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He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just figured par for the course for Robbie. He’s got a long drug history. The cops know it. He knows they know it. Around and around they go.”
“He’s not one of your AA reclamation projects?”
“People have to want help before they’ll accept help,” Donnie said. “Robbie…I don’t know. He was always kind of a loner, thatkid. A world of talent, but a puzzle. His folks did everything they could—rehab and whatnot. That Oxy, man, that is some bad shit. I’ve known too many people got hooked on that, and mostly not through any real fault of their own. They say it’s as bad as heroin for addiction.
“I saw on the news Robbie’s missing, too,” he said, frowning. “I hate to say it, but my first thought was that he’s probably dead somewhere. Playing with that shit, your luck runs out eventually.”
“This cop he was talking to that night,” Nick said. “Did you recognize them?”
“No. I just saw a uniform. I didn’t really look. I was busy slinging shrimp and sweet tea. That was a hell of a party. Were you there?”
“No,” Nick said. “Me, I don’t like crowds. Get that many drunks together, that’s just work waiting to happen for me.”
“True enough,” Donnie said, rising as Nick started to move toward the door. “I heard you married that Broussard girl, the deputy.”
“I did.”
Donnie shook his head, chuckling as he opened the office door. “I liked her. Man, she deserves way better than you!”
“She does,” Nick agreed, smiling, “but she’s my wife nevertheless.”
“Good for you. Kids?”
“We have a little boy. He’s five already.”
Donnie gave him a look as they walked down the hall. “I’m not the only tiger changed his stripes.”
“Mais non,” Nick confessed. “You’re not.”
He held his hand out, a peace offering long overdue. Donnie took it.
“I’m glad to see you’re doing well, Donnie,” Nick said. “Not everybody comes out the other side.”
“Same to you.”
“You call if you need me,” Nick said. “Thanks for the info.”
17
FYI: BethUnger in Lafayettejail 6 months for DUI.
Annie typed the text and hit send. She had told Rayanne Tillis she would look for her missing roommate, despite Rayanne’s claiming she didn’t care. The answer to Beth Unger’s disappearance had been easily had with a few mouse clicks. Hopefully, following through on her promise would gain her a few trust points.
She had weighed the relative merits of getting a search warrant for Rayanne’s place on the chance of finding Robbie Fontenot’s laptop but had decided against it. If she searched the house and found nothing, she would also lose whatever slim chance she had at getting Rayanne to tell her anything she might have known about the comings and goings at Robbie’s place. If she found the computer, she could use potential charges as leverage to get answers, but she felt that Rayanne was much more likely to get mulish and uncooperative, and there would be no going back from that breech of what little trust she’d built.
Rayanne was an addict. Rayanne was a thief. Rayanne was a liar. But Rayanne Tillis was also her one possible source of information. She needed to cultivate this relationship.
She had stopped at the lamp factory on her way back from the Parcelles’ to find out what she could about Robbie’s employment there, and Rayanne’s as well. It had come as no surprise to her that Rayanne hadn’t worked there long enough to collect unemployment as she had claimed. Nor was it a surprise that she had been fired rather than laid off, having repeatedly shown up late or not at all or in no condition to work. So if Rayanne hadn’t been earning a paycheck or collecting unemployment, how was she paying her rent?
She probably qualified for food stamps but not welfare. As a low-income individual, she possibly could have gotten rent assistance from the parish, but applying for that required a certain amount of organization and initiative Rayanne didn’t seem to possess. Where was her money coming from?
She was an addict. No dealer would have trusted her with any serious amount of product to sell. She might have sold some of her own supply to help with the cost of her habit, but that wouldn’t amount to much. She was a sometimes prostitute for men who wanted it quick and cheap, not a high-priced call girl or a plaything for a sugar daddy. Danny Perry or Dewey Rivette might have been tossing her a few bucks here or there for information, but she wasn’t selling state secrets for thousands.
The house she lived in—and Robbie Fontenot’s house as well—was one of four on that block owned by local slumlords, the Carville brothers, Roy and T-Rex (so-called not because he resembled a dinosaur, but in the Cajun tradition. Because he was named after his father, who was also called Rex, the prefixTwas added,Tbeing a shorthand forpetite. They were Rex and T-Rex, and T-Rex would be called that regardless of size or age until the day he died).
The Carville brothers ran a number of dubious businesses that skirted the bounds of legality, including Club Cayenne, the topless bar over on the industrial edge of town—not far from Rayanne’s neighborhood, as it happened. But Rayanne was not a candidate for pole dancing.
Roy Carville was currently on bail awaiting trial for havinginstalled spy cams in a number of his rental properties and selling the bedroom/bathroom videos of his unsuspecting tenants on amateur porn sites on the Internet. Annie wondered if Rayanne’s home had been checked for cameras. Or Robbie’s, for that matter. She doubted the Carville brothers discriminated on gender or sexual orientation or anything else. That investigation had gone on while she’d been out nursing her concussion. She would ask Nick about it later.
