The Neon Rain by Burke James Lee

Author:Burke, James Lee [Burke, James Lee]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery, Mystery & Detective - General, Private Investigators, Detective and Mystery Stories, Crime & mystery, Private investigators - Louisiana - New Iberia, Mystery & Detective, Fiction - Mystery, Detective, Hard-Boiled, General, Robicheaux, Police Procedural, Suspense, Women Sleuths, Mystery Fiction, Fiction, Dave (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 0753820331
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 1987-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

I waited until dawn to hit Starkweather’s fish camp. Clouds of fog swirled off the bayou through the flooded woods as I banged over an old board road that had been cut through the swamp by an oil company. The dead cypresses were wet and black in the gray light, and green lichen grew where the waterline touched the swollen bases of the trunks. The fog was so thick and white in the trees that I could barely see thirty feet ahead of the car. A rotted plank snapped under my wheel and whanged off the oil pan. In the early morning stillness the sound made the herons and egrets rise in a sudden flapping of wings toward the pink light above the treetops. Then to one side of the road, in a scoured-out clearing in the trees, I saw a shack built of Montgomery Ward brick and clapboard, elevated from the muddy ground by cinder blocks and cypress stumps, with a Toyota jeep parked in front. A knobby beagle that looked like it had been hit with birdshot was tied to the front porch.

I cut the car’s ignition in the center of the road, opened the door quietly, and walked through the wet trees on one side of the clearing until I was abreast of the porch. The oaks that ringed the clearing were covered with shredded rifle targets; perforated tin cans and shattered bottles dangled from bits of baling wire; the bark on the trunks was ripped and gouged white by bullets.

The screen door to the shack was ajar, but I couldn’t see or hear any movement inside. Out back, hogs were snuffing and grunting inside a wood pen.

I pulled back the receiver on my .45 and eased a round from the clip into the chamber. I took a deep breath, then raced across the dirt yard, cleared the porch steps in one jump, almost caused the beagle to break its neck on its rope, and crashed through the screen door.

I crouched and swung the .45 around the room, my heart hammering against my ribcage, my eyes wide in the gloom. The wooden floor was littered with beer cans, bread wrappers, Red Man pouches, chicken bones, bottle caps, and the chewed stuffing from a rotted mattress that was piled in the corner. But there was nobody in the room. Then someone slid back the curtain on the doorway to the single bedroom in back. I aimed the .45 right at her face, both of my hands sweating on the grip.

“Wow, who the fuck are you?” she said drowsily. She was maybe twenty and wore cut-off blue jeans and only a bra for a top. Her face looked numb, dead, and she had to keep widening her eyes to focus on me. Her hair was the color of weathered wood.

“Where’s Starkweather?” I said.

“I think he went out back with that other dude. Are you the heat or something?”

I pushed open the back screen and dropped into the yard. In

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