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“I’m not suggesting anything,” Nick said. “I have to be open to all possibilities.”
“Well,thatisnotpossible!” she said, trying to sound emphatic instead of on the verge of panic.
“Really, Detective,” Faulkner said. “That’s some pretty wild speculation. Marc’s off on a temper tantrum. He’s probably sitting out in the basin somewhere, shooting ducks and perfectly happy to think he’s got people worried sick. He’s made himself the center of attention even when he’s not here.”
“So there’s no reason to think Marc might have come to harm by his own hand or anyone else’s?” Nick asked.
“Who would want to hurt Marc?” Faulkner asked.
“No one,” Melissa snapped. “It’s ridiculous. This is all ridiculous!”
She snatched up her iPhone from the desktop and made a call, setting it to speaker, looking at Nick while she waited for the connection to pick up. The call went straight to voicemail.
“This is Marc. Leave a message.”
“It’s me,” Melissa said. “You need to call me back, Marc. People are worried sick about you. Your mother called the sheriff’s office, for God’s sake! I’m sitting here with a detective who’s asking me if someone might have killed you! Call me. Callsomeone, damn it! Let us know you’re all right, you selfish prick!”
She ended the call and covered her face with her hands for asecond before looking up at Will Faulkner. “Oh, my God, I shouldn’t have said that! What if somethinghashappened to him? He could be dead in a ditch or drowned in the swamp, and I’m sitting here pissed off at him for being a jerk!”
Faulkner squatted down beside her and squeezed her hand. “Let’s not panic.”
“Why did we have to come back here?” Frustration and anger and fear boiled up and spilled over. “God, I hate this place!”
“I’m sorry this is upsetting for you, Mrs. Mercier,” Nick said.
“Are you?” she asked, getting to her feet. Needing to burn off some of her anxious energy, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other even as she wrapped her arms around herself to hold herself together. “Why are you asking these questions? Would somebody want to hurt Marc? Would Marc hurt himself? What aren’t you telling us? Marc’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know that,” Nick said. His free question time was up. He would have to tell her, and she would react, and everything would shift, but there was no avoiding it. “This morning a body was found along a dead-end road outside of Luck.”
Melissa went still. Her face blanched chalk white. She pressed a hand across her mouth, as if to keep the emotion welling inside her from spilling out.
“Is it Marc?” Will Faulkner asked.
“We don’t have a positive ID at this time.”
“Didn’t Kiki give you a picture of him?” Melissa asked. “I-I can give you a picture of him.”
She scooped up her cell phone with trembling hands and fumbled to bring a photo up on the screen. “This is him,” she said, shoving the phone at Nick. “Is it him? Oh, my God!”
Will Faulkner stepped close and put an arm around her shoulders to steady her.
“I’m sorry there isn’t a better way of saying this,” Nick began. “But due to the nature of the injuries, we are unable to make an identification from a photograph.”
Melissa’s eyes widened, and a strange, primal sound of anguish wrenched itself out of her as her knees gave way. Her boss held on tight as he helped her slide back down onto her chair.
“Does your husband have any identifying marks on his body?” Nick asked. “A tattoo, a scar, a birthmark, anything like that?”
“Oh, my God. I can’t believe this is happening,” she said to herself. She was hyperventilating now, and a sheen of perspiration glazed her face. “Um, he…has a…scar…on the back of his left hand. He fell out of a tree. Deer hunting.”
She indicated the left hand. The hand Nick’s victim had held up in a vain attempt to block a shotgun blast.
“He broke his wrist,” Melissa added. “Our freshman year. I didn’t really know him that well at the time. He had a cast on his arm. He played it up to get sympathy from girls,” she said with a sad little smile of remembrance. “I fell for it.”
She curled over on herself as if she were in pain and started to cry. Will Faulkner bent down and murmured something to her as he pressed a clean handkerchief into her hand.
“What about his truck?” he asked Nick.
“There was no vehicle at the scene.”
