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He lifted the chain over his head and put it around her neck to her absolute delight—and to his. Sweet child. So innocent. Unspoiled by what passed for world wisdom among so-called normal people.
In the distance, Nick picked up the whine of an airboat motor.
Noelle lifted the badge with both small hands and looked at it with wonder, then danced away in a clumsy waltz around the deck to “Valse de Grand Meche,” singing her own made-up lyrics.Oh, to be so happy for such small pleasures, Nick thought.
The airboat was in sight now, swaying gracefully over the surface of the water. The engine noise was as loud as a small airplane as it approached. Luc Mercier sat high up on the driver’s chair, guiding the boat in. He cut the engine back fifty yards out and brought it in expertly alongside the dock.
Like many of the swamp tour boats Nick had seen, this one was a homemade affair with two rows of salvaged automobile bench seats for the tourists and a big ice chest bolted to the deck for refreshments or bait. He imagined people not from there might look at the vessel askance and wonder at its safety, but there wasn’t a Cajun on the bayou who didn’t take better care of his boat than of himself. Fancy seats and bells and whistles were unimportant here.
Mercier pulled his safety earmuffs off as he looked from Nick to Noelle and back, stone-faced, his eyes hidden by a pair of aviator sunglasses and a beat-up red ball cap pulled down low. He climbed down from his perch, tied the boat off, and came up on the dock, bolting the cormorant, which took flight with an offended squawk.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here, Fourcade?”
Nick could feel the fury in him, coiled tight like a heavy spring. He could see it in Mercier’s fists as they closed and opened, the hands of a man who couldn’t wait to hit something.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Nick said calmly. “I have a few questions for you.”
“I meanthis,” he said, pointing at his sister, who had stopped dancing and stood with Nick’s badge still in her hands even as she watched her brother with a wary expression.
Luc turned to her. “What you got there, Noelle?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, but snatched the badge out of her fingers and glared at it, then at Nick, then back at Noelle. “Give me that right now,” he snapped.
Tears welled up in the girl’s eyes. “Nick let me wear it! He’s my friend!”
“Your friend?!” Luc barked. “He isnotyour friend.”
He lifted the chain from around her neck and flung the badge in Nick’s direction, his ferocious glare still on his sister. “Go in the building.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong, me!” Noelle wailed.
“Go inside!”
The girl ran bawling around the corner, met with a hug at the door by Evie Orgeron, whose expression should have burned a hole clean through Luc Mercier.
Nick bent and picked his badge up off the rough wooden planks of the deck. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked quietly, taking a step toward Mercier, his anger held tight as a fist in the center of his chest. “Why you treat your sister like that? She’s done nothing wrong.”
“Don’t you talk to me about my sister! Here you are, trying to take advantage of a retard!”
“Don’t use that word.”
“I’ll use whatever word I want, and you can get the hell off my property!”
Nick took another aggressive step forward, prompting Mercier to do the same, his fists balled and raised to waist level.
Nick chuckled low in his throat, a sound that had nothing to do with humor.
“You gonna take a swing at me?” he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Please do. I will put your sorry ass face down on this deck, and I hope to God there’s some loose nails sticking up where you land. And then I’ll drag your bleeding ass to jail for assaulting an officer and hope you haven’t had a tetanus shot.”
Mercier glared at him, but any words he had seemed caught in his throat. Still, he didn’t back down.
“You wanna try me?” Nick asked. “ ’Cause now, me, I got a bad mood on, and I will be only too happy to turn you inside out for making that little girl cry.”
“You’re the one trying to take advantage,” Luc accused.
“I did no such thing. I came here to ask you questions, not her. But while we’re on it, maybe you wanna explain to me why she would tell me so proudly that she sweeps the office across the road every day when you told me nobody but Marc was in the office Saturday. You wanna tell me about that? Because now I’m thinking you’re a liar, and I’m wondering what else you lied to me about.”
“I don’t want you bothering her!” Luc barked. “She don’t need to be talking to cops, getting questioned like a suspect! She’s just a child!”
