By DICK LOCHTE | Illustration by Susan Stansbury

On a muggy Tuesday morning in May, 1967, investigator J.J. Legendre was summoned to the office of his boss, James Garrison, District Attorney for the city of New Orleans.

"You know Cameron McCree, Legendre?" the D.A. asked.

"Not personally," J.J. said. He knew of him, of course. Nearly everybody in the country knew of McCree, the literary world's outrageous enfant terrible, New Orleans born and bred. As anyone who watched The Tonight Show could tell you, the amusingly outspoken author had discarded his critically acclaimed gentle family memoirs in favor of a series of highly exploitative true crime studies, each of which had achieved a higher spot on the bestseller lists.

His latest, "The Rapist," had been based on events that had occurred in the early 1950s in the Crescent City -- the search for, capture and conviction of a serial rapist. Because the guilty party, who took his own life shortly after the sentencing, had been the son of a former governor of Louisiana, the story had been safely buried. Until McCree unearthed it. That was what he did, dig up things that people hoped would remain hidden. "I read one of his books," J.J. added.

"That puts you one up on me," Garrison said. "Anyway, he must've ruffled somebody's feathers. They did a pretty good job of stabbing him with his own letter opener. The police are at the scene now. McCree's apartment in the Bienville Arms. Go there and keep an eye on things."

"Sure," J.J. said. "Anything specific worrying you?"

"Lloyd Chenovet was the last known person to see McCree alive. He's their key suspect."

Chenovet was one of Garrison's assistants and a close personal friend. Since the book of McCree's that J.J. had read was "The Rapist," he knew that Chenovet had provided the author with official police records and access to some of the involved parties.

"I'll get right on it," he told Garrison.

Next page: Death of a man's man