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“Oh, yeah,” she said on a harsh laugh, “ ’cause I should rat out cops! That’s a good one!”
“Rat them out for what?” Annie asked calmly, though her heart beat a little bit harder at Rayanne’s choice of words. “Robbie Fontenot was reported to the Bayou Breaux police as a missing person. I would expect them to go to his house. I just don’t get the impression that they’re taking this seriously. That’s why I wonder have they been around.”
“Oh, well…I guess I seen them there once or twice.”
“Danny Perry?”
“Yeah…He’s around.”
“Do you know their detective? Dewey Rivette?”
“Why would I know a detective?” she asked, laughing again as she looked up at the camera on the wall. “Like I’m some kind of criminal mastermind or something. Can I get a cigarette?”
“There’s no smoking in here,” Annie said. “Sorry. I’ll make sure you get a pack on your way home.”
“When’s that gonna be?”
She was getting restless, shifting around in her seat. Annie wondered if it was her need for a smoke or her discomfort with the line of questioning. Either way, the clock was running down on her chance to get any useful information from Rayanne Tillis.
“You said that back door was open this morning. Mrs. Fontenot says that door was locked last night. You didn’t see anybody over there this morning messing with it?”
“No. I was having my beauty sleep,” Rayanne said, and she struck a pose like a model and smiled, showing off a dental wasteland of yellowed, snaggled, and missing teeth.
She might have been pretty once, Annie thought. The physical transformation brought on by addiction was like a time-lapsed horror show of sinking features, skin lesions, sores and scars, rottingteeth and gum disease. Rayanne Tillis was only twenty-three years old. She could have passed for forty-three.
“Rayanne, did you take anything else out of that house this morning besides that TV?”
“No!”
Annie held her hands up in surrender. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not gonna hold it against you if you did. Just tell me now. If you did, we’ll take it back. No harm, no foul. Nobody needs to know.”
“I didn’t take nothing!”
“Then I won’t find anything in your house when I take you home—like a laptop computer, for instance?”
“Fuck you!” Rayanne bolted up out of her chair and started pacing, agitation winding her tighter and tighter. “No, I don’t have no fucking laptop computer. And now I don’t have no TV, neither. This has been a fucking day, and I ain’t got nothing to show for it!”
She bent over, snatched a filthy flip-flop off one foot, and hurled it at the camera on the wall with amazing accuracy.
“Fucking cops! I want out of here!” she shouted at Annie. “You said you’d get me out of here! You fucking liar!”
She grabbed her other flip-flop and threw it at Annie, who batted it aside before it could hit her in the face. She jumped up out of her seat as Rayanne started toward her, her face twisted with rage.
That fast, the door swung open and a deputy the size of a minivan burst into the room, shouting at Rayanne, “Hey! Back off! Right now!”
Rayanne pedaled backward, leaning around him, red-faced. “You lying bitch! You said no one was watching us!”
“I said no one waslisteningto us,” Annie said. “That doesn’t mean you get to assault me!”
“I didn’t touch you, you lying cow!”
The deputy stepped in front of her again. “You need to sit down and shut up, miss.”
“Kiss my ass, you fat fucking whale!” Rayanne barked back. “I don’t take orders from you!”
The deputy glared at her. “You’re gonna take an order right now and shut your filthy mouth.”
“Deputy, it’s all right,” Annie said calmly. “We’ve just had a little misunderstanding, Miss Tillis and I. Give us another couple of minutes here.”
