The sixth in the New York Times bestselling Dave Robicheaux series delivers a heart-pounding bayou manhunt—and features “one of the coolest, earthiest heroes in thrillerdom” ( Entertainment Weekly ). When Hollywood invades New Iberia Parish to film a Civil War epic, restless specters waiting in the shadows for Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux are reawakened—ghosts of a history best left undisturbed. Hunting a serial killer preying on the lawless young, Robicheaux comes face-to-face with the elusive guardians of his darkest torments—who hold the key to his ultimate salvation or a final, fatal downfall. James Lee Burke is a New York Times bestselling author, two-time winner of the Edgar Award, and the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction. He has authored forty novels and two short story collections. He lives in Missoula, Montana. In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead CHAPTER 1 THE SKY HAD gone black at sunset, and the storm had churned inland from the Gulf and drenched New Iberia and littered East Main with leaves and tree branches from the long canopy of oaks that covered the street from the old brick post office to the drawbridge over Bayou Teche at the edge of town. The air was cool now, laced with light rain, heavy with the fecund smell of wet humus, night-blooming jasmine, roses, and new bamboo. I was about to stop my truck at Del’s and pick up three crawfish dinners to go when a lavender Cadillac fishtailed out of a side street, caromed off a curb, bounced a hubcap up on a sidewalk, and left long serpentine lines of tire prints through the glazed pools of yellow light from the street lamps. I was off duty, tired, used up after a day of searching for a nineteen-year-old girl in the woods, then finding her where she had been left in the bottom of a coulee, her mouth and wrists wrapped with electrician’s tape. Already I had tried to stop thinking about the rest of it. The medical examiner was a kind man. He bagged the body before any news people or family members got there. I don’t like to bust drunk drivers. I don’t like to listen to their explanations, watch their pitiful attempts to affect sobriety, or see the sheen of fear break out in their eyes when they realize they’re headed for the drunk tank with little to look forward to in the morning except the appearance of their names in the newspaper. Or maybe in truth I just don’t like to see myself when I look into their faces. But I didn’t believe this particular driver could make it another block without ripping the side off a parked car or plowing the Cadillac deep into someone’s shrubbery. I plugged my portable bubble into the cigarette lighter, clamped the magnets on the truck’s roof, and pulled him to the curb in front of the Shadows, a huge brick, white-columned antebellum home built on Bayou Teche in 1831. I had my Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department badge opened in my palm when I walked up to his window. “Can I see your driver’s license, please?” He had rugged good looks, a Roman profile, square shoulders, and broad hands. When he smiled I saw that his teeth were capped. The woman next to him wore her hair in blond ringlets and her body was as lithe, tanned, and supple-looking as an Olympic swimmer’s. Her mouth looked as red and vulnerable as a rose. She also looked like she was seasick. “You want driver’s what?” he said, trying to focus evenly on my face. Inside the car I could smell a drowsy, warm odor, like the smell of smoke rising from a smoldering pile of wet leaves. “Your driver’s license,” I repeated. “Please take it out of your billfold and hand it to me.” “Oh, yeah, sure, wow,” he said. “I was really careless back there. I’m sorry about that. I really am.” He got his license out of his wallet, dropped it in his lap, found it again, then handed it to me, trying to keep his eyes from drifting off my face. His breath smelled like fermented fruit that had been corked up for a long time in a stone jug. I looked at the license under the street lamp. “You’re Elrod T. Sykes?” I asked. “Yes, sir, that’s who I am.” “Would you step out of the car, Mr. Sykes?” “Yes, sir, anything you say.” He was perhaps forty, but in good shape. He wore a light-blue golf shirt, loafers, and gray slacks that hung loosely on his flat stomach and narrow hips. He swayed slightly and propped one hand on the door to steady himself. “We have a problem here, Mr. Sykes. I think you’ve been smoking marijuana in your automobile.” “Marijuana . . . Boy, that’d be bad, wouldn’t it?” “I think your lady friend just ate the roach, too.” “That wouldn’t be good, no, sir, not at all.” He shook his head profoundly. “Well, we’re going to let the reefer business slide for now. But I’m afraid you’re under arrest for driving while intoxicated.” “That’s very bad news. This definitely was not on my agenda this evening.” He widened his eyes and opened and closed his mouth as though he were trying to