A Thin Dark Line

23

The Voodoo Lounge had come into being as the indirect result of a gruesome murder, a fact that attracted the local cops in a way no other bar could. For years the place had been known as Frenchie's Landing, the hangout of farm-hands and factory workers, blue-collars and rednecks. It was known for boiled crawfish, cold beer, loud Cajun music, and the occasional brawl. Still known for all of those things, the place had changed ownership in the fall of 1993, some months after the murder of Annick Delahoussaye-Gerrard at the hands of the Bayou Strangler. Worn-out with grief, Frenchie Delahoussaye and his wife had sold out to local musician and sometime bartender Leonce Comeau.

The cops had started hanging out there immediately after the murder, a show of respect and associated guilt that had quickly turned into routine. The habit lived on.

The parking lot was two-thirds full. The building stood on the bank of the bayou, raised off the ground on a sturdy set of stilts for times when the bayou rushed nearer. A new gallery was under construction around three sides of the building. Loud rocking zydeco music blasted through the walls, the volume rising as the screen door swung open and a pair of couples descended the steps, laughing.

Nick let himself in, walking past the framed photographs of celebrities and pseudocelebrities that had come here over the last four years to soak up the atmosphere. He took the place in at a glance. The house band, led by the bar's owner, belted out Zachary Richard's "Ma Petite Fille Est Gone," Comeau contorting his face and body like a man with a neurological disorder. The dance floor was swarming with couples young and old bouncing and swinging to the infectious beat. Smoke hung in the air over the bar and tables. The smell of frying fish and gumbo was like a heavy perfume.

Stokes was in his usual spot, standing at the corner of the bar that afforded a view of the place and all the women in it. He wore a gray mechanic's shirt from a Texaco station with the name lyle on a patch over the pocket. His porkpie hat perched on the back of his head like a mutant yarmulke. He caught sight of Nick and raised his glass.

"Hey, brothers, if it ain't our tarnished comrade!" he called, his square smile flashing bright in the center of his goatee. "Nicky! Hey, man, you decide to go social or something?"

Nick wove his way between patrons, tolerating the slaps on the back that came from two different cops whose names he couldn't have said on pain of death. He stepped around a waitress with a tight T-shirt and inviting smile as if she were a post set into the floor.

Stokes shook his head at the wasted opportunity. He kissed the cheek of the bleached blonde on the stool next to him and gave her ass a farewell squeeze.

"Hey, sugar, how 'bout you go powder that pretty nose and let my man Nicky here take a load off. He's a legend, don'tcha know."

The blonde slid down off the stool, letting her breasts graze Nick's arm. "Hope you're back on the job soon, Detective."

Stokes elbowed him as the woman walked away, her ass packed into a pair of jeans a size too small for comfort, just right for lust. "That Valerie. Man, that girl's some piece of poontang, let me tell you. Got a pussy like a Vise-Grip. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'. You ever done her?"

"I don't even know her," Nick said with strained patience.

"She's Noblier's secretary, for Christ's sake. Hot for cops. Man, Nicky, sometimes I swear your hormones have gone dormant," he declared with disgust. "You could have your pick of the chicks in this joint, you know."

Ignoring the vacant stool, Nick leaned against the bar, ordered a beer, and lit a cigarette. He didn't give a shit about Stokes's assessment of his sexual appetites. He didn't believe in sex as a casual pastime. There needed to be meaning, significance, intensity. But he made no effort to explain this to Stokes.

Up on the stage, the band had announced a break, dropping the decibel level in the bar to something slightly more conducive to conversation. Danny Collett and the Louisiana Swamp Cats blared out of the juke up front. Half the dancers didn't bother to leave the floor.

"You missing the job?" Stokes asked. He'd had a few. There was a vagueness in his pale eyes, an artificial glow on his cheeks.

"Some."

"Gus say when he's bringing you back?"

"Depends on whether or not I take the big vacation to Angola."

Stokes shook his head. "That bitch Broussard. There's a chick more trouble than she's worth. I been thinking on that lesbian thing with her, and I don't see it. I think she just needs her pump primed, you know what I'm saying?"

Nick looked right at him. "Quit ragging on Broussard. She stood up and did what she had to do. That took balls."

Stokes's eyes popped. "What's the matter with you, man? She put your dick in the wringer-"

"I put my dick in the wringer. She just happened to be there at the time."

Stokes gave a snort. "You're singing a new tune. What's up with that?" A sly look swept across his face. He leaned closer, stroking his goatee. "Maybe you got to looking and decided you wanna do the honors for her, huh? Give her an attitude adjustment with the old joystick? There's a challenge to rise to, if you know what I mean."

"You know, Chaz, they say a mind is a terrible thing to waste," Nick said. He pulled on his cigarette and exhaled twin jet streams through his nose. "You been using yours at all lately or have you turned over all the duties to that piece of meat hanging between your legs?"

"I alternate between the two. Christ, who put the bug up your ass tonight?"

"Ah, this one's been there for a few days, mon ami, and I'm still not sure where it came from. Maybe you could help me with that, no?"

"Maybe. If I knew what the hell you're talking about."

Nick leaned a little closer. "Let's go take us a little walk in the night air, Chaz. We'll chat."

Stokes forced an apologetic grin. "Hey, Nicky, I got an agenda here tonight, man. I'll swing by tomorrow. We'll talk a blue streak. But tonight-"

Nick stepped in close and caught hold of his pride and joy in a crushing fist. "Alternate, Chaz," he ordered, his voice a low growl. "You're getting on my nerves."

As he let go, Stokes fell back a step, his face slack and pale with astonishment. He sucked in a gasp and shook himself like a wet cat, glancing around for witnesses. Life was moving on for everyone else in the bar. Fourcade's move had been too slick to draw notice.

"Fuckin" A!" he exclaimed in an outraged whisper. "What the hell's wrong with you, man? You can't do that! You just grab my willy and give it a yank? What the fuck's wrong with you? You can't do that to a brother!"

Nick took a swig of Jax and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I just did it. Now that I got your attention, let's go get some air."

He headed for a side door and Stokes moved with him, hesitant, wary, petulant. They stepped out onto the half-finished gallery where a sawhorse and a keep out! sign blocked the way to the bayou side of the building. Nick ignored the warning.

The gallery facing the bayou had no railing at this point in the construction. The drop was about twelve feet. Enough for the average drunk to fall and break his neck. Nick stepped to the edge of the platform and stood with his hands on his hips, thinking calm, center. Force was a tool of surprise in dealing with Stokes. Something to knock him off balance. A tool to be used sparingly, carefully. His goal was truth.

Still agitated, Stokes paced back and forth. "Man, you are fuckin' crazy, grabbing my dick. What goes through that head of yours, Nick? Jesus!"

"Get over it."

Nick lit another cigarette and stared out at the bayou. The moon shone down on half a dozen pontoon houseboats moored down the way, weekend retreats for people from town and from as far away as Lafayette. There were no lights in the windows tonight.

The music from inside the bar came through the wall in a muddled bass vibration. If he blocked it from his mind and focused, he could just hear the chorus of frog song and the slap and splash of a fish breaking the water. Lightning cracked the sky to the east-a storm sucking up along the Mississippi from the Gulf. A distant storm.

He thought of Marcotte. The distant storm.

"So why ain't you bending my ear, pard?" Stokes said, calming down. He propped a shoulder against a support post and crossed his arms over his chest. "You're the one wanted to chat."

"I heard there was another rape."

"Yeah. So?"

"You catch it?"

"Yeah, I caught it. Looks like it's the same sicko did that Nolan woman the other night. Broke in about one A.M., knocked her around, tied her up, raped her, made her take a shower after. He's a smart son of a bitch, I'll give him that. We got diddly-squat to go on."

"No semen?"

"Nope. He's taking it with him one way or another. Probably uses a condom. Maybe the lab'll find some latex residue on one of the swabs, but big fuckin' deal, you know? What'll that prove? He prefers Trojans?"

"He wear a mask?"

"Yeah. Spooked the shit out of these women, that mask did. Shades of the Bayou Strangler and all that crap."

"And Pam Bichon."

"And Bichon," he conceded. "Confuses the issue, you know what I'm saying? The mask was Renard's thing. So if Renard ain't this rapist, then is this rapist the one did Pam Bichon, folks wanna know. People are so fuckin' stupid. I mean, it's all over the news about that mask Renard left on Pam. This guy's an opportunist, that's all."

"Who was the woman?"

"Kay Eisner. Mid-thirties, single, lives over near Devereaux, works at a catfish plant up in Henderson. What's your interest in all this?" he asked, fishing a cigarette out of the shirt pocket beneath the lyle patch. "I was you, Nicky, I'd be spending my free time a little better."

"Just curious," Nick said. He dropped his cigarette butt on the floorboards, ground it out with the toe of his boot.

Inside the bar, the band had come back onstage. Leonce Comeau wailed the intro to "Snake Bite Love." The drummer pounded the opening and the rest of the band jumped in at a run.

"The past overshadows the present foreshadows the future."

Stokes blinked at him like a man nodding off in church. "Nicky, man, I ain't drunk enough for philosophy."

"We all got a past we drag around behind us," Nick said. "Sometimes it sneaks up and bites our ass."

The shift in the tension between them was subtle, but there. A tightening of muscles. A heightened awareness. Nick watched Stokes's eyes like a poker player.

"What are you saying, Nicky?" Stokes said softly.

Nick let the silence hang, waited.

"I hear teeth snapping behind me," he said. "I feel that shadow on my back." He stepped closer. "All of a sudden a name is turning up again and again like a damn bad penny. Me, I find myself in a bad position and I keep on hearing that name. And I'm thinking there's no such thing as coincidence."

"What name?"

"Duval Marcotte."

Stokes didn't blink.

Anticipation tightened in Nick's belly like a knot. What did he want? The flash of recognition? For Stokes to be guilty? For another cop to have betrayed him? He wanted Marcotte. After all this time, after all the work to put it behind him, he wanted Marcotte-even at the cost of another man's honor. The realization was as heavy as stone, hard and abrasive against his conscience.

"Is he in this thing, Chaz?" he asked. "It would have been a simple errand, piece a' cake. Get me to Laveau's, fill me up with liquor and ideas, point me in the right direction, see if I go off like a cocked pistol. Easy money, and hell, he's got plenty of it."

The expression on Stokes's face softened and he laughed to himself. He looked out toward the bayou and beyond, where the storm was an eerie glow inside black clouds.

"Man, Nicky," he whispered, shaking his head. "You are one crazy motherfucker. Who the hell is Duval Marcotte?"

"Truth, Chaz," Nick said. "Truth, or this time I walk away with your cock in my pocket."

"Never heard of him," Stokes murmured. "If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'."

Annie's eyes crossed and her head bobbed. The autopsy report blurred and came back into focus. She rubbed a hand over her face, swept the straggling tendrils of hair behind her ears, and consulted her watch. Fourcade had no clocks. Fourcade was one with time, she supposed-or he didn't believe in the concept of time, or God knew what philosophy he embraced regarding the subject. It was after midnight.

She had been sitting at the big table in his study four hours. Fourcade had not made an appearance. He had entrusted her with a key to the house and ordered her to study everything he had on the case. She asked if there would be a quiz. He wasn't amused.

Where he was, was anyone's guess. Annie told herself she was grateful for his absence. And still she kind of missed his blunt interrogation, his complex insights, and odd mystic philosophies.

"My Lord, you must be getting desperate for friends, girl," she muttered at the thought.

It was probably true. She'd been shut out at work, cut off from A.J. by necessity. People she didn't even know were insulting her on her answering machine. She was a social creature-by necessity, she sometimes thought. There was a small sense of aloneness in her that dated back to childhood, a feeling she had always feared reflected her mother's detachment, and so she sought out the company of others in an attempt to keep the aloneness from growing and swallowing her whole.

She wondered if maybe that was what had happened to Fourcade.

Needing to move, Annie forced herself up from the chair and stretched. She made a circuit of the loft, checking out the bookcases, looking out the dormer windows, wandering into the small corner Fourcade had set aside for sleeping and changing clothes. There were no personal items on the dresser, not even the cast-off miscellany from pockets. Though the temptation was certainly there, she made no move to open a drawer. She would never have invaded someone's privacy without a warrant. Besides, she knew without looking that every sock, every T-shirt, would be folded neatly and arranged in an orderly manner. The bed was made military-style, the covers tight enough to bounce quarters on.

She wondered what he looked like sleeping. Did he attack sleep with the same ferocious focus as he attacked everything else in his life? Or did unconsciousness soften the hard edges?

"Thinking of spending the night, chère?"

Annie spun around at the sound of his voice. Fourcade stood well inside the room, hands on his hips, one leg cocked. She hadn't heard so much as the creak of a hinge or a step on the stairs.

"Don't you know better than to sneak up on a woman when there's a rapist out running around loose?" she demanded. "I could have shot you."

He discounted the possibility without comment.

"I was just stretching my legs," she said, walking away from the bed, not wanting him to imagine she had been thinking about him in it. "Where've you been? Renard's?"

"Why would I go there?" he said, his tone flat.

"Let's put that past tense," Annie suggested. "Why did you go there? My God, what were you thinking? He could have had you thrown back in jail."

"How's that? You weren't on duty."

Annie shook her head. "Don't pull that attitude with me, thinking I'll back off You already know I'm not repentant for running you in, other than that it's made my life a living hell. You must have come here straight from his house last night and you didn't say a word to me."

"There was nothing to say. I was out in the boat. I ended up in the neighborhood. I didn't cross the property line. I didn't touch him. I didn't threaten him. In fact, he approached me."

"And you didn't think any of this would be of interest to me, partner?"

"The encounter was irrelevant," he said, moving away, dismissing Annie and her argument. She wanted to kick him.

"It's relevant in that you didn't share it with me." She pursued him to the long table where she had been studying. "If we're partners, we're partners. There's an expectation of trust, and you've already managed to break it."

He sighed heavily. "All right. Point taken. I should have told you. Can we move on?"

It was on the tip of Annie's tongue to demand an apology, but she knew Fourcade would somehow make her feel like a fool in the end.

He had turned his attention to the papers on the table. He picked up the discarded wrapper of a Butterfinger from among the files, frowned at it, and tossed it in the trash. "What'd you learn tonight, 'Toinette?"

"That I probably need reading glasses, but I'm too vain to go to the eye doctor," Annie said dryly.

He looked at her sideways.

"Joke," she stated. "A wry remark intended to lighten the moment."

He turned back to the statements and lab reports.

She sighed and rubbed the small of her back with both hands. "I learned that no fewer than a dozen people swore to Donnie's level of intoxication the night of the murder- some of them friends of his, some not. Doesn't necessarily let him off the hook.

"I learned there was no semen found during the autopsy. The mutilation made it difficult to find out if she'd been raped, but then again, it just may not have been there. That makes me nervous."

"Why is that?"

"This jerk running around out there now. I responded to the first call-Jennifer Nolan. No semen and the guy was wearing a Mardi Gras mask. Pam Bichon: no semen and a Mardi Gras mask left behind."

"Copycat," Fourcade said. "The mask was common knowledge."

"And he also knew not to come?"

"There's a certain rate of dysfunction among rapists. Maybe he couldn't come. Maybe he used a rubber. The cases are unrelated."

"That's what I like about you, Nick," Annie said sarcastically. "You're so open-minded."

"Don't become distracted by irrelevant external incidents."

"Irrelevant? How is a serial rapist not relevant?"

"From what I've heard, there are more differences than similarities in the cases. One's a killer, one's a rapist. The rape victims were tied up. Pam was nailed down-thank Christ we managed to keep that out of the papers. The rape victims were attacked in their homes, Pam was not. Pam Bichon was stalked, harassed. Were the others? It's simple, sugar: Marcus Renard killed Pam Bichon, and someone else raped these women. You better make up your mind 'bout which is your focus."

"My focus is the truth," Annie said. "It's not my job to draw conclusions-or yours, Detective."

"You saw Renard today," he said, dismissing her argument and her point once again.

Annie gritted her teeth in frustration. "Yes. He left a message on my answering machine last night, asking for my assistance in dealing with your little chance encounter. It seems the deputy who answered the call yesterday was unsympathetic."

"Where's the tape?"

She dug the cassette recorder out of her purse, turned the volume up, and set the machine on the table. Fourcade stared down at the plastic rectangle as if he could see Renard in it. He seemed to listen without breathing or blinking. When it was done, he nodded and turned toward her.

"Impressions?"

"He's convinced himself he's innocent."

"Persecution complex. Nothing is his fault. Everybody's picking on him."

"He's also convinced himself I'm his friend."

"Good. That's what we want."

"That's what you want," she muttered behind his back. "As a family they'd make great characters on The Twilight Zone."

"He hates his mother, resents his brother. Feels shackled to the both of them. This guy's head is a psychological pressure cooker full of snakes."

She couldn't argue with Fourcade's diagnosis. It was his vehemence that bothered her.

"What he said about that truck-the guy that supposedly helped him with his car that night," she said. "Did you check it out?"

"Ran the partial plate through DVM. Got a list of seventy-two dark-colored trucks. None of the owners helped a stranded motorist that night." He gave her a sharp look. "What you think, chère-you think I don't do my job?"

Annie chose her words carefully. "I think your focus was proving Renard's guilt, not verifying his alibi."

"I do the job," he said tightly. "I want my arrests to stand up in court. I do the job. I did it here. I don't just think Renard is guilty. He is guilty."

"What about New Orleans?" The words were out before she could consider the folly of pushing him. The necessity of trusting him and the reluctance to trust him were issues too important to ignore, especially after his sin of omission regarding his visit to Renard.

"What about it?"

"You thought you knew who did the Candi Parmantel murder-"

"I did."

"The charges against Allan Zander were dismissed."

"That doesn't make him innocent, sugar." He strode over to a neat stack of files on a corner of the table, digging down to pull one out. "Here," he said, thrusting it at her. "The DMV list. Call 'em yourself if you think I'm a liar."

"I never said I thought you were a liar," Annie mumbled, peeking inside the cover. "I just need to know you didn't run through this case with blinders on, that's all."

"Renard, he winning you over, chère?" he asked sardonically. "Maybe that's what this is all about, huh? He thinks you're pretty. He thinks you're cute. He thinks you'll help him. Good. That's just what I want him to think. Just don't you believe it."

She was pretty, Nick thought, letting that simple truth penetrate his temper. Even with her hair a mess and a cardigan two sizes too big swallowing her up. There was an earnest quality to her that the job would eventually rub off. Not naivete, but the next thing to it: idealism. The thing that made a good cop try harder. The thing that could drive a good cop toward the line so that obsession could pull her over it.

He skimmed his fingertips down the side of her face. "I could tell you you're pretty. That's no lie. I could tell you I need you, take you to my bed even. Would you trust me then more than you trust a killer?" he asked, leaning close.

The edge of the table bit into the backs of Annie's thighs. His legs brushed against hers. His thumb touched the corner of her mouth and everything inside her turned hot and sensitive. She tried to catch a breath, tried to make sense of her response with a mind that felt suddenly numb.

"I don't trust Renard," she said, her voice thready.

"Nor do you trust me." His mouth was inches from hers, his eyes burning black. He traced his thumb down her throat to the hollow at the base of it where her pulse throbbed.

"You're the one who said trust is of no use in an investigation."

He arched a brow. "You investigating me, chère?"

"No. This isn't about you." Even as she said it, she wondered. The case was about one woman's death and one man's guilt, but it was also about so much more.

"No," Nick said, though he wasn't certain whether he was just repeating her answer or issuing a command to himself. He took half a step back to break contact, to distance his senses from the soft, clean scent of her.

"Don't you help him, 'Toinette," he said, brushing back a stray lock of her hair. "Don't let him use you. Control." He curled his hand into a fist as he pulled it from her cheek. "Control."

I'm not the one in danger of losing it, Annie thought, ignoring the telltale shiver that ran through her. Fourcade dug a cigarette out of a stray pack on the table and walked away, trailing smoke. The truth was, she didn't feel she'd ever had control. The case had swept her up and swept her along, taking her places she hadn't expected to go. To this man, for instance.

"I should go," she said, talking to his back as he stood at one of the dormer windows. "It's late."

"I'll walk you down." His mouth twitched as he turned around. "Check that Jeep for snakes."

The night was soft with humidity, cool as a root cellar and rich with the fecund scent of earth and water. In the blackness beyond the fall of Fourcade's porch light, a pair of horned owls called in eerie harmony.

"Uncle Sos used to tell all the kids the stories about the loup-garou," she said, looking off into the darkness. "How they prowled the night looking for victims to cast their spells on. Scared the pee out of us."

"There's worse things out there than werewolves, sugar."

"Yeah. And it's our job to catch them. Somehow that seems a more daunting prospect in the dead of night."

"Because the darkness is their dimension," he said. "You and I, we're supposed to walk the edge in between and pull them from their side to the other, where everyone can see what they are."

It sounded like a mythic task that would require Herculean strength. Maybe this was why Fourcade had shoulders like a bull-because of the strain, the weight of the world.

She climbed up into the Jeep and tossed the DMV records on the passenger's seat.

"You watch yourself, 'Toinette," he said, closing the door. "Don't let the loup-garou get you."