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“I started to once. A few weeks after it happened. I was having a hard time dealing with it, and Coach Latrelle pulled me into his office. He was a good man. Still is. He asked me what was wrong, and I started to saywhat if…He didn’t want to hear it. Nobody would have. By then Marc was already our team hero, and we were going into the playoffs. That’s all anybody cared about, so…”
So…Robbie Fontenot had nearly lost his leg, an injury that set him on a path of self-destruction…and Dozer Cormier had become an alcoholic…and Marc Mercier had gone on with his life, gotten an education, met and married his wife…and Eli McVay had carried this terrible suspicion like a sliver in his soul all this time, festering, aching so that it could still bring him to the point of tears ten years later…all because a good lie was so much more palatable than an ugly truth.
People had wanted to believe Marc Mercier was a hero, just as they were happy to assume Robbie Fontenot was good for nothing once he’d fallen from his pedestal. The average human wanted life to be simple, cut-and-dried, black-and-white, but it almost never was.
If Eli’s suspicion was correct, that Robbie’s injury had been no accident, what did that mean in the here and now? What would ten years of rage built in jail and rehab and bitter disappointment do? Annie could only imagine the resentment. B’Lynn had suggested it,just based on the outcome of what had happened. How could Robbie not resent Marc? If he had somehow come to the conclusion that his injury had been intentional, how could that resentment not boil over? What if that resentment had become motive? Annie wondered as she drove back toward Bayou Breaux.
Nick had texted her to come back to the Pizza Hut as soon as she was done in Lafayette. He hadn’t said why, nor had he answered when she’d tried to call him. She texted him back, including the piece of information she’d gleaned from Eli regarding Robbie being seen with Dozer Cormier at Monster Bash. He didn’t respond.
She didn’t want to try to imagine why he wanted her back at the PH. Her head was spinning just from that morning’s revelations.
Danny Perry had tried to run Robbie Fontenot’s car off the road into the swamp. Robbie had told Eli he was investigating police corruption. Just a joke, Eli said. Robbie wasn’t a reporter. He didn’t have a job at all. But he had a box full of money no one could explain. How much of that money might have Danny Perry’s fingerprints all over it?
She kept going back to Halloween night.
Robbie had been seen talking to a town cop…or a party reveler dressed as one…
He had also been seen talking to Dozer Cormier.
And he hadn’t been seen since—until Danny Perry had chased after his car leaving the Merciers’ neighborhood.
If Robbie was driving that car, what was he doing there? And why had Danny Perry been there to intercept him? Danny had been working days—had worked that very day. How had he come to be there in the middle of the night? It wasn’t like the PD didn’t have a dog shift. The only way Danny got that assignment had to have been to volunteer for it, and why in the world would he do that when he had worked all day? Unless he thought there was something in it for him.
If Annie gave any credence to the possibility of Melissa paying Robbie to get rid of her husband, why this cloak-and-dagger bullshitin the middle of the night—calling her cell phone, creeping around the Merciers’ neighborhood? Maybe if the wife wasn’t paying what she owed him…But Melissa Mercier had no known connection to Robbie. Will Faulkner might have been the linchpin there, but they certainly didn’t have enough cause at this point to ask a judge for a look at Faulkner’s phone records or his finances for any unusual withdrawals of cash.
There were too many loose puzzle pieces, most of which would likely turn out to mean nothing. Murder almost always turned out to be depressingly, stupidly simple. A killed B because of money or jealousy or for revenge or in a fit of rage. The trick was sifting through the thousand pieces to find just the five or six that fit together to make the true picture of what had happened.
She turned into the law enforcement center parking lot, thinking she would begin again with the security video from downtown on Halloween night.
“Broussard!” Stokes called out as she walked in the door of the Pizza Hut. “How come you’re never around when I need you?”
“Because I don’t live my life for you?” Annie said. “Where’s Nick?”
“I don’t know. He got a text and left a little while ago.”
“And since when have you ever needed me?”
“Since I found this video,” he said. “Come have a look.”
She rounded the counter and went to stand behind him at his desk. “If this is porn, I’m gonna kick your ass. I’m in no mood for your nonsense, Chaz.”
“Well, this isn’t gonna improve your mood any,” he said. “We found out this morning there were two trucks at the dump site of our murdered guy. One dark and one light. This is a security video from a garage near the turnoff for that road. We lucked out. They’ve got a nice big yard light on that property.”
He clicked his mouse and started the footage. “We know Cody Parcelle drives a black Dodge Ram, and there’s a dark truck going by, could be a Ram. Can’t see the plates, can’t see the driver. And here comes our light truck right behind. Does that look familiar to you?”
An older white pickup with what looked like rust damage around the rear wheel wells.
The truck that had been parked in front of the Parcelles’ barn.
Annie felt her heart sink. “Oh, man…”
Stokes pushed his chair back and stood. “We need to go pick up Tulsie Parcelle.”
“And here I thought this day couldn’t get any worse.”
28
Dozer Cormierhad never shownup for work that day. His crew boss had shrugged it off as Dozer being Dozer. Just more of the rough patch he’d been going through lately. The rough patch he’d been going through since Halloween, the night Robbie Fontenot had gone missing. Robbie Fontenot, whom Dozer had flatly denied seeing.
