A Thin Dark Line

24

It wasn't a fictitious creature she had to worry about, Annie thought as she drove the road that cut through the dense woods. All the trouble she was facing had to do with mortal men: Mullen, Marcus Renard, Donnie Bichon-and Fourcade.

Fourcade.

He was as enigmatic as the loup-garou. A mysterious past, a nature as dark and compelling as his eyes. She told herself she didn't like that he had touched her, but she had allowed it and her body had responded in a way that wasn't smart. Her life was enough of a mess at the moment without getting involved with Fourcade.

"Don't go down there, Annie," she muttered to herself.

She tuned in to the scanner to let the chatter distract her. Nothing much going on Sunday night. What bars were open at all closed early, and the usual troublemakers refrained out of token deference to the commandments. There was no traffic. The only life she encountered was a deer darting across the road and a stray dog eating the carcass of a dead armadillo. The world seemed a deserted place, except for the lonely souls who called in to the talk radio station to speculate about the possible return of the Bayou Strangler. No one had been strangled, but people seemed confident it was just a matter of time.

Annie listened with a mix of fascination and disgust. The level of fear in the population was rising, and the level of logic was falling in direct proportion. The Bayou Strangler had come back from the dead. The Bayou Strangler had killed Pam Bichon. Conspiracy theories were plentiful. Most centered on the cops having planted evidence four years ago to pin the murders on Stephen Danjermond after he was already dead, which tied in neatly with current theories about planted evidence implicating Renard and damning Fourcade.

Annie wondered if Marcus Renard was listening. She wondered if the rapist was out there somewhere soaking up the satisfaction of his infamy, smiling to himself as he listened. Or was he out there somewhere selecting his next victim?

Spooked, she pulled the Sig from her duffel bag when she turned into the lot at the Corners. She locked the Jeep and went up to her apartment, her senses tuned to catch the slightest noise, the slightest movement. She twisted sideways as she worked the lock with one hand, and looked out over the parking lot and past it. There were no lights on at Sos and Fanchon's house. There seemed to be nothing stirring, and yet she couldn't shake the feeling of eyes on her. Nerves strung too tight, she thought as she let herself into the house.

She had left a light on in the apartment and added more to it as she made a systematic check of the rooms, gun in hand. Only after that task was finished did she put the Sig Sauer away and let go the anxiety that had gathered in tight knots in her shoulders. She pulled a bottle of Abita from the refrigerator, toed off her sneakers, and went to the answering machine.

With all the angry calls since the Fourcade incident hit the airwaves, she had considered unplugging the thing. What was the sense of offering convenience to people who wanted only to abuse her? But there was always the chance of a call on the case, or so she hoped.

The tape spilled its secrets one at a time. Two reporters wanting interviews, two verbal-abuse calls, a breather, and three hang-ups. Each call was unnerving in its own way, but only one ran a shiver down her back.

"Annie? It's Marcus." His voice was almost intimate, as if he had called from his bed. "I just wanted to say how pleased I was that you stopped by today. You can't know what it means to me that you're willing to help. Everyone's been against me. I haven't had an ally except for my lawyer. Just to have you listen… to know you care about the truth… You can't know how special-"

"I don't want to know," she said, but stopped herself from touching the reset button and pulled the cassette out instead. Fourcade would want to hear it. If things progressed with Renard, it could conceivably be deemed evidence. If he became infatuated with her… If the attraction evolved into obsession… Already he thought she was his friend.

"Don't you help him, 'Toinette… Don't let him use you."

"And just what do you think you're doing, Fourcade?" she murmured, slipping the tape into her sweater pocket.

The faint scent of smoke clung to her sweater. She let herself out the French doors onto the balcony for a breath of cool air.

Far out in the swamp an eerie green glow wobbled in the darkness-gases that had been ignited by nature and were burning off untended. Nearer, something splashed near the shore. Probably a coon washing his midnight snack, she told herself. But the explanation had the hollow ring of wishful thinking and the sense of a larger presence touched her like eyes.

Hair rising on the back of her neck, Annie did a slow scan of the yard-what she could see of it-from Sos and Fanchon's house, along the bank and past the dock where the swamp tour pontoons were tied up, to the south side of the building, where a pair of rusty Dumpsters stood. Only the finest grains of illumination from the parking-lot security light reached back here. Nothing moved. And still the sensation of a presence closed like a hand on her throat.

Slowly, Annie backed into the apartment, then dropped to her belly on the floor and crawled back onto the balcony to peer between the balusters. She did the scan again, following the same route, slowly, her pulse thumping in her ears.

The movement came at the Dumpsters. Faint, with a whisper of sound. The shape of a head. An arm reaching out. Black-all of it. A solid shadow. Moving toward the side of the building, toward the stairs to her apartment.

Annie scuttled backward into the apartment, pushed the doors shut, and scrambled to her bedroom, where she had left the Sig. Sitting on the floor, she checked the load in the gun as she called 911 and reported the prowler. Then she waited and listened. And waited. And waited. Five minutes ticked past.

She thought about the prowler, what his intentions might be. He could have been the rapist, but he could as easily have been a thief. A convenience store on the edge of nowhere would seem an easy target, and had been a target several times in the past. Uncle Sos had taken to keeping the cash box under his bed and a loaded shotgun in the closet- all against Annie's advice. If this was a burglar and he didn't find what he wanted in the store… if he went to the house in search of the money…

The potential for disaster turned Annie's stomach. She'd seen people shotgunned for fifty bucks in a liquor-store cash register. When she worked patrol in Lafayette, she'd seen a sixteen-year-old with his skull caved in because another kid wanted his starter jacket. She couldn't sit in her apartment and wait while some creep drew a bead on the only family she'd ever had.

She slipped her sneakers on and padded quietly to the bathroom and to the door behind the old claw-foot tub. The hinges groaned as she eased it open. She slipped through the door onto the seldom-used staircase that dropped steeply down into the stockroom of the store. Back pressed to the wall, gun in hand, raised and ready, she strained to listen for any sound of an intruder. Nothing. Slowly she descended one step at a time.

The light from the parking lot fell in the store's front windows like artificial moonlight. Annie moved down the short rows of goods like a prowling cat. Her hands were sweating against the Sig. She quickly dried one and then the other on the leg of her jeans.

The front door seemed the least risky place to exit. A thief would try to break in through the stockroom door on the south side, out of sight from the house and from the road. And if this wasn't a thief, if he was looking to gain access to the apartment, the only way up was the stairs on the south side of the building.

Annie let herself out quickly and slipped around the corner to the north side of the building. Where the hell was the radio car? It had to have been fifteen minutes since the call. They could have sent the cavalry from New Iberia in less time.

She made her way along the building, ducking beneath the gallery as soon as she could, hoping she was putting herself between the prowler and the house. She wanted to drive him away from it, not toward it. To scare him off toward the levee road seemed safest, though that was a likely spot for him to have hidden his vehicle.

The smell of dead fish was strong as she crept down the slope, holding herself steady against the foundation of the building with one hand and stepping with caution to keep from skidding on the crushed rock and clamshell. At the corner post of the gallery a cat hunched over scavenged fish entrails, growling low in its throat.

Annie could see no movement in the direction of the house. Adjusting her grip on the gun, she took a deep breath and stuck her head out around the corner. Nothing. Another deep breath and she turned the corner, leading with the Sig. The Dumpsters sat past the south end of the gallery.

She moved quickly toward them, still close to the building. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she resisted the urge to wipe it away. She was close now, she could feel it, could feel the presence of another being. Her senses sharpened, heightened. The sound of water dripping somewhere near seemed loud in her ears. The stench of gutted fish nearly made her gag. The scent seemed wrong somehow, but this wasn't the time to process that information.

She held up at the southeastern corner of the building, listening for the scrape of a foot on the ground or on the staircase to her apartment. She gathered herself to move around the corner, her mind racing ahead to visualize leading with the gun, focusing on her target, shouting out the warning to hold it. But as she drew breath to call out, a voice boomed behind her.

"Sheriff's deputy! Drop the gun!"

"I'm on the job!" Annie yelled, uncocking the Sig and tossing it to the side.

"On the ground! Now! Down on the ground!"

"I live here!" she called, dropping to her knees. "The prowler's around the side!"

The cop didn't want to hear it. He rushed up like a charging bull and clocked her between the shoulders with his stick. "I said, get down! Get the fuck down!"

Annie sprawled headlong on the ground, starbursts lighting up behind her eyes. The deputy yanked her left hand around behind her back and slapped on the cuff, twisted her right arm back and did the same.

"I'm Deputy Broussard! Annie Broussard."

"Broussard? Really?" The surprise wasn't quite genuine. He rolled her onto her back and shone his flashlight in her face, blinding her. "Well, what d'ya know? If it ain't our own little turncoat in the flesh."

"Fuck yourself, Pitre," Annie snapped. "And get the cuffs off while you're at it." She struggled to sit up. "What the hell took you so long? I called this in twenty minutes ago."

He shrugged, unconcerned, as he unlocked the handcuffs. "You know how it is. We gotta prioritize calls."

"And where did this rank? Somewhere below you paging through the latest Penthouse?"

"You really shouldn't insult your local patrol officer, Broussard," he said, rising, dusting off the knees of his uniform. "You never know when you might need him."

"Yeah, right."

Annie scooped up the Sig and pushed to her feet, biting back a groan.

She rolled her shoulders to try to dissipate the burning pain. "Great job, Pitre. How many home owners do you normally assault in the course of a shift?"

"I thought you was a burglar. You didn't obey my commands to get down. You oughta know better."

"Fine. It's my fault you whacked me. Now how about helping me look for the crook? Though I'm sure he's long gone after all your bellowing."

Pitre ignored the gibe, sniffing the air as they walked up around the corner to the south side of the building. "Jesus, what's that smell?" he said, shining the light ahead of them. "You been killing hogs or something?"

Annie pulled her own flashlight from the back waistband of her jeans. Dripping. She could still hear dripping. It hit her as she walked beneath the staircase-a drop, and then another-falling from the stairs that led up to her apartment. She held her hand out and shone the beam of the flashlight on her palm as another drop hit, and another. Blood.

"Oh my God," she breathed, bolting out from under the grisly shower.

"Christ Almighty," Pitre muttered, backing up.

The crushed shell beneath the staircase was red with it, as if someone had rolled an open can of paint down the steps. And hanging down between the treads like ghoulish tinsel were animal entrails.

Annie wiped her hand on her T-shirt and moved to the end of the staircase. Shining her light up to the landing, she illuminated a trail of bloody carnage, intestines strung like a garland down the steps.

"Oh my God," she said again.

A memory surfaced from a dark corner of her mind: Pam Bichon-stabbed and eviscerated. Then a possibility struck her like a bolt of lightning and the horror was magnified tenfold. Sos. Fanchon.

"Oh, God. Oh, no. No!" she screamed.

She wheeled away from Pitre and ran, feet slipping and skidding on the crushed shell, down the slope toward the dock. The beam of the flashlight waved erratically in front of her. Sos. Fanchon. Her family.

"Broussard!" Pitre shouted behind her.

Annie threw herself at the front door of the ranch house, pounding with the flashlight, twisting the doorknob with her bloody hand. The door swung open and she fell into Sos as a living room lamp went on.

"Oh God! Oh God!" she stammered, wrapping her arms around him in a frantic embrace. "Oh, thank God!"

"It's pig innards," Pitre announced, poking at an intestine with his baton. "Lotta pigs getting butchered this time of year."

Annie was still shaking. She paced back and forth at the base of her steps, fuming. Pitre had found the five-gallon plastic bucket the stuff had come in and set it off to the side, in view by the light now coming from the front window of the store. Annie wanted to kick it. She wanted to pick it up and beat Pitre with it because he was handy and he was a jerk. He was probably in on the joke. If it was a joke.

"I wanna hear it from the lab," she said.

"What? Why?"

"Because if a human body turns up two days from now missing its plumbing, someone's gonna want it back, Einstein."

Pitre made a disgruntled sound. If it was evidence, he would have to deal with it, scrape it back into the bucket, and haul it away in his car.

"It's pig innards," he insisted again.

Annie glared up into his face. "Are you so sure because you don't wanna deal with it or because you know?"

"I don't know nothin'," he grumbled.

"If Mullen is behind this, you tell him I'll kick his ass all the way to Lafayette!"

"I don't know nothing about it!" Pitre griped. "I answered your call. That's all I did!"

"Who's this Mullen, chère?" Sos demanded. "Why for he'd do somethin' like dis to you?"

Annie rubbed a hand across her forehead. How could she possibly explain? Sos had never been happy with her choice of profession in the first place. He'd love to hear how deputies were trying to run her out of the department. And if it wasn't Mullen, then who?

"A bad joke, Uncle Sos."

"A joke?" he huffed, incredulous. "Mais non. You didn' come laughin' to me, chérie. Ain' nothin' funny 'bout dis."

"No, there isn't," Annie agreed.

Fanchon looked up the stairs where half a dozen cats had come to feast on the entrails. "Dat's some mess, dat's for sure."

"Deputy Pitre and I will clean it up, Tante. It's evidence," Annie said. "You both go on back to bed. This is my mess. I'm sorry I woke you."

It took another five minutes of arguing to convince them to go home and leave the mess. Annie didn't want them touched by this act any more than they had been. As they finally walked away, a residual wave of the panic she had felt for them washed through her. The world had gone mad. That she could have thought someone could have butchered Sos and Fanchon was proof of it. Deep inside, she was just as afraid as everyone else in the parish that evil had leached up from hell to contaminate their world and devour them all.

She wished for more reasons than one that she could pin this undeniably on Mullen. But the more she thought on it, the less certain she felt. Keying her out on the radio was simple, anonymous. The snake in her Jeep had been easily managed, but this… Too much chance of being caught red-handed, literally. And the correlation to Pam Bichon was unnerving.

At Annie's insistence, Pitre hiked up onto the levee road with her and shone his light around. Animal eyes glowed red as the beam cut across woods and brush. If there had ever been a car parked along here, it was long gone now. There were no bloody footprints. Tires made no useable impression on the rock road.

It was nearly three A.M. by the time Annie trudged back up to her apartment via the in-store stairs. Her muscles ached. The pain between her shoulder blades where Pitre had struck her had a knifelike quality. At the same time, she was too wired to sleep.

She pulled another Abita from the fridge, washed down some Tylenol, and plopped down in a chair at the kitchen table, where her own notes on Pam Bichon's homicide were still spread out.

She picked up the chronology and glanced over the entries.

10/9 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.

Marcus Renard wanted to be her friend. He had wanted to be Pam Bichon's friend, too. Pam had rejected him. Annie had called him a killer to his face. Pam was dead. And Annie was lining herself up to take Pam's place in his life. Because she wanted to play detective, because she needed to find justice for a woman trapped in the shadowland of victims.

She had never imagined she might run the risk of ending up there herself.