Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 50, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2005

A Good Shooting by O’Neil De Noux

The body lay in the street next to a beat-up green Ford Escort, a heavy-set man in a gray T-shirt and jeans, a blue steel semiautomatic pistol lying two feet from his right hand. Detective John Raven Beau, standing in his shirt sleeves on the neutral ground along the center of St. Charles Avenue, loosened his crimson tie with its geometric design that wasn’t a geometric design at all. A closer look would reveal the small white circles were actually human skulls. Went with the territory, working Homicide.

Beau waited for a streetcar to pass, tucking his leather-bound notebook under his left arm and watching the curious faces peering out at the crime scene as the green and brown electric car clanked by, heading downtown. Beau at six-two, a lean one-eighty pounds, was thirty. He was a square-jawed man with dark brown hair and light brown eyes beneath a hooded brow. His sharp nose gave him a hawklike appearance. On his right hip sat his 9mm Beretta Model 92-F, snug in its black canvas holster, his gold star-and-crescent New Orleans Police badge clipped to his belt above the left front pocket of his dark blue suit pants.

The crime scene encompassed the uptown-riverside intersection of St. Charles and Burdette Street, including the corner drugstore and the body in the street. Beau’s sergeant, Jodie Kintyre, stood alongside the drugstore with a young patrol officer. Jodie, five-seven, a sleek one-ten, wore her yellow-blonde hair in a long pageboy cut. Her dark green skirt-suit brought out the color in her catlike hazel eyes, which she blinked at Beau as he stepped up.

“This is Frank Willard,” she said, nodding to the patrol officer whose dark brown face shimmered with perspiration on this typically humid summer afternoon. Willard was twenty-two and stood five-nine, with a thick-bodied wrestler’s build.

She gave Beau the rundown in quick sentences. Willard responded to a Signal 64, an armed robbery, at the drugstore and caught the robber on the way out. There was an exchange of gunshots. The robber missed. Willard didn’t.

“We have six eyewitnesses inside.” Jodie nodded at the drugstore. “Snowood’s taking statements. Stay with Willard till the lab’s done with him and take him to the Bureau.” She tapped Willard on the shoulder. “Don’t talk to anyone but me and Detective Beau here until we take your statement.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Call me Sergeant or Detective Kintyre or Jodie, just not ma’am.” She hurried off to join the crime scene technician who’d just arrived with his camera and brown evidence case. Beau smiled to himself. At thirty-six, Jodie was getting sensitive when anyone called her ma’am, unless it was a little kid.

Willard looked up at Beau and said, “Hope the old woman’s gonna be all right.”

“Hope you’re not talking about Jodie.”

“From inside. Behind the counter. Robber pistol-whipped her. Lotta blood.”

Jesus!

“What did your sergeant mean, till they’re done with me?”

“They’ll secure your weapon, then swab your hands for a neutron activation test to determine if you fired a firearm. Perpetrator too. That’s it.”

Willard leaned back against the brick wall of the drugstore and let out a long breath. He looked so damn young to Beau, who tried reassuring him. “I know what you’re going through, man. I’ve been through it. More than once.”

Willard turned his dark brown eyes to Beau and said, “I feel sick.”

“Don’t throw up on me.”

“No, not like that.” Willard closed his eyes. “I just feel like... jelly inside.”

“Not like in the movies, is it? Shoot a man and stand over him making wisecracks. You feel crappy, even when you do it right.” Beau watched Willard breathing heavily. “Relax. It looks like a good shooting.”

“I don’t know how he missed me. Face to face like that.” He gasped as if struggling to breathe. “We should teach how to duck and shoot at the range. I was duckin’, man.”

Beau faced him and said, “Relax. Save it for your statement. Now breathe normally.”

Willard nodded and started controlling his breathing. His eyes opened after a minute. “What’s your name again?”

“Beau.”

“As in John Raven Beau?”

Even rookies heard of me, Beau thought. It wasn’t a satisfying thought.

Willard’s eyes changed, a recognition maybe, a bonding maybe, standing with John Raven Beau, the half-Sioux, half-Cajun cop who always got his man, one way or the other. Beau was sure Willard thought he’d killed a dozen men at least, when the number was three, exactly. All good shootings. Justifiable homicides, declared by separate grand juries.

A streetcar heading uptown stopped and Beau automatically checked out who came off: a teen girl in white polo shirt and red shorts, a teen boy in green T-shirt and khaki pants, and a redheaded woman, late twenties, wearing blue nurse’s scrubs and white tennis shoes. Beau watched her stand motionless, staring at the crime scene as the streetcar pulled away.

She remained frozen in place, just staring at the body in the street.

Beau stepped away from the drugstore and flagged down a passing patrol car. Must have been a slow day in the Second District with all the cop cars passing, drawn to the scene like moths to a light bulb. The cop leaned over and rolled down the passenger-side window so Beau could lean in and ask, “Could you park your unit over there to block the view of the body from the streetcar?”

“Sure,” the eager cop said, pulling into the intersection, hitting his blue lights. His name tag read BERTUCCI. Another rookie.

When Beau looked back at the woman in nurse’s scrubs, he saw her crossing the street heading straight for him. As she arrived, he could see tears in her eyes. She was about five-five, a hundred pounds. She had a very pretty face. Up close, her hair looked strawberry blonde.

She pointed a shaky hand toward the body and said, “I think that’s my husband.”

Beau gently took her elbow and led her away from everyone down to the end of the drugstore and had her lean back against the wall. He pulled his portable radio from his back pocket and called Jodie.

“Can you come around the corner?”

Jodie came immediately and Beau moved toward her, keeping a wary eye on the strawberry blonde.

“You have the robber’s name yet?”

“We’re just going through his wallet now. John Clay.”

Beau led the way back to the woman and asked for her husband’s name.

“John Clay.” She wiped her eyes and Beau could see they were blue ovals.

“Talk to her,” Jodie said, returning to the body.

Beau took the woman’s elbow again and led her to the high curb and sat her down, sitting next to her, feet in the street, but not far enough to worry about passing cars.

“I’m Detective Beau,” he began, letting his voice drop. “It is your husband.”

She nodded and sucked in a deep breath. Then she put her head between her knees.

Beau waved to Officer Bertucci. Pulling out a buck he said, “Go in the drugstore and get me a couple Cokes. Make sure they’re cold.” He glanced back at Willard, who was taking it all in. “You want something to drink?”

Willard shook his head as he watched the strawberry blonde.

“I don’t think they’re open.” Bertucci pointed at the drugstore.

“Then go inside and steal two Cokes. I won’t call the police.” Bertucci gave Beau the I-know-I’m-a-rookie-and-the-butt-of-another-joke look, until Beau narrowed his eyes and said, “Go!”

As Bertucci entered the store, Jodie came back around and waved Willard to the crime lab technician.

Beau leaned close and asked the robber’s wife, “You okay?”

“I’m trying.”

“What’s your name?”

“Barbara Clay.”

He picked up a scent of her perfume now, sweet but not strong. She sat up straight and pulled her hair away from her face, then reached into her small purse for a Kleenex to wipe her face.

“I knew something like this was going to happen.”

“Something like what?”

She stood suddenly and Beau got up as Bertucci came out with two cans of Diet Coke, saying that was all they had. She waved hers away but Beau took both.

“The Ford Escort around the corner,” Barbara said. “It’s ours.”

She looked back at Beau and said, “You’ll want to come home with me. I have the receipts for his guns.”

“Where do you live?”

“Two blocks away.”

Beau turned to wave at Jodie and bumped into Bertucci standing there with the dollar in his hand.

“Go back inside and put the dollar next to the cash register.”

“Yes, sir.” Bertucci bounced away.

Beau waved Jodie over and handed her a Coke.

“Thanks.” She popped the cap immediately.

He told her about the Ford Escort and the gun receipts.

Jodie nodded. “Get what you can from her.” She raised the Coke but stopped at the deadpan look on Beau’s face. “You know what I mean.” She poked him in the ribs. “I’ll get someone to take Willard’s statement.”

Beau moved back to Barbara Clay and pointed across the street at his unmarked Chevy Caprice. “Why walk when we can ride?”

“I need to walk,” Barbara said as she started to cross St. Charles. Beau went with her. They crossed to the neutral ground, pausing for uptown traffic along the far side of the avenue before crossing to the sidewalk.

Barbara suddenly turned and looked into Beau’s eyes. “Did anyone else get hurt?”

“He beat up an elderly woman.”

Tears filled her eyes again and she leaned back against the Caprice. Beau waited, notebook under his right arm, Coke in his left hand. He looked around for a passerby who might be thirsty when Barbara reached for the soft drink, popped it open, and took a deep draught. Beau noticed a fresh, purple bruise on her forearm and two older, yellowish bruises above her elbow.

She took a moment to catch her breath, wiping the tears away with her fingers. She raised the soft drink without looking up and said, “Thanks. Really.” She pushed off the car, and Beau settled in next to her as they moved down the avenue, passing beneath the wide branches of the oaks, the air musty and smelling like chlorophyll now. The scent was familiar to Beau, who was raised on a small bayou just off Vermilion Bay, in swampy southwest Louisiana.

They turned up Adams Street, crossed to the other side up to Hampson. Barbara dug keys out of her purse and pointed to a two story apartment house.

“In back,” she said, guiding him through a fence with no gate, around the side of the wooden building, avoiding air conditioners sticking out of the side windows.

“Watch the stairs,” Barbara said, leading the way up a steep wooden staircase that was once painted white. “Don’t run your hands on the rail or you’ll have splinters for years.” It was then Beau identified her accent. He knew she wasn’t from New Orleans the first time she spoke. She sounded Midwestern.

As Beau waited for her to unlock the door, he reached down and rubbed his left knee. And for a moment, he thought of the orthoscopic surgery scheduled the following week to repair the cartilage in his knee.

It was an efficiency apartment, one large room with a double bed in one corner, mismatched dressers on either side, a small entertainment center with a portable TV, and two narrow doors beyond, a closet and a bathroom most likely. The kitchenette stood on the other side of the room.

Barbara put the Coke in the small refrigerator and her purse on a turquoise Formica table. The table had only two chairs; neither matched the other or the table. She moved to the small sink and rinsed out a coffeepot, then reached for a bag of coffee-and-chicory. She put a fresh pot on her Mr. Coffee machine. Beau noticed the place was very clean, smelling of lemon cleaner, curtains fluffed without a hint of dust. The windows sparkled.

Barbara sat in one of the chairs and nodded to the other. Beau sat across from her. She finally looked him in the eye again and said, “He beat up an old woman?”

“Pistol-whipped.”

Her shoulders sank and tears welled in her eyes again. She put her face in her hands. After a good cry, she got up for a Kleenex, took two matching mugs from the cupboard, and asked in a hollow voice, “Cream or sugar?”

“Black.”

“It’s strong.”

“That’s the way I like it.”

She brought the coffee and sat down across from him.

Beau said, “Earlier you said, ‘I knew something like this was going to happen.’ What did you mean?”

She took in a deep breath. “I should have said something like this was bound to happen.” She stared into her coffee and explained. Beau took notes as Barbara Clay laid out her life with John Clay in short, weary sentences.

Married two years, Barbara was the sole supporter. John Clay, who had served time in juvenile detention and a ninety-day stint in parish prison for battery, was supposed to be in welding school. Previously he’d taken auto mechanic classes and air-conditioning classes.

“He could be sweet,” Barbara said, taking a sip of coffee. “But he had a mean streak.” She lifted her arm and looked at the bruises. “Never hit me, just grabbed and squeezed, and shook me sometimes. When he’d been drinking.”

Barbara got up and moved to the sink, opened the cabinet below, and pointed inside. “I hid his first gun in there. Behind the cans of cleaners. He was drunk. When he woke, I told him he came home without the gun.” She came back to the table. “It was a Colt. Nine millimeter, I think. I threw it in the river.”

She didn’t know what he was doing with a gun. He never seemed to have any money and never came home with anything. “I told him if I ever caught him bringing anything stolen here, I was gone.” Her face seemed to tighten, and her voice was stronger now.

“I got rid of the gun and he went right out and got a bigger gun. A Smith & Wesson. Forty caliber. He said everyone needs a gun in this city. Said he was going to get me a twenty-two.”

She looked into her cup again. “I was going to leave him. Started to time and again, but...”

Beau took out a business card and put it on the table. Barbara leaned over and looked at it before stepping back to the kitchen counter and digging two pieces of paper from the silverware drawer. She sat and passed them to Beau. Gun receipts.

“He bought both at gun shows in Kenner. Even waited the five days.”

The first receipt, for a Colt 9mm, was dated over a year ago. The second, three months later, for a Smith & Wesson forty caliber. Willard was lucky one of those rounds hadn’t hit him.

“Was it a police officer who shot him?”

Beau nodded. “A rookie. Your husband gave him no choice.”

Barbara sighed and picked up Beau’s card and said, “It’s French? Your name?”

“Cajun.”

“I thought you were Mexican. Hispanic.”

“I get that a lot.” Beau’s face remained expressionless. “My mother’s Oglala Sioux.”

Her eyes lit up. “I’m from South Dakota. Sioux Falls.”

“My mother’s back up there with my grandparents. Pine Ridge Reservation.” Beau knew Sioux Falls was on the other side of the state.

A sad smile came to Barbara Clay’s lips. “Fancy meeting a Lakota down here.”

At least she had the tribe’s name right. Sioux was the name given to Beau’s people by their enemies, like the Pawnee and the Crow and the white man. Actually Beau liked the word Sioux better. It ran off the tongue with fierceness.

“May I see your driver’s license?” Beau asked.

She dug it out of her purse and he copied her pertinent information from it, date of birth, social security number. Her maiden name was Crockett. She looked nice in her photo, nicer than most people. She should smile more often. He passed her license back.

“Where do you work?”

“Charity Hospital M.R.I. Unit.”

Beau smiled. “I was in one yesterday.” His mind immediately flashed back to the M.R.I. Unit at Ochsner Hospital, him inside the hollow center of a space-age machine, lying very still for twenty minutes, with the machine making loud noises. He remembered all the warning signs lining the walls, signs warning about pacemakers, the danger of magnetizing metal objects brought into the room. He had to leave everything outside the unit, gun, badge, belt buckle, even his ballpoint pen.

“Why were you there?” Barbara asked.

He rubbed his knee and explained about the torn meniscus cartilage, then went on to explain how he’d torn up the other knee at his spring game at L.S.U., sophomore year, and had been unconsciously relying on his left leg so much, he’d torn the cartilage cushion between femur and tibia.

“You’re getting it repaired, I hope.”

“Next week.” He reached into his pocket for a small plastic case and took out two pills.

“Naproxen?”

He nodded as he swallowed the pills with the last of his coffee. He tore out a fresh sheet of notepaper, jotted down the number of the coroner’s office, and passed it to her.

“You won’t have to physically identify him. Unless you want to. We can match his fingerprints.”

She sank back in the chair and looked smaller. He looked down at his notebook as he told her the city would bury him if she didn’t have the money.

“I have a burial policy.” She got up and went to one of the dressers next to the bed. She rifled through a large folder and came up with several sets of folded papers. “Yes,” she said in a relieved voice. “It’s right here.” She restuffed the folder and started back to him but noticed something with the papers in her hand. She stepped back and pulled out a different set of papers and brought those to the table.

It was a burial policy for five thousand dollars. Barely enough to bury him. The policy was dated a year ago, shortly after her husband bought his first gun.

“Was your husband home when you left this morning?”

“Sleeping. My shift starts at five thirty.”

“Did he tell you what he’d be doing today?”

“He was supposed to be at welding school.” She pulled a business card from her purse. The school was in Metairie. She shook her head. “He never told me what he did. Wasn’t much of a talker.”

And Beau had to wonder why an attractive, intelligent woman like this could marry such a loser? Trying to understand love was an impossibility. Beau’s Cajun father told him that long ago, sitting in a pirogue while fishing with his son. “Never even try to figure,” his old man said. “De heart go where she wanna to go. Notin’ you can do ’bout it. Look at your mama. She too pretty fo’ me, too smart and too good.”

Beau nodded toward his card, still on the table. “If you think of anything else, call me. Oh, what’s your phone number?”

“We don’t have one.” She asked for his notebook and pen and wrote down her number at work.

He stood and told her he’d be in touch when they were finished processing the Ford Escort and she could pick it up. “Is there anyone who can come be with you?” he asked as he stepped to the doorway.

She shook her head and said she wanted to be alone for a while. She gave him a long stare, and he said she should lock the door behind him. As he moved down the stairs, he heard the latch click. He felt the familiar pain in his knee, but his mind was occupied elsewhere.

She has a burial policy. Odd. Maybe not. Maybe she could see the violence in her husband’s eyes.

Jodie was behind her gray metal, government-issue desk in the squad room; Paul Snowood sat in the chair next to it. The crime lab tech stood on the other side next to Beau’s desk, which abutted Jodie’s. Over by the coffeepot, Frank Willard stood beneath the unofficial logo of the Homicide Division, a vulture perched atop an NOPD gold star-and-crescent badge. His arms folded, he still looked jittery to Beau.

Snowood was explaining, “...It’s what we call here in town an open-and-shut case, a ‘justifiable homicide.’ Willard jumped the dude comin’ out and it was Dodge City for a minute.” Snowood, six feet tall, two hundred pounds, and over forty, wore another of his cowboy outfits — gold shirt with two rows of buttons, dressy, brown denim pants, tan cowboy boots. His white Stetson lay atop his desk.

“The dude and Willard drew on each other, like the O.K. Corral. Willard ducked and fired twice, and the dude just plain missed. It’s what we call back in the badlands, some good shootin’ and some bad shootin’.”

Jodie looked like she had a migraine.

Snowood, born and raised across the river in the suburb of Belle Chasse, took the fact he was born on the west bank of the Mississippi so seriously he’d evolved into a turn-of-the-century lawman, straight out of Tombstone. He’d have a handlebar mustache if he could grow a decent one.

Jodie acknowledged Beau with a nod. Snowood turned and grinned his tobacco-laced teeth at Beau and said, “Ah, the Plains warrior has arrived.” He raised a white Styrofoam cup to his lips and spit into it.

“How’s the woman from the drugstore?” Beau asked.

Jodie said, “She’s in stable condition. No fractures. She’ll be okay. Eventually.”

Atop Beau’s cluttered desk lay two semiautomatics, Willard’s stainless steel Beretta 9mm, and a blue steel Smith & Wesson forty caliber. The tech picked up the blue steel semiautomatic and wiped the white fingerprint powder from it before dropping the magazine out and pulling back the slide. He had trouble with both.

He dusted the magazine, then carefully flicked out the rounds and dusted them, finding several good partials, which he lifted with plastic tape.

“Our gunman was arrested four times,” Snowood said. “Three juvie arrests for shoplifting and simple battery. One adult arrest for simple battery.”

“Damn,” the technician said, as he struggled to pull back the slide to double check that no round was in the chamber. Making sure the weapon was empty, he pointed it at the top of the row of windows at the far end of the room and pulled the trigger.

“Well, this confirms it,” he told Jodie, as he sniffed the barrel of Clay’s Smith & Wesson and shook his head. “Got ten rounds here. We only found two casings at the scene. Both from Willard’s gun.”

Jodie nodded and closed her eyes. John Clay hadn’t fired his gun at all. Beau looked over at Willard who was sweating again. Big time.

“Safety’s off and it won’t fire.” The tech shrugged at Jodie. “Gun’s malfunctioning.”

Willard came over slowly. “Does this mean it’s bad for me?”

Jodie shook her head as Snowood said, “Hell no. It’s a real gun, and we got enough witnesses said he pointed it at you.”

Willard didn’t seem convinced, probably because it came from a man who looked like a refugee from Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles.

Jodie sat up and told Willard, “We have five eyewitnesses inside the drugstore saw him beat up the old woman. Three of them watched him go out the front door and point his gun at you; all swear y’all exchanged gunshots. And our sixth eyewitness, from the street, also saw Clay point his gun at you before you fired, and he’s a bank president.”

Willard wiped the sweat from his face. Jodie opened her hands, palms up, and recited the law verbatim. “R.S. 14:20. A homicide is justifiable when committed in self-defense by one who reasonably believes he is in imminent danger of losing his life or receiving great bodily harm and the killing is necessary to save himself from that danger.”

“Sounds like a good shootin’ to me,” Snowood said.

“It’s a good shooting,” Jodie confirmed.

Willard turned to Beau, who nodded and told him, “Relax. I’m serious.”

Beau leaned his hands on his desk and looked down at the weapons. He went to brush the silver paper clip away from Clay’s Smith & Wesson, but it was stuck. He tried pulling it off and it took a real yank to get it off.

“Glue?” Snowood said.

Beau shook his head and put the paper clip next to the Smith & Wesson, which sucked the paper clip to it like a magnet.

Jodie leaned forward. “Maybe the paper clip is magnetized.” Beau tried it with Willard’s weapon and his stapler but the clip didn’t stick to them. He pulled out his stainless steel Parker ballpoint and put it near the gun, and the pen rolled right to it.

“Damn,” Jodie said.

“The gun’s a friggin’ magnet,” Snowood declared. “Don’t that beat all.”

The technician took both weapons, bullets, and magazines down to the crime lab, and Snowood got up to take Willard home. Jodie reminded the rookie she’d see him in the morning at the Superintendent’s Hearing.

“Don’t worry,” she assured him, and started on her paperwork.

As Beau typed up a daily on what he’d learned from Barbara Clay, he told Jodie about the receipts and the burial policy and the short, unhappy marriage. Finishing the daily, he made two copies. One copy was for his records, the other he put in their lieutenant’s IN tray. He passed the original to Jodie.

Sitting back down, Beau closed his eyes and ran through it all again. He came up with the same conclusion he’d come up with as soon as the word magnet came from Snowood’s mouth.

Jodie stood and pulled the sheet from her typewriter. “Gotta go,” she said. He remembered she had a preliminary hearing in criminal court at four P.M. He opened his mouth to tell her what he was thinking, but said nothing.

After she’d left the squad room, Beau went down to the crime lab. Firearms Examiner Peggy Ruffin had the Smith & Wesson completely disassembled and lying on an evidence table. Peggy wasn’t the friendliest cop, but she was the best firearms examiner in the city.

“The damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” she told Beau. He’d never seen her so animated. “This weapon is completely magnetized. You could pull the trigger all day and it wouldn’t fire.” She pointed at the firing pin. “It’s stuck to the side of the channel in the slide. Officer Willard is one lucky man.”

Beau felt his heart stammering as he turned to leave.

“Hell,” Peggy added, “if we could do this to every criminal’s gun, I’d be out of a job.”

Beau sat at the top of the stairs and watched the orange glow of the late afternoon sunlight fill the small backyard of Barbara Clay’s apartment house. A mockingbird bounced from the branch of a camellia bush and scooped an insect from the grass before flying away, a gray and white streak of feathers. He waited and the mockingbird returned to the bush and perched patiently until it spotted another bug and swooped down to get it.

An hour after he’d arrived, just as twilight was claiming the city, Barbara came around the house and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Even in the dusk, he could see her eyes widen as she looked up at him. Still in her work clothes, she came up slowly. By the time she was a few feet away, he could see her eyes were wet.

“We have to talk,” Beau said, standing and brushing off his pants.

She fumbled with her keys. He could see her breathing heavily now. She led the way in and flipped on the light.

“Let’s sit,” Beau suggested, sitting across from her at the Formica table.

Barbara brushed her hair away from her face and said in a jittery voice, “I was at the funeral parlor. You want some coffee?”

“No. But you need to pay attention to what I’m about to say.”

She folded her arms in a typical defensive position.

“Whatever you tell me right now is off the record. I’m not advising you of your right to remain silent, so I can’t use anything you say against you.” He paused a moment to see if his words were registering. Barbara blinked twice and wiped her eyes.

“I know what happened,” Beau went on. “You couldn’t just throw the gun away again, he’d get another, so you brought it to work. To the M.R.I. Unit. Magnetic Resonance Imaging.”

Barbara took in a deep breath, her blue eyes boring into Beau’s. Her lower lip quivered, her voice a scratchy whisper. “I couldn’t live with myself if he shot someone.”

Beau felt the Plains warrior rising inside, and he spoke carefully, his voice void of emotion. “You knew he was up to no good. Knew he was using the gun for criminal endeavors. You didn’t believe it was for his protection. Otherwise...”

“I wouldn’t have incapacitated the gun.” Her voice was firmer.

“Exactly. The gun was completely magnetized. Wouldn’t fire, but you know that.”

The war drums echoed in some racial memory in the back of Beau’s mind as he said, “The other insurance policy.”

“What other...” Barbara looked away.

“The one you put back when you brought out the burial policy.”

She looked at him for a long moment, got up slowly, and went back to the dresser and the folder. She pulled out papers and came back, placing them in front of Beau on the table.

There were two policies. Life insurance on John Clay for twenty thousand dollars, Barbara Clay beneficiary. The second policy was on Barbara with Cristina Crockett as beneficiary. Beau pointed to the name and Barbara said it was her mother. He checked the dates on the policies. Both were dated shortly after the burial policy was taken out. He noted that John Clay had signed the policy on him, acknowledging the coverage. She didn’t take it out behind his back. No need to get John Clay’s signature on the burial policy. She’d taken it out directly with the funeral parlor.

Looking back at the blue eyes, he could see her struggling to keep from crying again. Her voice was barely a whisper. “I didn’t do it to kill him.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t want him to hurt anyone,” she repeated.

“Even you?” He pointed to her bruises and for an instant felt his father’s touch inside. His father would have been more than sympathetic with this woman; he would have soothed her with his Cajun compassion, probably joking to make her feel better.

But a moment later the warrior rose again in Beau. “You’re a smart woman, Barbara. Don’t get too smart. We’re pretty smart too.”

Beau stood up and stretched.

She looked up and asked, “What happens now?”

“Go back home. You’ve got a second chance at life. Use it well.” He looked around the tiny apartment. “Don’t carry this around for the rest of your life.” He smiled sadly, letting his Cajun side through. “I’m here to tell you it’s all right. You didn’t put the gun in his hand. You took it out.”

He nodded and turned toward the door.

She said, “What about the officer who shot him? Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” Beau said as he reached for the knob. “It was a good shooting.”