Alligator Moon. Joanna Wayne

      This was suicide. And a suicide it would stay.

       CHAPTER THREE

      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.

      Possibilities swirled in the fog that filled John’s mind. He looked up as a black Porsche skidded to a stop along the shoulder of the road.

      Dr. Norman Guilliot crawled from the low-slung car and took a few steps toward them with the same air of authority he probably flaunted in the operating room. But a few steps were all he’d be taking. Dressed in white trousers and a light blue pullover shirt, he wasn’t about to traipse through the murky water the way the rest of them had.

      At least not in the hot glare of the day with witnesses all around. Last night would have been a different story. John imagined him, slinking around in the dark, startling Dennis then sticking the pistol to his head. Dennis would have been an easy target, like blinding a doe with a high-powered flashlight and taking it down at point blank range. The kind of high-stake, no-risk operation a man like Guilliot would choose.

      The sheriff started toward Guilliot and the rest of the entourage followed, leaving Dennis’s body to the insects and the stifling humidity.

      John felt the hate swelling inside him and welcomed it. He could get his hands around hate, it was so much easier to deal with than the pain. He strode toward Guilliot, reaching him a few seconds after the others.

      “I’m sorry about this, John, really sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I’m still reeling with the shock of it myself.”

      “Shock doesn’t show much on you, Guilliot.”

      Guilliot fixed his gaze on John, a study in faux compassion. “I’m not going to get into an argument with you at a time like this. I won’t show that kind of disrespect toward Dennis.”

      “Your concern is underwhelming.”

      Dr. Guilliot shrugged his shoulders. “If blaming me helps you deal with this, go right ahead, John. But it doesn’t change anything. Dennis took his own life, and I guess that means we all let him down, including you.”

      “Dennis didn’t kill himself. He had no reason to.”

      “Guess you best take that up with Sheriff Babineaux.”

      The sheriff sidled up next to Guilliot. “I told you we don’t need no trouble out here, John. Why don’t you go back to your place and clean up a bit? Call you a friend to go to the funeral home in Galliano and make what arrangements need to be made.”

      John turned and stared at the sheriff, studied his gray eyes, his two crooked front teeth and the way his bottom lip curled downward as if it wanted to crawl away from the rest of his mouth. He’d known Babineaux all his life, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever really noticed him until today. Now everything about the sheriff and the entire morning were searing their way into the lining of John’s brain.

      “I expect, no make that demand, an autopsy, Babineaux. You see that it’s done or I see your ass in court.”

      Guilliot moved into John’s space, his eyes narrowed and accusing. “Making a big show’s not going to bring Dennis back or atone for that little girl you set the monster loose on, John. So why don’t you just let your brother rest in peace?”

      John fought the sudden urge to bury his fist into Guilliot’s gut. Instead he turned and walked back to his truck, wondering how in hell Dennis’s life had come to nothing more than a decaying body half-buried in a stinking bog on the edge of the road.

      Both Babineaux and Guilliot probably thought this would blow over, that John would go home and drown his grief in a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, but they were wrong. Someone had murdered Dennis and John would see that the man who had done it paid if he had to strangle him with his bare hands.