Leopard's Prey

ear.
    “You’re under arrest. Toss the gun aside and listen very carefully to your rights.”

19

    “ I ’M sorry, Remy,” LeBrun said. “I have nothin’ new for you. I can’t see any discernible difference in Pete Morgan’s bone and Bob Carson’s. I can tell you there were traces of ketamine in Bob Carson’s system. I found a small needle mark in his neck where he’d been injected.”
    Remy frowned. “We found ketamine in the Rousseau brother’s stash of drugs for sale, and Carson had ketamine in his hotel room. This case just keeps getting murkier and murkier.”
    “Well, I’m sure you’re aware some idiots use ketamine as a recreational drug. Carson might have bought the drug from the Rousseau brothers,” LeBrun said.
    “I thought of that. Robert said that Bob Carson was a longtime customer of the Rousseau brothers and he liked a variety of drugs, including ketamine. But he wouldn’t have injected it into his neck.”
    “That would be dangerous,” LeBrun agreed. “Injecting ketamine would be extremely dangerous. It’s fast acting. The person would be under before he could remove the needle from his arm.”
    “So someone else probably used the drug to render Carson unconscious so they could get him out to the swamp. Was there ketamine in Morgan’s or Cooper’s body?”
    LeBrun scowled. “If there had been, even slight trace amounts, I would have included it in the report.”
    Remy had known that. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t callin’ your professionalism into question. I’m just back to square one. I’m squeezing Durang. I want him to give up Butterfield, but the surgical instruments weren’t the ones used to carve bones out of our victims. Even the type of plastic sheeting doesn’t match. So where does that leave us?”
    “Back to the Rousseau brothers?”
    “Maybe, but if I’m wrong, if I accept that because it’s easy . . .”
    LeBrun shook his head, hitting the top of Remy’s desk with a flat palm. “Not because it’s easy, because it fits. Everythin’ points straight back to Jean and Juste Rousseau. The victims, the swamp, the drugs. You’re too close to this, Remy. You think there must be more because it seems too wrapped up and tied in a bow for you. Sometimes, it really does happen like that.”
    Remy wanted the case to be solved. Everyone else thought it was solved—but it didn’t feel right to him. “You said yourself, Doc, you didn’t think there were two of them.”
    “No, I said one definitely carved the bones and, in my opinion, made the altar. In fact,” LeBrun added, “you were very firm that the harvester and the man who made the altar were one and the same, yet the killin’ itself didn’t fit.”
    Remy couldn’t deny he’d considered many times that there were two men doing the killings. “There was only one set of footprints goin’ from the road to the swamp, carryin’ Carson’s body,” he reminded. “Carson was tall and slender, but he weighed a significant amount. If there were two of them, why didn’t they both carry him into the swamp where they were goin’ to kill him?”
    “I don’t know, Remy, but I’m tired and I’m going to believe the Rousseau brothers did it and we’ll get them eventually. They can’t live in the swamp forever. As for me, I haven’t seen my family forever and I’m goin’ home. I suggest you do the same.”
    “Maybe you’re right.” Remy had no intentions of going home. He rubbed at the tension in the back of his neck. He knew the Rousseaus were dead, but his gut hadn’t stopped churning and that was a very bad sign.
    “Just give it a day or two, Remy,” LeBrun encouraged. “Step back and think about other things. You’ve been goin’ at this night and day for a couple of weeks and you’ve had to contend with other things as well. Go see your girl and don’ think about murder.”
    Remy gave him a little salute and watched him leave. It was late. Most everyone had gone home already. He’d promised Bijou he’d meet her for dinner. He glanced at his watch. He still had a little time left to try to work things out. He wandered over to the murder board and studied the pictures of each suspect. Jean and Juste Rousseau were at the top of the list.
    “If only it was that easy,” he murmured aloud. “You two were building your own little kingdom. You liked gangster movies and thought you’d be the lords of New Orleans.”
    In their home, he’d found hundreds of DVDs, mostly mafia and gang