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“First thing in the morning.”
Annie took a deep breath and braced herself. The victim wasn’t the worst she had ever seen—not even close. She’d seen bloated bodies pulled out of the swamp, half eaten by wildlife. She’d seen the bodies of people who died alone in the dead of summer in an attic with no air-conditioning. Her first murder victim was a woman who had been nailed to a wood floor, tortured, and eviscerated. Still, there was always a jolt of shock seeing what was left after one human being had snuffed out the life of another.
“That’s nasty,” she muttered, staring at what was left of this man’s head. It was a sight from a horror movie, one brown eye staring out of a shell of shattered bone and pulverized flesh.
“No mystery what killed him,” Caleb remarked, leaning back against the wall and setting his hands at his waist.
“Mais non,” Nick said. “The secret is who he is and who did this to him.”
“Well, he’s not Robbie Fontenot,” Annie said with no small amount of relief as she looked at the dead man’s bare knees. “No surgical scars.”
“Robbie Fontenot?” Caleb asked. “Why’d you think it was him?”
“Is he a friend of yours?” Annie asked.
“Not mine. He went to school with Eli. They both played football for Sacred Heart.
“Man, that kid Robbie was a baller,” he said. “He would have been a Division I quarterback if he hadn’t blown out his knee.”
“Is Eli still friends with him?”
“Nooo,” Caleb said, shaking his head. “Robbie ran off the rails way back when. Drugs. In and out of jail. Eli bumped into him in town not long ago. He only mentioned it because he hadn’t seen him in so many years. He was shocked the guy was still alive. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if this was him, all things considered.”
“Where’s Eli at now?” Annie asked. “Is he still in Houston?”
“He moved to Lafayette this summer. He’s a civil engineer for the city.”
“You bunch of brainiacs,” Annie teased, pulling out her phone and entering Eli McVay as a new contact. “Your folks must be pleased he’s closer to home. What’s his phone number?”
Caleb recited the number. “Why you looking for Robbie Fontenot? Is he wanted for something?”
“He’s missing,” Annie said. “Have you heard anything about him recently?”
“No. We don’t run in the same circles.”
“Do you know for a fact he’s still into drugs?”
He shrugged his meaty shoulders. “Those tigers don’t change their stripes as a rule, do they?”
So everyone but Robbie Fontenot’s mother wanted to think.
“If you happen to hear anything about him, you call me, all right?” Annie said, handing him a business card.
Caleb tucked the card in the breast pocket of his scrubs. “Sure, but all I do these days is study. Unless he shows up here, I’m not liable to be much help.”
“I’m gonna hope for his mama’s sake, then, I don’t hear from you,” Annie said. She turned to Nick, but his attention was still on Caleb.
“Caleb, do you happen to know Marc Mercier?” he asked.
“Sure, I know Marc.” His blue eyes widened suddenly, and he turned to look at the body on the gurney. “You don’t think this is Marc, do you?”
“I don’t know. Could it be?”
“No!” he said, incredulous at the idea. “It can’t be!”
“It can’t be because the body doesn’t look like him,” Nick asked, “or it can’t be because you don’t want to believe it could be him?”
“Well, I ain’t never seen Marc naked, for starters,” Caleb said. “And I don’t know what to say about that head. That doesn’t even look real, let alone resemble an actual person. If you put Marc’s face on that mess, could it be him? Maybe. But who would shoot Marc? Why?”
