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“You don’t know about Robbie Fontenot being missing?” Annie asked. “Is this your regular patrol area, Officer Perry?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“But what?” B’Lynn demanded. “But you don’t give a rat’s behind?”
“No, well, no, that’s not it at all,” Perry stammered. “I came over here with Detective Rivette on a welfare check a few days ago. We didn’t find any reason to be concerned.”
“He’sMISSING!” B’Lynn shouted directly into his face.
Perry frowned and puffed himself up, trying too late to project an air of authority. “Ma’am, please calm down.”
Annie cringed.
“Calm down?Calm down?!” B’Lynn raged. “My son could be dead by now because of you people, because of your gross incompetence and abject lack of humanity. And you tell me tocalm down? I am all out of Calm Down!”
She was red in the face, eyes wet with tears she refused to let fall. Annie gently rested a hand on her shoulder. Her small body was vibrating with fury and fear and helplessness.
“Come on, B’Lynn,” she murmured. “Let’s just get on with it. I want you to go in the house and have a look around. Don’t touchanything. Just look and see if anything is missing or out of place. Can you do that for me?”
B’Lynn drew in a sharp breath and stepped back, fighting to compose herself for the umpteenth time that morning. Annie watched her walk back to the house, then turned to the officer. “Let me give you a few words of wisdom, Danny. Never in the history of the world has an upset woman ever calmed down because a man told her to calm down. Don’t ever do that.”
“Well, but I just—”
She held up a hand to cut him off just as a sheriff’s office cruiser came down the alley. “No mansplaining necessary, thank you. She’s a mother who can’t find her son.”
“He’s an addict with a record—”
“She’s well aware of that. He’s still her son.”
Perry huffed a frustrated sigh as he watched the radio car approach. “So, you’re just taking this over?” he said, making a vague gesture toward the house.
“Looks that way, yeah,” Annie said casually, though she had the distinct feeling she was about to kick over a small hornet’s nest.
Cops were territorial animals, and the Bayou Breaux PD, a much smaller agency, was ever in the shadow of the sheriff’s office. Only the governor of Louisiana had more power than a parish sheriff, and Gus Noblier had been sheriff a very long time. He had finally retired, only to be pressed back into service after the death of his successor, no doubt much to the consternation of Chief of Police Johnny Earl. The two men had disliked each other for a decade or more, constantly butting heads. While the agencies coexisted and cooperated with each other by necessity, that rivalry was always just under the surface.
“Rivette’s gonna be pissed,” Perry announced.
“Why?” Annie asked. “I’m just taking something off his plate he didn’t want in the first place. He should send me flowers.”
“You’re making him look bad.”
“How’s that? I didn’t make Mrs. Fontenot show up at thesheriff’s office this morning, begging for help. What was I supposed to do? Throw her out in the street? Y’all don’t even think this is worth investigating, do you?” she asked. “Robbie Fontenot is just another addict who up and left or OD’d somewhere. I’ll probably come to the same conclusion. I’ll just be kinder about it, that’s all.”
The deputy got out of the cruiser and came across the weedy lawn toward them. “Hey, Annie, whatcha got?”
“Young Prejean,” Annie greeted him. If the poor kid had a first name, nobody cared. He was called Young Prejean because he was the younger of the two Prejeans in uniform for the SO. He was twenty-two, wide-eyed and fresh-faced with a pathetic tuft of billy goat whiskers masquerading as a goatee on his chin.
“I need you to take this lady in for me,” Annie said. “Put her in a holding cell. Don’t book her yet.”
Young Prejean looked around the yard, tilting his head like a confused puppy. “What lady?”
“You can suck my ass, Deputy Dog!” Rayanne Tillis shouted as Annie gestured toward her. “And I didn’t steal nothing! I was just borrowing it.”
Annie arched a brow at her. “I thought you were loaning it to him.”
“I did, Miss Stick Up Your Ass. And now I’m loaning it back to me.”
“Oh, Lord help me,” Annie grumbled. To the deputy she said, “This is Miss Rayanne. Don’t let her work her feminine wiles on you.”
