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“Why would you loan a TV to a guy you don’t even know his name?”
“I’m nice that way.”
“Uh-huh.” Annie rolled her eyes. “You’re a regular ray of freaking sunshine, you are. What’s your name?”
“I don’t have to tell you nothing! I know my rights!”
“No doubt by heart. But I’ll refresh your memory, just the same.”
Annie recited the Miranda warning as she pulled her handcuffs off her belt. “Stand up, please.”
“Fuck yourself.”
“You’re not doing yourself any favors here being an ass to me,Sunshine,” Annie said, going around behind her and bending down to cuff one wrist and then the other.
“Not doing you any favors, either.”
“And here I’m probably the nicest person you’re gonna meet today,” Annie said as a car door slammed in the distance.
She glanced down the narrow space between the two houses, expecting to see a sheriff’s office cruiser; instead, a town cop in uniform came walking up, hand resting on the butt of his sidearm.
“Everything all right back here, ma’am?” he asked with a pleasant smile. He was maybe thirty and built like a small bull. His gray uniform shirt was tailored tight over his bulletproof vest. His jaw was square, his face all sharp angles capped with a head of blond-tipped dark hair. Annie recognized him from around town. Danny Perry. People called him Hollywood. It wasn’t a compliment.
She held up the badge she wore on a ball chain around her neck. “Detective Broussard. Sheriff’s office.”
“What you got going on here, Detective? You need help? Oh, hey, Rayanne,” he said to the thief. “What you got yourself into now?”
“You know Little Miss Sunshine here?” Annie asked.
“Oh, yeah. Rayanne Tillis. Me and Rayanne go way back, don’t we, Rayanne? How many times have I arrested you?”
The thief made a face at him. “I’d tell you to stick it up your ass, Danny, but you’d probably like it.”
“She’s a charmer,” Perry said. “What’s she done this time?”
“Caught red-handed stealing a TV from this house.”
The officer raised his eyebrows, pretending to be impressed. “B and E. You’re moving up in the criminal world, Rayanne.”
“What’s her usual?” Annie asked.
“Oh, you know, possession, shoplifting, the odd twenty-dollar blow job.”
“You never complain,” Rayanne remarked.
The officer narrowed his eyes at her and then turned back to Annie. “For the record, I have not partaken.”
Annie just looked at him, unamused and unconvinced.
“What brings you to town, Detective?” he asked. “Something going on I should know about?”
“Yes, you should know about it,” B’Lynn Fontenot snapped, coming in from the side. “Youwouldknow if you had any interest in doing your job.”
Perry looked ambushed. “Ma’am?”
“This is Mrs. Fontenot,” Annie said. “Her son lives in this house right here.”
“Except that he’s been missing more than a week, and y’all have not done one damn thing about it!” B’Lynn stepped right up to the officer. She looked ready to punch him. Annie wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t.
