A Thin Dark Line

13

Friday. Payday. Everyone was in a hurry to get to the bank, get to the bars, get home to start the weekend. Friday was a big speeding-ticket day. Friday nights were good for brawls and DUIs.

Annie preferred the tickets. With more people packing guns every day, brawls had become a little too unpredictable to be fun. Then there was the whole AIDS scare and the threats of lawsuits. The only cops she knew who still liked brawls were the boneheaded type who sweated testosterone, and short guys with big chips on their shoulders. Little guys always wanted to fight to prove their manhood. The Napoleon complex.

Just one more reason to be glad she didn't have a penis. The few skirmishes she had jumped into had been enough to win her a chipped tooth, two cracked ribs, and the respect of her fellow deputies. Men were that way. Being able to take a punch somehow made you a better person.

She wondered if any of them remembered those past brawls. It seemed not. When she had reported to the briefing room this morning, she had taken a seat at one of the long tables, and every deputy at the table got up and moved. Not a word was spoken, but the message was clear: They no longer considered her one of them. Because of Fourcade, a man who had befriended none of them and yet was lionized by them all for the mere fact that he had external genitalia. Men.

She had wanted to hear about the follow-up on the Jennifer Nolan rape, but the closest she was going to come to the case was rewriting her initial report, which Hooker had "misplaced." She had interviewed half a dozen of Nolan's neighbors yesterday, getting only one potentially useful piece of information: Nolan's former roommate had run off with a biker. Two of the doors she had knocked on had gone unanswered. She had passed all the information on to Stokes and doubted she would ever hear another word about it unless she read it in the paper.

She thought about the rape in fragments: the mask, the violence, the absence of seminal fluid, the ligatures, the fact that he made her bathe afterward. The fact that he hadn't spoken a single word during the ordeal. Verbal intimidation and degradation were standard fare in most rapes. She wondered which would be more terrifying: an attacker who threatened death or the ominous uncertainty of silence.

Careful. The word kept coming back to her. The rapist had been careful to leave no trace. He seemed to be perfectly aware of what the cops would need to nail him. That pointed to someone with experience and maybe a record. Someone should have been checking personnel records at the True Light lamp factory to see if any of Nolan's coworkers was an ex-con. But it wasn't her job, and it never would be if Chaz Stokes had anything to say about it.

Annie checked her watch again. Another half hour and she could head back to Bayou Breaux. She had pulled the cruiser off the road into the turnaround lot of a ramshackle vegetable stand that had blown down in the last big storm. The position was shaded by a sprawling live oak and gave her a view of two blacktop roads that converged a quarter mile south of the small town of Luck-a hot spot on Friday nights. Every rough character in the parish headed down to Skeeter Mouton's roadhouse on Friday night. Bikers, roughnecks, rednecks, and criminal types, all gathered for the popular low-society pursuits of beer, betting, and breaking heads.

A red Chevy pickup was coming fast out of town. Annie clocked it with the radar as it cruised past, the driver hanging a beer can out the window. Sixty-five in a forty zone and a DUI to boot. Jackpot. She hit the lights and siren and pulled him over half a mile down the road. The truck had a rebel-flag sunscreen in the back window and a bumper sticker that read USA Kicks Ass.

Nothing like a drunken redneck to make a day truly suck the big one.

"One Able Charlie," she radioed in. "I got a speeder on twelve, two miles south of Luck. Looks like he's drinking. Lou'siana tags Tango Whiskey Echo seven-three-three. Tango Whiskey Echo seven-three-three. Over."

She waited a beat for the acknowledgment that didn't come, then tried again. Still no response. The silence was more than annoying; it was disturbing. The radio was her link to help. If a routine stop turned into trouble, Dispatch had her location and the tag number on the vehicle she had pulled over. If she didn't call them back in a timely fashion, they would send other units.

"10-1, One Able Charlie. We didn't catch that. You're breaking up again. Say again. Over."

It was a simple thing to interrupt a radio transmission. All it took was one other deputy keying his mike when he heard her calling in and she was cut off. Cut off from communication, cut off from help.

Disgusted at the possibility, Annie grabbed her clipboard and ticket book and got out of the car.

"Step out of the vehicle, please," she called as she approached the truck from the rear.

"I wadn' speedin'," the driver yelled, sticking his head out the open window. He had small mean eyes and a mouth that drew into a tight knot. The dirty red ball cap he wore was stitched with a yellow TriStar Chemical logo. "You cops ain't got nothin' better to do than stop me?"

"Not at the moment. I'll need to see your license and registration."

"This is bullshit, man."

He swung open the door of the truck, and an empty Miller Genuine Draft can tumbled out onto the verge and rolled under the cab. He pretended not to notice as he stepped down with the extreme caution of a man who knows he has lost his equilibrium to booze. He wasn't any taller than Annie, a little pit bull of a man in jeans and a Bass Master T-shirt stretching tight over a hard beer belly. A short, drunken redneck.

"I don't pay taxes in this parish so y'all can harass me," he grumbled. "Goddamn gov'ment's tryin' to run my life. This here's supposed to be a free fuckin' country."

"So it is as long as you're not drunk and driving sixty-five in a forty. I need your license."

"I ain't drunk." He pulled a big trucker's wallet on a chain out of his hip pocket and fumbled around to extract his license, which he held out in Annie's general direction. His fingers were stained dark with grease. A tattoo of a naked blue woman with bright red nipples reclined on his forearm. Classy.

Vernell Poncelet. Annie stuck the license under the clip on her board.

"I wadn' speedin'," he insisted. "Them radar guns is always wrong. You can clock a goddamn tree doing sixty."

Suddenly his squinty eyes widened in surprise. "Hey! You're a woman!"

"Yep. I've been aware of that for some time now."

Poncelet put his head on one side, studying her, until he started to tip over. He swung an arm to point at her and righted himself in the process.

"You're the one was on the news! I seen you! You turned in that cop what beat up that killer rapist!"

"Stay right here," Annie said coolly, backing toward the squad. "I need to run your name and tags." And call for a backup. She had the feeling Vernell wasn't going down without a fight. Short guys.

"What kinda cop are you?" Poncelet shouted, staggering after her. "You want killer rapists runnin' 'round loose? An' you're giving me a ticket? That's bullshit!"

Annie gave him the evil eye. "Stand where you are!"

He kept coming, thrusting a finger at her as if he meant to run her through with it. "I ain't takin' no fuckin' ticket from you!"

"The hell you're not."

"You let a rapist run around loose. Maybe you wanna get lucky, huh? You fuckin' bitch-"

"That's it!" Annie tossed the clipboard on the hood of the cruiser and reached for the cuffs on her belt. "Up against the truck! Now!"

"Fuck you!" Poncelet made a wobbly 180-degree turn and started back for his truck. "Let a real cop stop me. I ain't takin' no shit from a broad."

"Up against the truck, stubby, or this is gonna get so real it'll hurt." Annie stepped in behind him, slapped a cuff around his right wrist, and pulled his arm up behind his back. "Up against the goddamn truck!"

She stepped into him, trying to turn him with pressure on his arm. Poncelet staggered, throwing her off balance, then swung around to take a punch at her. Their feet tangled in a clumsy dance and they went down in a heap on the side of the road, wrestling, grunting.

Poncelet swore in her face, his breath hot and acetous with beer gases bubbling up from his belly. He groped for a handhold to right himself, grabbing Annie's left breast. Annie kicked him in the shin and caught him in the mouth with her elbow. Poncelet got one knee under him and tried to surge to his feet, one hand swinging hard into Annie's nose.

"Son of a bitch!" she yelled as blood coursed down over her lips. She came to her feet and ran Poncelet headlong into the side of the truck.

"You picked the wrong day to fuck with me, shorty!" she snarled, closing the other cuff tight around his free wrist. "You're under arrest for every stinkin' crime I can think of!"

"I want a real cop!" he bellowed. "This is America. I got rights! I got the right to remain silent-"

"Then why don't you?" Annie barked, shoving him toward the cruiser.

"I ain't no crim'nal! I got rights!"

"You've got shit for brains, that's what you've got. Man, you have dug yourself a hole so deep, you're gonna need a ladder to see rock bottom."

She pushed him into the backseat and slammed the door. Traffic passed by on the blacktop road to Mouton's. A kid with a goatee leaned out the window of a jacked-up GTO and gave her the finger. Annie flipped it back at him and climbed in behind the wheel of her car.

"You're a feminazi, that's what you are!" Poncelet shouted, kicking the back of the seat. "You're a goddamn feminazi!"

Annie wiped the blood off her mouth with her shirtsleeve. "Watch your mouth, Poncelet. You start quoting Rush Limbaugh to me, I'll take you out in the swamp and shoot you."

She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror and swore as she pulled the radio mike. With the black eye from Wednesday and the bloody nose, she looked as if she'd gone five rounds with Mike Tyson.

"One Able Charlie. I'm bringing in a drunk. Thanks for nothing."

Poncelet was still screaming when Annie escorted him to Booking. She had stopped listening, her own anger muting his words to an annoying roar in the background. What if Poncelet had hurt her? What if he had gotten hold of her gun? Would anyone have known the difference?

The Deputies' Association had voted to pay Fourcade's legal bills. She wondered if they'd also taken a vote on getting her killed. She hadn't been invited to the meeting.

The shift was changing-guys going in and out of the locker room, hanging around the briefing room. Time for bullshit and bad jokes over strong coffee. The relaxed smiles froze and vanished when Annie came down the hall.

"What?" she challenged no one in particular. "Disappointed to see me in one piece?"

"Disappointed to see you at all," Mullen muttered.

"Yeah? Well, now you know how the whole female population feels when they see you coming, Mullen. What did you think?" she demanded. "That keying me out on the radio would make me disappear?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Broussard. You're hysterical."

"No, I'm pissed off. You got a problem with me, then be a man and bring it to me instead of pulling this adolescent bullshit-"

"You're the problem," he charged. "If you can't handle the job, then leave."

"I can handle the job. I was doing my job-"

"What the hell's going on out here?" Hooker bellowed, stepping into the hall.

Too angry for circumspection, Annie turned toward the sergeant. "Someone's covering my transmissions."

"That's bullshit," Mullen said.

"Musta been something wrong with your radio," Hooker said. Annie wanted to kick him.

"Funny how I suddenly can't get a radio that works."

"You got bad vibes, Broussard," Mullen said. "Maybe the wire in your bra is screwing up your reception."

Hooker glared at him. "Shut the fuck up, Mullen."

"It's not the radio," Annie said. "It's the attitude. Y'all are acting like a bunch of spoiled little boys, like I ruined everybody's fun. Someone was breaking the law and I stopped him. That's my job. If y'all have a problem with that, then you don't belong in a uniform."

"We know who doesn't belong here," Mullen muttered.

The silence was absolute. Annie looked from one deputy to another, a lineup of stony faces and averted eyes. They may not all have felt as strongly as Mullen, but no one was standing up for her, either.

Finally, Hooker spoke. "You got proof somebody did you wrong, Broussard, then file a grievance. Otherwise, quit your goddamn whining and go do your paperwork on that drunk."

No one moved until Hooker had disappeared back into his office. Then Prejean and Savoy walked away, breaking the standoff. Mullen started down the hall, leaning toward Annie as he passed.

"Yeah, Broussard," he murmured. "Quit your whining or somebody'll give you something to whine about."

"Don't threaten me, Mullen."

He raised his brows in mock fear. "What you gonna do? Arrest me?" The expression turned stony. "You can't arrest us all."