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And there was something in the way she had saidDetective, with a certain formal emphasis…
Annie stepped back as she pulled the screen door open, and the tan car at the curb in front of the neighbor’s house caught her attention. A tan sedan that had seen better days. Not the kind of car common to this street stocked with Mercedes and BMWs, but the kind of junker vehicles police agencies kept in their carpools for detectives to drive.
The tan sedan of Dewey Rivette.
What the hell?
“I’ll be right up!” Annie called, stalling for time.
What was he doing there? Annie had relieved him of his duty. And why wouldn’t B’Lynn have simply said he was there? Why wouldn’t Dewey have announced himself?
She quickly called for backup to come, no lights, no sirens.
Her heart was thumping as she stood in the doorway looking into the gracious old home. Her sense of self-preservation told her to wait. Her concern for B’Lynn told her to go in. One part of her brain told her she was being ridiculous, that she’d known Dewey for years and there was no reason to be afraid of him. Another part of her brain recalled that car running up behind her on the road to Lafayette, and her wondering what might have happened if they hadn’t been on a busy highway.
Then she remembered that Robbie’s bedroom overlooked the street, and anyone looking out the window would see the sheriff’s deputies pulling up. If there was a situation upstairs, she needed to be the distraction that kept the attention in the room.
“Annie?” B’Lynn called. “Are you coming?”
Her mouth as dry as cotton, Annie put her hand on the butt of her weapon.
“On my way!” she called, and went inside the house.
42
“Fucking hell!”Stokes muttered, staringat the scene in front of them: Sergeant Rodrigue straddling the prone body of Dozer Cormier, red-faced as he applied pressure to the massive wound in Cormier’s shoulder.
“Go in with Mercier,” Nick ordered. “Book him. Put him in an interview room and leave him alone, but don’t take your eyes off him on the video.”
“Aye, aye, boss,” Stokes said, hustling off toward the marked SUV a deputy had already put Marc Mercier in.
Nick dismissed him, his attention on Dozer, who had turned an unhealthy shade of gray and lay wide-eyed with fear, gasping for air like a fish out of water.
“Dozer, can you hear me?” he asked as he knelt down beside him.
“I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna die!” Dozer mumbled, terrified.
“The ambulance is on the way,” Nick said calmly. “You gotta hang in there for us, yeah? You don’t want Marc being the only one telling this story.”
“He tried to kill me! He killed me!”
“You ain’t dead yet,” Nick said. “We’re gonna get you to the hospital.”
Rodrigue’s pressure on the wound had stemmed the arterial bleeding for the moment, but the big man was drenched in red and he had begun trembling uncontrollably as his body reacted to the trauma. There was no guarantee he would make it to Our Lady.
“Dozer, look at me,” Nick ordered, tapping his fingers on the man’s cheek to try to keep him focused. “You need to stay with me here. Tell me what happened to Robbie Fontenot.”
“He’s dead,” Dozer said, panting. “I wanted to make amends. Now he’s dead.”
He began to cry, for himself, for Robbie Fontenot. It was hard to say.
“Oh, God, I’m going to hell!” he wailed.
“No, you’re not,” Nick assured him. “You still have time, Dozer. You’ve got good in you. I know that. Who killed Robbie?”
Dozer moaned and writhed. Nick glanced up at Rodrigue, who was whispering the Rosary in French under his breath.
