Joanna Wayne - Alligator Moon

He rinsed the shampoo from his hair, then left the water running when he stepped onto the wine-colored carpet to take the receiver from Annabeth.

“What’s up, Tom?”

“Your anesthetist killed himself.”

“Dennis?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, I’m sure. I’m looking at the body right now.”

“When did this happen?”

“Sometime during the early hours of the morning. Apparently he was driving home from somewhere. He ran his car off the road just south of the Tortue Bayou.”

“But you said he shot himself.”

“He did. Shot himself right in the head. The gun was still lying there in the swamp when Hank LeBlanc found him this morning. He was heading out to do some fishing and saw the car. Stopped to check it out, and there was Dennis. Dead.”

“Dennis? Dead?” The words tumbled about in Norman’s brain, and for a second he wasn’t sure if he’d said them out loud or merely thought them.

“I know this is a shocker, Doc.”

“Are you certain it was suicide?”

“No doubt. Of course, his brother John isn’t buying that, but the evidence is here. It’s open and shut to my mind, and my mind is the one that counts in this parish.”

“Is John there with you?”

“No, but he’s on his way.”

“So am I. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Why not?”

“Dennis blew his brains out with a .45. That ain’t the best accompaniment to breakfast.”

“It won’t be my first sight of blood—brains either, for that matter.”

Annabeth was staring at him when he broke the connection.

He’d like to spare her this, but that was the thing about fame and wealth. It set you inside this giant ball and everybody who walked by felt compelled to give it a kick. She was in the ball with him, so she’d have to prepare herself for a new onslaught of reporters’ feet slamming into their ball.

“What is it now?” she asked.

“Dennis Robicheaux shot and killed himself last night.”

“Oh, no! Not Dennis.”

His towel slipped from his waist as he reached for her and pulled her into his arms.

“Not Dennis. Please. Not Dennis.”

“I know it doesn’t seem possible, but these things happen.”

“He didn’t kill himself. I know he didn’t. He wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know him that well, sweetheart. He had some problems.”

“No. Not Dennis. He wouldn’t kill himself. Why would he?”

“Who knows? Maybe it’s the Robicheaux blood. Look at his brother. As soon as the first blast of adversity hit, John came running home to drown himself in whiskey and the same stinking life he’d worked to escape.”

“Dennis wasn’t like John.”

“I’m not saying he was, but he was still a Robicheaux.”

“It was the reporters who did this to him, Norman, not his Robicheaux blood. They kept hammering away at him, determined to blame Ginny Lynn Flanders’s death on him.” She pulled away, looked in the mirror, then dabbed her eyes with the back of her hands. “What will this do to the lawsuit?”

“Nothing. The reporters will howl and make a big show about it, but in the end, it won’t have a thing to do with the legal proceedings.”

“I hope you’re right.”

So did he. “I’m going to finish my shower and meet the sheriff out where they found the body.”

“I want to go, too.”

“It’s no place for a woman.”

She barely knew Dennis, but she had a tender heart, cried over dead goldfish. He’d like to stay here with her. He sure had no desire to see the body, but he had to be certain John didn’t throw some of the stinking Robicheaux shit into the mix.

This was suicide. And a suicide it would stay.

JOHN HIT the brakes and steered the car to the shoulder of the narrow road. A group of about six men stood in ankle-deep water a few yards away, gathered around the body. The body. Dennis.

The reality of the situation hovered over him, but it hadn’t struck yet. Once he walked over and stood where the sheriff and the others were, once the image got inside his head, reality would grab him by the balls and squeeze down tight.

A warning screamed and echoed in his ears as he sloshed into the bog. Hold back the day. Hold back the stinking black day. But the sun was already beating down on him, the fetid air already clogging his lungs. There could be no holding back.

His boots sank into the mud, stirring up the mosquitoes that hid in the low grass.

“I’m sorry about this, John, really sorry.”

John nodded, acknowledging the sheriff’s words but avoiding eye contact with him and the others. He didn’t want to feel any bond with them, didn’t need their self-serving commiseration. Pity was debilitating, and he needed his wits and strength to see him through this.

He forced himself to look at what was left of Dennis. For a second, he thought he might just collapse and evaporate in the morning heat. Somehow he held it together and his training as a defense attorney checked in, registered every contingent. The position of the body, the bloodied and shattered remains of the brain. The splatters of blood on the thick plants that clogged the swampland.

“It’s a rotten shame,” LeBlanc said. “Dennis was a good man.”

“Yeah. A rotten shame. Has the body been moved?” John asked.

“We haven’t touched it,” Babineaux answered.

“I want pictures before it’s moved to New Orleans for an autopsy.”

“I know this is tough, John, but you need to get a grip. What’s an autopsy going to show that we can’t see for ourselves plain as day? Dennis was shot in the head at point-blank range with his own gun. We found the weapon right at his fingertips.”

“How do you know it was Dennis’s gun?”

Babineaux held up a plastic bag containing a small blue metal Colt .45 with a brown wooden grip. “Are you going to tell me it isn’t?”

John stared at the weapon. It was his grandfather’s pistol, World War II vintage, the first weapon John had ever shot. He’d practiced his aim by firing it at tin cans behind the house long before he was old enough to get a driver’s license.

“I recognize it,” he said, figuring it was no use to lie. Babineaux had taken the thing away from the old man often enough when he’d had too much to drink in Suzette’s and started waving it at anyone fool enough to argue with him.

“I don’t give a damn if you found his finger on the trigger. Dennis didn’t shoot himself.”

“No sign there was anyone else with him.”

“You don’t have any proof there wasn’t. So I suggest you get a decent crime-scene unit out here even if it means calling one in from New Orleans.”

“I don’t know what they’d do that I haven’t.”

“I want every detail you can sieve out of this bloody swamp.”

“I’m sorry about your brother, John. We all liked Dennis. You know that. But the guy had problems and maybe he just couldn’t deal with them.”

“Or maybe Norman Guilliot couldn’t.”

“Don’t go making crazy accusations.”

“Then do your job.” John swatted at a mosquito that was feeding on his neck, then walked toward Dennis’s car. It looked as if he’d just lost control and slid off into the bog. A few seconds later and he’d have hit the bridge railing or possibly plunged into the rain-swollen bayou.

Maybe that’s what the killer had meant for him to do. A nice, accidental drowning. The gun might have been the insurance, plan B in case the first option didn’t fly. Either way, something must have been planted to make certain Dennis left the road at the specific spot where his killer was waiting.