All the Devil's Creatures Read Free

shimmer in the harsh glare of the sodium arc light at the foot of the pier. He jumped, startled, then pushed the creature from his mind. He still practiced environmental law, but his curiosity about nature had long departed.
    Inside, he pulled a fifth of bourbon from his bag and poured it into a plastic motel cup, over ice. The TV picked up five channels. PBS out of Shreveport featured a documentary about Hitler’s rise and the run-up to World War II—as good a thing as any to crash to.
    •
     
    Eileen knocked early. Geoff rolled out of bed and opened the door the amount the chain lock allowed. He saw her shadowy face and a shaft of morning light.
    “You’re not even dressed,” she said. But she didn’t sound impatient to start the day.
    “I feel like ass. Why don’t you go over to that place across the road. I’ll meet you—”
    Then he saw a flash of color out of the corner of his eye. Eileen jumped as if someone had poked her with a hot stick.
    “Geoff, did you see that?”
    “Orange lizardy thing?”
    “Yes … something like that.” She craned her neck all around in the direction the thing had scurried.
    “I think I saw it last night.”
    “What is it?”
    “A big orange lizard—I dunno.”
    “It’s remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s …”
    “Hey. I need a shower.”
    She left and Geoff closed the door and stumbled his way back in past a stack of empty beer cans and the much depleted whiskey bottle
.
His tired suit was a rumpled mess from having spent the night in his suitcase. He hung it up in the bathroom as he took a hot shower, making it a little more presentable when he got out, if a little damp.
    At the marina, they sipped coffee and picked at their food. Geoff tried to discuss their plan for the day. Not the best day on the lake he could imagine. Eileen’s excitement over the lizard had faded.
    “Senseless, senseless,” she kept repeating.
    “This interview should be just a formality. Dalia’s murder was a hate crime, and the investigation will lead a long way from her work on the case.”
    Eileen snarled a little and fought back tears. “A
formality
.”
    She remained dazed and distant, hardly speaking. The coffee did little to lift the fog shrouding her, and Geoff wondered if not just shock and sadness but also a healthy dose of Xanax was involved. Geoff noticed a front tooth stained yellow, almost brown. Not like the left-brained Eileen to let her hygiene go. He feared that she had slipped back into the depression that had taken her after Katrina, and which had never quite seemed to lift fully. Geoff himself was too broke to hire a regular secretary, and now his consultant was under-staffed and depressed—far from an optimal litigation team.
    As far as the lawsuit went, the biggest impact of all this would be on the schedule. “How much time do you need for the report?” he asked.
    Eileen shook her head and ran a hand through her once-silky black hair, now gone ashy. “I looked through all of Dalia’s notes last night. She did a thorough job. But I’ll need to educate myself and shuffle some staff.” She gestured at her bag, overstuffed with work papers; a Geological Survey map of the bayou on which the refinery sat stuck out at an angle like some ineffectual weapon. “I can pull it together for you in three weeks.”
    “I’ll ask for thirty days. That should give us time to review it together and make sure everything is consistent from a legal standpoint before I send it to the other side. Then I’ll start up on the motion for summary judgment. Texronco will file its own MSJ—I’ll need you to do a supplemental declaration in response. All this assuming the company doesn’t make a reasonable settlement offer.”
    She closed her eyes. “Geoff, after this, you might have to find someone else.”
    “Okay—”
    “I mean, with us being, you know,
us
—”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “And now this …”
    “Listen—”
    “No, wait. I’m not going to do any