Fever Moon by Carolyn Haines Page B

spent there alone were tests of endurance. Often he didn’t try to sleep, avoiding the nightmares that plagued him and the pain that sometimes claimed his body in the darkness. Florence mitigated those things. Sometimes he vowed to stop seeing her, but he always returned. She was the only thing that made his life bearable.
    Plaintive and chilling, a cry of loneliness, the wolf spoke again. There was no answer, and Raymond wondered if it was a solitary creature whose pack had been killed.
    Adele’s face came unbidden, and he had a sudden surge of worry for Madame Louiselle. Guilt and anxiety made him want to leap up, but he held himself steady, listening to the slow breathing of the woman who curled against him.
    Adele was weak as a kitten, if she were still alive at all. He had his doubts that she’d survive the fever. His worries about Madame were unfounded, and he forced his tense body to relax. His fingers traced the side of Florence’s face, and she snuggled closer to him. Before he went to war, he’d always thought a wife and family were his for the asking. He’d intended to do his duty and come home to resume the rhythms of life he knew in Iberia Parish. His secret dream involved an education—a type of betterment the army had made possible. He’d always been interested in journalism, the writing of facts, a modern-day historian. Journalists dug beneath the surface of things, and he’d always been good at that. Chula, even after their romance had faltered and died, had encouraged him in his dreams.
    The war had changed him, though. He’d lost all ambition for an education. He’d come home and, despite the sometimes intense pain of his leg and hip, had settled into the job of deputy. There was little to dig into, but what digging was done in the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office, he did.
    When the sun came up, he had some tracking to do. He’d failed to find Clifton Hebert, but some of the tidbits of gossip he’d heard had piqued his interest. Clifton lived far back in the swamp—no one could, or would, give an exact location. The one thing that all of his sources had been sure about was that Clifton Hebert kept a pack of savage dogs. Hog-catchers. Dogs so vicious and filled with bloodlust that they would jump the wild boars that roamed the swamps and hang on to the nose and ears until the human hunters could catch up and either shoot the boar or wrestle it to the ground and tie it for domesticating. It was said the meat would lose its gamey taste if the boar was castrated and fed corn or grain for several weeks before slaughter. Catching the dangerous boars alive was also part of the insane excitement.
    Often the dogs were slashed by the boar’s razor-sharp tusks, and the men who hunted boar for sport sometimes didn’t come back alive. Raymond had been on several search parties for missing men where a body was found, the hamstring muscles in the back of the legs severed. Once the boar brought a man down, it didn’t waste a lot of time finishing the kill. Wild boars were dangerous game for men and dogs alike. Clifton Hebert made his living leading such hunting expeditions.
    It had not escaped Raymond’s attention that the wounds on Henri Bastion could have been made by savage dogs. Or hogs. Clifton needed to answer to his whereabouts on the night Henri Bastion died.
    Other things nagged at him. Rosa Hebert, for one. How was it possible that one family could contain such a wealth of misfortune? His compassion for Adele and Rosa, topped off by his suspicions about what had happened to Armand Dugas, had led his thinking down a long and tortuous road. His calls to the state penitentiary at Angola had gone unheeded. His requests for a state-verified list of prisoners sent to work the Bastion farm had been met with amusement by the deputy warden who took his call.
    Strangely enough, it wasn’t Henri Bastion’s ravaged body that kept pricking his subconscious. It was Henri’s daughter, standing by the screen