Book 14 in the Robicheaux series

I would like to thank George Schiro and the other staff members at the Acadiana Crime Lab in New Iberia, Louisiana, and also Jim Hutchison, Judi Hoffman, Annalivia Harris, Bahne Klietz, Maureen Kocisko, and Debbie Lewis at the Montana State Crime Lab in Missoula for their patience and kind assistance over the years.

Thanks also to David Rosenthal, Michael Korda, and Chuck Adams for their support and editorial help.

My thanks again to Patricia Mulcahy and my agent Philip G. Spitzer and his assistant Lukas Ortiz for their loyalty and friendship and goodwill.

Lastly, I wish to acknowledge those who have been with me for the long haul – my wife, Pearl, and our children, James L. Burke, Jr., Andree Walsh, Pamela McDavid, and Alafair Burke.

God bless all creatures and things, large and small.

It was the end of an era, one that I suspect historians may look upon as the last decade of American innocence. It was a time we remember in terms of images and sounds rather than historical events – pink Cadillacs, drive-in movies, stylized street hoods, rock 'n' roll, Hank and Lefty on the jukebox, the dirty bop, daylight baseball, chopped-down '32 Fords with Merc engines drag-racing in a roar of thunder past drive-in restaurants, all of it backdropped by palm trees, a curling surf, and a purple sky that had obviously been created as a cinematic tribute to our youth.

The season seemed eternal, not subject to the laws of mutability. At best, it was improbable that the spring of our graduation year would ever be stained by the tannic smell of winter. If we experienced visions of mortality, we needed only to look into one another's faces to reassure ourselves that none of us would ever die, that rumors of distant wars had nothing to do with our own lives.