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Her relationship with Nick and her promotion to detective had put a stop to the worst of it, no one in their right mind wanting to run afoul of Nick’s temper. And times and attitudes toward women in policing had changed in the years since. Old grudges had softened, and she and Stokes had learned to coexist. That was as good as it would ever get. He still managed to irritate the shit out of her by merely breathing the air.
“Listen up!” Nick barked, getting the attention of everyone in the room. “As of right now, we’ve got three cases that will take precedence over everything else we’ve got going on. The unidentified murder victim found outside of Luck this morning; the disappearance of Marc Mercier, last seen Saturday night; and the disappearance of Robbie Fontenot, last seen on Halloween, both white males in their late twenties.
“These three cases may or may not be related. We know that Mercier and Fontenot knew each other in high school. Whether or not they’ve had anything to do with one another recently, we don’t yet know. We do know that the body in the morgue is not Robbie Fontenot. I’ve requested dental records on Marc Mercier for comparison, or we may have to rule him in or out by DNA.
“Annie is the lead on Fontenot. Chaz is the lead on the DB. I’ll take Mercier. Wynn, we’ll need cell phone records for both Fontenot and Mercier.”
“Do we have case numbers?” Dixon asked.
“On Fontenot, yes,” Annie said.
“I’ll have a case number for you on Mercier before I leave tonight,” Nick said. “For now, we’ve got a BOLO out on Mr. Mercier’s vehicle, a new black Ford Raptor pulling a seventeen-foot modified V-hull boat. Mr. Fontenot’s vehicle—a blue Toyota Corolla—has been reported stolen. I’ve given all the basic information to the press, but we need to get photos of both men released to all media outlets. Wynn, I’ll put that on your plate, too.
“Deebo,” he said, turning his attention. “Annie’s case may have a drug connection.”
Jeffcoat nodded. “We’ve already spoken. Whatever you need, Annie.”
“I need to know about a possible drug house on Lafourche over by the Mardi Gras warehouse,” Annie said. “Do you know that neighborhood?”
“Sure. Used to be Two Deuce Krewe territory, if we’re talking about hard drugs,” Deebo said. “But not for a while now. They move around. Did you see something?”
“The house is across the alley from where Robbie Fontenot lives,” Annie said. “It looks like it could be abandoned, but it’s also got bars on the doors and it’s tricked out with security cameras.”
“And you want to knock on the door and ask can you see their security footage?” he asked. “There’s a good way to get your head shot off.”
“I want to know what I can know about it,” Annie said. “Robbie Fontenot is a recovering addict. He’s supposedly been clean since he got out of rehab recently, but if his next-door neighbor is a dealer, that’s the most obvious rabbit hole to go down. As for the cameras, the one on the back porch could possibly catch anything going on at the back of Robbie’s place. That’s what I’m most interested in.”
“You’ve been in his house,” Nick said. “Were there any signs of a struggle?”
“No. I can’t say he was taken from there, but I’d sure like to see any comings and goings,” Annie said. That she was most curious about any comings and goings of Dewey Rivette, she kept to herself.
“I’ll find out what I can,” Deebo offered.
“Thanks.”
“Find out who owns this supposed drug house,” Nick said. “It’s likely a rental property.”
Annie nodded.
He turned to Stokes. “Has Alphonse Arceneaux come in to make his statement?”
“Yeah. He didn’t have anything useful to add. He’s still more hot under the collar about kids stealing his goddamn nutria. He gave me a list of suspects for that,” he said with a dismissive eye roll.
“Check them out.”
“What?” Stokes scoffed. “Are you fucking kidding me? Are we the swamp rat police now?”
“Use your head for something other than a hat rack,” Nick snapped. “If someone is raiding his traplines, they’re getting out there earlier than he is. Maybe they saw something. Check them out. Bring them in. They’re potential witnesses. What else did you manage to do today besides catching me on TV?”
“As you know, there’s no houses on that road out to where the body was dumped,” Stokes said, “so no doors to knock on, no witnesses. We can’t know if the vehicle that brought him out there came north out of Luck or south out of Bayou Breaux, or came from any one of a dozen side roads in between.
“The tire tracks at the scene are probably from a pickup,” he went on. “Hopefully, the casts are clean enough to get a make on the tires. That’ll take days or weeks to hear back. In the meantime, we can check security cameras on the south end of Bayou Breaux and the north end of Luck on the off chance this mystery truck stuck to a main drag hauling a murder victim around, and then we track down every pickup we see on the video.”
“The autopsy will be first thing tomorrow,” Nick said. “We’ll have a more accurate time of death, but he was out of rigor and decomp had already started, meaning he was probably killed on the weekend. But he wasn’t laying where we found him all that time, that’sfor sure. You only need to look at video from last night. We can borrow a couple deputies to help with that. There can’t be but four or five businesses on either end of that route with cameras. And check any houses along the way for cameras on garages or video doorbells.”
Stokes nodded. “We won’t have a full tox screen back anytime soon, but I asked for a quick blood alcohol. If he’d been drinking, I think bars are a good place to start asking questions. Any altercations over the weekend, any guys seen stepping out with other dudes’ ladies, that kind of thing. I still say that’s what this will come down to. Why else is he only half dressed?”
“Don’t rule out the chance that he could be gay,” Annie cautioned. “Remember Ronald Dominique? Twenty-three victims, all men and boys.”
