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“I’m done, Marc,” Dozer said, taking a step back. “That’s what I come to tell you. I’m going to Fourcade and telling him everything, and what happens happens, but it’s off my conscience.”
Marc thought he might be having a coronary. His heart was suddenly banging in his chest like a fist trying to break through. He felt like he couldn’t breathe.
“Are you out of your damn mind?!” he said, pursuing Dozer ashe took another step back toward his truck. “We’ll go to prison! And for what? Robbie’s dead! He ain’t coming back!”
“This is what I’m doing, Marc,” Dozer said. “You do what you will. I’m sure you’ll come out smelling like a rose. You always do. But this time you gotta do it without me. I’m done.”
He turned and started to walk away.
Marc’s brain was a scramble of animal panic and wild thoughts, grasping for ideas of how to get out of this. Maybe no one would believe Dozer. He was a drunk, and everyone knew he wasn’t quite right in the head.Who would believe him over me?But this Detective Fourcade said he had a witness who put him with Dozer and Robbie that night…And there he was with Robbie Fontenot’s car…
Oh, Jesus.
Oh, shit.
What could he do? There were three people living who knew what happened that night, and only two of them would never talk. The third had turned his back…
From the corner of his eye Marc caught sight of the red-handled axe lying on the firewood piled against the rusty metal shed. Without a second’s hesitation, he grabbed it and swung it as hard as he could.
39
Annie droppedJustin off ather cousin Remy’s in time for breakfast and headed into the office early. Deebo had texted her that he had connected with Kenneth Wood of Ravenwood Trust and was getting access to the video from the security cameras on the house behind Robbie Fontenot’s. She both hoped and dreaded it would give them something to go on—hoped for answers and dreaded what those answers might tell them.
B’Lynn had told her she was too kindhearted for this job, and that day she felt like that might be true. There was just so much sadness to unpack in these past few days. That Robbie Fontenot was dead was all but a foregone conclusion now, though she would hang on to the very last thread of hope until she absolutely had to let it go. She would have to go over to the jail that day to see Izzy Guidry and to the hospital to check on Tulsie Parcelle, hoping she could play a role in getting them if not a great outcome, at least a less terrible one. And she had yet to locate any next of kin for Rayanne Tillis, who lay dead in the morgue at Our Lady. It didn’t please her to add a dirty cop to that pile of misery.
What a hell of a week this was. The kind of week that made herthink about opening a flower shop or having another baby. Anything life-affirming to save her from falling into a pit of despair.
“Danny Perry didn’t make it,” Deebo said as she walked into the Pizza Hut.
Annie felt like someone had knocked the wind out of her. She gave him a look. “Could I get a ‘Hi, how you doing, Annie’ before the death notices, please?”
“Sorry,” he said, having the grace to cringe a little. “I figured I might as well lead with it and get it out of the way, before you sit down and look at this video.”
“You met with this Mr. Wood?” she asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee.
“Yes, ma’am. That house on Lafourche is his grandmother’s house. She’s gone into a nursing home recently and they needed to liquidate her assets so she could qualify for Medicaid. That’s how it ended up in this trust, so it’s still in the family. Mr. Wood had the security cameras installed on account of the sketchiness of that neighborhood. There’s nothing much in the house, but he didn’t want squatters or druggies or whatever taking up residence.”
Annie pulled a chair up beside him and sighed as she settled in. “So what have we got?”
“I went directly to Monday morning,” he said. “Who knows what else we might find going back, but I figured to cut straight to the chase and get it over with.”
He brought the video up on his computer screen and made a sad face while he petted his scraggly beard as if for comfort.
Robbie Fontenot’s back porch was some distance in the background, but there was no mistaking that the person unlocking the house to let Rayanne Tillis inside was a Bayou Breaux uniformed officer, square and stocky. Danny Perry.
It was what Annie had expected, but still she felt the weight of disappointment.
Deebo shook his head. “What the hell? I reckon we give him points for creativity, giving his snitch a bonus without dipping intohis own pocket, right? ‘Here, Rayanne, have this TV out of this guy’s house. He ain’t been around for a few days, and he’s probably dead anyway.’ ”
“Ah, Danny,” Annie murmured. “I was happier thinking you were just a fool.”
“I’m gonna bet he was up to his ears in drug business,” Deebo said. “Could be your Mr. Fontenot knew all about it.”
Annie thought of the money she’d found in Robbie’s bedroom, feeling sick at the idea that he might have been involved in the business. That was the last thing she wanted to have to tell B’Lynn.
“Thanks for getting this, Deebo,” she said. “This gives me enough to get a search warrant for Danny’s house, I should think.”
“Well, good luck with that,” he said. “Danny’s house burned to the ground early this morning.”
