Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke [59]
There was a class of people who always supported law and order. They believed that police officers and sheriff’s deputies and the law enforcement agencies of the United States government constituted a vast servile army with the same raison d’être as insurance carriers, tax accountants, medical providers, and gardeners—namely, to take care of problems that busy and productive people shouldn’t be concerned with.
Hackberry watched Temple Dowling stride toward the front door of the building, coatless, his silver shirt crinkling like tin, a martial glint in his eyes, his creamy complexion moist in the heat. But it was the man’s lips that Hackberry couldn’t get out of his mind. They seemed to have the coloration and texture of the rubber in a pencil eraser. They belonged on the mouth of a man who was cruel, whose sentiments were manufactured, whose physical appetites were visceral and base and infantile all at the same time. Watching him stride up the walk, Hackberry decided he had been too kind in assigning Dowling and his peers to that innocent and insular group who treated police officers as they would loyal servants. Temple Dowling, like his father, the senator, was a man who knew the value of the whip and how to turn the screw in order to bend others to his will. The fates may have given Temple Dowling a face that would never allow him to ascend to the throne. But Hackberry guessed that in Dowling’s view, the power behind the throne was gift enough.
Hackberry got up from his chair and met Dowling at the entrance to the building. “What’s your problem?” he said.
“I have a grocery list of them,” Dowling said.
The three men standing behind him had come to a stop. They wore western hats and sunglasses and had the physiques of men who worked out regularly in health clubs. They wore mustaches and a growth of beard that Hackberry guessed was deliberately maintained rather than shaved entirely off. Their hands were folded in front of them, their faces turned at a deferential angle so Hackberry would take note that they were not staring at him from behind their shades. One man had a puncture in his cheek that looked like a hole someone had made by inserting his thumb into putty. One man wore a tattoo inside the growth of beard on his throat. The third man had facial skin that was as dark as saddle leather and flecked with scars that resembled tiny pieces of brown string.
“Lose the entourage and come in,” Hackberry said.
“These men go wherever I go.”
“Not here they don’t.”
“Why do I continue to have trouble with you, Sheriff?”
“Because you asked for it.”
“I had to replace both the brake lights on my vehicle this morning.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. That’s too bad.”
“You’re aware your deputy broke them?”
“Be advised I support my deputy in whatever she does. I’m pretty busy. You want to stand out here in the sun or come inside?”
“Here will be just fine,” Dowling said. He wiped his forehead and upper lip with a handkerchief, then shook it out and wiped the back of his neck. He gazed down the street at the courthouse, a slick of sweat on one cheek, his eyes intense with the words he was preparing to speak. Hackberry realized Dowling’s next remarks would be part of a performance that was not for him but for his employees. “I’ve lost two good men to a psychopath who should have been mulch the first time you saw him. This same man has murdered an untold number of people in this county, your county, but you don’t seem to have a clue where he is, nor do you seem bothered by your ignorance. Instead of conducting an investigation, your personnel are vandalizing people’s SUVs. I understand that mediocrity is a way of life in a place like this, but I won’t abide