A Thin Dark Line

12

Bail hearings in Partout Parish were held Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, a schedule carefully structured to produce revenue. Anyone bailed out on Friday had the weekend to break another law or two, for which they would have to be bailed out again come Monday. Wednesday was thrown in for good measure and civil liberties.

The presiding judge, as luck would have it, was old Monahan. Nick groaned inwardly as Monahan emerged from his chambers and took his seat on the bench. Cases were called. A mixed bag of petty offenses on this Friday morning: drunk and disorderly, shoplifting, possession with intent to distribute, burglary. The defendants, their eyes downcast like dogs that had been caught soiling the carpet, stood beside their lawyers. Some of the accused looked ashamed, some embarrassed, some were just used to playing the game.

The gallery of the courtroom filled steadily as the cases were dealt with in short order, one scumbag loser at a time.

If these people going before him were losers, Nick thought, then what did that make him? Every person who came before the court claimed to have a good reason for what he or she had done. None was as good as his, but he doubted getting up and telling the court he had only done the job the court had shirked would win him any points with Monahan.

The esteemed members of the press filling the pews behind him were no doubt drooling for precisely that kind of dramatic statement. They waited restlessly through the preliminary goings-on, eager for the main event. Monahan seemed irritated by their presence, his mood more churlish than usual. He barked at the attorneys, snapped at the defendants, and set bail amounts at the high end of the spectrum.

Nick had exactly three thousand two hundred dollars in the bank.

"Don't piss off His Honor, Nick, my boy," Wily Tallant murmured, leaning toward Nick. "I do believe he's got an Irish headache today. Don't meet his eyes. If you can't look contrite, look contemplative."

Nick looked away. Tallant was a sly, scheming bastard- good qualities in a defense attorney, but that didn't mean he had to like the man. He only had to listen to him.

The lawyer was nearly a head shorter than Nick, with a lean, European elegance about him. His thin, dark hair was slicked back neatly, accentuating the distinguished lines of his face. He wore black suits year-round and a Rolex that cost more than Nick made in four months. Wily's clients may have been scumbags, but they tended to be scumbags with money.

Nick scanned the crowd again. A number of cops had found their way into the balcony that had been the gallery for black spectators in the days of open segregation. He spotted a couple of sheriff's deputies, a couple of Bayou Breaux uniforms. Broussard was not among them. He thought she might have come. This was what she wanted: him facing the music.

In the balcony front row, Stokes touched the brim of the ball cap he wore low over a pair of Ray-Bans. Quinlan, another of the SO detectives, sat beside him, along with Z-Top McGee, a detective from the city squad they had worked with a time or two.

It struck Nick as odd that anyone other than Stokes had come. He had spent no time cultivating friendships here. More likely their attachment to him was through the job. The Brotherhood. He was one of them, and here but for the grace of God… Ultimately, their concern was for themselves, he decided. A comforting cynical thought.

He dropped his gaze to the main gallery seating, skimming the faces of the reporters who had hounded him from the outset of the Bichon case, and one who had hounded him longer than that-a face familiar from New Orleans. New Orleanians generally cared little what went on beyond the boundaries of the Big Easy. The Cajun parishes were a separate world. But this one had smelled Nick's blood in the water and had come hungry. Unexpected, but not surprising.

The surprises sat ahead of the New Orleans hack. Belle Davidson and, two rows in front of her, her erstwhile son-in-law, Donnie Bichon. What were they doing here? Hunter Davidson was not among the unfortunate waiting their turn before the judge. Pritchett would want to downplay that bail hearing. Pressing charges against a grieving father would be unpopular with his constituents. Pressing charges against "a rogue cop" for the same crime was an altogether different matter.

"State of Lou'siana versus Nick Fourcade!"

Nick followed Tallant through the gate to the defense table. Pritchett had remained silent through the previous proceedings, letting ADA Doucet deal with the petty stuff, saving himself for the feature attraction. He rose from his chair and buttoned his suit coat, twitching his shoulders back and smoothing a hand over his silk tie. He looked like a little gamecock preening his feathers and scratching the dirt before a fight.

"Your Honor," he intoned loudly. "The charges here are extremely egregious: aggravated assault and attempted murder perpetrated by a member of the law enforcement community. We're dealing not only with a felony, but with a gross abuse of power and a betrayal of the public trust. It's an absolute disgrace. I-"

"Save your preaching for another pulpit, Mr. Pritchett," Judge Monahan barked as he snapped the cap off a bottle of Excedrin and dumped a pair of pills into his hand.

The judge glared at Nick, black eyebrows creeping down over piercing blue eyes.

"Detective Fourcade, I cannot begin to express my disgust at having you before my bench on this matter. You have managed to turn an ugly situation hideous, and I am not inclined to be forgiving. Could you possibly have anything to say for yourself?"

Wily leaned forward, his fingertips just resting on the defense table. "Revon Tallant for the defense. Your Honor, my client wishes to enter a plea of not guilty at this time." He enunciated each word as precisely as a poet. "As usual, Mr. Pritchett has jumped to all manner of extreme conclusions without having heard the facts of the situation. Detective Fourcade was simply going about the business of his job-"

"Beating the snot out of people?" Pritchett said.

"Apprehending a suspected burglar, who chose to resist arrest and fight."

"Resist and fight? The man had to be hospitalized!" Pritchett shouted. "He looks like he ran headlong into a steel beam!"

"I never said he was good at it."

Laughter rippled through the gallery. Monahan banged his gavel. "This is not a humorous matter!"

"I quite agree, Your Honor," Pritchett said. "We had ought to take a dim view of law enforcement officers crossing the line into vigilantism. A sheriff's deputy caught Detective Fourcade red-handed-in the literal sense. She will testify-"

"This isn't the trial, Mr. Pritchett," Monahan cut in. "I am in no mood to listen to lawyers go on and on for the benefit of the press and the sheer love of the sound of their own voices. Get on with it!"

"Yes, Your Honor." Pritchett swallowed his pride, his cheeks tinting pink. "In view of the seriousness of the charges and the brutality of the crime, the state requests bail in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars."

The words hit Nick like a ball bat.

Wily tossed his head back and rolled his big sloe eyes. "Your Honor, Mr. Pritchett's predilection for drama aside-"

"Your client is a law enforcement officer who stands accused of beating a man senseless, Mr. Tallant," Monahan said sharply. "That's all the drama I need." He consulted his clerk for his schedule, shaking the Excedrin tablets in his hand like a pair of dice. "Preliminary hearing set for two weeks from yesterday. Bail in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars, cash or bond. Pay the clerk if you can. Next case!"

Nick and Tallant moved away from the defense table as the next defendant and his attorney came in. Nick stared at Pritchett across the room. The DA's small mouth was screwed into a self-satisfied smirk.

"I'll have Monahan recused from the case before the hearing," Wily murmured, moving with Nick toward the side door, where a city cop waited to escort him back to jail. "He's obviously too biased to hear the case. However, there's nothing I can do about Pritchett. That man wants your head on a pike, my boy. You made him look bad with that unfortunate evidentiary matter the other day. That's a felony in Smith Pritchett's book. Can you make bail?"

"Hell, Wily, I can barely pay you. I might get ten thousand if I hock everything I own," Nick said absently, his attention suddenly on the gallery.

Donnie Bichon had risen from his seat and came forward, lifting a hand tentatively, like an uncertain schoolboy trying to attract the teacher's attention. He was a handsome kid-thirty-six going on twenty-with a short nose and ears that stuck out just enough to make him perpetually boyish. He had played third-string forward at Tulane and had a tendency to walk with his shoulders slightly hunched, as if he were ready to drive to the basket at any second. Everyone on the business side of the bar stopped what they were doing to look at him.

"Your Honor? May I approach the bench?" Monahan glared at him. "Who are you, sir?" "Donnie Bichon, Your Honor. I'd like to pay Detective Fourcade's bail."

Construction business must be doing better than I thought," Nick said, moving around Donnie Bichon's office, rolling a toothpick between his teeth.

He had allowed the drama in the courtroom to unfold, not because he wanted Bichon's money, but because he wanted to know the motive behind the magnanimous gesture.

The press had gone wild. Headline frenzy. Monahan had ordered the courtroom cleared. Smith Pritchett had stormed from the room in a fit of temper at having his thunder stolen. After Donnie paid the clerk, they had all run the media gauntlet out of the courthouse and down the steps. Deja vu all over again.

Nick had jumped into Wily's money green Infiniti and they had driven clear to New Iberia to shake the tail of reporters behind them. By the time they doubled back to Bayou Breaux on country roads, the press had gone off to write their stories. Nick had Wily drop him off at the house, where he grabbed the keys to his truck and left, skipping the shower and change of clothes he needed badly. He needed other things more. Answers.

The office gave the impression that Bichon Bayou Development was a solid company-sturdy oak furnishings, masculine colors, a small fortune in wildlife prints on the walls. Nick's investigation had told a different tale. Donnie had built the company on the back of Bayou Realty, Pam's business, and pissed away his opportunities to put it on solid financial ground. According to one source, the divorce would have cleanly severed the attachment between BBD and Pam's company, and Donnie would have been left to get business sense or die.

Nick traced a fingertip over the graceful line of a hand-carved wooden mallard coming in for a landing on the credenza. "When I checked your company out, looked to me like you were in hock up to your ass, Donnie. You nearly went belly-up eighteen months ago. You hid land in Pam's company to keep from losing it. How is it you can write a check for a hundred thousand dollars?"

Donnie laughed as he dropped into the oxblood leather chair behind his desk. He had opened his collar and rolled up the sleeves of his pin-striped shirt. The young businessman at work.

"You're an ungrateful bastard, Fourcade," he said, caught somewhere between amusement and irritation. "I just bailed your ass out of jail and you don't like the smell of my money? Fuck you."

"I believe I thanked you already. You paid for my release, Donnie, you didn't buy me."

Donnie broke eye contact and straightened a stack of papers on his desk. "The company's worth a lot on paper. Assets, you know. Land, equipment, houses built on spec. Bankers love assets more than cash. I have a nice line of credit."

"Why'd you do it?"

"You're kidding, right? After what Renard did to Pam? And ol' Hunter and you are sitting in jail and he's out walking around? That's crazy. The courts are a goddamn circus nowadays. It's time somebody did the right thing."

"Like kill Renard?"

"In my dreams. Perverted little prick. He's the criminal, not you. That was my statement. That deputy that hauled you in should have just minded her own damn business, let nature take its own course and finish this thing. Besides, I'm told I'm not out anything, unless you decide to skip town."

"Why cash?" Nick asked. "You pay a bail bondsman only ten percent for the bond."

And get a fraction of the publicity, he thought. Donnie crossing the bar to write out a huge check had been a climactic moment. It hadn't been Donnie's first taste of the spotlight.

He had been right there soaking it up from the day Pam's body had been discovered. He had immediately offered a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest. He had cried like a baby at the funeral. Every newspaper in Louisiana had printed the close-up of Donnie with his face in his hands.

In the outer office, the telephone was ringing off the hook. Reporters looking for comments and interviews most likely. Every story that ran was free advertising for Bichon Bayou Development.

Donnie glanced away again. "I wouldn't know anything about that. I never bailed anybody out of jail before. Christ, will you sit down? You're making me nervous."

Nick ignored the request. He needed to move, and having Donnie nervous wasn't an altogether bad thing.

"Will you be able to go back to work on the case?"

"When hell freezes over. I'm on suspension. My involvement would taint the case because of my obvious bias against the chief suspect. At least, that's what a judge would say. I'm out, officially."

"Then I'd better hope you have something else to keep you in Partout Parish, hadn't I? I sure as hell can't afford to lose a hundred grand."

"Some folks would say you can afford to lose it now more than you could have when your wife was alive," Nick said.

Donnie's face went tight. "We've been down that road before, Detective, and I mightily resent you going down it again."

"You know it's been a two-pronged investigation all along, Donnie. That's standard op. You bailing me outta jail won't change that."

"You know where you can stick your two prongs, Fourcade."

Shrugging, Nick went on. "Me, I've had a lotta time on my hands in the last twenty-four hours. Time to let my mind wander, let it all turn over and over. It just seems… fortuitous… that Pam was killed before the divorce went through. Once the insurance company coughs up and you sell off Pam's half of the real estate company, you won't need that line of credit."

Donnie surged to his feet. "That's it, Fourcade! Get outta my office! I did you a good turn, and you come in here and abuse me! I should have left you to rot in jail! I didn't kill Pam. I couldn't possibly. I loved her."

Nick made no move to leave. He pulled the toothpick from his mouth and held it like a cigarette. "You had a funny way of showing it, Tulane: chasing anything in a skirt."

"I've made mistakes," Donnie admitted angrily. "Maturity was never my strong suit. But I did love Pam, and I do love my daughter. I could never do anything to hurt Josie."

The very thought seemed to distress him. He turned away from the school portrait of his daughter that sat on a corner of his desk.

"Is she living with you yet?" Nick asked quietly.

There had been rumors of a custody battle brewing within the divorce war. Something that seemed more like petty meanness on Donnie's part than genuine concern for his daughter's well-being. As in countless divorce cases, the child became a tool, a possession to be bickered over. Donnie liked his freedom too well for full-time fatherhood. Visitation would suit his lifestyle better than custody.

Nick had long ago discounted Josie as a motive for murder. It was the money angle that bothered him, and the land Donnie had hidden in Bayou Realty's assets. Even when he swore up and down Renard was their boy, the money issue kept tugging at him. It was a loose thread and he couldn't simply let a loose thread dangle. He would worry at it until it could be tied off one way or another. If it meant looking his gift horse in the mouth, then so be it. Donnie had decided on his own to bail him out. Nick felt no obligation.

"She's with Belle and Hunter," Donnie said. "Belle thought they could provide a more stable environment for the time being. Then Hunter goes off with a gun and tries to commit murder in broad daylight. Some stability. Of course, the press is making him out to be a celebrity. If he doesn't go to prison, they'll probably make a movie about him."

The fight had run out of him. His shoulders slumped and he suddenly seemed older.

"Why are you dredging all this up again? You still believe Renard did it. I mean, I know some people are saying things after that rape the other night-all that Bayou Strangler bullshit and whatnot. But that's got nothing to do with this. You're the one found Pam's ring in Renard's house. You're the one put him in the hospital. Why are you dogging my ass? I'm the best friend you had today."

"Habit," Nick replied. "Me, I tend to be suspicious by nature."

"No shit. Well, I'm not guilty."

"Ever'body's guilty of something."

Donnie shook his head. "You need help, Fourcade. You're clinically paranoid."

A sardonic smile curved Nick's mouth as he tossed his toothpick in the trash and turned for the door. "C'est vrai. That's true enough. Lucky for me, I'm one of the few people who can make a living off it."

Nick left Bichon Bayou Development through the back door, made his way down two alleys, and cut across the backyard of a house where a teenage girl in a yellow bikini was stretched out on a shiny metallic blanket trying to absorb ultraviolet rays. With headphones and sun goggles, she was oblivious to his passing.

He had parked in the weedy side lot of a closed welding shop, the truck blending in with an array of abandoned junk. He climbed into the cab, rolled the windows down, and sat there, smoking a cigarette and thinking as the radio mumbled to itself.

"You're on KJUN with Dean Monroe. Our topic this afternoon: the release on bail of Partout Parish detective, Nick Fourcade, who stands accused of brutalizing murder suspect Marcus Renard. Montel in Maurice, speak your mind."

"He done this kind of thing before and he got off. I thinks we all gots to be scared when cops can plant evidence and beat people up and just get off-"

Nick silenced the radio, thinking back to New Orleans. He had paid in ways worse than prison. He had lost his job, lost his credibility. He had crashed and burned and was still struggling to put the pieces back together. But he had more urgent things than the past to occupy his mind today.

Maybe Donnie Bichon was filled with regret for the demise of his marriage and the death of the woman he had once loved. Or maybe his remorse was about something else altogether. Except for the hideous brutality of the murder, Donnie had been an automatic suspect. Husbands always were. But Donnie seemed more the sort who would have choked his ex in a moment of blind fury, not the sort who could have planned a death like Pam's and carried it out. It took cold hate to pull off a murder like that.

"Renard did it," Nick murmured. The trail, the logic led back to Renard. Renard had fixated on her, stalked her, killed her when she rejected him. Nick believed he'd done it in Baton Rouge shortly before moving here, but that woman's death had been ruled accidental and never investigated as a homicide.

Renard was their guy, he could feel it in the marrow of his bones. Still, there was something off about the whole damn deal.

Maybe it was the fact that no one had ever been able to prove Renard was the one stalking Pam. Hell, the word stalking never even appeared in the reports. That was how doubtful the cops and the courts had been. Renard had openly sent her flowers and small gifts. There was nothing menacing in that. Pam had thrown the gifts back at him in the Bowen amp; Briggs office one day, not long before her death.

No one had ever seen Renard going into Pam's office or her house out on Quail Drive when she wasn't there, and yet someone had stolen things from her desk and from her dresser. Someone had left a dead snake in her pencil drawer. Renard had access to the office building, but so did Donnie. No one had identified Renard as the prowler Pam had reported several times to 911 from her home, but someone had slipped into her garage and cut the tires on her Mustang. She had received so many hang-up and breather calls at home, she had taken an unlisted number. But there was not a single call listed in the phone company records from Renard's home or business number to Pam Bichon's.

Renard was meticulous, compulsively neat. Careful. Intelligent. He could have pulled it off. The flowers and candy could have been part of the game. Perhaps he had sensed all along she would never have him. Perhaps it was resentment that drove his fixation. Affection was the perfect cover for a deep-seated hatred.

Then again, perhaps Donnie had harassed Pam in a foolish and misguided attempt to get her back. Donnie had never been in favor of the divorce. He had argued it was not in Josie's best interest, but it was not in Donnie's best interest -financially. Pam had asked him to move out in February- a year ago, now. A trial separation. They went to a few counseling sessions. By the end of July it had been plain in Pam's mind that the marriage was over, and she filed the papers. Donnie had not taken the news well.

The harassment began the end of August.

Donnie could have pulled those tricks to scare her. He had the capacity for juvenile behavior. But again, there was no evidence. No witnesses. No phone records. A search of his home following the murder had turned up nothing. Donnie wasn't that smart.

"You need a break, Fourcade," he muttered.

Like the snap of a hypnotist's fingers, the trance was shattered. He didn't need a break. He was off the case. He didn't want to let it go, and yet, he had thrown it away with both hands by going after Renard.

He had replayed that night in his head a hundred times. In his head, he made the right choices. He didn't accept Stokes's invitation to Laveau's. He didn't pour whiskey on his wounded pride. He didn't listen to Stokes's eye-for-an-eye nonsense. He didn't take that phone call, didn't go down that street.

And Annie Broussard didn't walk out of the blue and into his life.

Where the hell had she come from? And why?

He didn't believe in coincidence, had never trusted Fate.

The possibilities rubbed back and forth in his mind and chafed his temper raw. He put the truck in gear, and rolled out of the parking lot.

The hell he was off this case.