Chapter 14

14

The morning sky was the color of a dove’s wing, backlit by the diluted yellow of a hidden sun. From a distance, the water looked like mercury, rippling quicksilver, moved by the unseen hand of God…or a school of fish, or the sudden departure of a wood duck. Same thing, really, Nick thought.

He spotted Luc Mercier’s truck parked on the water side of the property, near the small cabin-like building from which the Merciers ran their tour operation. He breathed a sigh of relief, wanting to avoid Kiki for the moment. She would be angry and impatient at his lack of information, a mood probably exacerbated by a hangover, but investigations seldom ran at a pace that satisfied the family and friends of victims—if indeed Marc Mercier was a victim of anything.

He turned in the driveway and pulled alongside the black truck, noting that it was no longer spotless and spit shined as it had been the day before. Now it was coated with a fine white dust. Someone had drawn a smiley face on the rear quarter panel.

Music was drifting out the open door of the little cabin, some old-school BeauSoleil—“Parlez-Nous à Boire”—a rollicking two-step that seemed overly energetic for a quiet, gray morning. Out in front of the cabin on the broad wooden deck, a plump girl in bib overalls danced by herself, singing along off-key in a garbled mix of nonsensical English and faux French.

Nick stuck his head in the cabin. “ Bonjour. ?a va? ”

A small older woman with cat-eye glasses and a head of curly black hair looked up from reading a magazine at the counter. “ Bonjour! ?a va! ” she greeted him, a sweet smile lighting her round face. “ ?a viens! ”

“ Bon. ?a va. I’m Lieutenant Fourcade from the sheriff’s office. You’re Mrs. Orgeron?”

“That’s me!”

“I’m looking for Luc Mercier. Is he around?”

“ Mais non . He’s out on the boat, him.”

“He got a tour this early?”

“No. He’s just out doing whatever men do on boats,” she said. “He’s outta my hair, but he said he’d be back soon. He gotta be somewhere at ten.”

Nick checked his watch. “I’ll wait, then.”

“You ain’t found Marc yet?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“This ain’t like Marc to worry people,” she said, shaking her head. “Kiki, she’s sick over it. He come back now, she gonna kill him for making her worry so!”

“When did you last see him?”

“Saturday morning, early, but just from over here. I saw him and Luc in the yard on the other side. We were busy that day. I didn’t speak to him.”

“How’s he been lately?” Nick asked. “He’s got a lot on his plate, no?”

“That’s Marc. He can’t tell nobody no. He’s all the time taking too much on. He always been that way.”

“What’s his mood been like lately? Happy? Down? Upset about anything?”

She frowned a bit. “He got too much responsibility on him. And that wife…” She rolled her eyes. “She’s not from here.”

“I hear she wants to move back to Philadelphia.”

“ C’est bon! She should go then, her! Won’t nobody here miss her, that’s for true!”

“What about the brothers? They been getting along?”

She pursed her lips and shrugged. “They’re brothers. They fight like a couple of damn couillons . What’s new?”

“What they been fighting about lately?”

“What don’t they fight about? If Marc says white, Luc says black. They always been that way. That’s nothing new. That’s just how they are. Don’t mean nothing.”

Her cell phone lit up and rang. She glanced over at it, unsure if she should pick it up or not.

“Go ahead,” Nick said. “I’ll wait outside. Thank you for your time. Merci .”

He went out the open door and around to the deck where the girl was still dancing—until she caught sight of him. She stopped abruptly and stared at him, her hands clutched together against her chest, her small almond-shaped eyes as wide as they would go in her round face.

“ Bonjour ,” Nick said. “You must be Noelle.”

It was difficult to pinpoint her age. She might have been a teenager or she might have been twenty-five. She had beautiful smooth skin and thin, dark shoulder-length hair pulled back from her face with a couple of ladybug barrettes like a small child might wear. She watched him with a child’s wariness of strangers.

“That’s good music, no?” Nick said, smiling. “You like to dance to that?”

“I can two-step!” she said proudly.

“I saw. You’re a good dancer.”

“Can you dance?” she asked.

“I do all right. Who taught you to dance? Your brothers?”

“Sometimes. And my papa. He danced with me all the time.”

“Did he?”

“He’s dead, though,” she said. “He died. He’s gone to be with Jesus and Mary and Joseph.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I was sad,” she admitted. “Did you know my papa?”

“No, I did not. I’ve heard he was a very nice man.”

She said nothing for a moment, as if she were trying to make her final decision on his trustworthiness. Nick waited, looking out at the water. A cormorant bobbing on the surface suddenly dove under, coming back up with a small fish, which was quickly swallowed whole. The bird shook its head as if to hasten the fish’s trip down its gullet, then made its way up onto the end of the dock and spread its wings wide to dry off.

From the corner of his eye, Nick watched Noelle Mercier take a cautious step closer.

“I heard you’re a hard worker here,” he said.

She nodded. “I help clean up the boats, me,” she said. “And I sweep. I’m a good sweeper, me.”

“I bet you are. If you’re a good dancer, you’ll be a good sweeper, too.”

“I sweep at home, and I sweep here, and I sweep the office every day.”

“Really?” Nick asked. “You sweep the office across the road, too?”

Noelle nodded. “Every day. It’s a very important job.”

“I agree.”

She came a step closer. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Nick. I’m here to see your brother Luc.”

“You’re the po-po,” she said, giggling, pointing at the badge he wore on a chain around his neck.

“I am.”

“Luc, he don’t like the po-po!” she said with a big smile.

“Doesn’t he?” Nick asked. “Why is that?”

“I don’t know, but he says bad words when he sees one.”

“Well, he’s not in any trouble or anything,” Nick said. “I just need to ask him some questions.”

“Can I see?” she asked, pointing to his badge.

“Sure.”

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 mean this ,” 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 is not your 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!”

“Oh!” Nick said, feigning amazement. “Now you’re telling me you’re trying to protect her, then you turn around and yell in her face and scare the hell out of her and make her cry? That don’t fly, Mr. Mercier. Better oil up those wheels in your brain and come up with a better story than that.”

Head down, hands on his hips, Luc Mercier took a step back, and then another. He turned toward the water, the muscles working in the back of his jaw like he was chewing on a tough piece of meat.

“Is that your pride you’re chewing on?” Nick asked. “Choke it down, baw , because you’re gonna apologize to that girl in front of me. Now, you and I are gonna have us a conversation, and you had better hope I find your answers satisfactory. Do you understand me?”

Mercier scowled and looked away. “This is how you treat people, Fourcade? My brother’s missing. My family are the victims here, and this is what you do?”

Nick laughed out loud. “Now you’re gonna play the Poor Me card? Spare me. You’re starting to bore me, Mr. Mercier. You should at least make an effort to be more original in your phony outrage. You were wrong, and you know you were wrong. I guess we should at least take that as a positive sign that you’re not a sociopath.”

Mercier sucked in a deep breath and sighed, still too stubborn to surrender, but not clever enough for a snappy comeback.

“Why you don’t want your sister talking to me?” Nick asked. “What’s she gonna say you don’t want me to hear? Has she seen something? Heard something?”

“She got the mind of an eight-year-old child,” Luc said. “She don’t always understand what she sees or hears.”

“Like what? Like you and Marc having a fight Saturday? Like Marc punching you in the face?” Nick suggested. “I don’t care that he did, if he did. I hope he enjoyed it, ’cause I sure as hell would. I’m only interested in the why and what you did about it after.”

“Nothing,” Luc said. “I did nothing.”

“So are you telling me now the two of you came to blows?” Nick asked. “That’s how you got that shiner. But it don’t mean nothing. And I’m supposed to swallow that? Seriously?”

“We’re brothers. We don’t always get along,” Mercier said. “I don’t know what planet you’re from, Fourcade, but around here, that’s normal.”

Nick didn’t argue. Bayou country was a place of strong opinions and hot tempers, to be sure. Though violence among family members was hardly the norm, that didn’t mean it wasn’t the norm for the Mercier boys.

“What did you fight about?”

Luc made an exasperated gesture with his hands and sighed again. “We disagree about things.”

“What things?”

“Everything. Every fucking thing. How’s that?”

“Not good enough, that’s how that is,” Nick said. “You disagree over Tony Chachere’s or Slap Ya Mama seasoning, you don’t punch your brother in the face for it. What did you fight about?”

Luc thought about it for a minute, still looking out over the water. Finally, he said, “I been running this business more or less since Daddy got sick. Long before Mr. Local Hero deigned to come back here. I didn’t need his help then, and I don’t need his help now. He can take his snotty wife and go back north. Don’t nobody need him here.”

He pulled his cap off and scratched his head. “That don’t mean I want him dead or anything. Just gone.”

“Well, he is gone, isn’t he?” Nick said.

Mercier said nothing to that.

“Marc never made it to the Corners Sunday morning,” Nick announced, then waited for a reaction.

“What do you mean?” Luc asked, doing a good job of looking confused. “That’s where we were meeting.”

“I mean, he was never there. And neither were you.”

“The hell. How do you know?”

“I know because Sos Doucet is my de facto father-in-law, and I made sure there are surveillance cameras all over that property. Your brother was never there Sunday morning, and you never came looking for him. Why would you lie to me about that?”

Luc muttered a curse, looked away, and sighed. “Because I wasn’t gonna stand there in front of my mother yesterday and say that I never went, that I blew Marc off. I don’t need her chewing my ass any more than she already does. Saying I was late was bad enough.”

As lies went, that one was for a good reason at least, Nick thought, but a good lie was still a lie.

“Marc’s wife says he left home Saturday night around six thirty, quarter to seven,” Nick said. “Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know. I told you,” Luc said. “I haven’t seen or heard from him since Saturday afternoon.”

“Where were you Saturday night?” Nick asked.

“I had some supper and watched the LSU game. Hit a couple bars after.”

“Which bars?”

“Club Cayenne. Things got a little fuzzy after that.”

“Were you there with anybody?”

“No. I don’t need company to watch naked girls dance.”

“Any girl in particular?” Nick asked.

“Their names aren’t exactly important to me.”

“Think hard. You might want one of them to remember you were there.”

Mercier shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I didn’t know I’d need an alibi.”

“And Marc wasn’t there?”

“Hell no. He’s too afraid of Melissa to go to a titty bar. You ought to be grilling her,” he said. “She probably killed him and ate him. She’s the last one seen him, ain’t she?”

“That we know of,” Nick said. “Do you know a guy named Robbie Fontenot?”

“Robbie Fontenot?” Luc said, pulling a face. “What about him?”

“You know him?”

“Not to speak of. Him and Marc played football together. Didn’t nobody pay money for me to go to Sacred Heart. All my friends are from low places.”

“Did Marc ever mention him recently?”

“Not to me. Why?”

“Robbie Fontenot happens to be missing, too.”

“What?” Luc laughed. “You think they run off together?”

“I don’t know,” Nick said flatly. “Might they have?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Luc blustered. “I don’t know nothing about Robbie Fontenot and which side of the plate he bats from, but Marc ain’t no fag. I’d’a beat that out of him a long time ago.”

“That’s not how that works,” Nick said.

“Whatever. Marc is not a homosexual. He’s got a new baby at home, for Christ’s sake!”

“What about Dozer Cormier?”

“What about him? He’s not a homosexual, either.”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

“He works construction for Donnie Bichon.”

“Dozer and Marc are tight?”

He shrugged. “I guess. I don’t run with either of them.”

“You haven’t spoken with him to ask him has he seen Marc?”

“No.”

“Have you done anything at all to try to find your brother?” Nick asked.

“Ain’t that your job?” Luc asked.

“You really don’t give a shit where he’s at, do you?” Nick said.

“I know Marc,” Luc said. “He’s gone off somewhere to pout and sulk, and when he decides we’ve all missed him enough, he’ll come home so we can fall all over ourselves with joy.”

“Or he never comes home at all,” Nick said. “And what then?”

He looked away, frowning. “Life goes on one way or the other, doesn’t it?”

That was how deep the resentment went, Nick thought. Down to the roots. Luc Mercier resented his brother for everything he was—the favored son, the popular athlete, the kid whose parents sent him to Sacred Heart, the college graduate who had his pick of lives. He could go away. He could come back. People loved him either way. While Luc was the guy who never went anywhere but to a titty bar ten miles from home, alone on Saturday night.

Luc was the one who stayed and worked the family business, and looked after his parents, and had no aspirations to leave this place or these people. And for his loyalty and his trouble, he was taken for granted and treated like hired help.

That was a big chip to carry on his shoulder all day every day while Marc walked around in his own beam of sunshine. That had to be exhausting.

The tension and anger and defensiveness had gone out of him now. He just looked tired and sad.

“How’s your maman today?” Nick asked quietly.

“Hungover and hell to be around,” Luc admitted. “She thinks y’all ought to call out the National Guard and the Cajun navy to search for Marc with helicopters and infrared cameras and submarines and bloodhounds and all.”

“Search for him where?” Nick asked. “I can’t line people up across the state and look at every square inch of Louisiana south of I-10. We need a starting place, a sighting of him or his vehicle or the boat or a likely place he might have gone.

“I can tell you we’ve alerted all law enforcement agencies, including the Wildlife agents, to be looking for him. All media outlets have been notified, including television and social media,” Nick said. “It may seem to you that we don’t have the sense of urgency you would like to see, but we’re doing what we can with what we’ve got. And I will share as much information with your family as I can.”

The main thing families wanted in a situation like this was information, to feel included in the loop of the investigation. Shutting them out only fostered their frustration and anger. The trick was giving them enough to placate them without giving them anything that might compromise the investigation. At this point, Luc Mercier was as much a person of interest in his brother’s disappearance as he was a family member.

Luc nodded and sighed, calmer. “Did you get them dental records?”

“Yes. We hope to have a comparison by this afternoon. No guarantees, though. There’s a lot of damage to the face.”

Could he have done that? Nick wondered. Shot his own brother right in the face? The notion seemed both impossible and yet all too logical—the need to obliterate everything about that person.

“What about DNA?” Luc asked, pulling a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and hanging it on his lip. “Ain’t that the be-all-end-all?”

“It is, but it takes time to get results back. This ain’t television, where you get all your answers by the end of the hour. Labs are backed up, short-staffed, underfunded. There’s a whole line of cases ahead of this one with people waiting on those answers, too.”

Luc lit the cigarette, took a deep drag, and exhaled. “Mama, she’ll lose her mind if that’s Marc. She had it in her head she could make him stay here. She can’t stand the idea of losing that grandbaby.”

“And which way is Marc leaning? Stay or go?”

“Whichever direction the wind is blowing in the moment. Marc wants to please everybody. I got it all over him there,” he said with a bitter smile. “Me, I don’t give a shit who I piss off. The more the merrier.”

Ironic, Nick thought, that Luc was the Mercier who held grudges and made enemies, but it was the golden boy gone missing.

“I’ll be in touch when I know something,” he said. “Let’s go see about that apology to your sister.”