Sleeping With the Crawfish Read online

  Broussard looked briefly at his card and put it on the desk. “I’ll do that.”

  “Kit, it’s essential you tell no one what you’re doing for us,” Bellair said. “Not your boyfriend, not your parents . . . no one. That goes for you, too, Andy.”

  “Gonna be kind of hard to keep my Memphis homicide detective in the dark.”

  “Do the best you can. If he presses you hard, refer him to Brian. Are we all agreed?”

  Broussard nodded. When Kit did the same, Bellair sealed the bargain with another big smile.

  “If you’re free, we can go out to the firing range right now,” Tabor suggested.

  Reluctantly, Kit agreed to that, too, and the meeting was over.

  Broussard saw them all out, then returned to his chair, where he popped a lemon ball into his mouth and lapsed into thought, idly tapping Tabor’s business card on the desk while he pictured all the trouble Kit could get into. If he had the power, he’d have probably forbidden her to help them. Though she didn’t believe it herself, she was about as resourceful a person as he’d ever known. But this could turn into more than she could handle.

  It was tough, this caring for people.

  Needing to get his mind back on morgue business and the loose ends he had to tie up before leaving for Memphis, he reached for his wallet to put Tabor’s card away. As he did, he saw that Tabor had mistakenly given him a card with someone else’s name and phone number written on the back, someone named P. Bates. But it was too late now to catch him. He’d mention it next time they spoke.

  TABOR AND THE GOVERNOR had come down from Baton Rouge in separate cars. Surprisingly, Bellair had driven himself, an unpretentious act that made Kit respect him even more than before they’d met. Before Bellair left to go back to the capital, he again shook Kit’s hand warmly and thanked her for helping. He promised to have her to the mansion for dinner when this was all over.

  Kit was afraid the lot where she’d parked would be closed when they got back from the firing range, so before they left, they dropped her rental car off at Nolen’s garage.

  As they finally got under way, Tabor asked, “Have you ever shot a pistol of any kind?”

  “My boyfriend taught me how to use his. It’s a twentytwo-caliber revolver.”

  “You’ll find that a thirty-eight has a good bit more kick.”

  “Couldn’t I have a twenty-two?”

  “They don’t have enough stopping power.” He took his eyes off the road and glanced at her. “I have to say, I admire your courage.”

  “I’m not courageous so much as easily outraged. I don’t like to be manipulated and I’m not good at turning the other cheek. I suppose it’s a character flaw.”

  “Not to me. What does your boyfriend do?”

  “He’s an alligator farmer in Bayou Coteau, a little town about sixty miles from Baton Rouge.”

  “Long-distance relationship, huh?”

  “We’re together mostly on weekends. I know that seems odd, but it has its advantages.”

  “So you’ll see him tomorrow?” As he said the word tomorrow, he made a thumbs-up gesture by his cheek and twitched his thumb toward his ear.

  “He’ll be here by breakfast,” Kit said.

  “You’re probably going to feel guilty about keeping this from him.”

  “I know.”

  “He’ll be here the whole weekend?”

  “He usually leaves Monday morning.”

  “What time? We’ll need to get you to Agrilabs Monday to apply for that job, and I have to show you where your résumé says you live.”

  “He’s always gone by six.”

  “How about I come by at eight, then?”

  “All right.”

  “We’ll be going in separate cars.”

  “I assumed as much.”

  Tabor checked the rearview mirror and changed lanes to pass a car whose left-rear tire was wobbling as if it were about to come off. “What’s your boyfriend’s name?”

  “Teddy LaBiche.”

  “I’ll bet the fact we’re even talking about hiding this from Ted bothers you.”

  “I don’t deny it.”

  “By Sunday night, the temptation to tell him will likely be unbearable.”

  “You’re suggesting I won’t keep my word?”

  “I simply want you to be prepared for that moment. Also, since by your own admission you’re not a gun person, it could be very awkward for you if he should find the one I’m going to give you.”

  “Do you own a lot of tools?”

  “A fair number, why?”

  “I’ll bet most of them are hanging on a Peg-Board with their outlines drawn behind them.”

  He looked at Kit and grinned. “Did I enjoy being in the army?”

  “The order appealed to you, but there were a lot of procedures you felt were poorly thought out.”

  “You make me feel like I’ve got a little window in my skull.”

  “We all do. It’s just a matter of recognizing what can be seen through it.”

  The firing range was thirty minutes from the heart of New Orleans, at the end of a rudimentary road that, had Kit not heard the sound of gunfire ahead, would have had her believing Tabor had lost his way. Eventually, they emerged from the scrub into a clearing that contained, to their right, a small lake surrounded by cattails. Three armed men facing the lake across a stretch of grass were knocking skeet from the sky. Straight ahead, under a long, low roof, a dozen people with their backs to the road were peppering targets with their weapons.

  Tabor parked next to a purple Silverado that blocked Kit’s view of the skeet shooters. He shut off the engine. “It’ll be noisy out there, so before we go, I’ll tell you how the range operates. It functions in cycles. You shoot for fifteen minutes; then the range supervisor shuts it down so everybody can go and check their targets. When it’s shut down, all weapons are unloaded and all revolver cylinders are left open and the clips of automatics removed so the range attendant can verify that. Everybody then steps behind the yellow line that runs the length of the place. The gate to the target area is then opened. During shutdown, no one is allowed to cross the yellow line. After a sufficient time to examine and adjust targets, a one-minute warning is issued. When everybody is out of the target area, the line is once again declared hot. Okay?”

  Kit nodded.

  “I notice you’re right-handed. Is that also your dominant eye?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s get out and see.”

  She joined him at the trunk of the car, where he told her to stand facing him. “Now, make a triangle with your two hands and your thumbs like this and then look at me through it.”

  Kit did that.

  “Now, move the triangle close to your face. . . . Keep watching me. . . . Ah, you’re cross-dominant.”

  She had brought the triangle to her left eye.

  “Is that bad?”

  “No, it just means we have to adjust for that in your stance.”

  Tabor unlocked the trunk and opened his briefcase. He transferred the Ladysmith into a gym bag, then hauled the bag out and locked the trunk. “C’mon.”

  She followed him to a small office situated between the left and right wings of the range. Windows on three sides gave the man occupying it full visibility of the firing positions and the targets downrange.

  “I need to stop in here and pay the fee.” He put the gym bag down and went into the office. When he returned, he reached in the bag and brought out two objects that looked like radio announcer headsets. He offered her one of them. “Put this on. It’ll protect your hearing.”

  He didn’t have as much hair as she did, so he got his on first.

  “Can you hear me?”

  It wasn’t great, but she could make out what he’d said, so she nodded.

  “Good. Bring the bag.”

  He went to some bins containing targets on legs, chose one with four separate sets of concentric rings on it, and carried it to the firing
line entrance, where he showed his receipt to an attendant wearing an orange vest over blue work clothes. Satisfied they weren’t trying to sneak in, the attendant pointed to an open cubicle four down on the left. Over a loudspeaker, a voice said, “ONE MINUTE.”

  Reaching the assigned spot, Tabor got out the Ladysmith, along with one blue and one yellow plastic box, each containing about fifty rounds of ammunition, and put them on the carpet-covered work surface in front of him. Around them, the air was filled with pregnant explosions whose issue ripped into the paper targets downrange and kicked up dirt behind them. Beyond the farthest target, an earthen berm as tall as a house ensured that no flying slug found its way into a passerby.

  In the cubicle next to theirs, a guy wearing a leather glove with no fingers was firing from a sitting position on an upturned bucket, his pistol resting on a sandbag. The expression on his face was positively orgasmic. Kit was searching her mind for any studies she’d read to corroborate her intuitive belief that there was likely an inverse relationship between penis length and the size of a man’s favorite handgun when the loudspeaker announced, “THE RANGE IS NOW CLOSED.”

  Tabor motioned her to the bench behind the yellow line, where they removed their ear protection and waited for the other shooters to unload and step back. When the attendant had verified that cylinders were empty and clips removed, he opened the gate to the target area.

  “No need for you to come,” Tabor said. He took the target he’d picked out earlier to a spot about seven yards in front of their cubicle and threaded its legs into two plastic pipes in the ground. He then came back and sat down.

  With nothing else to do, Kit broached a subject she’d been curious about since they’d first met. “I was wondering—a couple of times in Andy’s office when you mentioned phones, you made a gesture like a telephone next to your ear. And talking on the way over here, you did a little thing next to your cheek. Why?”

  Tabor reached in his back pocket, took out his wallet, and showed her a picture of a pretty little girl. “That’s Ellie.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “Yeah. She’s ten. She was born with a heart defect and an absence of the apparatus in her ears that receives sound. The doctors think her mother may have had a mild case of German measles we didn’t notice during the first part of her pregnancy. That’s when the heart and ears are most susceptible. They were able to repair her heart, but they couldn’t do anything for her hearing. I’m so used to signing with her, I sometimes do it in normal conversation.”

  “She’s a beautiful girl.”

  “And despite all she’s gone through, she’s happy all the time. I wouldn’t trade her for any other kid in the world. They say you don’t become part of the human race until you’ve had kids. I never knew what that meant until Ellie came along.” A flicker of recognition that he was talking to someone who didn’t have kids crossed his face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . gloat.”

  “No apologies needed. You’ve got every right to be proud.”

  “THE LINE IS NOW HOT.”

  They donned their ear protection and returned to their firing position, where Tabor closed the empty cylinder on the Ladysmith. “We’ll start with stance and some dry firing. Since you’re cross-dominant, you’ll want your left leg slightly forward, right hand around the grip, left hand supporting it like this, thumbs out of the way.” He raised the gun and sighted along it with his left eye. “Elbows slightly bent. Here, you try.”

  Kit took the gun and assumed the stance he’d demonstrated.

  “Good. Now, you know about sighting?”

  “Front sight centered and its top level with the top of the rear sight. Top of front sight centered on the target.”

  “Very good. Let’s see your trigger work.”

  She squeezed the trigger three times.

  “Excellent. Let’s try the real thing.”

  He took the gun and loaded it from the blue plastic box, then handed it back. “Start with the target on the upper left.”

  Her first shot was wide of the outer ring of the target by a good two inches and the kick threw her hands up. “Wow, that’s powerful,” she exclaimed.

  “Try again.”

  The next shot nicked the outer ring, but again it kicked her hands up.

  “You’ll get it.”

  She emptied the gun at the target, getting close to the bull’seye and controlling the kick better with each round. Tabor removed the spent shells from the cylinder, reloaded from the blue box, and handed the gun back. This time, she put one round dead center and five in a tight cluster around the bull’s-eye.

  “Damned if you haven’t got a shooter’s eye,” Tabor said.

  It was better than she’d ever shot with Teddy’s .22, maybe because he’d never realized she was cross-dominant.

  “Wasn’t that fun?” Tabor said.

  “Not particularly.”

  She handed him the gun and he reloaded it from the blue box. “Now, I want you to imagine the target is an armed man . . . and the bull’s-eye is the center of his chest—that’s where you aim, not the head. I want you to fire each round as quickly as you can and still be accurate.”

  “New target?”

  “Upper right.”

  She took the gun, quickly lined up the target, and fired the six rounds in rapid succession, most of the time between shots being consumed by resighting after the kick. The result was only slightly inferior in accuracy to the previous six rounds.

  “Good placement, speed a little slow,” Tabor said, holding his hand out for the gun.

  “Can we go?”

  He loaded the gun again and put the blue box in the gym bag. “Six more rounds and we’ll leave,” he said, handing her the gun. “Control that kick now. Lower-left target.”

  Her final six rounds were the fastest yet and were crowded around dead center. Tabor shook his head in admiration. “Best teaching job I ever did.”

  She gave him the gun, happy to be rid of it, and watched while he reloaded all six chambers from the remaining box of cartridges. He then slipped the gun into the holster and put everything in the bag.

  “Aren’t you supposed to leave the chamber under the hammer empty to keep the gun from firing accidentally?” Kit asked.

  “Not with modern revolvers.”

  Following Tabor’s lead, Kit left her ear protection on until they reached the car, where Tabor put both headsets in the trunk along with the bag. Before closing the trunk, he again got out the holstered Ladysmith. “I want to show you how to wear this. Put your foot on the bumper and pull your pant leg up to the knee.”

  She did as he said and he strapped the holster to her leg about four inches above her ankle, one Velcro strap encircling her calf at holster level, another that stabilized it above the first, four inches below her knee. He then pulled her pant leg down.

  “How’s that feel?” Coincident with the word feel, his middle finger went to his chest and he flicked it upward in another gesture he’d learned for his daughter.

  Kit put her foot on the ground and took a few steps.

  “Uncomfortable.”

  “You’ll get used to it. You may need to adjust the tension on the straps. It looks good.”

  “I feel like I should get a tattoo or buy some cigars.”

  “C’mon. I’ll take you home.”

  Before leaving the parking lot, Tabor gave her another pointer. “If the time comes when you need to use the gun, fire twice before checking to see what you’ve accomplished. That way, you’ll still have a few rounds left for dealing with any unexpected circumstances or to finish off your primary target. Now, there’s one other issue. I’m convinced you’ve got the technical skills to protect yourself and you’ve got the tactical know-how. But have you got the character?”

  “You think I lack character?”

  “I’m not talking about it in the usual sense. Before I let you go into that institute, I’ve got to know you have the strength to use deadly force against anoth
er human being.”

  “If it means saving my life, count on it.”

  Tabor looked deeply into Kit’s eyes, searching for affirmation of the resolve she’d expressed. Apparently finding it, he said, “I believe you.”

  Thirty minutes later, as she was getting out of the car in front of the photo gallery, he stopped her. “Wait, you forgot these.” He pulled the briefcase onto the front seat and got out the Baggie containing the recording equipment and handed it to her.

  “Isn’t this premature?” she asked. “What if they don’t hire me?”

  “They will. Don’t bother bringing a recorder on Monday. It’s not likely you’ll get a crack at rigging it that soon. And even if you see what appears to be an opportunity, your unfamiliarity with the routines of the place will make you unqualified to judge. Don’t forget the gun. You should spend some time between now and Monday studying your résumé—not in front of your boyfriend, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Watching him drive away, the Bee Gees began playing in her head. “Stayin’ alive . . . stayin’ alive.”

  Good God. What had she gotten herself into?

  11

  Tabor picked Kit up at eight Monday morning as planned and they headed for Nolen’s garage.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Kit said. “If I’ve got all this great technical ability, why have I suddenly appeared in this town where there’s probably only one possible place I could be employed to use it?”

  “Your family lived there when you were a child. But your father moved you all to New York State, where he operated a small hardware store until the big chains drove him out of business. He retired after that and died last year. As so often happens when one member of a couple passes on, your mother followed him two months ago. Then the long-term relationship you’d been in deteriorated and suddenly you were all alone. Needing time to think, and remembering the happy times when you all lived in Louisiana, you decided to come home for a while.”

  “Do I have any relatives nearby?”

  “Your mother’s sister lived in Sorrento, but she’s gone now, too.”

  “Isn’t that a dangerous story? Suppose I meet someone at the institute whose family has lived in the area forever and they start asking me questions about when I lived there?”