A Thin Dark Line

29

Mouton's was the kind of place few men entered without a gun or a knife. Squatting on stilts on the bank of Bayou Noir south of Luck, it was the hangout of poachers and thieves and others living on the ragged hem of society. People looking for trouble looked at Mouton's, where just about anything could be had for the right price and no one asked any questions.

It was the latter truth that appealed to Nick on a Tuesday afternoon. He was in no mood for the Voodoo Lounge, wanted no one patting his back or expressing their useless sympathy for his situation. He wanted whiskey, settled for a beer, and waited for Stokes to show.

He had dragged himself out of bed at noon and forced himself through the Tai Chi forms, meditating on the movement of each aching muscle, trying to force the pain out with the power of his mind. The process had been excruciating and exhausting, but his sense of being was clearer for it.

His mind was sharp, his nerves coiled tight as springs, as he nursed his beer, his back to a corner.

A couple of bikers were playing pool across the room with a barfly hooker hovering around them in a short skirt and push-up bra. Nearer, a pair of swamp rats sat at a table, trading stories and drinking Jax. John Lee Hooker was moaning on the juke, black delta blues in a redneck bar. There was an illegal card game going on in the back room, and horse racing on the color television mounted over the bar. The bartender looked like Paul Prudhomme's evil twin. He watched Nick with suspicion.

Nick took a slow pull on his beer and wondered if the guy had made him for a cop or for trouble. He knew he looked like the kind of trouble no one wanted on his doorstep, his face cut and bruised, the butt of the Ruger peeking out of his open jacket. He had left his mirrored sunglasses on, despite the gloom of the bar.

One of the swampers scraped his chair back and rose, scratching at the giant middle finger screened on the front of his black T-shirt. A filthy red ball cap was stuck down on his head, the brim bent into an inverted U to frame a pair of eyes too small for a bony face. Nick watched him approach, sitting forward a little on his chair, ready to move. If nothing else, the beating at the hands of DiMonti's thugs had knocked the rust off his survival instincts.

"My buddy and me, we got a bet," the swamper said, weaving a little on his feet. "I say you're that cop what beat the shit outta that killer, Renard."

Nick said nothing, pulled a long drag on his cigarette, and exhaled through his nose.

"You are, ain't you? I seen you on TV. Let me shake your hand, man." He stepped in close and popped Nick on the arm with his fist like an old buddy, as if seeing him on the news had somehow forged a bond between them. "You're a fuckin' hero!"

"You're mistaken," Nick said calmly.

"No way. You're him. Come on, man, shake my hand. I got ten bucks on it." He cuffed Nick's arm again and flashed a bad set of teeth. "I say they shoulda let you put that asshole's lights out in a permanent way. Li'l bayou justice. Save the taxpayers some money, right?"

He moved to make another friendly punch. Nick caught his fist and came up out of the chair, twisting the man's arm in a way that turned the swamper's face into the rough plank wall.

"I don't like people touching me," he said softly, his mouth inches from his erstwhile friend's ear. "Me, I don't believe in casual intimacy between strangers, and that's what we are-strangers. I am not your friend and I sure as hell am nobody's hero. See the mistake you've made here?"

The swamp rat tried to nod, rubbing his mashed cheek against the wall. "Hey-hey, I'm sorry, all right? No offense," he mumbled out the side of his mouth, spittle running down his chin.

"But you see, I've already taken offense, which is why I've always found apologies to be ineffectual and the products of false logic."

Out of the corner of his eye Nick could see the bartender watching, one hand reaching down under the bar. The screen door slammed, the sound as sharp as gunfire. The swamp rat's buddy shot up from his chair, but he made no move to come any closer.

"Now you have to ask yourself," Nick murmured, "do you want your friend's ten dollars only to put it toward your doctor bills, or would you rather walk away a poorer but wiser man?"

"Jesus H., Nicky." Stokes's voice came across the room, punctuated by the sound of his footfalls on the plank floor. "I can't leave you alone ten minutes. You keep this up, you're gonna need a license to walk around in public."

He came up alongside Nick, shaking his head. "What'd he do? Touch you? Did you touch him?" he asked the swamp rat. "Man, what were you thinking? Don't cross that line. The last guy that touched him is sucking his dinner through a straw."

He tipped his fedora back and scratched his head. "I'm telling you, Nicky, the inherent stupidity of humankind is enough to make me give up hope on the world as a whole. You want a drink? I need a drink."

Nick stepped back from the swamper, his temper defused and dissipating, disappointment in himself coming in on the backwash. "Sorry I lost my cool there," he said. The corners of his mouth twitched at the joke. "See? It doesn't mean shit."

Rubbing a hand against his cheek, the swamp rat stumbled back to his buddy. The pair vacated their table and moved to the far end of the bar.

"You don't play well with others, Nicky," Stokes complained, pulling a chair out from the table and turning it backward to straddle it. "Where'd you learn your social skills -a reformatory?"

Nick ignored him. Shaking a cigarette out of the pack, he lit it on the move, needing to pace a bit to burn off the last of the energy spike. Control. Center. Focus. He'd had it there for a little while, and then it slipped away like rope through a sweaty hand.

"Long as I'm asking questions, what happened to your face? You run into the business end of a jealous husband?"

"I interrupted a business meeting. Mr. DiMonti took exception."

Stokes's brows lifted. "Vic 'The Plug' DiMonti? The wiseguy?"

"You know him?" Nick asked.

"I know of him. Jesus, Nicky, you're a paranoid son of a bitch. First you think I set you up. Now you think I'm on the pad with the mob. And here I am-the best friend you got in this backwater. I could get a complex." He shook his head sadly. "You're the one lived in New Orleans, man, not me. What's DiMonti's beef with you?"

"I went to see Duval Marcotte. Marcotte is in real estate. DiMonti owns a construction company. Donnie Bichon is all of a sudden looking to sell his half of Bayou Realty. The realty company owns a fair amount of property 'purchased' by Pam from Bichon Bayou Development to keep Donnie's ass out of bankruptcy. And now I hear Lindsay Faulkner, of Bayou Realty, was attacked last night."

"Raped. Probably the same guy did those other two," Stokes said, motioning to catch the bartender's attention. "This is some hard case with his pecker in overdrive. It wasn't no mob hit, for Christ's sake. You shoulda gone into the CIA, Nicky. They would love the way your mind works."

"I don't make it for a mob hit. Me, I just don't like coincidence, that's all. You talk to Donnie?"

He nodded, glancing at the bar again. "Christ, you scared the bartender off. I hope you're happy," he muttered, casting a considering glance at Nick's half-empty bottle. "You gonna drink that? I'm dying, man."

"What'd he have to say for himself?"

"That he wishes he'd never heard of the Partout Parish Sheriff's Office. He tells me he was at his office 'til eleven doing paperwork, stopped off at the Voodoo for a couple, then went on home alone." He drained the beer in two long gulps. "I told him he oughta get himself a steady girlfriend. That boy is forever without corroboration. You know what I'm saying. But then he's short on brains for a college boy. Look what he blew off so he could chase tail. Pam was a fine lady and a meal ticket to boot, and he gave her nothing but a hard time.

"Why you chewing his bone anyway?" he asked, helping himself to a cigarette from the pack on the table. "Guy bails you outta jail, the average man would show a little gratitude. You're trying to tie him to some big boogeyman conspiracy."

"I don't like the connections, that's all."

"Renard did Pam. You know it and I know it, my friend."

"The rest is an unpleasant by-product," Nick said, finally settling into his chair. "What else have I got to do with my time?"

"Go fishing. Get laid. Take up golf. Get laid. I'd mainly get laid if I was you. You need it, pard. Your spring's wound too damn tight, and that's a fact. That's why you're always going off on people."

He checked his watch and sat back. The place was filling up as day edged into evening. A waitress materialized from the back room. Dyed blond curls and a tight white tank top from Hooters in Miami. He flashed her the Dudley Do-Right smile.

"A pair of Jax, darlin', and a side order of what you got."

With a sly smirk she leaned down close and reached across in front of him for the empty, treating him with the up-close and personal view of her cleavage. He gave a tiger growl as she walked away. Across the room, the biker with junior stitched on the breast pocket of his denim vest looked over from his pool game, scowling. Stokes kept one eye on the waitress.

"She wants me. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'."

"She wants a big tip."

"You're a pessimist, Nicky. That's what happens when you look for the hidden meaning in every damn thing. You're doomed to disappointment-you know what I'm saying? Go for face value. Life's a whole hell of a lot simpler that way."

"Like Faulkner's rape?" Nick said. "You think it's part of the pattern because that's simpler, Chaz?"

Stokes scowled. "I think it because it's a fact."

"There's no change in the MO between this and the other two?"

"There's some, probably because she heard him coming. But everything else matches up. It was mean and clean, just like the others. Guy's probably got a sheet a mile long. I got a call in to the state to see what we might see."

"Why her? Why Faulkner?"

"Why not? She's a looker, lives alone. He maybe didn't know she's a dyke."

Nick arched a brow over the rim of his shades. "She wouldn't sleep with you either, huh? This parish is just crawling with lesbians."

"Hey. I call ' em like I see 'em."

Someone had changed the channel on the television over the bar to a station out of Lafayette. The graphics said the broadcast was coming live from Bayou Breaux. Noblier's meaty face filled the screen. He stood behind a podium sprouting microphones, looking as unhappy as the proverbial cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Press conference. Every figurative rocker would be aiming for his tail.

Nick nodded toward the set. "Why aren't you there? I hear you got the task force."

"Hell, I am the task force," Chaz muttered. "Me and Quinlan and a few uniforms-Mullen and Compton from days, Degas and Fortier from nights. Big fuckin' deal. Quinlan tried to get the BBPD in on it-Z-Top and Riva. No way. Noblier and the chief are like dueling hard-ons on account of you. The official excuse is that the rapes have all been outside city limits. It's our turf, it's our case, it's our task force." He shook his head and pulled on the cigarette. "It's all for show anyway, man. We got zippo to go on. This is supposed to make the common folk feel safe."

"So how come you're not up there reassuring all the single ladies, Hollywood?"

"Shit, I hate that media stuff," he said. "Bunch of hairdos asking stupid questions. I'll pass, thanks. I got a big enough headache as it is. Guess who called in Faulkner?" he said with a pained expression. "Broussard. Now what do you suppose she was doing there?"

Nick shrugged, the picture of disinterest. His attention had caught on the bikers. The one called Junior looked like a red-bearded upright freezer. An Aryan Brotherhood tattoo was etched into his right biceps. He stared at Stokes with reptilian eyes.

"Claims she's looking to buy a house. Yeah, right, I believe that," Stokes sneered. "It was just a coincidence. Like it was just a coincidence she came on you with Renard." He shook his head as he helped himself to another smoke. "I'm telling you, man, that chick is bad news. She's always where she hadn't oughta be. You want a conspiracy, you go see what she's up to. You know, rumor has it she's screwing the deputy DA-Doucet. There's your conspiracy."

Junior came toward them from the pool table, intercepting the waitress and helping himself to one of the beers. Stokes swore under his breath and stood up.

"Hey, man, don't fuck with my drink."

The biker curled his lip. "You want a drink, go stick your head in a toilet."

Stokes's eyes widened. "You got a problem with me being here, Junior Dickhead? You think maybe I'm a little too brown for this bar?"

Junior took a swig of the Jax and belched. He glanced over his shoulder at his partner. "This is the kind of trouble you get when niggers breed with white women."

Stokes dropped a shoulder and hit him running, knocking Junior into the pool table. The biker sprawled on his back, his head banging hard on the slate. Balls bounced and scattered. The other biker stepped away, holding his cue stick like a baseball bat, as Chaz pulled his badge and shoved it in Junior's face.

"This make me any lighter, asshole?" he bellowed.

"How about this?" He pulled a Glock nine-millimeter from his belt holster and jammed the barrel into Junior's left nostril. "You think you're the superior race, you Nazi cocksucker? What you thinkin' now?"

He slapped the biker hard on the cheek with the badge, then dropped it on the table and jammed his hand up under the man's chin. "Don't you call me nigger! I ain't no nigger, you motherfucking cracker piece of shit! Call me a nigger and I'll blow your fuckin' head off and say you assaulted an officer!"

Junior made a strangled sound, his big face turning a shade redder than his beard.

Nick took in the wild rage in Stokes's eyes, knowing he was close to an edge, surprised by it, surprised to see it in someone else. Maybe they had something more in common than the job after all.

Nick braced his hands on the pool table, and leaned into Junior's bug-eyed field of vision. "See what you get for being politically incorrect these days, Junior? People just don't take being abused like they used to."

Stokes backed off and Junior rolled over, choking up phlegm on the green felt.

Stokes blew out a breath and forced a grin, twitching the tension out of his shoulders. "Damn, Nicky, you spoiled my fun."

Nick shook his head and started toward the door. "And you say I'm the crazy one."

Stokes shrugged off the responsibility. "Hey, what can I say? He crossed my line."

Annie sat at her kitchen table, a fork in a carton of kung pow chicken, Jann Arden singing in the background. The strange, voyeuristic lyrics of "Living Under June" touched off thoughts of her own situation. The experiences of one person seeping into another's life, that person's life touching someone else.

Had she really believed she could become involved in this investigation and float from point to point in a bubble of invisibility? People talked to one another. The case was open and ongoing. Stokes was supposed to be working it; of course he would speak to Lindsay Faulkner. Lindsay had spoken with Annie. Why wouldn't she mention it to Stokes? She had no reason not to.

"Except that it could mean my ass," Annie muttered.

If Stokes took this to the sheriff… It made her stomach hurt to imagine what Noblier would have to say about it. They'd have to bury her in that damn dog suit.

But Gus had said nothing outright when he'd called her into his office about the Faulkner attack, which could only mean Stokes hadn't brought it up… yet.

"Hooker was right," Gus had growled, fixing her with his classic look of disgruntlement. "It seems if there's a pile of shit around, you'll find one way or another to step in it. Just how did you come to be at Lindsay Faulkner's home, Deputy Broussard?"

She stuck with the lie she'd told Stokes, wondering too late if she'd trapped herself. There would be no paperwork at Bayou Realty to back her up. What if Stokes walked into the realty office and requested a file that didn't exist?

She would have to deal with that burning bridge when she came to it, she decided, setting her dinner aside. The question that nagged her more was this: If Stokes knew she was sniffing around his case and he didn't want her there, why hadn't he gone to the sheriff?

Maybe Faulkner hadn't told him about their meetings. There was no way of knowing until either Stokes made a move or Lindsay Faulkner regained consciousness.

"Why can't you just mind your own business, Annie?" she mused aloud.

Downstairs in the store, Stevie the night clerk was watching Speed again, deep in lust with Sandra Bullock. The sounds of crashes and explosions came up through the floor as if a small war were going on below. Ordinarily Annie was able to shut out the noise. Tonight she found herself wishing for the quiet of Fourcade's study, but she had no intention of seeking it out. She needed a night off, time to clear her head and take a hard look at what she'd gotten herself into. For all the good that would do her now.

Still, in spite of herself, she wondered how Fourcade was doing. She had called from a pay phone at noon and left a message on his machine about Lindsay Faulkner. He hadn't called her back. She occasionally lapsed into panicked thoughts of him lying on his floor dead from internal bleeding, but then talked herself out of them. It wasn't the first time he'd been on the receiving end of a pounding. He knew better than she did the extent of his own injuries.

He certainly hadn't kissed like a man on the brink of death.

No, he had kissed her like a blind man sensing light, like a man who needed to make a connection with another soul and wasn't quite sure how.

"Don't be stupid," she muttered, turning her attention to the papers she had brought home with her from Nick's place the night before-the reports of the harassment Pam Bichon had endured before her murder, copies of reports from the Bayou Breaux PD on incidents that had occurred at her office.

Pam had feared for her safety and for Josie's. But her level of fear had seemed out of proportion to the officers who had taken the calls. While they had drawn no conclusions in the reports, it wasn't hard for another cop to read between the lines. They thought she was overreacting, being unreasonable, wasting their time. Why would she be afraid of Marcus Renard? He seemed so normal, so harmless. Why should she think he was the one making the breather calls? What proof did she have he was stalking the shadows of her Quail Run property? How could it possibly frighten her to receive a silk scarf from an anonymous admirer?

Gooseflesh swept down Annie's arms. She knew Renard had given Pam a number of small gifts, but the only gift ever mentioned in detail in any of the paperwork or news reports had been a necklace with a heart-shaped pendant. He tried to give it to her on her birthday, shortly before her death.

Annie pulled her binder of news clippings and paged through the pockets, hunting for the one burning in her memory. It was a piece from the Lafayette Daily Advertiser that had run shortly after Renard's arrest, and it spoke specifically of Pam's birthday, when she had gone into the Bowen amp; Briggs office with a cardboard box containing the gifts he had given her during the preceding weeks. She had reportedly hurled the box at Renard, shouting angrily for him to leave her alone, that she wanted nothing to do with him.

She had given back to him everything he had ever given her, and among those gifts was a silk scarf. Annie could find no detailed description of it. The detectives had looked for the rejected gifts during a search of Renard's home but had never found them, and didn't consider them important. How would anyone consider a lovely silk scarf proof of harassment?

Nausea swirled through Annie as an idea hit. She reached across the table for the box, lifted the scarf and ran it through her fingers, her mind racing.

"You look like her, you know," Donnie said, his voice strangely dreamy. "The shape of your face… the hair… the mouth…"

"You fit the victim profile," Fourcade said. "… you came into his life, chère. Like it was meant to be… He could fall in love with you."

Had Pam Bichon held this very scarf in her hands, feeling the same strange sense of disquiet Annie felt right now?

The phone rang, sending her half a foot off her chair. She tossed the scarf aside and went into the living room.

The machine picked up on the fourth ring and she listened to herself advise the caller.

"If you're someone I'll actually want to talk to, leave a message after the tone. If you're a reporter, a salesman, a heavy breather, a crank, or someone with an opinion of me I don't want to hear, just don't bother. I'll only erase you."

The warning hadn't seemed to deter anyone. The tape had been full by the time she'd gotten home. Word of her involvement in the Faulkner case had leaked out of the department like oil through a bad gasket. Three reporters had been lying in wait for her on the store gallery when she got home. But it wasn't a reporter who waited for the tone.

"Annie, this is Marcus." His voice was tight. "Could you please call me back? Someone took a shot at me tonight."

Annie grabbed the receiver. "I'm here. What happened?"

"Just what I said. Someone took a shot at me through a window."

"Why are you calling me? Call 911."

"We did. The deputies who came said it was a pity the guy was such a poor shot. They dug the bullet out of the wall and left. I'd like someone to look around, investigate."

"And you'd like that someone to be me?"

"You're the only one who cares, Annie. You're the only one in that whole damn department who cares about justice being done. If it were up to the rest of them, I'd have been alligator bait weeks ago."

He was silent for a moment. Annie waited, apprehension coiling around her stomach like a python.

"Please, Annie, say you'll come. I need you."

Out over the Atchafalaya, thunder rumbled like distant cannon fire. He wanted her. He needed her. He was probably a killer. She had immersed herself in this case up to her chin. She took a breath and went deeper.

"I'll be right there."