A Thin Dark Line

28

The scarf wound around her wrists, the kiss of silk like cool breath against her fevered skin. It tightened and held her. It pulled her arms above her head. She was naked. Exposed, vulnerable. She couldn't escape, she couldn't fight.

Fourcade lowered his head to her breast, dragged his mouth slowly down across her belly. She groaned and twisted her body, feeling swept away on the racing tide of her pulse. She couldn't escape. It made no sense to fight.

His tongue touched her femininity, shooting heat through her veins. Then the head lifted, and Marcus Renard smiled at her.

Choking, Annie jerked awake. The sheets were tangled around her. The T-shirt she had slept in was soaked through with sweat. She knocked the alarm off the nightstand, silencing it, and sat up, fighting the urge to throw up. Dragging herself out of bed, she stumbled into the bathroom and splashed cold water in her face, trying to wash the images out of her memory-all of them.

Her workout lived up to its name. She felt every move in every muscle fiber. Live right, exercise, die anyway. She directed a few scathing thoughts at the Higher Power as she struggled for sit-up number forty. What was the point in following the rules, personally or professionally, if all that would bring her was pain and suffering? Then she thought of Fourcade, who broke the rules with impunity and would be lucky if he could crawl out of bed today. Maybe God was an equal-opportunity bully after all.

The time she'd spent tending Nick's wounds had become a surreal memory with the passing of the night. Maybe she hadn't really touched his naked chest. Maybe she hadn't let him play tonsil hockey. Maybe she hadn't dreamed about him. She tried to put it out of her head as she grabbed hold of the chin-up bar and dragged her body upward, straining every inch.

She thought instead of the story Fourcade had told her about New Orleans and Duval Marcotte. It didn't matter, she decided. Donnie Bichon had not contacted Marcotte before Pam's death, therefore, Marcotte was not a motive for Donnie to have killed her. Unless Marcotte had contacted him. Unless their conversations had taken place over pay phones. Which made Donnie smarter than he let on. Who knew what his potential might be? She couldn't see him doing what had been done to Pam, but Fourcade's beating at the hands of DiMonti's men raised the unpleasant possibility of hired help.

She headed for the door, stopping as the scarf on the kitchen table caught the corner of her eye. What was she doing mapping out conspiracy scenarios when she had a suspected murderer leaving her tokens of his affection? Maybe she would have been better off with Fourcade's tunnel vision. Maybe whatever Lindsay Faulkner had to offer her would help put her on track.

She hit the trail at a slow jog. The ground fog was waist high, like something from an old horror movie. The sun was a huge fuchsia ball rising up through it in the east. Islands of trees seemed to float on it in the distance. Annie ran through it down the levee road. Fifty yards ahead a squadron of five blue herons leapt from the reeds and skimmed the top of the fog bank to a willow island, their spindly legs trailing behind them like fine streamers.

She ran two miles that seemed like ten, showered and dressed, then joined Fanchon and Sos for breakfast in the cafe.

"Someone left a package for me yesterday," Annie said, stirring milk into her coffee. "Did either of you happen to see him?"

"A secret lover?" Sos bobbed his eyebrows, mischief lighting his face. "Dat's gotta be Andre, no? Sends you flowers, brings you presents. Dat boy's got it bad for you, 'tite chatte. You listen to your Uncle Sos."

Annie gave him a look. "It wasn't A.J. I know who brought it. I was just wondering if either of you saw him."

Sos scowled and muttered something under his breath.

Fanchon waved off the possibility. "Mais non, chère. We was so busy here, me, I thought I was chasin' myself. Two busloads of chil'run from Lafayette for the boat tours. Dat's like turnin' a hundred li'l raccoons loose in the store. Why for you wanna know?"

"No reason. It's not important." Annie grabbed her coffee mug and pushed back from the table. She kissed them each on the cheek. "I gotta go."

"So who was he?" Sos called, his curiosity winning out over his pique.

Annie snatched a Snickers from the box as she passed down the candy aisle and waved good-bye with it. "No one special."

Just a likely stalker and murderer.

She didn't like the idea of Renard showing up here, trespassing on her private life, coming into contact with Sos and Fanchon. It seemed impossible Renard could have become fixated on her so quickly. She'd given him no encouragement, had in fact tried to discourage him. Just as Pam had… and Pam Bichon had never saved his life.

She swung west at the edge of town, hoping to catch Lindsay Faulkner before she left for the office. Annie couldn't help but think her patience and persistence had paid off. She had appealed to Faulkner woman to woman and now she was going to get something Faulkner hadn't given the male detectives. She allowed herself a moment's smugness as she turned down Cheval Court.

Faulkner's garage door was closed. The front drapes were drawn. Annie walked up to the house and punched the doorbell as she leaned close to peer in the sidelight.

Lindsay Faulkner lay on the entry floor, her nightgown bunched up beneath her chin, her right arm reaching toward the portable handset of a phone that lay on the floor with an assortment of debris. Blood caked her golden hair at the roots. Her face was covered with it. Her ginger cat lay curled beside her, sleeping.

Swearing, Annie ran back to the Jeep and grabbed the radio mike.

"Partout Parish 911. Partout Parish 911. Requesting officers and an ambulance at 17 Cheval Court. Please hurry. And notify the detectives. This is a probable 261. Over."

She confirmed the information as requested, giving her name and rank. Then, grabbing her gun out of her duffel in case the assailant was still on the premises, she ran back to the house to see if Lindsay Faulkner was alive.

The front door was locked, but the assailant had obligingly left the patio door standing wide open. Annie covered Lindsay's body with a blanket hastily dragged from the guest bedroom and knelt beside her, monitoring her weak pulse.

"Hang in there, Lindsay. The ambulance is on its way," she said loudly. "We'll have you to the hospital in no time. You've gotta hang tough. We'll need you to tell us who did this to you so we can catch the guy and make him pay. You've gotta hang on so you can help us with that."

There was no response. Not a movement of eyelids or lips. Faulkner seemed to be clinging to the finest thread of life. The only good sign was that she had not gone into a fetal posture indicative of severe brain damage, but that didn't mean she couldn't die.

Annie stared at the face some animal had battered into unrecognizability. If this was the work of their serial rapist, why had he singled out Lindsay Faulkner? For the obvious reasons? That she was single, attractive, lived alone? She was also connected to a murder investigation. Just yesterday she'd found something relevant to say in regard to that murder. Had someone shut her up before she could tell it? The possibilities made Annie's nerves twitch.

The wail of approaching sirens penetrated the silence of the house. The EMTs stormed the place first, followed closely by Sticks Mullen. He scowled at Annie. She scowled at him.

"What the hell are you doing here, Broussard?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Annie said, glancing at her watch. "You're usually stuffing your face with doughnuts about this time. Lucky me, you picked today to be diligent instead of delinquent."

She stepped back into the living room, out of the way of the EMTs, one eye on the paramedics as they worked.

"It looks to me like the attacker cracked her head with the base unit of the phone." She pointed to where it lay bloody on the floor among scattered broken picture frames. "She put up a fight."

"For all the good it did her," Mullen muttered.

"Hey, some jerk comes after me, I go down swinging," Annie said. "I'll make the guy wish he'd never set eyes on me."

"There's plenty of that going around anyway."

"Don't start with me," Annie snapped.

She dared him with a glare, then started for the dining area. "He came in here through the patio door. She must have heard him, came out of her bedroom, and confronted him."

"Should have stayed put and called 911."

"Wouldn't have done her any good. The phone's dead. You'll find the line cut, I imagine. Just like the others."

The EMTs hefted up their stretcher and rolled it out the front door with Lindsay Faulkner motionless beneath the blanket. As they left, Stokes walked in, a gray fedora sitting back on the crown of his head, a slip of toilet paper glued to his left cheek with a dot of blood. His light eyes were shot through with red.

"Man, I hate these early calls," he grumbled.

"Yeah, how inconsiderate of people to be attacked during your off-hours," Annie said. "At least she waited until morning to be found raped, beaten, and unconscious."

Stokes scowled at her. "What're you doing here, Broussard? Somebody call for McGruff?"

"I found her."

He took a moment to digest that, his gaze sharpening. "And I say again, what are you doing here? How'd you know her? You two playing 'Bump the Doughnut' or something?"

Mullen snickered. Annie rolled her eyes.

"You know, Chaz, I hate to break it to you, but just because a woman won't have sex with you doesn't mean she's a lesbian. It just means she has standards."

"Stop. You're spoiling my fantasies." He nodded to Mullen. "Go see if the phone line's cut. And see if there's any good footprints in the yard. Ground's soft. Maybe we can get a cast."

Mullen went out the front. Stokes hiked up his baggy brown trousers and squatted down amid the junk that had toppled from the hall table.

"You gonna answer my question, Broussard?" he asked as he pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and picked up the bloody phone unit.

"She's my real estate agent," Annie said automatically. "I'm thinking of buying a house."

"Is that right?" he said flatly. "So why come all the way out here to see her when her office is-what?-all of four blocks from the department?"

"She wanted to show me something out this way."

"This neighborhood's a little out of your price range, isn't it, Deputy?"

"A girl can dream."

"Uh-huh. And when did y'all set this up?"

"Lindsay called me last night and left a message on my machine." Her eyes went to Faulkner's answering machine. Her own voice would be on the tape. Thank God she'd left nothing more than her name and number.

"I tried to call her back about ten-thirty, but the machine answered. Why all the questions?" she asked, turning it back around on him. "You think I raped her and beat her head in?"

"Just doing my job, McGruff." He narrowed his eyes as if he were visualizing Lindsay Faulkner's body on the floor. He rubbed his goatee and hummed a note. The puddle of blood that had leaked from her skull had dried dark on the honey-tone oak. Spatters and smears had soaked into the off-white Berber runner. "He did her right here, huh?"

"Looked that way. Her nightgown was pulled up around her shoulders. There was a lot of bruising on her body."

"So is this the work of our friendly neighborhood serial rapist?" Stokes said more to himself than to Annie. "He did the other two in bed, tied them up."

"It looks to me like she heard him coming," Annie said; "He didn't get the chance to surprise her in bed. And he didn't have to tie her up because he knocked her out with the phone."

She squatted down beside the rug, her gaze zooming in on a patch of dark fibers embedded in the carpet runner where Faulkner's body had lain. She scratched at the spot gingerly with a fingernail and plucked at the loose end that came up, bringing it up close before her eyes.

"Looks to me like a piece of black feather," she said, looking at Stokes as she held it out toward him. "That answer your question for you?"

"Don't you bend them papers shoving them in that way," the records clerk snapped, his voice at a pitch that rivaled screeching chalk on a blackboard.

Annie twitched. "Sorry, Myron."

"That's Mr. Myron. You on the other side of my counter, you call me Myron. You on my side of my counter, you call me Mr. Myron. You are in my domain. You are my assistant."

Myron jammed his hands at his belt and nodded sharply. A slight, prim black man, he wore a clip-on polyester tie every day and had his gray hair trimmed like a shrub every other Friday. He had worked records and evidence for twenty years and saw the presence of a uniform behind his counter as a direct threat to his kingdom.

"Don't let it go to your head," Annie muttered. To Myron she gave her earnest face and said, "I'll do my best."

Myron gave her the skunk eye and went back to his desk.

Annie let his presence fade from mind as she concentrated on the facts of Lindsay Faulkner's attack. She was tempted to think this attacker was a copycat of their rapist, who was a copycat of sorts of Pam Bichon's killer, someone who had taken advantage of the first two rapes to silence Faulkner for his own reasons. Perhaps it had been his intent to murder her. He may well have believed she was dead when he left her.

But if that was the case, then who was this copycat? Renard would seem to be free from suspicion. Debilitated by the pounding Fourcade had given him, he couldn't have had the strength or the mobility to attack a strong, healthy woman like Lindsay. If not Renard, then who? Donnie? It was no secret he disliked Lindsay. If she was standing in the way of a deal for the real estate company…

Could he kill her? Make it look like rape? If it was Donnie, then did that mean he was involved in Pam's murder? If he had murdered Pam, killing Lindsay would have been easy by comparison.

The fragment of black feather was the sticking point for the copycat theory. That feather had been no plant left to implicate someone else. It appeared to be just the opposite, in fact. Something left behind by accident, hidden by his victim's unconscious body. Their boy had certainly left nothing else behind to incriminate himself.

Then again, the feather may not have come from a mask. It could have been part of a cat toy. It could have been tracked in by a visitor. They wouldn't know whether or not they had a match to the feather in the Nolan case until they heard back from the lab in New Iberia.

"Hey, Myron, what'd you do to deserve this, man?" Stokes asked, snickering as he set the rape kit on the counter. "Who sicced the crime dog after you?"

Annie gladly abandoned her filing and went to the counter. "Yeah, Chaz, we all got that joke the first ten times you made it. Is this Faulkner's? It took you long enough."

"Hey, it takes how long it takes, you know what I'm sayin'. The doctors had to get her stabilized. Don't matter nohow. We got nothing from it. There was nothing under her nails. There's not gonna be anything on the swabs, and pubic hair all looks alike to me. This joker's good."

"He sure seems to know what we'll look for," Annie said. "I'll bet he's got a record. Have you checked with the state for known offenders? Run the MO past NCIC?"

Stokes switched his attitude up a notch. "I don't need you to tell me how to run an investigation, Broussard."

"I believe my remark was in the form of a question, Detective," she said with stinging sweetness. "I know how swamped you are dealing with these rapes and the Bichon homicide, and what all. I might have offered to make those calls for you."

Myron moved his head like an outraged banty rooster. "That ain't your job!"

Annie shrugged. "Just trying to be helpful."

"Just trying to stick your nose in where it don't belong," Stokes muttered. "I told you before, Broussard, I don't need your kind of help. You stay the hell away from my cases."

He turned to Myron. "I need to get this stuff logged in and back out again. I'm taking it down to New Iberia myself, personally, so they can rush it through the lab and tell me I ain't got squat, just like I ain't got squat on those two other rapes."

"Who's working them besides you?" Annie asked.

He glanced at her from under the brim of his fedora. "I don't need this shit from you. These are my cases. Quinlan's helping with the background checks on the other two women-who they worked with and like that. Is that acceptable to you, Deputy?"

Annie raised her hands in surrender.

"I mean, I know you don't think I'm acceptable," he went on with an edge in his voice. "But hey, who's in plain clothes here and who's going around town in a goddamn dog suit?"

Myron looked up from the paperwork to glare at her, clearly unhappy with her for bringing the stigma of the dog suit into his realm.

Coming down the hall, Mullen let out a hound-dog howl. Annie tried not to grind her teeth.

"I always said you should be wearing a flea collar, Mullen," she said, moving down the counter away from Stokes and Myron.

"You're moving down in the world, Broussard," he said with glee as he set a plastic pee-cup on the counter, full to the lid with some drunk's donation to forensic science. "Take a bite outta crime lately? You can wash it down with this."

Annie yawned as she pulled out an evidence card and began to fill it out. "Wake me up when you have something original to say. Does this urine belong to someone, or did you bring me this to impress me with your aim?"

Thwarted again, he momentarily stuck to facts. "Ross Leighton. Another five-martini lunch at the Wisteria Club. But you got him beat, don't you, Broussard? Nipping Wild Turkey on the way to work."

The pen stilled on the form. Annie raised her head. "That's a lie and you know it."

Mullen shrugged. "I know what I saw in that Jeep Saturday morning."

"You know what you put in my Jeep Saturday morning."

"I know the sheriff pulled you off patrol and I'm still driving," he said smugly, flashing his ugly yellow teeth. He put his hands on the counter and leaned in, the gleam in his eye as mean as a weasel's. "Just what kind of witness are you gonna make against Fourcade?" he whispered. "I hear you were drinking that night too."

Annie held back her retort. She'd had a drink before dinner at Isabeau's that night. A glass of wine with the meal. The bartender at Laveau's could testify she had been in the bar. Maybe he wouldn't remember whether he'd served her or not. Maybe someone would make it worth his while to lose his memory. She had by no means been intoxicated that night, but Fourcade's lawyer would have a field day insinuating that she may have been. What that would do for his case would be dubious; what it would do for her reputation would be obvious.

She gave a humorless half-laugh. "I gotta say, Mullen, I wouldn't have given you credit for being that smart," she murmured. "I oughta shake your hand."

As she reached out, she backhanded the specimen cup, knocked the lid askew, and sent Ross Leighton's urine spewing down the front of Mullen's pants.

Mullen jumped back like a scalded dog. "You fuckin' bitch!"

"Oh, gee, look," Annie said loudly, snatching the cup off the counter. "Mullen wet his pants!"

Four people down the hall turned to stare. One of the secretaries from the business office stuck her head out the door. Mullen looked at them with horror. "She did it!" he said.

"Well, that'd be a hell of a trick," Annie said. "I'd need a hose attachment. They know what they're looking at, Mullen."

Fury contracted the muscles of his face. His thin lips tightened against his mouth, making his teeth look as big as a horse's. "You'll pay for this, Broussard."

"Yeah? What're you gonna do? Spill another bucket of pig guts down my steps?"

"What? I don't know what you're talking about. You done pickled your brain, Broussard."

Hooker bulled his way through the gawkers. "Mullen, what the fuck are you doing? You pissed yourself?"

"No!"

"Jesus Christ, clean up the mess and go change."

"Don't forget the Depends!" someone called from down the hall.

"Broussard made the mess," Mullen groused, bristling at the laughter. "She ought to clean it up."

Annie shook her head. "That's not my job. The mess is on your side of the counter, Mr. Patrol Deputy. I'm back here on my side of the counter, Myron's lowly assistant."

The clerk looked up from his paperwork with the dignity of a king. "Mr. Myron."

It became quickly apparent to Annie that there were few advantages to working in records and evidence. Her one perk of the day came in the form of a fax from the regional lab in New Iberia: the preliminary results on the tests of the entrails that had been draped down her steps Sunday night. No detective had been assigned to the case, which meant the fax came into the machine in records and evidence to be passed on to the case deputy. By being right there when the message rolled out of the machine, Annie bypassed any contact with Pitre.

She held her breath as she read the report, as if the words had the power to bring back the smell. The scene flashed through her mind: the blood dripping, the gory garland of intestines, the fear for Fanchon and Sos.

Preliminary findings reported the internal organs to be from a hog. The news brought only a small measure of relief. The lab couldn't tell her where the stuff had come from. Hogs got butchered every day in South Louisiana. Butcher shops sold every part of them to people who made their own sausage. No one kept records of such things. Nor could the lab tell her who had dumped the viscera down her steps. If it hadn't been Mullen, then who? Why? Did it have anything to do with her investigation of Pam's murder?

Did Pam's murder have anything to do with Lindsay Faulkner's attack? The questions led one into another, into another, with no end in sight.

By late afternoon Lindsay Faulkner's status was listed as critical but stable. Suffering from a skull fracture, fractures to a number of facial bones, multiple contusions, and shock, she had not regained consciousness. The doctors were arguing over whether or not she should be transferred from Our Lady of Mercy to Our Lady of Lourdes in Lafayette. Until they could decide which apparition of the Virgin would prove more miraculous, Faulkner remained in Our Lady of Mercy's ICU.

News of the attack had hit the civilian airwaves. The sheriff scheduled a press conference for five. Scuttlebutt around the department was that a task force would be set up to appease the panicking public. With few leads to go on, there would be little for them to concentrate on, but all the ground would be covered again and again until they churned it to dust. If Stokes, who would head the task force, hadn't already checked with the state for recent releases of sex offenders or with the National Crime Information Center to cross-reference MOs of known sex offenders, that would happen now. Acquaintances of the victims would all be questioned again, with the aim of finding a clue, a connection between the women who had been raped.

As Annie sat at her temporary desk in the records room, she felt a pang of envy toward the people who would be working on the task force. It was the kind of job she had set her sights on, but unless she reversed her fortunes in the department, hell would freeze over before Noblier promoted her to detective.

Closing the Bichon homicide would go a long way toward improving her status. But if anyone found out she was conducting her own investigation-and with whom she was conducting that investigation-her career would be toast.

She thought about that as Myron reluctantly left his post for his afternoon constitutional in the men's room. What was she supposed to do if she came up with evidence? Who was she supposed to tell about Renard's apparent fixation on her? If Lindsay Faulkner had given her useful information, where would she have gone with it? Stokes didn't want her near his case, and if she gave him anything useful, he would doubtless claim the credit for himself. If she went to A.J., she would be jumping the food chain in a way that wouldn't win her points with anyone outside the DA's office. Should she go to the sheriff with any findings and risk his wrath for overstepping her boundaries? Or would Fourcade take the opportunity to put his own career back on track and leave her in the dust?

Maybe that was what that kiss had been all about. The closer he pulled her to him, the easier it would be to shove her behind him when he had what he needed.

She doodled on her notepad as her brain ran the slalom of possibilities. She had taken advantage of Myron's absence to pull some of the Bichon homicide file: Renard's initial statement, wherein he related the improbable story of his alibi, for which he had no corroborating witnesses. He had sent Fourcade on a wild-goose chase with his phantom Good Samaritan motorist, and he was trying to send her on the same pointless quest. A test of her loyalty, Annie supposed. Renard believed she was some kind of savior sent to deliver his life from the jaws of hell-or Angola penitentiary, not that there was a big difference between the two.

Mr. Renard states motorist was driving a dark-colored pickup of undetermined make. Louisiana plates possibly bearing the letters.