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“You have a plaster kit?”
“I’ve got one in my trunk. You got any?”
“I think I might have two. Who called this in?”
“Swamper,” Stokes said, nodding in the general direction of the blue-and-white sheriff’s office cruiser parked a short distance ahead of his car. A bald, stocky deputy sat back against the hood of the cruiser, chatting animatedly with a small, wiry man in overalls and green waders, the pair of them smiling and laughing like old friends catching up at a Sunday picnic.
Nick hitched his backpack over one shoulder and headed toward them.
“Bonjour, Sergeant Rodrigue.Ça viens?”
He had grown up in a household where Cajun French was the default language of his parents, people proud to keep that language alive even when that idea had been unpopular in the mainstream. As was the case with many people in these parts, even his English was seasoned liberally with French.
“Our newly minted Lieutenant Fourcade!” Rodrigue boomed, his usual broad grin lighting his face beneath a bushy black mustacheof epic proportions. “Bonjour! Ça va. I’m good, me. What a fine day we have in God’s country, no?”
“Mais oui.That it is.”
“Fourcade?” the swamper asked, squinting hard beneath the bill of a worn, dirty green Bass Pro cap. “You related to the Fourcades down Abbeville? Coy and them?”
“No, sir.”
“Fourcade—that’s not a Cajun name, but you a Cajun. I can tell,” he declared.
“Through and through,” Nick conceded. “And you are…?”
“This here’s my wife’s third or fourth cousin or something like that,” Rodrigue said with a chuckle. “Alphonse Arceneaux. My wife, Mavis, she’s an Arceneaux on her mama’s side. Alphonse, he found the body, him, and he called me.”
“Why you didn’t call nine-one-one?” Stokes asked, joining them.
Arceneaux looked at him like he was a fool, lines of disapproval creasing his narrow, weathered face. He might have been seventy or forty-five. It was difficult to say. His skin had been turned to tooled leather by years working outdoors in the harsh Louisiana weather.
“That’s for emergencies!” he declared. “This ain’t no emergency. That dude, he’sdeaddead, him. He as dead as dead gets. What’s the hurry?”
“We’d like to catch the bad guy.”
“Bah!” Arceneaux scoffed. “I told you, there wasn’t no bad guy. There wasn’t nobody but me, and I gotta stay here for y’all. I might as well call a friend, no?”
“You didn’t see anyone?” Nick asked. “No car or truck?”
“Mais non, no nothing.”
“How’d you come to find the body? You got a boat out there?”
“My bateau.” Arceneaux pointed in the general direction of the water, though the boat was hidden from view by the tall grass.
“And what brings you out this way?”
“Running my traplines. Me, I lease this land. I come this way first thing in the morning and try to get my nutria before they getstole. This here land’s too close to town. Lazy-ass town boys come out here and steal my nutria. Y’all need to do something ’bout that!” Arceneaux said, as if the raids on his traplines should take priority over a murder.
“We do dead people, not dead rodents,” Stokes grumbled.
“Stealing is stealing,” Arceneaux said. “Six bucks a tail this year. That’s my livelihood they messing with!”
“I don’t disagree,” Nick said. “But you have to take that up with the Wildlife agents. That’s their jurisdiction.”
“Me, I’m gonna catch them rascals red-handed this year,” Arceneaux promised, clearly relishing the idea. “Give them raggedy-ass thieves some Cajun justice!”
“Dude, don’t promise violence on your fellow man in front of cops,” Stokes cautioned.
