A Thin Dark Line

33

Donnie was jealous of Stokes. Annie let her brain chew on that while she sorted through the faxes in the tray, pulling the one she'd requested from the DMV-a listing of trucks with Louisiana plates containing the partial sequence EJ.

It wasn't difficult to envision Stokes flirting with Pam. In fact, it would have been impossible not to. That was what Stokes did: spent his every spare moment honing his seduction skills. He considered it his duty to flirt with women. And, according to what Lindsay Faulkner had said Sunday, Pam brought out those qualities in men without even trying. Men were attracted to Pam, found her charming and sweet. Chaz Stokes would never be the exception to that rule.

With the stalking an ongoing thing, he would have had ample cause to see Pam on a fairly regular basis. Had Donnie gotten the wrong idea about the two of them? And what would he have done about it if he had? Confront Stokes? Confront Pam?

If Stokes knew Donnie was jealous, then he would certainly have examined that angle when Pam was murdered. She could check the statements tonight, ask Nick about it. Renard had alleged Pam was afraid of Donnie, was afraid to see another man socially because of what Donnie might do. Donnie had threatened a custody fight, as though he had grounds for challenging Pam's rights. But it wasn't as if Pam had been seeing Stokes in a social way.

Was it?

"Stupid," Lindsay Faulkner had said. "It wasn't anything."

But Donnie had thought otherwise. Had he heard what he wanted to hear, interpreted the situation to suit-or to rouse-his temper? Annie had seen a hundred examples in domestic abuse cases-the imagined slights, the phantom lovers, the contrived grounds for anger. Excuses to lash out, to hurt, to belittle, to punish.

No one had ever accused Donnie of abuse, but that didn't mean his mind didn't bend the same way. Pam had bruised his ego openly, publicly, kicking him out of their house, filing for divorce, trying to separate the companies. An imagined affair with Stokes might have pushed him over the edge.

He had said something derogatory about Stokes when she'd spoken with him Saturday, hadn't he? Something about Stokes being lazy. The remark had seemed almost racist, an attitude that would have yanked Stokes's chain, and rightly so. He would have been on Donnie like a pit bull. But Marcus Renard was the suspect Stokes had in his crosshairs.

She was giving herself an unnecessary headache. Nick was probably right. If she didn't keep the individual strands separate, she would end up with a knot-around her own neck. She had Renard on the hook, just the way Fourcade had predicted. If she kept her focus, she could reel him in. She decided she would swing by the hospital again at lunch and see if Lindsay could identify the scarf Renard had sent Pam.

"There is no time for dawdling, Deputy Broussard!" Myron pronounced, marching to his post with all the starch of a palace guard. "We have our orders for the morning. Detective Stokes needs the arrest records for every man accused of a violent sexual crime in this parish dating back ten years. I will call up the list on the computer, you will then pull the files. I will log them out, you will deliver them to the task force in the detectives' building."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Myron," Annie said with a plastic smile, sliding the fax from the DMV under her blotter.

They worked quickly, but interruptions of usual records division business dragged the task out-calls from the courthouse, calls from insurance companies, filling out the intake form on a newly arrested burglar, checking in evidence against the same burglar, checking out evidence for the trial of a suspected drug dealer.

All of it was tedious and Annie resented it mightily. She wanted to be the one receiving the files instead of the one digging for them through decades of filed-away crap. She wanted to be on the task force instead of in the paper trenches. Even working with Stokes would have been preferable to working with Myron the Monstrous.

Lunch was ten minutes with a Snickers bar and a telephone pressed to her ear, checking the local garages for any big sedans with passenger-side damage. She found none. Her adversary either had stashed the car or had taken it out of the parish for repairs. She checked the log sheet for recently stolen vehicles and found nothing to match. Expanding the parameters of her search, she started in on the list of garages in St. Martin Parish.

"Hey, Broussard," Mullen barked, leaning over the counter. "Knock off the hen party and do your job, why don't you."

Annie glared at him as she thanked another mechanic for nothing and hung up the phone.

"This task force is priority one," Mullen said, puffing his bony chest out.

"Yeah? Well, how'd you get on it? You got pictures of the sheriff naked with a goat?"

He smirked, much too pleased with himself. "I guess on account of my work on the Nolan rape."

"Your work," Annie said with disdain. "I caught that call."

"Yeah, well, you win some, you lose some."

"You know, Mullen," she muttered, "I'd tell you to eat shit and die, but by the smell of your breath I guess it's already a staple of your diet."

She expected him to snap at the bait, but he leaned back from her instead. "Look, can I get the rest of those files now? As for our little feud, let's just let that go. No hard feelings."

"No hard feelings?" Annie repeated. She leaned toward him, holding her voice low and taut. "You terrorize me, threaten me, cost me a small fortune in damages, cost me my patrol. I'm standing back here playing a glorified goddamn secretary while you're making hay on a case that should have been mine, and you say no hard feelings?

"You son of a bitch. Hard feelings are the only kind I've got right now. You'd better believe I find so much as a paint chip connecting you to that Cadillac or whatever the hell it was you tried to kill me with last night, I'll have your badge and your bony ass."

"Cadillac?" Mullen looked confused. "I don't know what you're talking about, Broussard. I don't know nothing about no Cadillac!"

"Yeah, right."

"I didn't do nothing to you!"

"Oh, save the act," Annie sneered. "Take your files and get out of here."

She gave the folders a shove and sent them over the edge of the counter, raining arrest reports all over the floor.

"Goddammit!" Mullen yelled, drawing Hooker out of his office.

"Jesus H., Mullen!" he shouted. "You got a nerve condition or something? You got something wrong with your motor skills?"

"No, sir," he said tightly, glaring at Annie. "It was an accident."

"South Lou'siana is traditionally a place of folk justice," Smith Pritchett preached, strolling along the credenza in his office, his hands planted at his thick waist. "The Cajuns had their own code here before organized law enforcement and judicial agencies provided a mitigating influence. The common mind here still makes a distinction between the law and justice. I am well aware that a great many people in this parish feel that Detective Fourcade's attack on Marcus Renard was an acceptable way to cure a particular social problem. However, they would be mistaken."

Annie watched him with barely disguised impatience. This was likely the rough draft of his opening statement for Fourcade's trial, which would be weeks or months away if he was bound over. She sat in Pritchett's visitor's chair. A.J. stood across the room, arms crossed, back against the bookcase, ignoring the empty chair four feet away from her. His expression was closed tight. He hadn't spoken a word in the ten minutes she'd been here.

"People can't be allowed to take the law into their own hands," Pritchett continued. "We'd end up with chaos, anarchy, lawlessness."

The progression and conclusion pleased him enough that he paused to jot them down on a pad on his desk.

"The system is in place to mark boundaries, to draw a firm line and hold the people to it," he said. "There is no room for exceptions. You believe that, Deputy Broussard, or you would never have gone into law enforcement-isn't that right?"

"Yes, sir. I believe that's been established, and I've already given my statement to-"

"Yes, you have, and I have a copy right here." He tapped his pen against a file folder. "But I feel it's important for us to get to know each other, Annie. May I call you Annie?"

"Look, I have a job-"

"I understand you've been having some difficulties with other members of the department," he said with fatherly concern as he perched a hip on a corner of his desk.

Annie shot a glance at A.J. "Nothing I can't handle-"

"Is someone trying to coerce you? Dissuade you from testifying against Detective Fourcade?"

"Not in so many wor-"

"While a certain reticence on your part would be understandable here, Annie, I want to impress upon you the necessity and the importance of your testimony in this matter."

"Yes, sir. I'm aware of that, sir. I-"

"Has Detective Fourcade himself approached you?"

"Detective Fourcade has made no attempt to keep me from testifying. I-"

"And Sheriff Noblier? Has he instructed you in any way?"

"I don't know what you mean," Annie said, holding herself stiff against the urge to squirm.

"He's been less than cooperative in this matter. Which is a sad commentary on the effects of his tenure in office, I'm afraid. Gus thinks this parish is his little kingdom and he can make up the rules to suit himself, but that isn't so. The law is the law and it applies to everyone-detectives, sheriff's, deputies."

"Yes, sir."

He stepped around behind the desk and slid into his leather chair. Slipping on a pair of steel-rimmed reading glasses, he pulled her statement from the folder and glanced over it.

"Now, Annie, you were off duty that night, but A.J. tells me your personal vehicle is equipped with a police scanner and a radio, is that correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"He tells me the two of you had a pleasant dinner at Isabeau's that evening." He glanced up at her with another indulgent, fatherly smile. "A very romantic setting. My wife's personal favorite."

Annie said nothing. She thought she could feel A.J.'s stare burning into her. While it seemed he had told Pritchett everything else about their relationship, he hadn't told him it was over. Pritchett was trying to use it as leverage to shift her loyalties. Slimy lawyer.

"Where'd you go after dinner, Annie?"

She had managed to avoid this part of the story so far. It wasn't relevant to the incident-except that Fourcade had taken a phone call and then left the bar, which might have suggested premeditation to say nothing of collusion with someone. But no one else had been beating on Renard, and Fourcade couldn't be compelled to reveal the source or the content of the call, so what was the use of talking about it?

On the other hand, there were witnesses who could place her at Laveau's.

"I saw Detective Fourcade's truck across the street at Laveau's. I went to have a few words with him about what had happened at the courthouse."

Pritchett looked at A.J., clearly unhappy at being taken by surprise.

"Why wasn't this in your statement, Deputy?"

"Because it preceded the incident and had no bearing on it."

"What condition was Fourcade in?"

"He'd been drinking."

"Was he aggressive, angry, antagonistic?"

"No, sir, he was… unhappy, morose, philosophical."

"Did he speak about Renard? Threaten him?"

"No. He talked about justice and injustice." And shadows and ghosts.

"Did he give any indication he was going to seek Renard out?"

"No."

Pritchett pulled his glasses off and nibbled thoughtfully on an earpiece. "What happened next?"

"We went our separate ways. I decided to stop at the Quik Pik for a few things. The rest is in my report and in the statement I gave Chief Earl."

"Did you at any time pick up a call on your scanner regarding a suspected prowler in the vicinity of Bowen and Briggs?"

"No, sir, but I was out of the vehicle for several minutes, and then I had the regular radio on for a while and the scanner turned down. I was off duty, it was late."

Silence hung like dust motes in the air. Annie picked at a broken cuticle and waited. Pritchett's chair squeaked as he rose.

"Do you believe there was a call, Deputy?"

If he asked her this question in court, Fourcade's attorney would object before the whole sentence was out of his mouth. Calls for speculation. But they weren't in court. The only person in the room who objected was Annie.

"I didn't hear the call," she said. "Other people did."

"Other people say they did," he corrected her. His voice rose with every syllable. He bent over and planted his hands on the arms of Annie's chair, his face inches from hers. "Because Gus Noblier told them to say that they did. Because they want to protect a man who blew a major case, then took it upon himself to execute the suspect he couldn't out-smart!

"There was no call," he said softly, pushing himself back. He sat against the desk again, his eyes on her every second. "Did you arrest Fourcade that night and take him into custody?"

What difference did it make when the arrest had been made? What would it change? Fourcade was up on charges. Pritchett was simply looking for ammunition to use against Noblier, and Annie wanted no part of that feud.

She called up the words the sheriff himself had put in her mouth. "I stumbled across a situation I didn't understand. I contained it. We went to the station to sort it out."

"Why does Richard Kudrow claim he saw an arrest report that subsequently went missing?"

"Because he's a stinking weasel lawyer and he loves nothing better than to stir the pot." She looked Pritchett in the eye. "Why would you believe him? He lives to tie you up in knots in the courtroom. You can bet he's loving this- you and Noblier at each other's throats with cops in the middle."

A small measure of satisfaction warmed her as she watched her strategy work. Pritchett pressed his lips together and moved away from the desk. The last thing he would want in the world would be having Richard Kudrow play him for a fool.

"How well do you know Nick Fourcade, Annie?" he asked, the driving force gone from his voice.

She thought of the night spent in Nick's arms, their bodies locked together. "Not very."

"He doesn't deserve your loyalty. And he sure as hell doesn't deserve a badge. You're a good officer, Annie. I've seen your record. And you did a good thing that night. I'm gonna trust you to do the right thing when you get up on the witness stand next week."

"Yes, sir," she murmured.

He checked his Rolex and turned to A.J. "I'm needed elsewhere. A.J., would you show Annie out?"

"Of course."

She started to get up, intending to leave on Pritchett's heels, but the door shut too quickly after him.

"He's late for his tee time," A.J. said, not moving from the bookcase. "Why are you lying to us, Annie?"

She flinched as if he'd spat the words in her face. "I'm not-"

"Don't insult me," he snapped. "On top of everything else, don't insult me. I know you, Annie. I know everything about you. Everything. That scares you, doesn't it? That's why you're pushing me away."

"I don't think this is the time or place for this conversation," she muttered.

"You don't want anyone getting that deep in your soul, do you? 'Cause what if I leave or die like your mother-"

"Stop it!" Annie ordered, furious that he would use the most painful memories of her childhood against her.

"That hurts a hell of a lot more than losing someone who isn't a part of you," he pressed on. "Better to keep everyone at arm's length."

"I want more than an arm's length away from you right now, A.J.," Annie said tightly. She felt as if he had reached out unexpectedly and sliced her with a straight razor, cutting through flesh and bone.

"Why didn't you tell me you saw Fourcade earlier that night?" he asked.

"What difference does it make?"

"What difference does it make? I'm supposed to be your best friend! We had a date that night. You dumped me and went to see Fourcade-"

"That was not a date," she argued. "We had dinner. Period. You're my friend, not my lover. I don't have to clear my every move with you!"

"You don't get it, do you?" he said, incredulous. "This is about trust-"

"Whose trust?" she demanded. "You're giving me the goddamn third degree! One minute you claim to be my best friend and the next you're wondering why I didn't give you something you can use in court. You tell me we can separate who we are from what we do, but only when it's convenient for you. I've had it, A.J. I don't need this bullshit and I sure as hell don't need you taking potshots at my psyche!"

"Annie-"

He reached for her arm as she started for the door and she jerked away from him. The secretaries in the outer office watched with owl eyes as she stormed past.

The outer hall was dark and cool. Voices floated down from the third floor. The last of the day's court skirmishes had been fought, and the last of the warriors lingered in the hall, swapping stories and making deals. Annie headed for a side exit, letting herself out into sunshine that hurt her eyes. She fumbled with her sunglasses, then nearly ran into a man standing at the edge of the sidewalk.

"Deputy Broussard. This is serendipitous, I must say."

Annie groaned aloud. Kudrow. He stood leaning against a Times-Picayune vending machine, his trench coat belted tightly around him despite the unseasonable heat and choking humidity of the afternoon. His posture suggested pain rather than laziness. His emaciated face was the color of a mushroom and glossed with perspiration. He looked as if he might die on the spot, draped over a headline heralding the approach of Mardi Gras.

"Are you all right?" Annie asked, torn between concern for him as a human and dislike of him as a person.

Kudrow tried to smile as he straightened. "No, my dear, I am dying, but I won't be doing it here if that's what concerns you. I'm not quite ready to go just yet. There are still injustices to be corrected. You know all about that, don't you?"

"I'm not in the mood for your word games, lawyer. If you have something to say to me, then say it. I've got better things to do."

"Like searching for Marcus's alibi witness? Marcus has told me you've taken an interest in his plight. How fascinating. This falls outside the scope of your duties, doesn't it?"

How much damage could he do with that knowledge? Sweat pooled between her shoulder blades and trickled down the valley of her spine. "I'm looking into a couple of things out of curiosity, that's all."

"A thirst for the truth. Too bad no one else in your department seems to share that quality. There's no evidence anyone is so much as looking into last night's shooting incident at the Renard home."

"Maybe there's nothing to find."

"Two people have openly tried to do Marcus harm in a week's time. Numerous others have threatened him. The list of suspects could read like the phone book, yet to my knowledge no one has been questioned."

"The detectives are very busy these days, Mr. Kudrow."

"They'll have another homicide on their hands if they let this go," he warned. "This community is wound tighter than a watch spring. I can feel the air thickening with anger, with fear, with hate. That kind of pressure can only be contained to a point, then it explodes."

A tight, rattling cough shook him and he leaned against the vending machine again, his energy spent, his eyes growing dull; an ill spectre of doom.

Annie walked away from him knowing he was right, feeling that same heaviness in the air, the same sense of anticipation. Even in the sunshine everything looked rimmed in black, like in a bad dream. Down the side street she could see city workers hanging pretty spring flags on the light poles, sprucing up the town for the Mardi Gras Carnival, but the sidewalks seemed strangely empty. There was no one in the park south of the law enforcement center.

Three women had been attacked in a span of a week. Cops were acting like criminals, and a suspected murderer had gone free. People were terrified.

Annie thought back to the summer the Bayou Strangler had hunted here, and remembered having the same uneasy feeling, the same irrational fear, the same sense of helplessness. But this time she was a cop, and all the other emotions were being compressed by the weight of responsibility.

Someone had to make it stop.

Myron welcomed her back to the records office with a pointed stare he directed from Annie to the clock.

"This gentleman from Allied Insurance needs a number of accident reports," he said, nodding to a round mound of sweating flesh in rumpled seersucker on the opposite side of the counter. "You will get him whatever he needs."

On that order he took up his Wall Street Journal and marched off to the men's room.

"That's the best dang thing I've heard all day!" the insurance man chortled. He stuck out a hand that looked like a small balloon animal. "Tom O'Connor. Easy to remember," he said with a smarmy wink. "Tomcat O'round the Corner. Get it?"

Annie passed on the handshake. "I get it. What reports did you need?"

He pulled a crumpled list from his coat pocket and handed it to her. "Hey, aren't you cute in that uniform! You look like a little lady deputy."

"I am a deputy."

His eyes popped and he let loose another volley of chuckles. "Well, shoot me dead!"

"Don't tempt me," Annie said. "I'm armed and it's been a very bad day."

She looked up to heaven as she took the list to the file cabinets. "Purgatory is a clerical department, isn't it?"

As she sent Tom O'Connor on his way with his reports, the fax machine rang and kicked on. Annie watched the cover sheet roll out, her interest piquing at the letterhead- the regional crime lab in New Iberia. The transmission was addressed to Det. Stokes, but the fax number was for records instead of for the detectives' machine-one digit off.

She watched the sheets roll into the tray, plucking them up one at a time. Preliminary lab results on the meager physical evidence collected at Lindsay Faulkner's crime scene and from Lindsay Faulkner's person. Negative. Nothing from the rape kit-no semen, no hair, no skin from under her nails, though they knew she'd put up a fight. Blood samples from the carpet runner appeared to be hers. Same type, at least. More sophisticated tests for DNA would take weeks.

Just as Stokes had predicted, they had nothing, just as they had nothing from the Jennifer Nolan rape or the Kay Eisner rape. Lack of evidence was the one thing tying the cases together. And the black feather mask-if the fragment Annie had picked off Faulkner's rug matched the one she'd found at Nolan's trailer park. Nolan and Eisner had both seen their assailant, had both seen the mask. So far, Lindsay Faulkner remembered nothing. If that situation didn't improve, then the feather from the mask could be the only link to the other attacks.

She looked back through the transmission for mention of the feather, finding none. There should have been a note, at least.

Annie glanced at the clock. Myron would be another five minutes in men's room seclusion. The world's official timekeepers could have set their watches by Myron's bowels. She dialed the number for the lab from her desk and connected with the person she needed, rattling off the case number and what she was after.

She waited, scanning through the fax pages, frustrated by the lack of evidence. They had to be dealing with a pro, someone savvy enough and cold enough to force the women to wash away all trace evidence or, in the case of Lindsay Faulkner, to wash it away himself. He knew everything they would look for, down to pubic hairs and skin under the fingernails.

She wondered if the task force had gleaned anything from the old files, wondered if Stokes had heard back from the state pen, wondered if the NCIC or VICAP computers would come up with anything. She wished she was the person who would be finding out instead of the person waiting on sweaty insurance guys in the records department.

"Excuse me?" the woman's voice came back on the line. "You said a black feather, didn't you?"

"Yes. There was one with the Nolan case, and what might have been a fragment of a black feather with the Faulkner case."

"Not here, there isn't."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I'm looking right at the inventories and I don't see any feathers. They were never logged in here. Sorry."

Annie thanked the woman and hung up.

"No feathers," she murmured as Myron marched back into the office.

"Deputy Broussard, what are you mumbling about?" he demanded.

Paying no attention to him, Annie went to the drawer at the counter and pulled the evidence card for the Faulkner case. She ran her finger down the inventory of items. The black feather-like fiber was listed fourth. The last name on the chain of custody list was Det. Chs. Stokes, who had signed out the entire list of items for the purpose of turning them over to the lab for examination.

She pulled the card for Nolan and ran her finger down the lines. The feather had been listed. The evidence had been checked out to Stokes for the purpose of turning it over to the lab. But the lab had no record of any feathers being checked in.

"What are you doing?" Myron asked, snatching the card from her fingers and squinting at it.

Annie grabbed the fax sheets from her desk and started for the door.

"Where do you think you're going?" the clerk demanded.

"To see Detective Stokes. He's got some explaining to do."