A Thin Dark Line

34

The detectives had their own building across the alley from the main facility. Known affectionately as the Pizza Hut for the volume of pepperoni with extra cheese pies delivered there on a regular basis, it was a low, snot green cinder-block job that had once been office space for a road construction outfit. The sheriff's office had bought the property, converted the parking yard for the heavy equipment into an impound lot, and given the building to a detective division that had outgrown its allotted space in the aging law enforcement center.

Annie buzzed the door and was let in by the detective named Perez, his name spelled out in Magic Marker across the front of the Kevlar vest he wore over a T-shirt. His dark hair was scraped back into a short rattail. The mustache that covered his upper lip was bushy enough to hide small rodents. He gave Annie a sour once-over.

"I need to see Stokes."

"You got a warrant?"

"Screw you, Perez."

As she walked past him, he cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted, "Hey, Chaz, you got the right to remain silent!"

The building was as cold as a walk-in freezer. Two window air conditioners groaned at the effort to maintain the temperature while electric fans blew the chilled air around the single front room. The room that had been given over to the rape task force was at the back. It had probably been the construction foreman's office at one time. A twelve-by-twelve cube paneled in cheap wood grain. Someone had started a soda can pyramid on the ledge of the barred window. The files Annie and Myron had gathered were strewn in haphazard piles over the long table that was the room's main piece of furniture. The hard-driving Cajun-spiced rock of Sonny Landreth's "Shootin" for the Moon" was wailing out of a boom box on top of a corner file cabinet.

Mullen was on the phone. Stokes pranced behind the table, playing air guitar and mouthing lyrics, his crumpled porkpie hat tipped back on his head.

Annie rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, the women of this parish will sleep better knowing you're on the job, Stokes."

He swung toward her. "Broussard, you are a boil on the butt of my day. You know what I'm saying?"

"Like I care." She held the faxes up. "Your preliminary lab results on Faulkner. Where's the feather?"

He snatched the papers away from her and scanned them, frowning.

"Don't bother to pretend you're looking for it in there," Annie said. "The lab says they've never seen it or the one from the Nolan scene. I want to know why."

Mullen still had the phone receiver pressed to his head, but his eyes were on them.

"Man, I need this like I need root canal," Stokes muttered, turning for the back door.

Annie followed him out. The area behind the building was a wasteland of crushed shell, rock, and weeds with a view of the abandoned junkers in the impound lot.

"What'd you do with them, Chaz?" she demanded.

"I told you to keep your nose out of my cases," he snapped, thrusting a finger at her.

"So you can feel free to fuck up with impunity?"

"Shut up!" he shouted, charging her. "Shut the fuck up!"

Annie backpedaled into the side of the building.

"I'm just about half past sick of your shit, Broussard," he snarled, his face inches from hers. His pale eyes were neon-bright with temper. The tendons in his neck stood out like iron rods. "I know what I'm doing. How do you think I got this job? You think I got this job 'cause I'm browner than you? You think I skated in on my color?"

Annie glared right back at him. "No. I think you got it because you're a man and you're full of bullshit. You talk a big game, and when somebody calls you on it, then they're suddenly a racist. I've had it up to my back teeth with that game. I don't hear Quinlan calling anybody a racist. I don't hear Ossie Compton calling anybody a racist. I don't hear anybody but you, and what you got is barely a suntan."

She ducked under the arm he had braced against the building, and backed away from him. "You're a jerk. You'd be a jerk if you were snow white. You'd be a jerk if you looked like Mel Gibson. End of topic. I want to know what you did with the evidence I collected. You can tell me or we can take it to the sheriff."

Stokes paced, trying to school his temper or weigh his options or both. "Don't you threaten me, Broussard," he muttered. "You're nothing but a little prick-teaser troublemaker."

"Gus is still in his office," Annie bluffed. "I could have gone straight to him, you know."

And run the risk of not only looking like a fool but renewing every hard feeling the men held toward her. Stokes would say the same thing to Gus he'd just said to her. He'd call her a troublemaker, and there wasn't a soul in the department who wouldn't believe him on some level.

"You dumped evidence," she prodded, not wanting to give him time to think. "What possible excuse do you have for that?"

"I didn't dump nothing," he growled. "The feathers went to the state lab."

"Where's the receipt?"

"Fuck you! I don't have to answer to you, Broussard! Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"Maybe I'm the only person paying attention," Annie shot back. "Why would you send everything to New Iberia except the feathers?"

"Because I know a guy in the state lab and he owes me a favor. That's why. They got some brainiac fibers expert can look at a feather and tell if it came off a duck's ass in Outer Mongolia. So I sent him the goddamn feathers and the mask from the Bichon homicide. For all the good that'll do us.

"Those damn masks are a dime a dozen. What are we gonna do? Track down every manufacturer in Bumfuck, Thailand, and ask them what? Go to every five-and-dime and cheap-shit souvenir shop in South Lou'siana and ask them if they sold any masks to rapists? A hundred goddamn miles of legwork that'll get us jack shit."

"Unless the feathers match up," Annie said. "Then you might be able to tie the first two rapes to Faulkner, at least. Even just by a thread would be more than you've got now. Faulkner doesn't remember anything about the attack. She may never."

She knew instantly she'd made a mistake. Stokes's posture tightened, his gaze turned cold and hard.

"How do you know that?" he asked quietly.

Oh, shit. Annie jumped in with both feet. "I went to see her this morning."

"Fuck-in' A!" Stokes shouted in disbelief. Then his voice dropped to a near whisper, and yet it skated sharply across Annie's nerves. "You just do not listen, do you, bitch?

"This is my case," he said, thumping a fist to his chest. "I will make it. I don't have to answer to you. I find out you called the state lab to check my story, I'll haul your ass into Noblier's office-and if you think he isn't ready to cut you loose, you better think again, Broussard. You'll be working security at a gator farm by the time I'm through with you.

"Faulkner is my vic, my witness. You stay the hell away from her. You stay the hell away from my cases," he warned, poking her sternum with a forefinger. "You stay the hell away from me."

He went back into the building, the barred storm door hissing shut behind him. Mullen stared out the window at her. A moment later, a car's engine roared to life on the other side of the building and tires squealed on pavement. She caught a glimpse of Stokes's black Camaro as it shot past toward the bayou.

What now? Annie couldn't imagine Stokes being so diligent as to send the feathers to a specialist, but if she called the state lab to check, he'd have her ass on a platter. If he had in fact taken the feathers to Shreveport, he would have kept the receipt with the case file, and the case file was in his possession. And if he hadn't sent the feathers to the state lab?

He admitted he didn't want to do the legwork, didn't want to chase down the source of the feathers. The chance of getting anything useful out of it was too big a long shot. He didn't want the feathers to match up with the mask from the Bichon homicide because that might mean someone other than Marcus Renard killed Pam Bichon. He didn't want the work. He didn't want the headache. He didn't want to be proved wrong.

A wanderer on the path of least resistance, that was Stokes. His problem had absolutely nothing to do with his color or anyone's perception of his color. It had to do with his own perception of the world and his priorities regarding it. He would rather have spent his time playing air guitar than seeing through the tedious business of tracking down a long-shot lead. He would rather have spent his time flirting with Pam Bichon than doing the grunt work that could have proved her stalking case. He hadn't perceived her to be in danger, so why follow up on anything?

Annie wondered what else he might have screwed up- on this case and on Pam's case. What might he have overlooked when Pam was being stalked? Something that could have been used against Renard when Pam filed for the restraining order? How differed might things have turned out if someone else had caught Pam's case in the beginning-Quinlan or Perez or Nick?

Now Stokes had charge of a task force that could affect the lives of any number of women. They were up against a criminal who knew the system, knew procedure, had left them virtually nothing at the scenes of three rapes. Only a pro would know what they needed-

Or a cop.

The idea swept a chill over her. Fear scratched at the back of her neck, and she turned her eyes on the Pizza Hut.

A cop would know exactly what went into building a rape case.

Stokes a rapist? It was crazy. He had more women than he could keep track of. But then, rape wasn't about sex. Plenty of rapists had wives or girlfriends. Rape was about anger and power. She thought of the way Stokes had looked as he charged her moments ago; the fury in his eyes. She thought of the way he had looked months ago when she had argued with him in the parking lot at the Voodoo Lounge, the hot blue flame of hate that had flared at her rejection of him.

But it was a long jump from anger to aggression to rape. It made more sense that Stokes was lazy than a sexual predator. It made more sense that their rapist was a career criminal than a career cop.

Still…

Stokes had control of all the evidence in three rapes that shared traits with Pam Bichon's homicide.

Stokes had investigated Pam's stalking complaints.

Donnie Bichon had been jealous of Pam's relationship with the detective. So said Lindsay Faulkner, who had met with Stokes over lunch on Monday and had her head bashed in that same night.

Donnie had been jealous of Stokes.

"Stupid… It was nothing," Faulkner had said.

Annie wondered who might have broken that news to Stokes.

She finished her shift in clerical hell, changed clothes in her makeshift locker room, and went in search of estimates for the damage to the Heap, one eye peeled for a Cadillac with matching dents. The last of the three garages sat across the street from Po' Richard's sandwich shop.

Stomach growling, she contemplated supper. Going home this early would almost certainly mean a confrontation with Uncle Sos. She had avoided him and his questions this morning, but she wouldn't be that lucky again. He would want to know why A.J. had come and gone so quickly this morning. Going to Fourcade's place would mean what? Would they sit down and talk about what was going on between them or would they just end up in his bed, solving nothing, complicating everything?

She pulled up to the drive-through window and ordered a fried shrimp po'boy basket and a Pepsi. The kid at the window didn't recognize her. He didn't look like the type to watch the news. Shunning the picnic tables that sat out in front of the restaurant and the half-dozen people taking their suppers there, she drove down the block and parked in front of a vacant lot strewn with beer cans and broken glass. As she munched her dinner she stared out her broken window across the street to Bichon Bayou Development.

The office had been closed nearly two hours, but Donnie's Lex's sat alongside the building and a light shone in two of the windows. Why had Donnie been jealous of the time Pam spent with Stokes? Had he expected Pam to turn to him instead of to the cops during the stalking? Had that been his plan-to stalk Pam himself, frighten her anonymously, get her to turn to him, and win her back? It seemed like the kind of juvenile grand plan that would appeal to Donnie's arrested adolescent ego. And when the plan failed, he would have wanted to blame someone other than himself -Stokes, or Pam herself.

Annie picked the last shrimp from the cardboard tray and chewed it slowly, thinking of Lindsay. Faulkner disliked Donnie. Hate may not have been too strong a word. She may have come up with her latest revelation simply to make trouble for him. According to the receptionist at the realty, Donnie and Lindsay had argued Monday morning. Lindsay may have thought defaming Donnie would scare off his prospective buyer for the realty. And how would Donnie have reacted to that plan?

If he was capable of terrorizing the mother of his child, if he was capable of killing her, then what would stop him from beating Lindsay Faulkner's head in with a telephone?

She let herself out of the Jeep, crossed the street, and walked through the open side gate to Bichon Bayou Development. She chose a side door, near the window with the light shining through, rang the bell twice, and waited. A moment later Donnie pulled the door open and stared at her, a vague sheen glossing his eyes.

"Well, if it isn't the chick filler in my cop sandwich," he drawled. He had shed his tie and left his shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled up. The scent of whiskey hung on him like a faint cologne. "I've got Fourcade on my ass, Stokes in my face, and you… What part of me do you want, Ms. Broussard?"

"How much have you had to drink, Mr. Bichon?"

"Why? Is there now some law against a man drowning his sorrows in the privacy of his own office?"

"No, sir," Annie said. "I'm just wondering if this conversation will be worth my while, that's all."

He raked a hand through his brown hair, mussing it, and propped a shoulder on the door frame. The smile he flashed her seemed thin and forced. He looked tired, physically, spiritually. Sad, Annie decided, though she was careful not to let the assessment taint her feelings toward him. Donnie was the type of man a lot of women would want to mother -the perpetual boy in a man's body, full of charm and mischief and confusion and potential. Had it been that boyish quality that had attracted Pam? Lindsay Faulkner had said Pam had always seen the potential in Donnie, but had never imagined he wouldn't live up to it.

"Are you always so straightforward, Detective?" he asked. "Whatever happened to those coy games women learned while under their mothers' white-gloved tutelage?"

"It's Deputy," Annie corrected. "My mother died when I was nine."

Donnie winced. "God. I can't manage to do much of anything right these days. I'm sorry," he said with genuine contrition. He stepped back from the door and motioned her in. "I'm not so drunk to have lost all my manners or sense, though some would say I never had much of the latter to begin with. Come in. Have a seat. I just ordered a pizza."

A gooseneck lamp was the only light on in his office, glowing gold on the polished oak desk and giving the place an intimate feel. A bottle of Glenlivet single malt scotch sat on the blotter beside a coffee mug that declared Donnie to be #1 DAD.

"Have you seen Josie this week?" Annie asked as she walked slowly around the office, taking in the wildlife art on the walls, the framed aerial photos of the Quail Run subdivision. A photo of Josie smiling like a pixie sat on the desk near the mug.

Donnie dropped into his chair. "Hell, no. Every night's a school night. On the weekend Belle runs off with her. Let me tell you, the only thing worse than having an ex-wife is having an ex-mother-in-law. She lies when I call-tells me Josie's in the bathtub, she's gone to bed, she's doing homework." He poured two fingers of scotch into the mug and drank half. "I admit, I have dark thoughts about Belle Davidson."

"Careful who you say that to, Mr. Bichon."

"That's right. Anything I say can and will be used against me. Well, I'm past caring at the moment. I miss my little girl."

He sipped at the scotch, stroked his fingertips over the printing on the mug. There was an air of surprise about him, as if he had never expected to face any difficulty in his life and what he was going through now was a rude and unwelcome shock. Things had come too easily for him, Annie suspected. He was handsome. He was popular. He was an athlete. He expected love and adoration, instant forgiveness, no accountability. In many ways, he was as much a child as his daughter.

"Please have a seat so I can focus my eyes, Deputy. And please call me Donnie. I'm depressed enough without having to think attractive women feel compelled to call me 'sir.' " He flashed the weary smile again.

Annie took a seat in the burgundy wing chair across the desk from him. He wanted to be friends, to pretend she was here for him instead of as a cop-the way Renard kept trying to do. But she felt less anxious about it with Donnie, which could prove to be a costly mistake, she reminded herself. He had as much reason to kill Pam as Renard. More. But he was handsome, and popular, and charming, and no one wanted to think he was guilty of anything other than cheating on his wife.

If she was going to play detective, it was her role to draw him out from behind his public facade. Get him to relax, get him to talk, see what he might reveal. She could once again play off the adversarial positions Stokes and Fourcade had taken with him. She could be his friend.

"Okay, Donnie," she said. "What's depressing you?"

"What isn't? I'm separated from my child. I'm being stalked by a psychopathic cop who I bailed out of jail. Now I've got Stokes coming in here asking me did I bash in Lindsay Faulkner's head-like I even thought anything could put a dent in it. Business is…" He let the statement trail off on a heavy sigh. "And Pam…"

Tears filled his eyes and he looked away. "This isn't what I wanted," he whispered.

"It's not working out for the best for anyone," Annie said. "I saw Lindsay this morning. She's in pretty rough shape."

"But that's got nothing to do with Pam," he declared. "It was that rapist."

Annie didn't comment. In the brief silence she watched his expression of certainty slip. "I suppose you heard about someone taking a shot at Renard last night."

"It's the talk of the town," Donnie said. "I believe if he'd been killed, the Rotarians would have made the shooter grand marshal of the Mardi Gras parade. People are sick of waiting around for justice to be done."

"Are you one of those people?"

"Hell, yes. Did I pull the trigger? Hell, no, and for once I've got half a dozen witnesses to back me up. I was here last night, working on the parade float."

"And the crew is off tonight?"

"It's finished. I'm celebrating." He lifted the bottle and raised his eyebrows. "Want to help me?"

"No thanks."

"That's the second time you've turned me down. If you're not careful, I'll get the feeling you don't like me."

"And then what?"

He shrugged and grinned. "I'll have to try harder. I dislike rejection."

"What about competition? Lindsay told me you were jealous of Detective Stokes spending time with Pam."

The grin flattened. He poured a little more scotch and took the mug with him as he unfolded his lanky body from the chair. "The guy's a jerk, that's all. He was supposed to be investigating. All he really wanted was to get in her pants."

"Do you think he ever succeeded?"

"Pam didn't sleep around."

"And how would it be any of your business if she had?"

"She was still my wife," he said, his expression tightening with suppressed anger.

"On paper."

"It wasn't over."

"Pam said it was."

"She was wrong," he insisted. "I loved her. I screwed up. I know I screwed up, but I loved her. We would have worked things out."

His determination amazed and unnerved Annie. "Donnie, she had filed the papers."

"She still had my name. She still wore my ring, for Christ's sake." Tears welled in his eyes again and his hand trembled a little. "And she's out with that-"

He wasn't drunk enough to finish the sentence. He shook his head at the temptation, turned away from it.

"What do you mean-out with him?" Annie prodded. "You mean like on dates?"

"Lunch to discuss this aspect of the case. Dinner to go over that aspect of the case. I saw the way he looked at her. I know what he wanted. He didn't give a shit about the case. He didn't do anything to stop what was happening."

"How do you know that?"

He blinked at her. "Because I-I know. I was there."

"Where?" Annie pressed, rising and stepping toward him, her instincts at attention. "Did you follow him around? Did you talk to the sheriff? How would you know what he did or didn't do, Donnie?"

Unless you were involved.

He didn't answer for a moment, didn't look at her. "You ask him," he said at last. "You ask him what he was doing. Ask him what he wanted. I can't believe he hasn't wanted the same thing from you." His gaze moved over her face. "Then again, maybe he has. Maybe you go for his type. What do I know?"

"His type?"

Sipping at his scotch, he moved away.

"Did you ever confront him about his interest in Pam?" Annie asked.

"He said if I had a problem with him, I should take it to the sheriff, but that I'd look like a jackass 'cause Pam sure as hell wasn't complaining."

"How did that make you feel toward Pam?"

He didn't answer. He picked a small framed photograph off a shelf in the bookcase and looked at it as if he hadn't seen it in a very long time. A photograph of himself with Pam and Josie at about five. His family, intact.

"She was so pretty," he whispered.

Setting the frame aside, he turned toward Annie again. "Like you, Detective. Pretty brown eyes." He reached up with a hesitant hand to brush her bangs to the side. "Pretty smile." He touched the corner of her mouth. "Better watch out. I'll want to marry you."

Annie held herself still, wondering how much of this talk was Donnie and how much was the liquor. Then the doorbell buzzed, and whatever had been in Donnie's head vanished.

"Pizza man," he announced, walking out.

She wondered just how stable he was. His logic seemed perilously close to the classic pattern of the obsessive stalker everyone had pegged Renard to be. She wondered how angry he might have been seeing Pam with Stokes. She wondered how a man who reportedly chased every skirt in town could find any moral outrage at his estranged wife having lunch with another man. Even if Stokes had had designs on Pam, Pam had not reciprocated. "It was nothing," Lindsay had said; she had been reluctant even to raise the subject, it seemed so insignificant.

And yet she had raised the subject with Stokes the very day she had quarreled with Donnie… and that same night someone had tried to silence her forever.

The pieces sifted through her mind: Donnie, desperate, losing a wife and a safety net for his business. Donnie, unable to cope with the idea of rejection. Donnie, in financial straits. Donnie, angry, driven to a dangerous limit by his problems and by the sight of his wife enjoying the company of another man-a man whose race might have added to the outrage in Donnie's mind. Pushed to that thin dark line, might he have crossed it in a moment of madness? Killed her in a fit of rage and covered the crime with atrocities no one would ever attribute to him?

The sudden ringing of the telephone broke Annie's concentration. She expected an answering machine to pick up, but none did. Who called a business line at this hour? A client? A girlfriend? A legitimate associate? A not-so-legitimate associate?

She picked up the receiver when the phone stopped ringing. Eyes on the door, she dialed star 69 and waited while the call chased itself back home.

On the fourth ring a man's voice answered. "Marcotte."