she fell over, twisting to regain her balance as she reached and caught nothing but air. She rolled over, groaning and holding her head. I stood up to help her; Lita was already at her side. What happened next was a policeman's worst nightmare.

Suddenly, as Lita reached to take her arm, Penny tripped her and, in one calculated move, wrenched the gun from Lita's holster. She sprang to her feet, waving the pistol back and forth—first at me, then at Lita.

“It would've all been fine,” Penny yelled, “ if Cap or Arpee either one could shoot worth a damn! But they wanted to get the sonofabitch to a doctor. Their precious money, I guess. Forget Penny, she's expendable. Don't mind that Maglie's jilting her for trailer trash! I had to finish the job—I hate Arpee. I hate them all!”

Lita struggled to get up; I stood with my hands on the table.

“Don't move, bitch! One more won't make a lot of difference, will it?” Penny screamed.

“You were playing me weren't you? You and that damn coroner. You had no intention of laying it on Arpee, did you?”

I tried to calm her down, distract her. “Penny, you're only making things worse for yourself. Maybe there were extenuating circumstances, but killing one of us would be murder—a death penalty—because you won't get out of here alive, I can assure you.”

“Go to hell! They'll burn me anyway...only, I'm not hanging around for that. You're going to help me get out of here.”

She stuck the gun in Lita's face. I pushed my chair back with my foot, scraping it on the floor causing Penny to turn back to me. I nodded at Lita, as if she were to perform some predetermined heroic act. As Lita began rolling along the floor away from her tormentor, Penny whirled around just as I summoned all my strength and flung the table up into the air and toward her. The first gunshot struck wood, splintering the table edge as it came down upon her. The second hit the floor behind Lita and ricocheted into her leg. I was all over Penny Savoie before she could fire another round.

“Let me go, you sonofabitch!”

I struck her in the face, full force with my fist. Her head hit the floor, the gun went flying across the room. Though she appeared unconscious, I hit her again for good measure, raking my knuckles against her exposed teeth. The door burst open and Tip Landry rushed through, followed by Lieutenant Marquand and every cop within hearing distance. They all had guns drawn.

“Somebody get this garbage out of here,” I said, pointing to Penny Savoie, “and call an ambulance, I believe Miss Lita's been shot.”

I walked over to where Lita was sitting propped against the wall, her left hand clasped against her thigh, blood oozing between her fingers. Her face was already pale, and perspiration dotted her brow.

“You going to make it?” I said, eyeing the flesh wound.

“Yeah,” she said hoarsely, “it's not my kicking leg.”

“Huh?”

“The one I was gonna use to kick your ass if you didn't get to her in time.”

“Chere, if I hadn't made it—it wouldn't matter, now would it?”

Lita smiled, and again I saw a softness and beauty in the dimpling of her face. I knelt down, and, without thinking, pushed an errant curl back from her eyes.

“How about a smoke?” she whispered.

“You know I don't—”

“Not you...me, you moron.”

I laughed; she joined in, a harmonious thing, as if we'd been sharing intimate moments for quite some time.

“You know it's against the ‘regs'—smoke-free building and all. And second-hand smoke could kill me,” I joked, reaching in her breast pocket and retrieving her cigarillos.

“That's not half as bad as what'll happen to you if you don't give me one.” She let me put one in her mouth, light it for her, and then she inhaled deeply. “I messed up, didn't I?”

There was suddenly a haze of anxiety in her eyes, and her countenance drooped.

“It could happen to anyone,” I said softly.

She'd broken a rule—no guns in the interrogation room. But she was still learning and it wouldn't happen again. I was sure of it. As the stark scent of cigarillo mixed with the faint smell of her perfume, I leaned over and whispered in her ear.

“You're a good cop, Miss Lita. Everything will work out.”

Her pallor was deeper now, but she turned up her nose and did her best to flash me a grin.

“That's Detective Guidry to you, Jamie...and thanks.”

The paramedics barreled through the door, pushing a gurney. I watched as they tended to her, and listened to her tell them what they should do, what they could do, and what they ought to do.

Yes, sir, Lita Guidry had the attitude, the smarts, and that ‘something' that bothered me—something that I was absolutely sure had nothing to do with her qualifications for detective. She reached for my hand as they carted her out.

“Didn't you think it was Arpee who did it?” I asked.

“Not a chance. I knew who it was all the time,” she said, smiling again. The lie twinkled in her eyes, all the way out the door.

After they took her out, I repeated all that had happened to Marquand, right up to the time that they hauled Penny Savoie off to a cell. Then I sat down to do my reports. But there was something still bothering me, and I had to deal with it now, or be plagued by it again. I hoped that I wasn't too late.

I found out from Pete Dozier that the dead pit bull was on ice in a cooler in the evidence room. I gave no explanation for why I wanted to see it. I walked outside, stared up at a tentative, gray-mushroom sky that seemed intent upon squelching the sun that was burgeoning from the other side of thick cloud cover. In spots, small rays had burned their way through, and darted earthward in bright, triumphant beams. I walked next door to the Auxiliary Building.

As I closed the door of the evidence room behind me, I thought about the ramifications of the case. Arpee Savoie and Cap Blanchard would go down for a number of things—dog fighting was only the beginning. Witnesses were lining up, in hopes of avoiding personal arrest, to build a case that would send them away for a long prison stint. Penny Savoie would take the hard fall, maybe even murder one, and would have plenty of time to reflect on the moment she chose darkness over light. Mala Dugat would continue to believe that her son could do no wrong, and she'd probably take that belief to her grave one day.

I walked into the cooler and found the large ice chest marked Case# 666. I cut the police tape, raised the lid, and peered inside. Even packed in ice, the pit bull appeared to have begun a characteristic drawing of its features, its lips receding from around the teeth. I turned the chest so that I could see the eyes.

You're dead, I thought. You're not coming back. Do you hear? Leave me alone! Leave us all alone.

I still saw the tombstones, but now I could read most of the names—the Rue-Jeans of this world , trained for evil, and the countless hordes of terrorists and assassins and perverts that had purposely aligned themselves with and become part of the darkest elements of humanity. Looking into those blank, bottomless eyes, I still felt a twinge of fear. But, now, for the time being at least, I had it under control. I spat into the ice chest, then closed it tight. I locked up behind me, gave the key to the clerk, and told him that he'd need to reseal evidence box Case# 666. Then I walked outside into a substantive, gold-etched sky, brimming with expectant pearl clouds. For a moment, as a soothing breeze caressed my face, I thought I detected a hint of Miss Lita's cologne, mixed with the brash smell of a cigarillo.

End