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“Bob Fontenot?” Gus said. “There’s a name I haven’t heard in donkey’s years.”
“He moved to Lafayette.”
“I know.”
Something in the way he said it gave Annie pause, like those two simple words might be only the very tip of a substantial iceberg.
“You haven’t heard from him lately?” she asked.
“No.”
“His son is missing.”
“Is he?”
Another two icy chips off the same block. There was a story there, and Gus wasn’t wanting to share it.
“He’s been missing since Halloween,” she pressed on. “So far, the only person who has any sense of urgency about it is his mother—and I include the BBPD and our own desk sergeant in that statement. Dewey Rivette has done nothing, as far as I can see.”
“The Fontenot boy isn’t this body you’ve got laying in the morgue at Our Lady?” Gus asked.
“No, sir. Definitely not.”
“And we may have another possible missing person,” Nick said. “Marc Mercier, who hasn’t been seen since Saturday. He and Mr. Fontenot knew each other, as it turns out.”
“Then who is this corpse? Marc Mercier?”
“We don’t know yet. I’ve got to get his dental records and hope there’s enough mouth left on that corpse for comparison. He took ashotgun blast to the face. It’ll probably come to DNA to identify him, and where do we even start with that if it isn’t Marc Mercier?”
Gus slapped a hand down hard on his desktop. “What the actual hell is going on in this parish? I leave for one day and come back to all this mess? Missing persons. Unidentified murder victims…”
“Maisyeah,” Nick said dryly. “As I recall, there was no crime at all when you were sheriff before.”
“Smart-ass. The world’s going to hell on a sled,” Gus declared. “You think this is somehow all connected, do you?”
Nick gave half a shrug. “I have no idea at this point.”
“I spoke with Mrs. Fontenot after we left the morgue,” Annie said. “She remembers Marc Mercier from when the boys were in school. They ran together before Robbie had his accident, but not after. He lost most of his old friends. They graduated, moved on with their lives. She doesn’t know who his friends are now. He doesn’t share with her. But she’s never heard him mention Marc Mercier in recent memory, for whatever that’s worth.”
Gus frowned. “Try to find people in this town whodidn’tgo to school together. Doesn’t mean much.”
“I still don’t like the coincidence,” Nick said. “For now these are three separate investigations that may or may not intersect. But if it turns out there’s a connection, I would sooner not be tripping over the BBPD as we investigate.
“Annie filed the missing persons report, she’ll enter Mr. Fontenot into the NCIC database, and she’s already working on a possible witness. As far as I’m concerned, this is our case going forward, and Dewey Rivette can devote himself to solving the crime wave of shoplifting in downtown Bayou Breaux.”
Gus sat back in his chair and heaved a sigh as the wheels of his mind turned.
“If you had been here this morning,” Annie began, “what would you have told Mrs. Fontenot? Would you have turned her away? Would you have told her that her son isn’t our problem because of his address, because you didn’t want to offend Johnny Earl?”
“No,” he said wearily. “I don’t reckon I would have. But that doesn’t make this any less of a can of worms.”
He swiveled his chair slowly back and forth as he stared out the window, as if it was a portal into the past.
“That boy caused his parents a world of grief,” he said. “And here he is, still doing it.”
“We don’t know that he’s done anything,” Annie said. “All we know at this point is he’s gone. Where and why, I don’t know. Could be no fault of his own at all.”
“The result is the same,” Gus said. “Here’s his mama, hysterical with worry, begging for help, running herself ragged, I expect. She’s dragged him out of hellholes before. She’s gotta be thinking he’s dead or worse.”
