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“Man, I hate these places,” Stokes griped, unwrapping a stick of gum as he got out of his car. He looked around and made a face.
“Look at that mess,” he said, nodding toward the corral of trashed cars gutted of their engines, stripped of their tires, hoods up or missing, doors hanging open. “There could be anything out there. Rats and snakes. For sure there’s snakes. And trunks full of drugs and dead bodies for all we know.”
Nick cut him a sideways look. “You’re up to date on your tetanus shot, yeah?”
“I don’t know why I put up with you.”
“Because you have no choice.”
“Well, it sure ain’t your sunny disposition.”
The door and two long horizontal windows of the building markedofficewere fitted with iron bars for security and plastered with redneck bumper stickers and product logos for Pennzoil and Snap-on tools, support for the NRA, Browning rifles, and Ducks Unlimited. A hand-lettered sign proclaimed:We REservE the RIGHT to RefusE ServicE to ANyBody!!
“Like it’s a freaking five-star restaurant,” Stokes quipped. “I didn’t know junk dealers could be so choosy.”
A bell rang as they opened the door and went inside, though whether it could be heard over the blaring country music was debatable. The smells of oil, grease, and sweeping compound made a thick perfume that assaulted the senses. Long rows of tall industrial metal shelving were crammed with all manner of engine and car parts, household plumbing fixtures, pipes of all descriptions, light fixtures, and electrical wiring.
At the front of the space, a long cypress-wood counter that looked like it might have come out of an old-time drugstore marked off the office section of the building. Several chrome-legged stools with ripped vinyl seats invited customers to sit and shoot the breeze. Behind the counter, more shelving was piled with precarious mountains of paperwork and thick catalogs. A doorway led into whatlooked to Nick like a small private office—more shelves stuffed with who knew what.
A woman’s harsh voice called out from inside the little room: “Turn down that goddamn music!Merde!I can’t hear me think! Do you hear me, Luc Mercier?!
“Mais ça c’est fou!’Course he don’t hear me ’cause of that goddamn radio,” she muttered, coming out of the office. “Damncouillon.”
She was a tall, rawboned woman, thin and sinewy with wide hips and a lean, unadorned face. Her hair was steel gray and scalp short. She stopped in her tracks and stared with narrowed eyes at Nick and Stokes. Men with badges hanging around their necks were not her regular customers.
“Lieutenant Fourcade, Sheriff’s Office,” Nick said. “This is Detective Stokes.”
The woman said nothing as the color drained from her face. She stood frozen, as if she were afraid to move, afraid to breathe.
“You say something, Mama?” a man’s voice called. Luc Mercier emerged from the murky darkness of the shelf rows, thirtyish, six feet of stocky muscle, with a day’s growth of dark beard, and a shiner on his right eye.
“Can I help you fellas?” he asked, wiping his meaty hands on a greasy rag.
“Turn off that goddamn radio!” his mother shouted, snapping out of her state of suspended animation.
He turned on his heel and headed back down the first aisle to kill the music.
The woman turned back to Nick. “Is it Marc?” she asked. “Was it a car wreck?”
“Ma’am?”
“My son Marc. Marc Mercier. Is he dead?” she asked, and crossed herself over the front of her bib overalls.
The picture of the faceless body flashed through Nick’s mind, the body he’d sent to the morgue at Our Lady of Mercy with a JohnDoe toe tag. The mystery could be solved right there and then, which was way more than he had hoped for—and not at all what this woman wanted to hear. That was how quickly lives could be turned on their heads, upended and tumbled all over the place, like dice from a cup. Just like that.
“We ain’t heard from him since Saturday,” the woman went on. She turned toward her present son as he came back. “I told you! I told you something terrible happened! And would you listen to me? Hell no!”
He threw his hands up. “Well, what the hell was I supposed to do about it? Drive up and down every goddamned road in the parish looking for him?”
“You don’t ever listen to me!”
“Oh, I hear you! Jesus Christ! My ears are ringing all damn day with it!”
Nick held a hand up like a referee and barked, “Arrête! C’est assez!We need to begin here again, yeah? There’s been no car crash I know of. Let’s start there.”
“Jesus,” Luc Mercier muttered half under his breath. “Going off half cocked for no damn reason, as usual.”
“Shut your mouth!” his mother snapped.
