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Luc Mercier sat up on his perch, guiding the boat in, his eyes hidden by his sunglasses, but his full attention was on the sheriff’s office personnel waiting for him—Nick and a pair of uniformed deputies stationed a few yards behind him. He took his time getting down, making sure the boat was tied off properly, before walking up.
“I don’t reckon this is a social call, is it?”
“Mais non,” Nick said quietly. He saw no need to make a show in front of the tourists, no need to embarrass the man or upset his loved ones. “I need you to come with me, Mr. Mercier. Your brother is already under arrest and in custody.”
Luc’s mouth twisted in a parody of a smile, and he looked off over the water. “And he threw me under the bus, did he? That’s Marc. Our paper tiger.”
“Me, I’m hoping you’re not gonna make a scene in front of your sister,” Nick said. “She doesn’t need to see that.”
“No,” Luc agreed. “You’ll give me a minute with her?”
Nick nodded. He watched Mercier go to his sister over by the ticket building and kiss her cheek and tell her he was going away for a bit and not to worry. Noelle Mercier smiled brightly and waved at Nick, her friend.
Nick had the deputies wait until they were on the far side of the vehicles to handcuff her brother and load him into the SUV.
It gave him no pleasure to take Luc Mercier away from his family and his business. Every part of this story was a tragedy that would go on and on because the Merciers’ favored son had made a terrible decision when he was just a boy, desperate to be a hero. The wake from that choice was still rippling through lives a decade on.
“What are you doing?” Kiki shouted as she came running across the road, red-faced and wild-eyed. “Where are you taking my boy?”
Nick intercepted her with both hands before she could fling herself at the vehicle. She twisted out of his grasp and stepped back, fuming.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“He’s under arrest, Mrs. Mercier,” Nick said quietly. “Please don’t make a scene. For the sake of your daughter.”
Kiki’s attention was on Luc now as he stared at her, stone-faced, from inside the vehicle. “What have you done?! What have you done to Marc?!”
She flung herself at the car, slamming her hands on the window and shouting at her eldest son. “If you hurt Marc, I’ll kill you!”
Nick pulled her away and held on to her as the SUV drove off.
—
Despite theno smokingsign posted on the wall, Luc lit up a cigarette and took a long drag on it, as if this might be his last for a while. He exhaled and shrugged. “What are you gonna do? Arrest me?”
“You don’t want a lawyer present?” Nick asked, unbothered by the man flaunting a rule. That was the least of his sins.
“For what? To charge me money to tell me to shut my mouth? No, thanks.”
“Your choice. Tell me about Halloween.”
He tapped the ash off his smoke into a paper cup with a puddle of cold coffee in the bottom. “Marc called me in a panic. Eleven thirty or so. Said there’d been an accident and could I come. I wasn’t far away, just down the street a ways at T-Neg’s bar drinking. So I go, and there’s Marc and Dozer, dressed up in costumes like a couple’a goddamncouillons, drunk. Dozer was crying. Marc was crying that his life was gonna be over…”
“Where was this at?”
“In the alley behind Canray’s Garage. And there was Robbie Fontenot, on the ground in a bad way.”
“He was alive?”
“Barely. There’d been a fight. Robbie hit Marc; Marc hit him back. Robbie fell and hit his head on a busted-up old concrete parking block. He wasn’t gonna make it,” he said, shaking his head at the memory. “The side of his head was caved in. He was barely breathing, having a seizure, foaming at the mouth. It was godawful.”
“Why you didn’t call an ambulance?” Nick asked.
“For what? So he could be a vegetable? So he could get to Our Lady and die there instead of in that alley? So my brother could go to prison? No. No. I couldn’t let that happen. What would be the point?” he asked. “It was a stupid accident. It didn’t need to get any more tragic than it was.”
“What did you do?”
“I cleaned up the mess because Marc wouldn’t. He couldn’t suck it up and be a man and do what needed to be done. I put that poor bastard out of his misery, and I rolled him up in a tarp and put him in the back of my truck.”
