A Thin Dark Line

10

"Broussard ratted you out," Stokes said, curling his fingers through the wire mesh of the holding cell. "Man, I can't believe she did this to you. I mean, it's one thing that she won't sleep with me. Some women are just masochists that way. But ratting out another cop… man, that's low."

Stokes shouldn't have been allowed into the city jail holding cells. At least not as a visitor. Prisoners in holding had the right to see their attorneys, and that was all. But, as always, Stokes had known somebody and talked his way in.

"Goddamn, you think maybe she's a lesbian?" he asked, as the idea struck him.

An image of Annie Broussard came to Nick as he prowled his cell-her eyes widening, a hint of a blush spreading across her cheeks as he reached out and passed his hand too close to her.

"I don't care," he said.

"Maybe you don't, but she's just taken on a whole new role in my fantasy life," Stokes admitted. "Damn, but I've always had a thing for lesbians. Pretty ones," he qualified. "Not the butch dykes. Don't you ever picture beautiful women naked together? Man, that gets my dick twitching."

"She arrested me," Nick stated flatly, impatient with Stokes. The man had no focus.

"Well, yeah, she'll be a bad lesbian in my fantasies. A black leather bitch with a whip. Man hater."

"How'd she happen to be there?" Nick asked.

"Damn bad luck, that's for sure."

Nick had mixed feelings about that. If Annie Broussard hadn't come along, he would have killed Renard. She had, in fact, saved him from himself, and for that he was thankful. But her motives troubled him.

"She thinks I should be held accountable."

Maybe it was as simple as that. Maybe she was that idealistic. Having never been an idealist himself, he had a hard time accepting the prospect. In his experience, people were usually motivated by one thing: self-gain. They could couch their intentions in a million different guises, give no end of excuses, but most everything came down to one thought: What's in it for me? What was in it for Annie Broussard? Why had she suddenly popped up in his life?

"She's a pain in the ass," Stokes said. "Little Miss By-the-Book. I caught a rape case this morning out in that white-trash trailer park going toward Luck. She's out there butting into every damn thing. 'You gonna send that nose hair to the lab?' " he mocked in a high falsetto. " 'Maybe it's rapist nose hair. Maybe this guy did Bichon. Maybe he's the Bayou Strangler.' "

"What made her think it was tied to Bichon?"

Chaz rolled his eyes. "The guy wore a mask. Like that's an original idea. Christ," he muttered. "Whoever thought they should let broads on the job?"

He glanced over his shoulder, checking the door. The city jail was about a thousand years old and had no surveillance cameras in its holding cell areas. City cops had to listen in on conversations the old-fashioned way.

"Well, she's damn near the only one who thinks you should pay for this, man," he muttered. "Not even God himself would call you on it. An eye for an eye, you know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean. I'm supposed to be an avenging angel."

"Hell, you should have been the Invisible Man. No one would have been the wiser if Broussard hadn't stuck her nose in it. Renard would be roasting in hell, case closed."

"That's what you thought?" Nick said softly, stepping toward the chain-link that caged him in. "When you called me at Laveau's-you thought I'd go over to Bowen and Briggs and kill him?"

"Jesus!" Stokes hissed. "Keep your voice down!"

Nick leaned close to the wire mesh, slipping his fingers through just above Stokes's. "Whatsa matter, pard?" he whispered. "You worried about a conspiracy beef?"

Stokes jerked back, looking shocked, offended, hurt even. "Conspiracy? Shit, man, we were drunk and talking trash. Even when I called you and told you he was over there, I never thought you'd really do it! I'm just saying I wouldn't blame you if you had. I mean, good riddance-am I right or am I right?"

"You're the one wanted to go to that particular bar."

" 'Cause no one else hangs there, man! You can't think I was setting you up! Jesus, Nicky! We're brothers of the badge, man. I'm the closest thing to a friend you got. I don't know how you can even think it. It wounds me, Nicky. Truly."

"I'll wound you, Chaz. I find out you fucked me over, you'll wish your mama and daddy never got past first base."

Stokes stepped away from the cell. "I don't believe what I'm hearing. Man oh man! Stop being so fuckin' paranoid. I'm not your enemy here." He tapped his breastbone with one long forefinger. "Hell, I called you a lawyer. The guys are gonna cover it. They all agreed-"

"I pay my own way."

"You didn't do anything the rest of us hadn't had wet dreams about for the last three months."

"What lawyer?"

"Wily Tallant from St. Martinville."

"That bastard-"

"-is slick as snot," Stokes finished. "Don't think of him as being on the other side of the fence. Think of him as the man who's gonna open the gate so you can get back on your own side. That ol' boy can make Lucifer look like the poor misunderstood neglected child of a dysfunctional family. By the time he's through, you'll probably end up with a commendation and the keys to the fucking city, which is what you deserve."

He leaned toward the mesh again, slipping a hand inside his jacket and pulling out a cigarette like a magician. "That's all I want, pard," he said, passing the cigarette through the wire. "I want everybody to get what they deserve."

Annie stayed in the locker room for twenty minutes fighting to compose herself. Twenty minutes of staring at that skinned muskrat.

There was no way of knowing where it had come from or who had hung it, not without questioning people, looking for witnesses, making a fuss. Mullen was a sound bet, but she knew a half dozen deputies who did some trapping for extra income. Still, skinning would have been Mullen's touch. Annie had always pegged him for the sort of kid who had pulled the wings off flies.

Turncoat bitch.

Holding her breath against the sweet-putrid scent of decaying rodent, she cut the thing down with her pocketknife and grimaced as it hit the floor with a soft thud. She tore up the note, then pilfered a cardboard box from the garbage in the office supply room and used it for a coffin. She had no intention of taking the thing to Noblier and making a bad situation worse. And there was no leaving it. After she rewrote her final report on the cemetery vandalism and filed it, she grabbed the box and her duffel bag and left. She could toss the corpse in the woods after she got home, and Mother Nature would give it a proper disposal.

The drive home usually calmed her after a bad day. Today it only made her feel more alienated. Daylight was nearly gone, casting the world in the strange gray twilight of bad dreams. The woods looked forbidding, uninviting; the cane fields were vast, unpopulated seas of green. Lamps burned in the windows of the houses she passed; inside families were together, eating supper, watching television.

Always in times like this, she became acutely aware of her lack of a traditional family. This was when the memories crept up from childhood: her mother sitting in a rocking chair looking out at the swamp, a wraithlike woman, surreal, pale, detached, never quite in the present. There had always been a distance between Marie Broussard and the world around her. Annie had been keenly aware of it and frightened by it, fearing that one day her mother would just slip away into another dimension and she would be left alone. Which was exactly what had happened.

She had had Uncle Sos and Tante Fanchon to look after her, and she couldn't have loved them more, but there was always, would always be, a place inside her where she felt like an orphan, disconnected, separate from the people around her… as her mother had been. The door to that place was wide open tonight.

"You're on the air with Owen Onofrio, KJUN, all talk all the time. Home of the giant jackpot giveaway. We're up over nine hundred dollars now. What lucky listener will pocket that check? It could happen any time, any day.

"On our agenda tonight: Murder suspect Marcus Renard was allegedly attacked and beaten last night by a Partout Parish sheriff's detective. What do you have to say about that, Kay on line one?"

"I say there ain't no justice, that's what I say. The world's gone crazy. They put that dead woman's daddy in jail, too, and everyone I know says he's a hero for trying to do what the courts wouldn't. Killers and rapists have more rights than decent people. It's crazy!"

Annie switched the radio off as she turned in at the Corners. There were three cars in the crushed shell lot. Uncle Sos's pickup, the night clerk's rusty Fiesta, and off to one side, a shiny maroon Grand Am that made her groan aloud. A.J.

She sat for a moment just staring at the place she had called home her whole life: a simple two-story wood-frame building with a corrugated tin roof. The wide front window acted as a billboard, with half a dozen various ads and messages for products and services. A red neon sign for Bud, a placard that read ICI ON PARLE FRANCAIS, another sign handwritten in Magic Marker HOT Boudin amp; Cracklins.

The first floor of the building housed the business Sos Doucet had run for forty years. Originally a general store that served area swampers and their families who had come in by boat once or twice a month, it had evolved with the times and economic necessity into a landing for swamp tours, a cafe, and a convenience store that did its biggest business on the weekends when fishermen and hunters- "sports," Uncle Sos called them-stocked up to head out into the Atchafalaya basin. The tourists loved the rustic charm of the scarred old cypress floor and ancient, creaking ceiling fans. The locals were happier with the commercial refrigerators that kept their beer cold and handy, and the two-for-one movie rentals on Monday night.

The second-floor apartment had been home to Sos and Fanchon during the first years of their marriage. Prosperity had allowed them to build a little ranch-style brick house a hundred yards away, and in 1968 they had rented the apartment to Marie Broussard, who had shown up on the porch one day, pregnant and forlorn, as mysterious as any of the stray cats that had come to make their home at the Corners.

" 'Bout time you got home, chère!" Uncle Sos called, leaning out the screen door.

Annie climbed out of the Jeep with her duffel bag strapped over one shoulder and the muskrat box in her other hand.

"What you got in the box? Supper?"

"Not exactly."

Sos came out onto the porch, barefoot, in jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his sinewy forearms. He wasn't a tall man, but even at sixtysomething his shoulders suggested power. His belly was as flat as an anvil, his skin perpetually tan, his face creased in places like fine old leather. People told him he resembled the actor Tommy Lee Jones, which always brought a sparkle to his eyes and the retort that, hell no, Tommy Lee Jones resembled him, the lucky son of a bitch.

"You got comp'ny, chère," Sos said with a sly grin that nearly made his eyes disappear. "Andre, he's here to see you." He lowered his voice in conspiracy as she stepped up onto the porch. His face was aglow. "Y'all had a little lovers' spat, no?"

"We're not lovers, Uncle Sos."

"Bah!"

"Not that it's any of your business, by the way, for the hundredth time."

He jerked his chin back and looked offended. "How is that not my business?"

"I'm a grown-up," she reminded him.

"Then you smart enough to marry dat boy, mais no?"

"Will you ever give up?"

"Mebbe," he said, pulling open the screen door for her. "Mebbe when you make me a grandpapa."

A bouquet of red roses and baby's breath sat on the corner of the checkout counter, as out of place as a Ming vase. The night clerk, a crater-faced kid as skinny as a licorice whip, was running Speed on the VCR.

"Hey, Stevie," Annie called.

"Hey, Annie," he called back, never taking his eyes off the set. "What's in the box?"

"Severed hand."

"Cool."

"Aren't you gonna say hello to Andre?" Sos said irritably. "After he come all the way out here. After he sent you flowers and all."

A.J. had the grace to look sheepish. He leaned back against a display counter of varnished alligator heads and other equally gruesome artifacts that titillated the tourists. He hadn't changed out of his suit, but had shed his tie and opened the collar of his shirt.

"I don't know," Annie said. "Should I have my lawyer present?"

"I was out of line," he conceded.

"Try left field. On the warning track."

"See, chère?" Sos smiled warmly, motioning her to close the distance. "Andre, he knows when he's licked. He come to kiss and make up."

Annie refused to be charmed. "Yeah? Well, he can kiss my butt."

Sos arched a brow at him. "Hey, that's a start."

"I'm tired," Annie declared, turning back for the door. "Good night."

"Annie!" A.J. called. She could hear him coming behind her as she rounded the corner of the porch and started up the staircase to her apartment. "You can't just keep running away from me. "

"I'm not running away. I'm trying to ignore you, which, I promise you, is preferable to the alternative. I'm not very happy with you at the moment-"

"I said I was sorry."

"No, you said you were out of line. An admission of wrongdoing is not an apology."

Two cats darted around her feet and onto the landing, meowing. A calico hopped up on the railing and leaned longingly toward the muskrat box. Annie held it out of reach as she opened the door. She hadn't intended to bring the thing into her apartment, but she couldn't very well dispose of it with A.J. breathing down her neck.

She set the box and her duffel on the small bench in the entry and proceeded past the telephone stand in the living room, where the light on her answering machine was blinking like an angry red eye. She could only imagine what was waiting for her on the tape. Reporters, relatives, and disgruntled strangers calling to express their opinions and/or try to wheedle information out of her. She walked past the machine and went into the kitchen, flipping on the lights.

A.J. followed, setting the vase of roses on the chrome-legged kitchen table.

"I'm sorry. I am," he said. "I shouldn't have jumped all over you about Fourcade, but I was worried for you, honey."

"And it had nothing to do with you being caught flat-footed with Pritchett."

He sighed through his nose. "All right. I admit, the news caught me off guard, and, yes, I thought you should have told me because of our relationship. I would like to think that you would turn to me in that kind of situation."

"So that you could turn to Smith Pritchett and spill it all, like a good lieutenant."

Annie stood on the opposite side of the table, her lower back pressing against the edge of the counter at the sink.

"This is just another example of why this relationship thing isn't going to work out," she said, her voice going a little rusty under pressure. "Here I am and there you are and there's this-this-stuff between us." She used her hands to illustrate her point. "My job and your job, and when is it about the job and when is it about us. I don't want to deal with it, A.J. I'm sorry. I don't. Not now."

Not now, when she suddenly found herself caught up in the storm Fourcade had created. She needed all her wits about her just to keep her head above water.

"I don't think this is the best time for us to have this conversation," A.J. said softly, coming toward her, gentleness and affection on his face. "It's been a rough day. You're tired, I'm tired. I just don't want us mad at each other. We're too good friends for that. Kiss and make up?" he whispered.

She let her eyes close as he settled his mouth against hers. She didn't try to stop her own lips from moving or her arms from sneaking around his waist. He pulled her closer, and it seemed as natural as breathing. His body was strong, warm. His size made her feel small and safe.

It would have been easy to go to bed with him, to find comfort and oblivion in passion. A.J. enjoyed the role of lover-protector. She knew exactly how good it felt to let him take that part. And she knew she couldn't go there tonight. Sex would solve nothing, complicate everything. Her life had gotten complicated enough.

A.J. felt her enthusiasm cool. He raised his head an inch or two. "You know, you can hurt a guy making him stop like this."

"That's a lie," Annie said, appreciating his attempt at humor.

"Says who?"

"Says you. You told me that when I was a sophomore and Jason Benoit was trying to convince me I would cripple him for life if I didn't let him go all the way."

"Yeah, well, I would've crippled him if he had." He touched the tip of her nose with his forefinger. "Friends again?"

"Always."

"Who ever thought life could be so complicated?"

"Not you."

"That's a fact." He glanced at his watch. "Well, I suppose I should go home and take a cold shower or page through the Victoria 's Secret catalog or something."

"No work?" Annie asked, following him to the door.

"Tons. You don't want to hear about it."

"Why not?"

He turned and faced her, serious. "Fourcade's bond hearing tomorrow."

"Oh."

"Told you so." He started to open the door, then hesitated. "You know, Annie, you're gonna have to decide whose side you're on in this thing."

"I'm either for you or against you?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah," she admitted, "but I don't want to talk about it tonight."

A.J. accepted that with a nod. "If you decide you do want to talk, and you want to talk to a friend… we'll work around the rest."

Annie kept her doubts to herself. A.J. pulled the door open, and three cats darted into the entry and pounced on the muskrat box, growling.

"What is in that box?"

"Dead muskrat."

"Jeez, Broussard, anybody ever tell you you've got a morbid sense of humor?"

"A million times, but I'm also in denial."

He smiled and winked at her as he stepped out onto the landing. "I'll see you around, kiddo. I'm glad we're friends again."

"Me, too," Annie murmured. "And thanks for the flowers."

"Ah-sorry." He pulled a face. "I didn't send them. Uncle Sos assumed…"

Annie held a hand up. " 'Nough said. That's okay. I wouldn't expect you to."

"But feel free to let me know who did, so I can go punch the guy in the nose."

"Please. One assault a week is my limit."

He leaned down and brushed a kiss to her cheek. "Lock your door. There's bad guys running around out there."

She shooed the cats out of the entry and went back into the apartment. The bouquet sat dead center on her kitchen table, looking almost as out of place there as it had in the store. Her apartment was a place for wildflowers in jelly jars, not the elegance of roses. She plucked the white envelope from its plastic stem and extracted the card.

Dear Ms. Broussard, I hope you don't think roses inappropriate, but you saved my life and I want to thank you properly.

Yours truly, Marcus Renard