Chapter 19

19

Two thousand four hundred fifty dollars. Where had Robbie Fontenot come by $2,450, and why had he hidden the cash at his mother’s house?

His paychecks from the lamp factory had gone by direct deposit to his bank account, B’Lynn said, not that he’d had a check in the last month. If he wanted to keep cash on hand, Annie supposed it wasn’t all that strange that he hadn’t wanted to keep it at his house in a shit neighborhood where his next-door neighbor was a thief and God knew what else went on. Where had the money come from was the pertinent question, and why did he want or need that much cash?

The obvious answer was that drugs were expensive and drug dealers liked cash, although some of them had taken to more modern forms of payment like Venmo, as weird as that seemed. If drugs were the answer, was Robbie keeping the cash to buy drugs or was he making the cash selling drugs? Neither answer was anything B’Lynn wanted to hear.

Annie felt the weight of that as she drove. The likelihood of this story having a happy ending was slim to none. She both hoped that Rayanne Tillis might have an answer and hoped that she wouldn’t. If she had an answer, the investigation would go forward in a direction that would end with Robbie Fontenot in jail at best and dead at worst. If she didn’t have an answer, B’Lynn could hang on to a sliver of hope, and the thing about slivers was that they were usually painful and often left a scar. It seemed to Annie that Robbie Fontenot’s mother had enough scars to last a lifetime. The look on her face as she’d sat on her son’s bed, considering the possibilities of this latest discovery, had made Annie’s heart hurt.

Barely twenty-four hours after coming back to work, she found herself up to her ears in emotional attachment to a case that had a snowball’s chance in hell of ending well. As much as she loved her job, and as much as she was good at it…some days…

At least she wasn’t thinking about her head injury.

She hit the blinker and turned onto Rayanne’s block, trying to formulate a plan. How best to work the conversation in a way that would invite an exchange of information, not put the girl on the defensive, where she was almost sure to lie. It took time to build a relationship with someone as short on trust as Rayanne, but time was a luxury Annie didn’t have.

B’Lynn had offered to pay Rayanne for any useful information she might have. Money was sure to be a motivator for a girl who had none, and any information she might have was more than they had at the moment.

Rayanne’s manager at the lamp factory had said Rayanne definitely knew Robbie Fontenot. He had seen them interacting at work. To what extent that was a personal relationship or just workmates talking, he didn’t know. He said Rayanne was friendly with the male employees. Friendly in italics. Friendly as in inappropriate. Friendly as in drumming up customers for her night job.

That reminded Annie of the condoms in Robbie Fontenot’s nightstand, and she cringed a bit at the thought.

She pulled into the driveway behind Rayanne’s piece-of-shit, falling-apart red Chevy Malibu, which looked like a homeless person was living in it. She glanced in the windows on her way to the house. The car was full of garbage and cast-off clothes. The front passenger window was broken and repaired with duct tape. The side mirror had come off. At least no one would bother stealing it, Annie thought.

She climbed the stairs to the tiny front porch and knocked on the door. No one came. At midday, there was no guarantee Rayanne was even up. She had no job to go to. B’Lynn had seen a visitor leaving her house at one-something in the morning. There was a good chance she’d spent the night getting high in celebration of not spending the night in jail.

She knocked again and looked around while she waited. Kitty-corner across the street, a heavyset elderly Black man was sitting on his porch in his dingy undershirt drinking a beer, his white hair standing straight up on his head like vintage Don King.

“Damn it, Rayanne,” Annie muttered, knocking a third time.

Losing patience, she pulled the warped old screen door open and tried the interior door. It wasn’t locked.

“Rayanne?” she called, cracking the door open. “It’s Annie Broussard. Are you home?”

The silence that answered her raised the hair on the back of her neck. There she was again, walking into who-knew-what. Her heart beat a little faster.

“Rayanne?” she called again as she went into the house.

The front room looked the same as it had the day before. The smell was as bad as or worse than the day before, having added notes of weed smoke over the amalgam of cigarettes, rodent, and sour garbage.

Cockroaches scattered in all directions as she passed the filthy kitchen. Annie’s skin crawled. How people lived like this never failed to amaze her.

“Rayanne?”

The term dead silence kept playing through her mind, over and over. Her heart beat a little harder.

“No, no, no,” she muttered as she made her way down the hall, that sense of foreboding rising like a tide inside her. “Rayanne? Shit!”

The girl lay on the floor of the bedroom, half tangled in a bedsheet, still wearing her faded red Fuck Your Feelings T-shirt, naked from the waist down.

“Shit!”

Annie dropped to the floor beside the body and felt for a pulse. It was weak and thready, hard to feel with trembling fingers. She was barely breathing. Annie lifted an eyelid to see the pupil constricted to a pinpoint.

“Rayanne!” she shouted, shaking the unconscious girl. No response. She rubbed her knuckles hard against the girl’s sternum. Still no response. “Rayanne, wake up!”

Her body was limp and cold as Annie rolled her onto her side. She had vomited at some point, a trail of puke already crusting at one corner of her mouth and down her chin.

“Don’t you die on me!” Annie yelled, scrambling to her feet.

She fumbled with her phone as she ran down the hall and out the front door, dialing 911.

“This is Detective Broussard with the sheriff’s office,” she said breathlessly, running to her vehicle. “I need an ambulance ASAP at 2-1-7 Opelousas in Bayou Breaux for a probable opioid overdose. Subject is unconscious with a weak pulse and shallow breathing.”

She yanked open the passenger-side door and popped the glove compartment, raking through the contents, scrambling to find the blister pack containing the Narcan plunger. Two tumbled out onto the floor. She grabbed them both and ran back to the house.

“Don’t you die on me, Rayanne!” she shouted again, ripping the package open.

She dropped to her knees beside the girl and rolled her onto her back again, noting that Rayanne’s lips had taken on a slight blue tint as the drug she’d taken suppressed her instinct to keep breathing. Annie tilted her head back, shoved the nozzle of the spray container up one nostril, and depressed the plunger.

This was the part where in the movies the overdosed person always came instantly awake, sat bolt upright, and started talking as if they hadn’t been seconds from death. Rayanne Tillis did not sit bolt upright. She did not open her eyes. She did not suddenly take in a gasping gulp of oxygen.

Annie turned her onto her side and shoved some of the rumpled bedsheet up under her head, her own heart going a hundred miles an hour as she watched for the Narcan to kick in. Two to five minutes, the manufacturer claimed. Two minutes seemed like an eternity.

“Come on, Rayanne, you gotta wake up for me.”

She stuck two fingers into the girl’s mouth to clear away anything that might obstruct her airway, then used an edge of the sheet to try to wipe away the crusty remains of vomit from Rayanne’s lips. She turned her onto her back again to begin mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, managing a dozen or so breaths before pulling away and gagging on the taste of vomit.

“Damn it, Rayanne,” she muttered, ripping open the packaging for the second dose of Narcan. “Come on, come on.”

In the distance the faint sound of a siren heralded the approach of the paramedics.

Annie felt again for a pulse that came and went, seemingly ducking out from under her trembling fingertips as death beckoned Rayanne Tillis. She tried to spit the taste of vomit from her mouth, then started in again on resuscitation. Another minute and help would arrive. Twelve more breaths.

And then came the organized chaos of the paramedics rushing in with their equipment and taking over with the speed and efficiency of an Indy 500 pit crew. Annie stepped back out of their way as they swarmed on Rayanne.

“What have we got here, Detective?”

“Rayanne Tillis. She’s twenty-three with a history of drug abuse. I found her unconscious about ten minutes ago.”

“What’d she take?”

“I don’t know yet. She’s got a history with opioids. Everything points to that.”

“She looks like a meth head.”

“That, too. Something for every mood.”

“Did you give her Narcan?”

“Two doses. She’s not responding.”

“How long ago?”

“Maybe three minutes since the second dose.”

“Shit, she’s barely got a pulse.”

“Hey, Rayanne, we need you to wake up for us!” one of them said, tapping the side of her face. He repeated Annie’s actions, scrubbing his knuckles on the unconscious woman’s breastbone. Rayanne didn’t respond. “Come on. Come on back to us, girl!”

“She’s going into cardiac arrest. Starting CPR!”

Annie stood and watched, leaning back against a wall, feeling drained and sick and useless as the paramedics worked to save the life of Rayanne Tillis—at least long enough to get her into the ambulance.

She followed them out of the house and watched them load her and go, siren screaming. As the ambulance drove out of sight, the adrenaline crash hit her. Feeling suddenly weak and lightheaded, she leaned over the rickety porch railing and threw up, her stomach trying hard to turn itself inside out as everything that had happened replayed through her mind at a dizzying speed.

She needed to sit down, but she needed to get the taste out of her mouth more as her stomach rolled again and again. She walked to her car on wobbly legs and fell backward into the driver’s seat, bent over with her forearms on her thighs, breathing through her mouth, trying to slow her respiration as another wave of nausea crashed over her. She was both sweating and cold, and her pulse throbbed in her head like a drumbeat.

She had to go back inside to search for the drugs Rayanne had taken, but she needed a minute to gather herself. She grabbed her water bottle from the passenger seat, rinsed her mouth, and spat into the grass again and again, trying unsuccessfully not to think about her resuscitation efforts and the taste of Rayanne Tillis’s mouth.

“You better live, Rayanne,” she muttered, digging through the little travel kit she kept in the car for the tiny toothbrush and miniature tube of toothpaste. “I don’t want to think I did that for nothing.”

She was in the middle of brushing her teeth when Danny Perry arrived. She watched him walk up like some character in a TV cop show in his tailored uniform and mirrored sunglasses, wondering if he practiced that walk in a full-length mirror when he went home at night.

“Detective Broussard,” he said, posing like an action figure a few feet in front of her. Backlit by the sun, the frosted tips of his spiky hair looked like little white flames atop his head. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Annie rinsed her mouth and spat a few inches away from the toes of his boots. “Help what? What are you doing here?”

“I heard the call on the radio.”

“Really? Where were you? Baton Rouge? The ambulance has been and gone.”

“How’s Rayanne? Is she all right?”

“No, she’s not all right, you numbskull,” Annie barked. “She OD’d. She died on the floor and had to be revived. I don’t know that she’ll make it.”

“Oh, man, that’s terrible.”

“Is it?” She rinsed her mouth a second time, and he had to hop back to avoid the spray.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Annie said, willing her legs to hold her up steady as she got out of the car. She still felt weak, and her head was pounding, but she didn’t want Danny Perry towering over her.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You look a mite peaked.”

“Yeah, well, the senseless loss of life for a cheap high makes me sick,” she said. “Do you have any idea who Rayanne’s dealer is?”

“I don’t think she’s fussy. Last I knew, she didn’t have any money, and I heard she owed a couple of people who weren’t inclined to extend her credit.”

“What about you?” Annie asked bluntly. “Are you giving her money? Is she your CI?”

“Me?” he asked, incredulous. “No! You met her. Do you think she’d be a source of reliable information?”

“I think even a busted watch is right twice a day. Maybe that’s worth a few bucks here and there.”

“Not from me.”

“What about Rivette?”

“How would I know who his CIs are? Don’t nobody share that kind of information.”

“Well, she got something from someone.”

“Yeah. She got a get-out-of-jail-free card from you, apparently.”

“Mrs. Fontenot declined to press charges,” Annie said. “That’s hardly the same thing as giving an addict money for drugs.”

“She probably traded a favor for a pill or two. That’s what addicts do. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

“Do you know any of her regular johns?”

“I wouldn’t know if she had regulars. She’s more of a crime of opportunity, if you know what I mean.”

“A man was seen leaving her house late last night,” Annie said, watching his face.

“Seen by who?” he asked. “You have a witness?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Who?”

“Why do you need to know?” Annie asked pointedly.

Perry shrugged. “Just curious as to who’s hanging around this neighborhood in the middle of the night. Did they describe this visitor, or do I not get to know who to look for?”

“White male. Average size. Wearing a dark hoodie.”

“That’s it?”

“It was dark. He was seen from a distance.”

“Vehicle?”

Annie shook her head. “That’s why I asked if you knew her regulars. I would start there if I had a list of names.”

“Can’t help you there.”

“Because we only bother to prosecute the women and not the men who use their services,” Annie said with disgust. “Do you know anything about Rayanne’s family or where she’s from?”

“She’s from Henderson, I think. I don’t know her people, though.”

Annie sighed. “I guess I’d better go back into that mouse-infested roach hole and pick through her things. Try to find her phone or some clue who her folks are. They should know what’s going on.”

“You want help?” he asked.

Annie looked at him, both puzzled by and suspicious of his offer. “Hasn’t your chief declared war on the SO?”

He shrugged. “He doesn’t need to know. If that girl is at death’s door and you want her kin to make it here before it’s too late, there’s no time to waste. What difference does it make what uniform I’m wearing? I’m standing right here.”

Annie thought about it for a second. She had a hard time thinking Rayanne Tillis had a family who cared about her, but then she thought of B’Lynn, who would have given anything to see her son again, even if it was just for the last few seconds of his life. You never knew someone else’s story or who might be heartbroken at the end of it.

“Okay, Hollywood,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She grabbed a pair of gloves out of her bag and handed another pair to Danny Perry as they walked to the house.

“Brace yourself,” she said, leading the way inside.

Danny shoved his sunglasses on top of his head and squinted at the smell. “Wow. About the only thing that could make this smell worse would be cat piss. Of course, maybe she wouldn’t have mice, then.”

“Let’s start in the bedroom,” Annie said. “That’s where I found her. She’s got a cell phone somewhere. And be on the lookout for drugs. If we can find what she took, that might be helpful.”

“We don’t need a search warrant for this?”

“It’s exigent circumstances, but don’t touch anything you don’t have to.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said. “I don’t wanna touch the stuff I have to touch. It’s unreal to me how people will live this way.”

He pulled a ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket and used it to move things around on the cluttered nightstand. “Animals don’t live like this.”

“Cockroaches and mice do,” Annie pointed out, picking up the bedsheet Rayanne had been tangled in. Roaches scattered.

“Vermin. It’s disgusting.”

“All an addict cares about is getting high,” she said. “Hygiene and housekeeping don’t even make the list.”

“Well, here’s the drugs,” Danny said. He turned around holding up a tiny plastic zip-top bag by one corner. “There’s part of a joint, too.”

“Where was it?” Annie asked, coming over.

He pointed with the pen to a spot on the nightstand between a can of Michelob Ultra and a dirty glass with an inch of whiskey with two cigarette butts floating in it.

Three white tablets with room to spare in the bag. Three pills left out of how many? Five, maybe. At thirty bucks per, minimum, that would have been $150.

“Where’d she get the cash for that?” Annie mused.

“Maybe she has a generous friend.”

“I don’t have any friends that generous—do you?”

She bagged the drugs and they kept looking for the phone, Danny picking through the mess on the dresser. Cringing, Annie got down on the dirty floor and looked under the bed. Dust bunnies, discarded underpants, a used condom. No phone.

A charger cord was plugged into the wall near the nightstand, stretched out as if maybe someone had yanked the phone off it on their way out of the room.

Maybe she had traded the phone for the drugs, Annie thought, getting to her feet, but that seemed doubtful. Why would someone take her phone? Because phones held a wealth of information. A little handheld treasure trove of potential evidence.

Her own phone vibrated, and she took it into the hall to answer.

“Broussard.”

“It’s Chris Skinner, Detective. I’m just calling to let you know she didn’t make it,” the paramedic said. “She went into cardiac arrest a second time in the bus, and we couldn’t get her back. The ER staff did all they could, but…she didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

Annie thanked him, ended the call, and heaved a sigh. All the urgency drained out of her, and whatever hope she’d held on to for Rayanne went with it, leaving her feeling empty.

Danny Perry watched her, waiting for her to speak.

“She didn’t make it,” she said quietly.

“Oh, man,” he muttered. “That’s our fourth OD in two weeks. And people keep taking that shit.”

“Nobody thinks it’ll happen to them,” Annie said. “That’s the bad lie they tell themselves every time they pop a pill or shoot up or whatever they do.”

She sighed again and rubbed at the tension in the back of her neck.

“You can go, Danny,” she said. “I’ll close up here.”

“You sure?” he asked. “I don’t mind. I mean, you haven’t found her phone yet.”

“It’s okay. You’ve got patrol and a prickly chief. I’m good here. There’s no rush now. Thanks for your help, though.”

She saw him out as if she was a hostess. When he was halfway to his radio car, she remembered her other order of business for the day.

“Hey, Danny. Did you happen to see Robbie Fontenot Halloween night at Monster Bash?”

He turned around, appearing to search his memory. “I don’t think so.”

“Someone saw him talking to a uniform near Evangeline Bank and Trust,” she said. “I’m gonna go look at the CCTV video from the area, but I thought maybe…I might as well ask on the off chance…”

She let the rest of the sentence trail off, giving him a chance to rethink his answer.

“You know, I might have,” he said, shrugging. “There were only a few thousand people there that night. I try to do my thing as your friendly neighborhood po-lice man, you know. If I did see him, nothing stood out about it.”

“Okay. Well, I was just hoping to get a read on what his mood was that night.”

“Sorry.”

“It was worth a shot.”

Annie watched him get in his patrol car and drive away, wondering at his motives for showing up there. He’d gone right to the drugs and handled the package, potentially smudging any fingerprints that might have been left on the plastic bag. She didn’t like the way her mind was bending, but it wasn’t going that way for no reason.

A middle-aged woman was out on her porch next door in a sleeveless cotton housedress that showed off upper arms shaped like ham hocks, pretending to water a window box full of half-dead plants. Her gaze darted over in Annie’s direction every few seconds.

“Ma’am?” Annie asked. “Do you know the woman who lives here?”

The woman just scowled at her with a face like a blobfish, then turned and went back inside.

Annie went back into the house, back to the bedroom to have one last look for Rayanne’s phone. She stood in the doorway, looking around the shithole bedroom in this shithole house, wondering who would come for Rayanne’s belongings. There wasn’t anything in this house that shouldn’t have been put in a dumpster and taken to a landfill. Would anyone from her family even bother? Would they come to Our Lady to claim her body or leave her there like a sack of trash for the parish to dispose of?

No matter how Rayanne had ended up in her life, she had once been someone’s daughter, someone’s baby. Had she been wanted? Had she been raised with love? Or had she been a mistake, an accident, the result of something brutal?

Annie tried to imagine what Rayanne must have looked like as a little girl with her straight-as-sticks hair and petulant expression. It was hard to imagine her as sweet or innocent, but she probably had been before the world had gotten hold of her. She had had hopes and dreams at some point in her life. No child had ever gotten up in front of their third-grade class and declared they wanted to grow up to be a junkie prostitute, but that was how her life had turned out. Dead on the floor of a shithole in a Fuck Your Feelings T-shirt and no underpants.

No one deserved that, no matter how poor their life choices had been.

“I heard she didn’t make it.”

Annie bolted at the sound of the voice and spun around.

“Jesus, Dewey! You gave me a heart attack! Don’t you know how to knock on a door?”

“This isn’t a social call, is it?” Rivette asked. He was in rumpled khakis and a wrinkled button-down that might have been the same outfit he’d worn the day before, though Annie wouldn’t have been surprised to find his closet was full of identical garments. He didn’t strike her as being long on imagination or fashion sense.

“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you!” she said. “Though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you, what with your favorite little toady having just left.”

“Danny will be pleased to hear you think so highly of him.”

“Danny knows exactly what I think of him. You make a good tag team. Are you here to express your condolences?”

“To you? Did you adopt Rayanne Tillis or put her in jail?” he asked. “Oh, wait, if she was in jail, she’d still be alive.”

“Screw you, Dewey. I’m not the one who supplied her with drugs,” Annie said. “Maybe you know something about who did. A witness described an unremarkable white male leaving here last night around one fifteen.”

“I don’t know anything about that. Or are you accusing me of killing a junkie hooker?”

“I didn’t accuse you of anything. You’re the town detective. You don’t know who’s dealing drugs right under your nose?

“And no matter who her dealer is, somebody had to be giving that girl money,” Annie said. “Danny says it wasn’t him. Was it you? We’ve all got our CIs.”

He screwed up his round face like he’d smelled a fart. “Like I’d tell you who my CIs are! You can fuck right off, Broussard.”

“She’s dead now,” Annie said. “You might as well tell me. What difference does it make?”

“Yeah. What difference does it make?” he asked. “She’s dead now. You don’t need to know anything about her.”

“I’d like to know who her parents are,” Annie said. “I’d like to let her relatives know what happened to her so they can give her a Christian burial. You want the parish to just throw her in a hole with two or three other indigent dead people?”

“I never said that! And why would I know who her parents are?”

“You are worse than useless, Dewey.”

“And you are nothing but a pain in my ass,” he returned.

“Speaking of,” Annie said, “you ran straight to Chief Earl yesterday and tattled, didn’t you? So predictable.

“How’d that work out for you?” she asked. “Did your chief enjoy getting his ass handed to him by Sheriff Noblier? I’m thinking there might have been some fallout there.”

“No. Chief Earl was as appalled by your behavior as I was. And Gus Noblier being a pompous blowhard was no surprise to anybody.”

“Well, then, everybody’s happy,” Annie said. “Good.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, disappointed that she wasn’t offended. “You enjoy your nothing case, trying to find Robbie Fontenot, who is probably dead in a Lafayette drug house.”

“Is that wishful thinking on your part?”

“Why would I want him dead?” he asked. “He didn’t mean anything to me.”

“Clearly not for all the effort you put into finding him.”

“And what have you done?” he asked. “You ain’t found him.”

“I’ve done everything you didn’t,” she said, ticking the points off on her fingers. “At least people are aware of him today. People can call the tip line if they’ve seen him. He’s on the NCIC database now. I’ve got his cell phone records coming. His car is listed as hot. You know, all the basics of running a missing persons case. You apparently missed that class at the academy, or do they even bother with schooling at the PD? Do you just send in your Wheaties box tops and get a badge?”

“I’ve been at this just as long as you, Broussard.”

Annie stepped past him to get into the hall, tired of the smell of vomit and stale sex. She would have tried to open a window, but it was a good bet the windows had been painted shut years before.

“I need some fresh air,” she said, walking away from him, going to the back door and out onto the rotting little porch.

“Why’d you let her go yesterday?” Dewey asked, following her. “I thought you had her red-handed stealing a TV.”

“Mrs. Fontenot declined to press charges. What was the point, anyway? We got the TV back. And maybe I built a little faith with Rayanne.

“She used to work with Robbie Fontenot at the lamp factory,” she said. “Did you know that?”

His expression said he didn’t. That round face wasn’t very good at masking surprise. And surprise tended to short out the brain circuits from asking obvious questions like how long did they work together, and did they actually know each other, and wasn’t Rayanne high most of the time.

“Not just a junkie hooker after all,” she said.

Dewey frowned.

“Why did you come here, Dewey?” Annie asked. “Obviously Danny Perry called you right up, didn’t he? Why?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” he returned. “This is my town. I should know what’s going on.”

“That’s a novel idea. Or maybe you were afraid you left something here last night when you came to see Rayanne?”

Red rose in his cheeks as his temper began to heat up. “I was not here last night,” he insisted. “I don’t frequent prostitutes, and I resent you suggesting I’m some kind of dirty cop.”

“Did I suggest that?” Annie asked. “I don’t think so, but I’m glad to hear you’re not, just the same.”

“You’re a really annoying person,” he remarked.

“Yeah, well, my family loves me, so I’m good…”

She looked over next door at Robbie Fontenot’s house and across the alley at the house with the security cameras, wondering if Dewey had even noticed that equipment. She bet not.

“A funny thing happened this morning,” she said. “I found $2,450 cash money that Robbie Fontenot had squirreled away.”

“What? Where?”

He couldn’t stop himself from looking over at the house next door, making Annie think he had searched that house better than she had first thought.

“At his mother’s house,” she said. “Where do you think Robbie got that kind of cash? He’s unemployed, and he didn’t work there long enough to collect benefits.”

“He’s probably dealing.”

“Maybe. But he’s never had charges for dealing. He isn’t on the radar for the drug task force. And I haven’t found any product anywhere.”

“Probably keeps it in his car,” Dewey said.

“I suppose that could be. Funny how nobody seems to be aware of it, though. People who should know—drug cops, town cops, people who have arrested him on multiple occasions. Yourself, for instance,” she said. “Everybody knows Robbie’s drug history—which is as a user, not a dealer, but still, he might have graduated. People have an eye on him because of that history, but nobody knows anything about him dealing.

“You know,” she said, “when I was going over his record, I kept thinking it was funny how he has never gotten caught for anything really bad. Charges were always bare minimum.”

“Good lawyer,” Dewey said. “He comes from money. His father is a prominent surgeon.”

“Even so. I just keep thinking it looks like maybe he’s useful to someone. Maybe he’s been a good source of information. Maybe that’s where some of that money came from.”

Dewey said nothing. He had the body language of a man who wanted to leave, but he stayed out of a need to hear what she had to say next.

“I suppose I’ll know more when I have that cash dusted for fingerprints,” Annie said, and watched the color drain from his face. She turned and looked right at him, noting he was breathing a little faster than before. “Do you want to tell me something, Dewey?”

He shifted his weight from foot to foot and rubbed a hand across his jaw as he contemplated his options. There was no getting out of this if she had the money and the money had his fingerprints on it.

He ran a hand back through his bad haircut and sighed. “All right. I was throwing him a few bucks here and there for information. So what?”

“How much?”

“Fifty bucks here and there. Not no twenty-four-hundred dollars’ worth! I don’t know where he got all that!”

“For what?” Annie asked. “What kind of information?”

“What else? Drug deals and such.”

“And how many drug arrests have you made off this information since he’s been back in town?”

“A few.”

“Do you think I won’t check?”

“Information doesn’t always lead directly to an arrest! You should know that.”

“So, I’m supposed to believe your CI went missing and you have done basically nothing to find him. You put forth so little effort, his mother gave up on you and came to the SO. Are you a moron, Dewey?” Annie asked. “I don’t understand how your brain works.”

“I was looking for him!” he insisted. “I told his mother I was looking for him!”

“You told his mother he probably took off. You told me he’s probably dead somewhere. Where in all this were you actually looking for him?”

He seemed to be having trouble getting a good deep breath. He couldn’t stand still, the nervous energy winding up and up.

“Or do you not need to look for him because you already know where he’s at?”

“I don’t know where he’s at!”

“But…” Annie prompted.

He shook his head, not at her, but as if he couldn’t believe he was finding himself in this fix.

“You sure as hell know more than what you’re telling me,” Annie said. “You’d be a damned sight better off telling me all of it now than having to explain yourself to your chief and to Sheriff Noblier later. I’m thinking you wouldn’t come out of that with a career intact.”

“Oh, fucking hell,” he muttered to himself, turning around in a little circle with his hands on top of his head. He was sweating now.

“I’m not trying to gloat here, Dewey,” Annie said, “but I’ve got you by the short curlies. I’m not looking to ruin your life. My only obligation here is finding Robbie Fontenot. So, you might as well spill it.”

He sucked in a big deep breath and let it go as he made his decision.

“He told me he could get me information on a ring of copper thieves,” he said. “He wanted me to advance him two hundred dollars. I gave him one hundred. He said it might take a few days. When his mother came looking for him, I thought, Just stall her. A couple of days turned into a week. I figured he played me for a sucker and he just split. Maybe he did.”

Annie said nothing for a moment. Dewey Rivette had let this go on for more than a week. Because he was pissed off. Because he thought he’d been played. If Robbie’s offer had been genuine, Rivette had given him money for information on potentially dangerous people, then left him hanging out there because he was mad, and then told everyone who would listen that Robbie Fontenot was gone because he was a worthless drug addict.

“You are something else,” Annie muttered, glaring at him. “You left your CI hanging over a hundred bucks. That’s what his life is worth to you.”

“I still say he left,” he said, but without much conviction. He didn’t believe that any more than she did.

“You really think he’d take off and leave twenty-four-hundred-fifty dollars in a box in his mother’s house?” Annie asked.

He had the grace to look ashamed as he avoided her eye contact. “No.”

“Me neither.”

She turned to go back into the house.

“What are you gonna do?” Dewey asked.

Annie rounded on him, wishing she had some of her husband’s ability to physically intimidate people. Nick would have left Dewey Rivette sitting in a puddle of his own urine. The best she could do was tell him the truth.

“Me, I’m gonna find Robbie Fontenot. And whatever happens to you, I don’t really give a shit.”