A Thin Dark Line

30

"We were sitting here having coffee like civilized people," Doll Renard said, gesturing to her dining room table like a tour guide, "when suddenly the glass in that door shattered. I nearly had a heart attack! We're not the kind of people who have guns or know about guns! To think that someone would shoot into our home! What kind of world are we living in? To think I used to believe in the good of people!"

"Where were y'all sitting? Which chairs?"

Doll sniffed. "The other officers didn't even bother to ask. I was right here, in my usual place," she said, going to the chair at the end of the table.

"Victor was here in his usual seat." Marcus claimed a chair that put his brother's back to the French doors.

At the mention of his name, Victor shook his head and slapped the palm of one hand on the table. He now sat at the head of the table, rocking himself, muttering incessantly. "Not now. Not now. Very red. Enter out. Enter out now!"

"He'll be ranting for days," Doll said bitterly.

Marcus cut her a look. "Mother, please. We're all upset. Victor has as much reason as the rest of us. More than you- he could have been killed."

Doll's jaw dropped as if he'd struck her. "I never said he shouldn't be upset! How dare you talk to me that way in front of a guest!"

"I'm sorry, Mother. Forgive my short temper. My manners aren't what they should be. Someone meant to kill me earlier."

Annie cleared her throat to draw his attention. "Where were you sitting?"

He glanced toward the shattered door. Dozens of insects had flocked in through the hole and now swarmed around the light fixture. Gnats dotted the ceiling like flecks of black ink. "I was out of the room."

"You weren't sitting here when the shot was fired?"

"No. I had left the room several moments prior."

"Why?"

"To use the bathroom. We'd been sitting here drinking coffee."

"Do you own a handgun or a rifle?"

"Of course not," he said, a flush creeping up his neck.

"I wouldn't have a gun in this house," Doll said with great affront. "I wouldn't even let Marcus have a BB gun as a boy. They're filthy instruments of violence and nothing more. His father had guns," she said with accusation. "I got rid of every one of them. Temptations to violence."

"You can't think I staged this," Marcus said, looking hard at Annie.

"Staged it?" Doll shrilled. "What do you mean- 'staged' it?"

Annie turned her back on them and went to the wall where the slug had buried itself in the thick horsehair plaster. It looked as if the call deputies had dug the thing out with a pickax. Plaster littered the floor in crumbled chunks and fine dust. The bullet had struck a good foot above the heads of anyone seated at the table. One of the things any marksman had to consider when aiming was the drop of the bullet as it traveled away from the barrel of the gun. To hit where this shot had hit, the triggerman had to have been aiming still higher.

"Either he was a piss-poor shot or he never meant to hit anyone," she said.

"What do you mean?" Doll asked. "Someone shot at us! We were sitting right here!"

"Had you noticed anyone hanging around earlier in the day?" Annie asked. "Today or any other day recently?"

"Fishermen go past on the bayou," she said, fluttering one bony hand in the direction of the waterway as she clutched the bodice of her baggy housedress with the other. "And those horrible reporters come and go, though we have nothing to say to them. They do as they will. I've never seen such an ill-mannered lot in all my life. There was a time in this country when etiquette meant something-"

Marcus squeezed his eyes shut. "Mother, could we please stick to the subject? Annie isn't interested in a discussion of the decline of formal manners and mores."

Doll's complexion mottled pink and white. Her face went tight, pulling skin against bone and tendon. "Well, excuse me if my views aren't important to you, Marcus," she said tightly. "Pardon me if you believe Annie doesn't want to hear what I think."

"This has been traumatic for all of you, I'm sure," Annie said diplomatically.

"Don't patronize me!" Doll snapped. Her entire body was trembling with anger. "You think we're either criminals or fools. You're no better than any of the others."

"Mother-"

"Red! Red! No!" Victor shrieked, rocking so hard the chair legs came up off the floor. He slapped the tabletop over and over.

"If you believe she cares about us, Marcus, you are a fool." Doll turned away from him to her other son. "Come along, Victor. You're going to bed. No one here needs our presence."

"Not now! Not now! Very red!" Victor's voice screeched upward like metal rending. He curled himself into a ball as his mother clamped a white-knuckled hand on his shoulder.

"Come along, Victor!"

Sobbing, Victor Renard unfolded his body from the chair and allowed his mother to tow him from the room.

Marcus hung his head and stared at the floor, embarrassment and anger coloring his battered face. "Well, wasn't that lovely? Another night in the life of the happy Renard family. I'm sorry, Annie. Sometimes I think my mother doesn't any more know what to do with her emotions than does Victor."

Annie made no comment. It was more useful for her to see the Renards coming apart at the seams than to see them wrapped tightly in control. She moved toward the French doors, stepping around the broken glass. "I'd like to look around outside."

"Of course."

Out on the terrace she filled her lungs with air that tasted of copper. Clouds appeared to sag to the treetops, bloated with rain that had yet to fall.

"Just to set things straight," Marcus said, "my mother has never believed in the good in people. She's been waiting for a lynch mob to show up on the front lawn, and never misses the opportunity to point out that it's all my fault. I'm sure she's secretly pleased by this in her own twisted way."

"I didn't come here to discuss your mother, Mr. Renard."

"Please call me Marcus." He turned toward her. The light that filtered out from the house softened and shadowed his bruises and stitches. With the swelling gone he was no longer grotesque, merely homely. He didn't look dangerous, he looked pathetic. "Please, Annie. I need to at least pretend I have a friend in all this."

"Your lawyer is your friend. I'm a cop."

"But you're here and you don't have to be. You came for me."

She wanted to tell him differently, had tried to set him straight, but either he didn't listen or he twisted the truth to suit himself.

It was the kind of thinking that applied to stalkers and other obsessive personalities. The unwillingness or inability to accept the truth. There was nothing overt in Renard's attitude. Nothing that could have been deemed crazy, and yet this subtle insistence to bend reality to his wishes was disturbing.

She wanted to distance herself from him. But the truth was the closer she got to him, the more likely she was to see something the detectives had missed. He might let down his guard, make a mistake. "He could fall in love with you…" and she'd be there to nail him.

"All right… Marcus," she said, his name sticking in her mouth like a gob of peanut butter.

He let out a breath, as if in relief, and slid his hands into his pants pockets. "Fourcade," he said. "You asked if anyone had come by recently. Fourcade was here on Saturday. On the bayou."

"Do you have any reason to believe Detective Fourcade is the one who took that shot tonight?"

He made a choking laugh, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and dabbed at the corners of his mouth. "He tried to kill me last week, why not this week?"

"He wasn't himself that night. He'd lost a tough decision in court. He'd been drinking. He-"

"You're not going to make excuses for him at the hearing next week, are you?" he asked, looking at her with shock. "You were there. You saw what he was doing to me. You said it yourself: He was trying to kill me."

"We're not talking about last week. We're talking about tonight. Did you see him tonight? Have you seen him since Saturday? Has he called you? Has he threatened you?"

"No."

"And of course you didn't see the shooter because you happened to be in the bathroom at the precise moment-"

"You don't believe me," he said flatly.

"I believe if Detective Fourcade wanted you dead, you'd be meeting your maker right now," Annie said. "Nick Fourcade isn't going to mistake your brother for you or put a shot in the wall a foot above your head. He'd blow your skull apart like a rotten melon, and I don't doubt but that he could do it in the dark at a hundred yards."

"He came here in a boat Saturday. He could have been on the bayou-"

"Everybody in this parish owns a boat, and about ninety percent of them think you should be drawn and quartered in public. Fourcade is hardly the only possibility here," Annie argued. "To be perfectly frank with you, Marcus, I do think you're a more likely candidate than Fourcade."

He turned away from her then, staring out at the darkness. "I didn't do this. Why would I?"

"To get attention. To get me over here. To sic the press on Fourcade."

"You can test my hands for gunpowder residue, search the premises for the gun. I didn't do it." He shook his head in disgust. "That seems to be my motto these last months: I didn't do it. And while y'all are busy trying to prove me a liar, killers and would-be killers are running around loose."

He blotted at his mouth again. Annie watched him, tried to read him, wondered how much of what he was letting her see was an act and how much of it he bought into himself.

"You know the worst part of all this?" he asked, his voice so soft Annie had to step closer to hear him. "I never got to mourn Pam. I've not been allowed to express my grief, my outrage, my hurt, my loss. She was such a lovely person. So pretty."

He looked down at Annie as lightning flashed and his expression was gilded in silver-a strange, glassy, dreamy look, as if he were looking at a memory that wasn't quite true.

"I miss her," he whispered. "I wish…"

What? That he hadn't killed her? That she had returned his affection instead of his gifts? Annie held her breath, waiting.

"I wish you believed me," he murmured.

"It's not my job to believe you, Marcus," she said. "It's my job to find the truth."

"I want you to know the truth," he whispered.

The intimacy in his tone unnerved her, and she stepped back from him as the wind came in a great exhalation from the heavens, rattling the trees like giant pompons.

"I'll keep on top of this," she said. "See if the deputies come up with anything. But mat's all I can do. I'm in enough hot water as it is. I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone I'd been here."

He drew his thumb and forefinger across his lips. "Our secret. That makes two." The idea seemed to please him.

Annie frowned. "I'm checking on that truck-your Good Samaritan the night Pam died. I'm not making promises anything will come of it, but I want you to know I'm looking."

He tried to smile. "I knew you would. You wouldn't want to think you saved my life for no good reason."

"I don't want it said the investigation wasn't thorough on all counts," she corrected. "For the record, Detective Fourcade looked into it, he just didn't find anything. Probably because there's nothing to find."

"You'll find the truth, Annie," he murmured, reaching out to touch her shoulder. His hand lingered a heartbeat too long. "I promise you will."

Annie's skin crawled. She shrugged off his touch. "I'm gonna go get my flashlight. I want to have a look around the yard before the rain starts."

The yard gave up no secrets. She searched for twenty minutes. Renard watched her from the terrace for a while, then disappeared into the house, returning some time later with his own flashlight, to help her look.

Annie didn't know what she had hoped to find. A shell casing, maybe. But she found none. The shooter could have disposed of it. It may well have been in the bayou if that was where the shooter had been-if the shooter had been anyone other than Renard himself.

She mulled the possibilities over in her mind as she drove out of the Renard driveway and headed for the main road. It wouldn't hurt to know where Hunter Davidson had been at the time of the shooting, though he was an old sportsman and she couldn't imagine him missing a target.

Maybe he had drawn a bead on the back of Victor Renard's head, having mistaken him for Marcus, and while staring through the crosshairs of the rifle's scope had been hit with the enormity of taking a human life, then popped the shot into the wall instead.

It seemed more likely that he would have looked at Renard in his sights and pulled the trigger on a tide of emotion. Remorse, if it came at all, would come after the revenge.

Nor did it make any sense to consider Fourcade as a suspect, for the very reasons she had given Marcus. Renard himself, on the other hand, had everything to gain by staging the incident. It gave him an excuse to call her. It cast suspicion on Fourcade, could be used to draw the media. The story could have rolled on the ten o'clock news, creating a full-fledged furor by morning. That's certainly what Renard's lawyer would have wanted.

Then where were the reporters? Renard hadn't called them; he had called her.

"You're here and you don't have to be. You came for me."

The bayou road was empty and dark, a lonely trench between the dense walls of woods that ran on either side of it. The rain had finally begun to fall, an angry spitting that would, any second, become a deluge. Annie hit the switch for the wipers and glanced in the rearview mirror as lightning flashed-illuminating the silhouette of a car behind her. Big car. Too close. No lights.

She cursed herself for not paying attention. She had no idea how long the car had been behind her or where it had pulled onto the road.

As if the driver had sensed her notice, the headlights flared on-high beams glaring into the Jeep, blinding in their sudden intensity. At the same time, the heavens opened and the rain came down in a gush. Annie clicked the wipers up to high and punched the gas. The Jeep sprinted forward with the tail car right on its bumper.

Annie nudged the gas pedal again, the speedometer springing toward seventy. The car came with her like a dog on the heels of a rabbit. She grabbed the radio mike, then realized the cord had been severed cleanly from the base unit.

Premeditation. This was no random game. She had been chosen to play. But with whom?

There was no time to consider names. There was no time to do anything but act and react. She was outrunning her visibility, flying blind through sheets of rain. The road along here curved and bent back like a snake as it ran parallel to the bayou. Every corner tested the Jeep's traction and presented the threat of hydroplaning. Another mile and the road became a virtual land bridge between two areas of dense swamp.

The tail car swung into the left lane and roared up beside her. It was big-a Caddy, maybe-a tank of a car. Annie could sense the heft of it beside her. Too big for the curves, she thought, and hoped it would fall back. But it stayed with her, and she abandoned the distraction of hope, focusing on driving as the Jeep rocked into a turn and the wheels fought against her will.

The car had the inside of the curve and bore wide, hitting the Jeep, metal grinding on metal, trying to muscle her off the pavement. Her rear outside wheel hit the shoulder, and the Jeep jerked beneath her. Annie put her foot down and hung on, straining to hold the vehicle on course. The view through the windshield tilted, then slammed back hard onto a level plane.

"Son of a bitch!" she yelled.

She floored the accelerator as the road straightened out, and prayed there was nothing in the way. It was raining too hard for the water to run off the pavement, and plumes sprayed up from the wheels of the Jeep. The drag had to be pulling harder on the low-slung car, but it hung beside her, swerving in for another hit. Her side window shattered, chunks of it falling in on her.

Annie jerked the Jeep back into the car. The crash was like a burst of white noise. The car held its ground, repelling the Jeep like a rubber ball. For a heartbeat she had no control as the Jeep skidded toward the shoulder and the inky blackness of the swamp beyond. The right front tire hit the shoulder and dropped. Mud spewed up across the hood, across the windshield. The wipers smeared the mess across the glass.

Annie cranked the wheel to the left and prayed at the speed of sound as the Jeep bucked along, half on the road, half off, the swamp sucking at it like a hungry monster. From the corner of her eye, she could see the car swerving toward her again, and for a split second she saw the driver-a black apparition with gleaming eyes and a mouth tearing open on a scream she couldn't hear. Then the road curved hard to the right directly in front of her and the Jeep jumped back on the pavement, bumping noses with the car, sending a shower of sparks up into the rain.

Options streaked through Annie's mind like shooting stars. She couldn't out-muscle him and she couldn't outrun him, but she had four good all-terrain tires and a machine that was nimble for its size. If she could make the levee road, she would shake him.

She hit the brakes and went into a skid, downshifting. As the car shot past her, she bent the skid into a 180-degree turn and hit the gas. In the rearview, she could see the brake lights on the car glowing like red eyes in the night. By the time he got turned around, she would be halfway to the levee-if her luck held, if the trail out to Clarence Gauthier's camp wasn't under a foot of water.

Her headlights hit the sign. Nailed to the stump of a swamp oak that had been struck by lightning twenty years ago, the sign was a jagged piece of cypress plank, hand-lettered in blaze orange: keep out-trespasser will be ate.

Behind her the car was lurching around. Annie swung the Jeep onto the dirt path and hit the brakes. Ahead of her, water lay across the trail in a glossy black sheet dimpled by rain. Too late, she thought she might have been wiser to sprint the miles back to Renard's house to take refuge with one killer in order to escape another. But the car was barreling toward her now, taking advantage of her hesitation.

If she couldn't make it across to higher ground, she was his, whoever the hell he was, for whatever the hell he wanted. She'd have to go for the Sig in the duffel bag on the passenger's seat, and hold the son of a bitch off until help came along.

She gunned the engine as she let out the clutch. The Jeep hit the water, engine roaring, wheels churning. Churning and catching. Churning and sinking.

"Come on, come on, come on!" Annie chanted.

The back end of the Jeep twisted to the right as the back tire slid toward the edge of the submerged trail. The engine was screaming. Annie was screaming. In the mirror she caught a glimpse of the car pulling up on the road behind her.

Then the front tires caught hold of firmer ground, and the Jeep scrambled to safety.

"Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. Oh, shit," Annie muttered as she sped down the twisting trail, branches slapping at the windshield.

Someone ran out of the shack where Clarence Gauthier kept his fighting dogs. Annie took a right before she got to the camp, and flinched at the sound of a shotgun going off in warning. Another half mile on the trail that was rapidly disintegrating to bog and she was finally able to climb up onto the levee road.

Clear of the woods, the rain closed around her like a liquid curtain. Only the lightning allowed her nightmare glimpses of the world beyond the beam of her headlights. Black, dead, not a living thing in sight.

She felt ill. She was shaking.

Somebody had just tried to. kill her.

The Corners' store was closed. The light in Sos and Fanchon's living room glowed amber through the gloom across the parking lot. Annie pulled the Jeep in close to the staircase on the south side of the building and ran up to her landing. Her hands were trembling as she worked the lock. She struggled to mentally talk her nerves into calming down. She was a cop, after all. That someone tried to kill her probably shouldn't have bothered her so much. Maybe next time she would shrug it off entirely. Par for the course. Just another day on the job. The hell it was. Once inside the entry, she shed her sneakers, dropped her gear bag, and went straight to the kitchen. She pulled a chair across the floor. A dusty bottle of Jack Daniel's sat in the cupboard over the refrigerator.

She thought of Mullen as she pulled the whiskey down and set it on the counter. He would have liked this moment on videotape-evidence of her sudden alcoholism. Son of a bitch. If she found out he'd been behind the wheel of that car tonight… what? The consequences would go far beyond having him charged with a crime.

Life should have been so much simpler, Annie thought as she unscrewed the cap from the Jack and poured a double shot. She took a long sip, grimacing as the stuff slid down.

"You gonna offer me some of that?"

Heart in her throat, Annie bolted around. The glass hit the floor and shattered.

"I locked that door when I left," she said.

Fourcade shrugged. "And I told you before: It's not much of a lock."

"Where's your truck?"

"Out of sight."

Nick grabbed a dish towel and bent down to clean up the mess. "You're a mite on the edge tonight, 'Toinette."

He looked up at her standing beside the jaunty gator on her refrigerator. Her face was pale as death, her eyes shining like glass beads, her hair hanging in damp strings. He could feel the tension in her like the vibrations of a tuning fork.

"I suppose I am," she said. "Someone just tried to kill me."

"What?" He jerked upright and looked her over as if he expected to see blood.

"Someone tried to run me off the bayou road into the swamp. And he damn near succeeded."

Annie looked around her kitchen, at the old cupboards and the vintage fifties table, at the canisters on the counter and the ivy plant she had started from a sprig in Serena Doucet's bridal bouquet five years ago. She looked at the cat clock, watched its eyes and tail move with the passing seconds. Everything looked somehow different, as if she hadn't seen any of it in a very long time and now found none of it quite matched the images in her memory.

The whiskey boiled in her empty stomach like acid. She could still feel its path down the back of her throat.

"Somebody tried to kill me," she murmured again, amazed. Dizziness swept through her like a wave. With as much cool and dignity as she could muster, she looked at Nick and said, "Excuse me. I have to go throw up now."