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“It was dark!”
“There was a good moon still up then. Did you see anything at all?”
“We were a ways off,” Olivier said. “There was a truck with its lights on, but we couldn’t tell what they were doing.”
“What kind of truck?”
“Couldn’t tell. A pickup.”
“Light or dark?”
“Dark.”
Nick turned his gaze on the Munroe boy. “You can pipe up anytime,tête dure. Or I can let Detective Stokes take you and question you separately. You’re not joined at the hip here.”
The boy chewed a dirty thumbnail, weighing his options. Nick watched him, unblinking.
“Maybe he wants to spend the night here,” Stokes said. “I’m sure we can find him a nice cellmate. Do you like big hairy guys, Li’l Rambo?”
Munroe gave Stokes the side-eye, then looked back at Nick. “There was two trucks,” he said. “We come around the bend and I could see the dark truck off the road. It had its lights on. And there was a light one farther down on the road. Maybe white or silver. Hard to say.”
“We figured it was drug business,” young Olivier said. “We didn’t want no part of that. I cut the engine when I saw ’em, and then we was in the tall grass and couldn’t see nothing. I was afraid maybe they’d come and shoot us, but they didn’t. They took off.”
“Did you see them dump that body?” Stokes asked.
“No, sir. I swear.”
“Did you see the people at all?”
They both shook their heads.
“Would you know these trucks if you saw them again?” Nick asked.
“No,” Olivier said. “It was too dark, and we were too far away.”
“One was a diesel,” Munroe offered. “The dark one, I think. It was closer, louder. The other one had a gas engine.”
Two trucks. Nick exchanged a look with Stokes. What the actual hell?
“You know your engines?” Nick said.
“My dad’s a mechanic.”
“You wanna be a mechanic, too?”
The boy nodded.
“You think you gonna get to be a mechanic if you keep stealing?” Nick asked. “You gonna learn to be a mechanic in prison, spend your time fixing farm equipment at Angola penitentiary. Would that make your daddy proud?”
“No, sir.”
“What about you,pischouette? Why you think it’s okay for you to take things don’t belong to you?”
The boy hung his head. “Alphonse, he runs a hundred fifty traps. I didn’t think he’d miss a few.”
“That’s not an answer,” Nick said. “I don’t care if he runs five hundred traps. He’s doing the work, and he doesn’t owe you anything. Why do you think you’re entitled to his profit?”
“Just wanted some pocket money, is all,” the kid mumbled, close to tears now.
