A Thin Dark Line

14

Late July: Pant makes it known around the office that she means to divorce Donnie. They have been separated since February. Renard begins to show an interest in her. Drops into the realty office to chat, to show his concern for her, etc.

August: Renard clearly has a crush. He sends Pam flowers and small gifts, asks her to lunch, asks her out for drinks. She goes with him only in a group, tells her partner she wants to be sure Renard doesn't get the wrong idea about their friendship, though she admits she thinks it's rather sweet the way he's trying to court her. She tries to stress to Renard they are just friends.

Late August: Pam begins to receive breather and hang-up calls at home.

September: Small items go missing from Pam's office and from her home. A paperweight, a small bottle of perfume, a small framed photo of herself and daughter Josie, a hairbrush. She can't pinpoint when the items were taken. Renard is hanging around, shows more concern than seems appropriate. Pam begins to feel uncomfortable around him. Breather and hang-up calls continue.

9/25: On leaving for work, Pam discovers her tires slashed (car parked in unlocked garage). Calls the sheriff's department. Responding deputy: Mullen. Pam expresses her concerns about Renard, but there is no evidence he committed the crime. Detective assigned to investigate alleged harassment: Stokes.

10/02 1:00 A.M.: Pam reports a prowler outside her home. No suspect apprehended. Renard interviewed regarding incident. Denies involvement. Expresses concern for Pam.

10/03: Renard comes to Pam's office, expresses concern for her in person.

10/09 1:45 A.M.: Pam again reports a prowler. No suspect apprehended.

10/10: On leaving house for school bus, Josie Bichon discovers the mutilated remains of a raccoon on the front step.

10/11: Renard comes to Pam's office again to express concern for her safety and for Josie's safety. Unnerved, Pam tells him to leave. Clients waiting to meet with her confirm her level of upset.

10/14: On arriving at her office, Pam finds a dead snake in her desk drawer. Later that day Renard approaches her yet again to express his concern for her. Says something to the effect that a single woman, like Pam, has much to fear, that any number of bad things might happen to her. Pam perceives this as a threat.

10/22: On returning home from work, Pam finds house has been vandalized: clothing cut up, bedding smeared with dog waste, photos of herself defaced. No suspect fingerprints recovered from scene. No witnesses. Pam calls Acadiana Security to have home system installed. Later realizes a spare set of house and office keys has gone missing. Can't pinpoint when she last saw them.

10/24: Renard gives Pam an expensive necklace for her birthday. Pam, extremely angry, confronts Renard in his office with her suspicions, returns all small gifts he had given her during the months of August and September. In front of witnesses, Renard denies all charges of stalking.

10/24: Pam consults attorney Thomas Watson about a restraining order against Renard.

10/27: Watson petitions the court on Pam's behalf for a restraining order against Marcus Renard. Request denied for lack of sufficient cause. Judge Edwards refuses to "blacken a man's reputation" with no more reason than "a woman's unsubstantiated paranoia."

10/31: Pam sees a prowler outside her house. Tries to call sheriff's department. House phones are dead. Calls on cellular. No suspect apprehended. Phone line had been cut. Back door of house smeared with human waste.

11/7: Pam Bichon reported missing.

Annie read through her notes. Laid out in this linear fashion, it seemed so simple, so obvious. A classic pattern of escalation. Attraction, attachment, pursuit, fixation, increasing hostility at rejection. Why hadn't anyone else seen it for what it was and stopped it?

Because a pattern was all they had. There was absolutely nothing to tie Renard to the stalking. His public reaction to Pam's accusations had been confusion, hurt. How could she think he would ever harm her? Not once in those months preceding Pam Bichon's murder had Renard expressed to any of "his co-workers anger or hostility toward her. Quite the contrary. Pam had complained to friends about Renard. They offered support to her face and questioned her sanity behind her back. He seemed so harmless.

With the divorce looming and the settlement potentially affecting his business, Donnie Bichon had seemed a more likely candidate for villain. But Pam had insisted Renard was her stalker.

What a nightmare, Annie thought. To be so certain this man was a danger, but unable to convince anyone else.

Annie rose from her kitchen table to prowl the apartment. Half past nine. She'd been staring at those notes for an hour, cross-referencing newspaper articles, referring to photocopies of magazine articles and textbook passages on stalkers. She had kept track of the case all along-out of a sense of obligation, and to continue her self-education toward one day making detective. She had purchased a three-ring binder, storing all news clippings in one section, notes in another, personal observations in another. If not for the news clippings, it would have been a thin notebook. She had conducted no interviews. It wasn't her case. She was only a deputy.

Fourcade probably had two notebooks-murder books, the detectives called them. But Fourcade was off the case. Which left Chaz Stokes in charge. Stokes had been the detective assigned to check out the initial harassment charges. If he had been able to come up with anything at the time, maybe Pam would still be alive today.

Annie wandered restlessly into the living room. Out of old habit, she fell into a slow, measured pace along the length of her coffee table and back. The table consisted of a slab of glass balanced on the back of a five-foot-long taxidermied alligator, a relic Sos had once kept hung suspended from the ceiling of the store until one of the wires broke, and the gator swung down and knocked a tourist flat. Annie had taken the creature in like a stray dog and named it Alphonse.

She walked back and forth from one end of Alphonse to the other, pondering the current situation, ignoring the occasional ringing of the phone. She let the machine pick up -reporters and cranks. No one she wanted to deal with. No one who could solve her need to find justice for Pam Bichon.

She might have been able to talk Fourcade into letting her help with the investigation if it hadn't been for the incident with Renard. Now Stokes had the case and she would never ask Stokes. She would have struck out with him even if she hadn't arrested Fourcade. Stokes had never been able to get over the fact that she didn't find him irresistible. Nor would he let it go. He had taken her simple, polite "No, thank you" first as a challenge, then as a personal insult. In the end, he had accused her of being a racist.

"It's because I'm black, isn't it?" he charged.

They were in the parking lot at the Voodoo Lounge. A hot summer night full of bugs and bats swooping to eat the bugs. Heat lightning sizzled across the southern sky out over the Gulf. The humidity made the air feel like velvet against the skin. They'd gone to the bar with others as a group, as they often did on Friday night. A bunch of cops looking to unwind a little. Stokes had too much to drink, mouthed off enough about her being frigid that Annie had walked out in disgust.

She gaped at his accusation.

"Go ahead. You might as well admit it. You don't want to be seen with the mulatto guy. You don't want to go to bed with a nigger. Say it!"

"You're an idiot!" she declared. "Why can you not accept the fact that I'm simply not attracted to you? And why am I not attracted to you? Let me count the reasons: It could be that you have the maturity of a high school junior. It could be that you have an ego the size of Arkansas. Maybe it's because you have no interest in a conversation that doesn't center on you. It's got nothing to do with what kind of people are climbing around in your family tree."

"Climbing? Like they're monkeys? You're calling my people monkeys?"

"No!"

He came toward her, his face hard with anger. Then a car drove in the lot and some people came out of the bar, and the tension of the moment snapped like a twig.

The scene was so vivid in Annie's memory that she could almost feel the heat of the night on her skin. She opened the French doors at the end of her living room and stepped out onto the little balcony, breathing in the cool damp air and the fecund smell of the swamp. There was just enough moonlight to silver the water and outline the eerie silhouettes of the cypress trees.

Funny, she'd never really thought about it, but she could relate in a small way to Pam Bichon's experience. She did know what it was like to deal with men who wouldn't take no for an answer. Stokes. A.J. Uncle Sos, for that matter. The difference between them and Renard was the difference between sanity and obsession.

"Men," she said aloud to the white cat that jumped up on the balcony railing to beg for attention. "Can't live with 'em, can't open pickle jars without 'em."

The cat offered no opinion.

In all fairness, it wasn't just men, Annie knew. Stalkers came in both sexes. New studies were showing that these people were unable to shut off that focus. The impulse, the fixation, was always there. Simple obsessionals, the shrinks called them. Often these men and women seemed perfectly rational and normal. They were doctors, lawyers, car mechanics. Their level of schooling or intelligence didn't matter. But regarding the object of their fixation, their brains weren't wired right. Some moved on to what was known as erotomania, a condition in which the person imagined and actually believed there was an ongoing romantic relationship with the object of the fixation.

A simple obsessional or an erotomaniac-she wondered which description applied to Marcus Renard. She wondered how he could hide either so well from everyone around him.

Somewhere out in the swamp a bull alligator gave a hoarse roar. Then the shriek of a nutria split the air like a woman's scream. The sound razored along Annie's nerves. She closed her eyes and saw Pam Bichon lying on that floor, moonlight pouring in the window, spilling across her naked corpse. And deep inside her mind, Annie thought she could hear Pam's screams… and the screams of Jennifer Nolan… and the women who had died four years ago at the hands of the Bayou Strangler. Screams of the dead.

"It's cold there, no?"

"Where?"

"In Shadowland."

Goosebumps racing over her flesh, Annie stepped back inside the apartment, closed the doors, and locked them.

"Nice place you got here, 'Toinette."

Heart in her throat, she wheeled around. Fourcade stood just inside the front entry, leaning back against the wall, ankles crossed, hands in the pockets of his old leather jacket.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Not much of a lock you got on this door." He shook his head in reproach as he straightened from the wall. "You'd think a cop would know better. Especially a lady cop, no?"

He moved toward her with deceptive laziness. Even halfway across the room Annie could sense the tension in him. She sidestepped slowly, putting the coffee table between them. Her gun was in her duffel bag, which she had abandoned in the entry. Careless.

Her best hope was to get out. And then what? The store had closed at nine. Sos and Fanchon's house was a hundred yards away and they were out dancing just like every other Friday night of the year. Maybe she could get to the Jeep.

"What do you want?" she asked, edging toward the door. Her keys hung on a peg above the light switch. "You want to beat me up, too? You haven't committed your daily quota of sins? You want to get rid of the witness? You should know enough to hire out that kind of job. You'll be the obvious suspect."

He had the nerve to appear amused. "You think I'm the devil now, don'tcha, Toinette?"

Annie broke for the door, grabbed for the keys with one hand, and knocked them to the floor. With the other hand, she grabbed the knob, twisted, pulled. The door didn't budge. Then Fourcade was on her, trapping her, hands planted against the door on either side of her head.

"Running out on me, 'Toinette?"

She could feel his breath on the back of her neck, laced with the scent of whiskey.

"That's not very hospitable, chère," he murmured.

She was trembling. And he was enjoying it, the son of a bitch. She willed herself to control the shaking, forced herself to turn and face him.

He stood as close as a lover. "We have so much to talk about. For instance, who sent you to Laveau's that night?"

Nick watched her face like a hawk. Her reaction was spontaneous-surprise or shock, a touch of confusion.

"What'd you think, 'Toinette? That I was too drunk to figure it out?"

"Figure what out? I don't know what you're talking about."

His mouth twisted in derision. "I'm in this department six months, you never say boo to me. All of a sudden you show up at Laveau's in a pretty skirt, batting your eyelashes. You want in on the Bichon case-"

"I did want in."

"Then there you are on that street. Just happen to be passing by-"

"I was-"

"The hell you were!" he roared, enjoying the way she flinched. He wanted her frightened of him. She had reason to be frightened of him. "You followed me!"

"I did not!"

"Who sent you?"

"No one!"

"You been talking to Kudrow. Did he set it up? I can't believe Renard would go for it. What if I came at him with a gun or a knife? He'd be stupid to take the chance just to ruin me. And he's not stupid."

"No one-"

"On the other hand, maybe that was Kudrow's justice, heh? He has to know Renard is guilty. So Kudrow gets him off to save his own rep. Works it so I kill Renard. Renard is dead and I'm caged up with the red hats in Angola, twenty-five to life."

He's insane, she thought. She'd seen what he was capable of. She cut a glance at the duffel bag sitting on the bench. Two feet away. The zipper was open. If she was fast… If she was lucky…

"I don't have a clue what you're talking about," she said, keeping her mouth in motion to buy time. "Kudrow's trying to jam me up with the department so I don't have anyone to turn to but his side. I wouldn't work for him if he paid in gold bullion."

Fourcade didn't seem to hear her.

"Would he chance all that?" he mused to himself. "That's the question. 'Course, he'd only have to pay off the blackmail 'til he's dead, and that won't be long…"

With all the power she could muster, Annie brought her right knee up into his groin, then dropped to the floor as Fourcade staggered back, doubled over, swearing.

"Fils de putain! Merde! Fuck! Fuck!"

Oh please oh please oh please. She plunged her hand into the duffel bag and groped for the Sig. Her fingertips grazed the holster.

"Lookin' for this?"

The Sig appeared before her eyes in the palm of Fourcade's hand, one finger hooked through the trigger guard. He had dropped to his knees behind her and now pulled her head back by a handful of hair and shoved his body into hers, pinning her against the bench.

"You fight dirty, 'Toinette," he murmured. "I like that in a woman."

"Fuck you, Fourcade!"

"Mmm…"he purred, pressing against her, pressing his rough cheek against hers. "Don't give me ideas, 'tite belle."

Slowly, he rose, his hand still tangled in her hair, drawing her up with him.

"You, you're not much of a hostess, 'Toinette," he said, directing her toward the kitchen where the light was bright and cheery. "You haven't even offered me a chair."

"Sorry, I flunked home ec."

"I'm sure you have other talents. A flair for decorating, I see."

He took in the small kitchen with amazement. Someone had painted a dancing alligator on the door of the ancient refrigerator. Canisters in the likeness of stair-step doughboys lined one counter. The wall clock was a plastic black cat whose eyes and tail twitched back and forth with the passing seconds.

One chair was pulled out at the chrome-legged table. He sat her down. Snatching up the pen she had left on the tabletop, he backed up to the counter.

Annie stared at him. Some of the wildness had gone out of his eyes, though his gaze was no less intense. He stood with his arms crossed in front of him, her gun dangling from his big hand as if it were a toy.

"Now, where were we before you tried to kick my balls up to my back teeth?"

"Oh… somewhere between delusional and psychotic."

"Was it Kudrow? He buy you and Stokes?"

"Stokes?"

"What? You thought you were getting all the pie? Stokes got me into that bar. Why go there? Nobody ever goes there. To be away from the grunts, he tells me. And Bowen amp; Briggs, that just happens to be right across the alley. How fucking handy. Then along comes little 'Toinette to keep an eye on me while ol' Chaz goes his merry way."

"Why would I let Kudrow buy me?" she asked. A futile attempt at reason, she supposed. "Yours isn't the only career taking a beating here, you know. I'll be mopping out jail cells before this is over. Kudrow doesn't have enough money to make up for that."

Nick tipped his head to one side and considered. He hadn't eaten all day, but had fed on anger and frustration and suspicion, and washed it all down with a few belts of whiskey. And now something black and rotten surfaced in the brew and slipped out of his mouth in a whisper.

"Duval Marcotte."

Son of a bitch. The pieces fit with oily ease. The similarity of the cases would appeal to Marcotte's sense of irony. And he sure as hell knew how to buy cops. The face of the New Orleans reporter at the courthouse came back to him. Shit. He should have seen it coming.

He pounced at Annie, making her bolt back in the chair. "What'd he give you? What'd he promise you?"

"Duval Marcotte?" she said, incredulous. "Are you out of your mind? Oh, Christ, look who I'm asking!"

He leaned down into her face, wagging the nose of the Sig like a finger. "He'll take your soul, chère, or worse. You think I'm the devil? He's the devil!"

"Duval Marcotte is the devil," Annie repeated. "Duval Marcotte, the real estate magnate from New Orleans? The philanthropist?"

"That son of a bitch," he muttered, pacing along the counter. "I shoulda killed him when I had the chance."

"I don't know Duval Marcotte, other than to see him on the news. Nobody bought me. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Believe me, I regret it."

"I don't believe in coincidence."

"Well, I'm sorry, but I don't have any other explanation!" she shouted. "So shoot me or leave me the hell alone!"

Turning possibilities over in his mind, Nick reached back and scratched behind his ear with the nose of the gun.

"Jeez! Will you be careful with that thing!" she yelled. "If you don't shoot me, I'd rather not be left to scrape your brains off my cupboards."

"What? This gun?" He twirled it on his finger. "It's not loaded. I figured it might be too tempting."

Relief surged through Annie, and she rubbed her hands over her face. "Why me?"

"That was my question."

"I've told you all I know, which is exactly nothing. I would no more be in league with Chaz Stokes than I would be with someone like Marcotte. Stokes hates me. Besides, who sets up a frame that completely relies on the framee actually committing the crime? That's stupid. If someone wanted to set you up, why not just kill Renard and make it look like you're the guy? That's a piece of cake. So why don't you just take your elaborate conspiracy theories to Oliver Stone. Maybe he'll make a movie about you."

Setting the empty gun aside, Nick leaned back against the counter. "You got a mouth on you, chère."

"Being terrorized brings out the bitch in me."

He almost laughed. The urge to do so surprised him almost as much as Annie Broussard surprised him. He pressed his lips together and stared at her. She returned his stare, indignant, angry. If she was as innocent as she professed, then she had to think he was insane. That was all right. Perceived psychosis carried certain advantages.

"Tell me something," she said. "Did you go to Bowen and Briggs that night of your own accord?"

He thought of the phone call, but answered the real truth. "Yes."

"And you made your own decision to beat up Renard?"

He hesitated again, knowing the answer wasn't so simple, remembering the flashbacks that had burst in his head that night like fireworks. But in the end he could answer only one way. "Oui."

"Then how is this anyone's fault but your own?"

Annie waited for his answer. He had never struck her as the kind of man who would shirk his responsibilities. Then again, she hadn't believed he was crazy either.

"Stokes didn't put you in that alley," she said. "Nobody held a gun to your head. You did what you did, and I was unlucky enough to catch you. Quit trying to blame everyone else. You made your own choices and now you have to live with the consequences."

"C'est vrai," he murmured. Just like that, the frenetic energy was shut off and he seemed to go still from deep within. "Me, I did what I did. I lost control. I can't think of many people who deserved a beating more than Renard, and I feel no remorse for providing it-other than the impact it will have on my own life."

"What you did was wrong."

"In that force ultimately defeats itself. I disappointed myself that night," he admitted. "But the tendency is for every aspect of this existence to continue to be what it is, mais oui? Interfere with its natural state and the thing will resist. Fundamentally, I find it difficult to embrace a philosophy of nonaction. Therein lies the crux of my problem."

He had taken a hard left turn on her once again. From raving maniac to philosopher in a span of moments.

"You pled not guilty," she said. "But you admit that you are."

"Nothing is simple, chérie. I go down for a felony, I'm off the job forever. That's not an option."

"The resistance of a being against interference to its natural state."

He smiled unexpectedly, fleetingly, and for a heartbeat was extraordinarily handsome. "You're a good student, chère."

"Why do you do that?"

"What?"

"Call me chère, like you're a hundred years old."

The smile this time was sad, wry. He came to her slowly and lifted her chin with his hand. "Because I am, jeune fille, in ways that you will never be."

He was too close, bending down so that she could see every year, every burden in those eyes. His thumb brushed across her lower lip. Unnerved, she turned her face away.

"So what's your beef with Duval Marcotte?" she asked, sliding out of the chair, walking toward the other end of the table.

"It's personal," he said, taking her seat.

"You were quick enough to throw it out a while ago."

"When I thought you might be involved."

"So I've been absolved of guilt?"

"For the moment." His attention caught on the papers spread out across the table. "What's all this?"

"My notes on the Bichon homicide." Slowly, she moved back toward him. "Why do you think Marcotte might be involved? Is there some kind of connection to Bayou Real Estate?"

"There hasn't been to this point. It all seemed very straightforward," Nick said as he took a quick inventory of what she had compiled. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I care about what happens. I want to see her killer punished, legally. I believed he would be-until Wednesday. As much as it pains me to admit this at the moment, I had faith in your abilities. Now, with Stokes in charge of the investigation, and attention being diverted elsewhere, I'm not so sure Pam will get justice."

"You don't trust Stokes?"

"He likes things to be easy. I don't know if he has the talent to clear this case. I don't know if he would apply it if he did have it. Now you're telling me you think he set you up. Why would he do that?"

"Money. The great motivator."

"And who involved with the case would want to see you go down besides Renard and Kudrow?"

He didn't answer, but the name had taken root in his mind like a noxious weed. Duval Marcotte. The man who had ruined him.

Annie moved toward the counter. "I need some coffee," she said, as calmly as if this man hadn't burst into her home and held a gun to her head. But her hands were trembling as she turned on the faucet. Breath held deep in her lungs, she reached for the tin coffee canister on the counter and carefully peeled the lid off. She flinched when Fourcade spoke again.

"So what you gonna do, 'Toinette?"

"What do you mean?"

"You want to see justice done, but you don't trust Stokes to do it. I go within spitting distance of Renard, I get tossed back in the can. So what you gonna do? You gonna see 'bout getting some justice?"

"What can I do?" she asked. A bead of sweat trickled down her temple. "I'm just a deputy. They don't even let me talk on the radio these days."

"You already been working the case on your own."

"Following the case."

"You wanted in on it. Bad enough to ask me. You wanna be a detective, chère. Show some initiative. You already got a knack for sticking your pretty nose in where it don't belong. Be bold."

"Is this bold enough for you?" She turned with a five-inch-long, nine-millimeter Kurz Back-Up in hand, chambered a round with quick precision, and pointed it dead at Fourcade's chest.

"I keep this little sweetheart in the coffee tin. A trick I learned from The Rockford Files. Call my bluff if you want, Fourcade. No one will be too surprised to hear I shot you dead when you broke into my house."

She expected anger, annoyance at the very least. She didn't expect him to laugh out loud.

"Way to go, 'Toinette! Good girl! This is just the kinda thing I'm talking 'bout. Initiative. Creativity. Nerve." He rose from his chair and moved toward her. "You got a lotta sass."

"Yeah, and I'm about to hit you in the chest with a load of it. Stand right there."

For once, he listened, assuming a casual stance two feet in front of the gun barrel, one leg cocked, hands settled at the waist of his faded jeans. "You're pissed at me. "

"That would be an understatement. Everybody in the department is treating me like a leper because of you. You broke the law and I'm getting punished for it. Then you come into my house and-and terrorize me. Pissed doesn't begin to cover it."

"You're gonna have to get over it if you're gonna work with me," he said bluntly.

"Work with you? I don't even want to be in the same room with you!"

"Ah, that…"

He moved quickly, knocking her gun hand to the side and up. The Kurz spat a round into the ceiling, and plaster dust rained down. In seconds Fourcade had the gun out of her hand and had her drawn up hard against him with one arm pulled up behind her back.

"… that would be untrue," he finished.

He let her go abruptly and went back to the table, scanning her papers on the case. "I can help you, 'Toinette. We want the same end, you and I. "

"Ten minutes ago you thought I was part of a conspiracy against you."

He still didn't know that she wasn't, he reminded himself. But she wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of building a casebook on Pam Bichon's murder if she wasn't truly interested in seeing it solved.

"I want the case cleared," he said. "Marcus Renard belongs in hell. If you want to make that happen, if you want justice for Pam Bichon and her daughter, you'll come to me. I've got ten times what you've got lying here on this table- statements, complaints, photographs, lab reports, duplicates of everything that's on file at the sheriff's department."

This was what she had wanted, Annie thought: To work with Fourcade, to have access to the case, to try-for Josie's sake and to silence the phantom screams in her own mind. But Fourcade was too volatile, too wired, too unpredictable. He was a criminal, and she was the one who had run him in.

"Why me?" she asked. "You should hate me more than the rest of them do."

"Only if you sold me out."

"I didn't, but-"

"Then I can't hate you," he said simply. "If you didn't sell me out, then you acted on your principles and damned the consequences. I can't hate you for that. For that, I would respect you."

"You're a very strange man, Fourcade."

He touched a hand to his chest. "Me, I'm one of a kind, 'Toinette. Ain'tcha glad?"

Annie didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Fourcade laid her weapon on the table and came toward her, serious again.

"I don't wanna let go of this case," he said. "I want Renard to go down for what he did. If I can't trust Stokes, then I can't work through him. That leaves you. You said you felt an obligation to Pam Bichon. You want to meet that obligation, you'll come to me. Until then…"

He started to lower his head. Annie's breath caught. Anticipation tightened her muscles. Her lips parted slightly, as if she meant to tell him no. Then he touched two fingers to his forehead in salute, turned, and walked out of her apartment and into the night.

"Holy shit," she whispered.

She stood there as the minutes ticked past. Finally she went out onto the landing, but Fourcade was gone. No tail lights, no fading purr of a truck engine. The only sounds were the night sounds of the swamp: the occasional call of nocturnal prey and predator, the slap of something that broke the surface of the water and dived beneath once more.

For a long time she stared out at the night. Thinking. Wondering. Tempted. Frightened. She thought of what Fourcade had said to her that night in the bar. "Stay away from those shadows, 'Toinette… They'll suck the life outta you."

He was a man full of shadows, strange shades of darkness and unexpected light. Deep stillness and wild energy. Brutal yet principled. She didn't know what to make of him. She had the distinct feeling that if she accepted his challenge, her life would be altered in a permanent way. Was that what she wanted?

She thought of Pam Bichon, alone with her killer, her screams for mercy tearing the fabric of the night, unheeded, unanswered. She wanted closure. She wanted justice. But at what price?

She felt as if she were standing on the edge of an alternate dimension, as if eyes from that other side were watching her, waiting in expectation for her next move.

Finally she went inside, never imagining that the eyes were real.

"I feel a sense of limbo, as if I'm holding my breath. It isn't over. I don't know that it will ever be over.

The actions of one person trigger the actions of another and another, like waves.

I know the wave will come to me again and sweep me away. I can see it in my mind: a tide of blood.

I see it in my dreams.

I taste it in my mouth.

I see the one it will take next.

The tide has already touched her."