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Dozer answered the door in boxer shorts and a Ragin’ Cajuns T-shirt that didn’t quite accommodate his belly. His eyes went round at the sight of Nick.
“Expecting company?” Nick asked, arching a brow at the getup.
“What the hell do you want?” Dozer asked. His breath reeked of beer and boudin sausage.
“I have a couple more questions for you, Mr. Cormier. May I come in?”
“Why?”
“Because me, I think you may not want your neighbors to look out their windows and see you being questioned by a sheriff’s detective on your front porch. I’ve been all over the news lately. They might get the wrong idea about you.”
“Fuck ’em,” Dozer said, but he stepped back just the same.
The trailer stank of decades of cigarette smoke that had soaked into the acoustic tile ceiling and the cheap fake wood paneling. Dozer stood in the middle of the kitchen looking like a giant in a dollhouse. The seven-foot ceilings barely cleared the top of his bald head. For sure he had to duck to get through the doorways. He probably had to walk sideways to get down the hall to the bedrooms.
“Mr. Bichon, he’s gonna be disappointed in you, Dozer,” Nick said, nodding at the collection of beer cans on the kitchen table.
Dozer frowned. “Ain’t against the law to have a beer.”
“Mais non, it’s not. But he’s under the impression you’re walking the straight and narrow during the week so you can give your best while working for him, the man who wants to take a chance on you. And here you are, clearly under the influence on a Tuesday night, and it ain’t even hardly past suppertime. You gonna go through another six-pack before you pass out? Mr. Bichon gonna be sad to hear it.”
“Why would you tell him?” Dozer asked, leaning back against the kitchen counter to disguise the fact that he wasn’t quite steady on his feet.
“Because me, I’m an asshole,” Nick said bluntly. “You don’t give me some straight answers, I’m gonna fuck up your life any way I can.”
“Answers about what? I already told you, I don’t know nothing! I ain’t done nothing wrong!”
“Really, though?” Nick asked making a face. “I think maybe I just haven’t looked hard enough yet.”
He looked down at the family room end of the trailer, where an enormous flat-screen TV showingWheel of Fortunetook up almost the entire end of the narrow room.
“You see, I pull up next to that fancy truck outside. That’s gotta be what? Forty, fifty grand? And then I come in here and you got that big-screen TV. Watching football on that gotta be like sitting on the fifty-yard line. Those are some expensive toys. And I’m gonna bet you got a boat somewhere, too.”
“So? I got a good job, me. Ain’t none of your business how I spend my money!”
“Yeah, well, all these toys look like more than you make hammering nails,” Nick said, though he didn’t truly find it all that suspicious. Dozer Cormier wasn’t wasting his money on his accommodations or on an expensive wardrobe. He wasn’t wearing a Rolex or diamond-crusted neck chains. He didn’t have a wife or children to eat up his income. He spent his earnings on the things that mattered to him—his truck and his sports—like many a young man in these parts.
“You got a second income, Dozer?” he asked, just to keep digging. Just to make him nervous. “You got a side job? You might be more ambitious than anyone gives you credit for.”
Cormier looked away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Copper. That’s what I’m talking about,” Nick said, prowling around the room, making a show of looking at random pieces of mail on the kitchen table, spying a little burner cell phone half hidden by a take-out menu from a Cajun restaurant in Luck.
Dozer stepped over and snatched away a pile of junk mail. “Quit touching my stuff!”
Nick gave him a hard look. “You want me to go get a warrant and come back here in a bad mood?”
There was nothing in this house he had the least bit of interest in. Nor did he expect there was much worth finding with regard tohis case. It was an empty threat made for no other reason than to make Dozer Cormier uncomfortable.
“I want you to fuck the fuck off,” Dozer said, taking a menacing step toward him. Everyone Nick had spoken to had said Dozer could make bad choices when he was drinking, that he could get mean and reckless, and there he was.
Nick stood his ground and smiled. “You gonna try to intimidate me, Dozer? Because I’ll tell you right now, I don’t care that you’re the size of a goddamn elephant. You don’t scare me.”
Cormier didn’t know what to make of that. He had six inches and 150 pounds on Nick. How could a man that much smaller than him, and a dozen or more years older, not be intimidated by him?
“You can’t bully me, Dozer,” Nick said. “And no matter how mean you think you are, you will never in your wildest dreams be meaner than I am.”
But he was just drunk enough to take another step forward. With two quick moves, Nick swept the big man’s feet out from under him and landed him on his ass on the kitchen floor with a thud that shook the house.
