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“Watch out,” Danny Perry warned. “She’ll bite, too.”
“Oh, hey, Danny,” Young Prejean said. “She a friend of yours?”
“Frequent flier.”
“How come we’re taking her, then?”
“ ’Cause I said so,” Annie said, wrinkling her nose as she picked Rayanne’s filthy flip-flops out of the grass. “Don’t strain yourself thinking about it. I’ll be along directly. Miss Rayanne and I need to have a chat.”
“Hell to the no!” Rayanne declared, then made an ugly bulldog face at her. “I got the right to remain silent.”
Annie rolled her eyes. “That hasn’t stopped you so far. Come on now, get up and put your shoes on.”
She helped the woman to her feet and patted her down, blinking hard at the unpleasant smell of sour sweat and stale sex.
“You got anything sharp in your pockets gonna stick me?”
“I hope so.”
“You need to think on being friendlier to me, Rayanne,” Annie advised. “I can make your life easier or harder. Your choice.”
She handed off her thief to Young Prejean and started back toward the house. Dismissing Danny Perry, she said, “I’ll call Rivette when I get back to my desk,” dreading the idea.
Welcome back to work, Annie, she thought as she climbed the back steps. She’d caught a case, caught a burglar, and started an interagency war, and it wasn’t even noon.
Her phone pinged the arrival of a text message.
Have you counted all the paper clips?
Nick.
Not yet, she typed, adding a smiley-face emoji, and left it at that.
What he didn’t know could wait. He wasn’t liable to be happy about this situation. As her boss, he would take the brunt of any blowup over the potential turf war. As her overprotective husband, he would have preferred to wrap her in cotton wool and tuck her away someplace quiet than have her digging into a missing person’s case with potential drug involvement.
Oh, well.
5
B’Lynn wasstanding in herson’s tiny bedroom at the back of the house, looking small and lost and drained in an unguarded moment. As soon as she saw Annie, she pulled herself up taller and put on her game face like a warrior putting on armor. She had to be exhausted, bone-weary after a week of worry and anger, fighting to get anyone to listen, much less care, about her missing son.
“They haven’t done a goddamn thing!” she said, pointing toward the backyard. “He’s been gone more than a week and they haven’t done a goddamn thing!”
“I’m sorry, B’Lynn.”
“It’s not your fault. You’re the first person to even listen to me.”
“Have you looked around?” Annie asked. “Is anything missing?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell,” B’Lynn said, turning around in a circle.
The room was messy but not dirty. The bed was unmade, a tangle of blue sheets, a single pillow. A side chair held a pile of cast-off clothes.
The closet door stood open. An assortment of shirts hung on the rod. A gray roll-aboard carry-on-size suitcase sat on the floor, tucked back in the corner behind a pile of sneakers. If Robbie Fontenot had taken a trip, he was traveling light.
Annie pulled on a pair of gloves and opened the drawer of the single nightstand, bracing herself for a stash of pill bottles, but there were none. There was nothing but a half-dozen foil packs of condoms, which made her wonder again about the possibility of a girlfriend or boyfriend. Or maybe he preferred to pay for his pleasure with his friendly neighborhood prostitute, Rayanne. Could be that was how she knew about the TV.
On top of the nightstand, a cheap glass ashtray held a few spent butts.
