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He had actually contemplated suicide for a minute, which was laughable. How could Marc Mercier kill himself? Too many people loved him. How could he deprive the world like that? The truth was, he didn’t have the character to do it. He didn’t have the balls.
He thought he might choke on his self-loathing.
He took a pull on the bottle of whiskey he’d found in a cupboard and tried to wash it down.
If he wasn’t going to kill himself, then he needed to plan his next move. Dozer would be there soon. Things would happen. He would go back to Bayou Breaux, and he would find a way to do it as a hero because that was what was expected. Maybe he would say he’d been injured, that he’d lost his phone overboard…Maybe he would claim he had left a note with Melissa that he needed a little time to sort some things out, but that she must not have found it or accidentally threw it away, and that him “missing” was just a big misunderstanding. He’d only been gone a couple of days, holed up in a place with no TV, and in this scenario he had also lost his phone but hadn’t worried about it.
He believed fully in his ability to spin a lie and in the gullibility of people who would be eager to believe him. But then what?
Part of him wanted to stay in Louisiana because it was familiar, because people bought the myth that was Marc Mercier hook, line, and sinker, and that was a comfortable role for him to play. Part of him couldn’t stand the idea. The myth was a lie. He was a lie. He would be trapped in that lie forever if he stayed, trapped in this place with the memories and reminders of everything he’d ever done—not just the good, but the bad as well. But who was he if he wasn’t here, and if the life he’d built with Melissa went up in flames?
She’d seen through him now, seen through to the real Marc, theliar, the fraud. She was done. He was sure she would take the baby and leave, despite whatever was going on between her and Will Faulkner. Friends, lovers, it didn’t matter. Faulkner was just handy, someone to fill the space in her life her husband had already vacated.
Marc hadn’t been able to resist going around the house at night to see if she was alone. He had even called once. He couldn’t say why. To hear her voice? To scare her? To say something? Say what? How could he even begin? Faulkner had been there at the house that night, drinking wine and making Melissa laugh. He had gone at one point, but he came back fast enough after Marc’s creepy, silent call from a phone that wasn’t his, and he hadn’t left.
That Melissa didn’t even try to hide whatever that relationship was told Marc she was done with him. And he had to be done with her, because how could he stay with a woman who knew exactly what he was?
He took another pull on the whiskey, as if the answers he wanted were in that bottle. The pink band on the horizon had turned flame orange as daybreak neared, the color spilling down across the water like molten flame. The birds had begun to call. Dozer would be there soon. He had to get ready.
—
Nick picked up Dozer on the west side of Bayou Breaux, on the road everyone referred to as the Loop, skirting the new developments. He stayed well back, barely keeping the Silverado’s taillights in sight.
There was no traffic to hide in at this hour, especially not where Dozer seemed to be headed, but a thin fog helped give him cover. He couldn’t risk being seen, couldn’t risk spooking Dozer. He would get one shot at this. Everything had to fall just right.
He drove Annie’s old Jeep—the army-variety utility vehicle, small, black, devoid of any decoration. It in no way resembled a police vehicle. There were plenty just like it in the area. The kind of vehicle people used to head into the wild to off-road or to hunt. As soon as it was barely light, he cut his headlights.
The truck turned onto Cypress Island Road, winding through the stands of cypress trees. The road barely raised up above the water on both sides, and the fog gave a sensation of floating through the wilderness. They passed by Danny Perry’s BBPD radio car, still perched where it had landed on a stump, its front end squished like an accordion up against the trunk of a tree. The area was still cordoned off by yellow tape.
Nick had a good idea where Dozer was headed. A Wildlife and Fisheries agent had tipped him off to some unusual activity at one of the fish camps—a vehicle covered with a tarp, a dim single light flickering in the house at night. No one would have thought anything of it come the weekend, but in the middle of the week, it was just enough to pique the interest of a trained eye.
The call had come late, while he’d been sitting outside the Fontenot house waiting for Annie. He knew the general area where the camp was located. There was one road in. Once Dozer turned down it, he was trapped, along with whoever was staying at the camp. Marc, Nick reckoned.
The question was why. Why would Marc Mercier have taken himself out there without telling anyone where he was going? He had left his wife without a word, left his child. His mother was beside herself with worry. Why? Why did a man who loved to be adored disappear? Something had become too much. Pressure bred the need to run away. The trouble with his marriage? The conflict with his brother?
But it seemed that Halloween had been the trigger. Something had happened Halloween night. Something involving Robbie Fontenot. In the days that followed, tensions had built, Dozer had started drinking, Marc and his brother had fought and come to blows. Marc had left his wife and child and gone out Saturday night as if he were a single man and never came home.
He had run away from something, but if he had meant to escape, he should have run farther, Nick thought. Justice was about to come calling.
37
Dawn wasan orange hazein the east as Dozer turned down the wooded path to the camp. The sheerest gauze of fog clung to the ground, giving a dreamlike quality to the scene, like a strange, distant memory. He had to stop for a moment as a buck deer stepped out of the brush and stood in the middle of the path, staring at him as if offended by his interruption. Eight points on the rack. On some other day he would have shot it, but that wasn’t what he was there for.
The buck moved on. Dozer drove forward.
The camp looked abandoned. Marc had parked the Toyota next to the storage shed and covered it with a tarp. He had pulled his truck with the trailer and his boat inside the old metal shed, out of sight of anyone who might have had an eye open for it—deputies or Wildlife agents.
Dozer pulled in behind the car and parked and sat there. He didn’t feel well. He felt sick at his stomach and odd, like his soul wasn’t connected to his body. Nerves, he supposed. He had made a hard choice to do a hard thing. That was bound to come with nerves. He needed to change his life. That day. But he knew he wasn’t the smartest guy, and Marc was an old hand at manipulating him.
He pulled a flask of Jack Daniel’s out of the console and drank the whole thing down in a few gulps. His last alcohol. A parting shot for a little courage, and then he would be done. For good. He meant it this time.
Something Fourcade had said the day before kept coming back to him, playing over and over in his mind:Do you want this to be the rest of your life? A drunk, a failure, trying to hide from yourself…
No. No, he didn’t. He didn’t know what would happen after that day, but it would damn well be different from the purgatory his life had been for the past decade.
Marc came out of the house and down the steps.
Here we go…
