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“Imagine my surprise,” he said, “when I’m sitting with the governor at Sullivan’s, about to cut into my beautiful Delmonico steak, and my phone starts blowing up with Johnny Earl having a tantrum because one of my detectives has chased one of his off a case. Imagine my indigestion.”
“That’s what you get eating red meat,” Nick said.
Gus’s scowl deepened as red began to creep up his neck. “Are you trying to be amusing?”
“No.”
“Because I am not in the mood to be amused by anyone, least of all you, Lieutenant.” He turned his eagle-eyed glare on Annie. “And you must be eating your Wheaties these days, young lady. First day back on the job and you’re sinking your teeth into the town boys like a terrier with a rat, running their detective off his case in their jurisdiction.”
“I didn’t run Dewey Rivette off his case, sir,” Annie corrected him. “He didn’t have a case. He wasn’t investigating anything. He’s just a big baby who showed up mad because he thought I was about to make him look bad.”
“Weren’t you?”
“I don’t have to lift a finger to make Dewey Rivette look bad. He does all that heavy lifting on his own. Anyway, Bayou Breaux is as much our jurisdiction as it is theirs, as you yourself have pointed out many times.”
His attention went back to Nick. “And I suppose you’re gonna make excuses for your wife’s behavior?”
“Mais non,” Nick said calmly. “No excuses are necessary. Detective Broussard, she did nothing wrong.”
“You gave her the okay for this?”
“Me, I was otherwise engaged at the time with a murder victim. At any rate, my detectives don’t need permission to investigate crimes. It is their job after all, is it not?”
“Don’t get cute with me,” Gus grumbled. “I’m trying to orchestrate a smooth change of power in this office. I don’t have time to be starting World War III with Johnny Earl.”
“C’est triste,” Nick said. “That’s sad, for sure, considering butting heads with Chief Earl has always been your favorite way to pass a good time, yeah?”
“Now, listen here—”
“Don’t bother to deny it. I don’t know how you stood it this long out of office not being able to wind up Johnny Earl ’til his head spins. It seems to me the only real problem here is that you were caught unaware. You never did like to play defense.”
“Well, the best defense is a good offense,” Gus conceded as he took his seat. He heaved a sigh and gestured them toward chairs.
“Have you actually spoken with Chief Earl?” Nick asked.
“Without knowing the particulars of the situation? Hell no!”
“Then there is no problem, is there? You’re just cranky because the governor didn’t tell you what you wanted to hear today, and you’re gonna be stuck with this job longer than you want to be, yeah?”
Gus made a rumbling sound low in his throat like distantthunder. “That I’m sitting here this minute dealing with you is already longer than I want to be here.”
Annie glanced around the office. When Gus had reigned, this room had been a veritable time capsule of the history of Partout Parish. The walls had been covered in photographs of Gus with every important or self-important politician and minor celebrity in south Louisiana, as well as dozens of commendations and awards and framed newspaper and magazine articles featuring Gus. Every available surface had been piled with old files and weird relics he had collected over the years: lacquered alligator heads, giant ceremonial ribbon-cutting shears, a jar full of tiny plastic baby dolls found in decades’ worth of king cakes.
When he had come into office, Kelvin Dutrow had stripped the room bare and then built his own wall of fame, all of it gone now, thrown away and forgotten. The wall had remained empty, save for the dozens of empty picture hooks. Gus had made no effort to bring anything personal back into the room. The sense of impermanence was subtly unsettling.
“I wanna dig Kelvin Dutrow up and kill him myself for leaving this office in the lurch,” he grumbled. “No chief deputy, and the next obvious choice don’t want the job, not that I blame him.”
Nick, who had hated Kelvin Dutrow on first sight and had never changed his mind, wisely chose to say nothing in the moment. Gus had handpicked Kelvin Dutrow to succeed him. That his choice had turned out to be a bad one was not sitting well with him. He now found himself in a hell that was, at least in part, of his own making, but he was more than willing to take some of that frustration out on anyone handy if they displeased him.
“This is a missing persons case,” Annie said, turning them back to the topic at hand. “We should have been brought in immediately, not left to wait until a family member came to us out of desperation.”
Gus sighed and rubbed a big hand over his face and back over hissilver crew cut. “Is this family member the same woman Valerie tells me attacked her this morning?”
Annie rolled her eyes. “She did not attack Valerie. If Valerie didn’t wear her skirts too tight and her heels too high, she could have easily gotten out of the way.”
“Out of the way of what?”
“B’Lynn Fontenot,” Annie said. “She came here this morning hoping to appeal to you directly. She said her ex-husband is an acquaintance of yours—Dr. Robert Fontenot.”
