A Thin Dark Line

35

"When will you paint that, Marcus? I want no reminders," Doll said with drama. "My nerves are still ragged tonight. They're worse, in fact. It's as if it's all coming back to me because of it being evening. My evenings will never be the same. The joy of my evenings has been robbed from me. I will never again be able to sit at this table and enjoy a cup of coffee after dinner. Certainly not with the wall looking that way. When will you paint it?"

"Tomorrow, Mother."

Marcus scraped the last of the excess wet patching compound from the wall and into the can he had used to mix the concoction. He was no expert at repairing walls, let alone a bullet hole, but then no expert had been willing to do the job. Every call had been the same: They heard his name and hung up.

He had boarded up the broken French door himself. When the replacement glass arrived, he would have to learn about glazing, he supposed. Until then, the heavy drapes would be pulled across the door. Doll had closed every shade and drape in the house to block the view of any potential voyeur or sniper.

"The sheriff's office should have to pay for fixing that hole," Doll said. "It's their fault we have people shooting at us. The way they've railroaded you when you're guilty of nothing but making a fool of yourself over a woman. They're lazy and corrupt, and we'll all end up murdered in our beds because of them."

"They're not all that way, Mother. Annie said she'd do her best to check into what happened last night."

"Annie," she said with disapproval. "Don't delude yourself, Marcus. You think she's some kind of angel. She's no better than the rest."

Tuning out his mother's droning, Marcus knelt to clean up his work area. He imagined what it would be like to move away from here and start fresh without the burden of his family or his reputation. He envisioned a house of his own design, perhaps on the Gulf Coast of Texas or Florida. Something open and bright, with a large deck facing the water.

He thought of coming home after work to cook dinner for Annie. She wasn't the domestic sort. He would take pleasure in teaching her. They would work side by side in the kitchen, and he would show her the proper way to fillet a fish. His hand would close over hers on the knife and guide her. He could almost feel the delicate bones of her hand beneath his, the smooth handle of the knife filling her palm. It would remind them both of the night before, when he had closed her hand around the shaft of his penis. Warmth flooded his groin.

"Marcus, are you listening to me?"

Doll's shrill tone tore through the fabric of his fantasy, ruining it. He briefly imagined surging to his feet with a roar, swinging the can of plaster mix, striking his mother across the face with it, plaster and blood spraying across the wall as she crumpled to the floor. But of course he didn't do that. It was only a moment's madness, there and gone. He wiped his hands on the damp towel and folded it neatly.

"What was that, Mother?"

"Will the paint match?" she asked with exasperation. "I have a premonition that the spot will always stand out. That the color won't match no matter what we do, and every time I look at that wall I'll be taken with the fear."

Marcus rose with the bucket in one hand and toolbox in the other. "I'm sure it will match-so long as we allow the plaster to cure properly before we paint it."

Doll drummed her fingertips against her sternum, frowning sourly. "I wish you would paint it tonight."

"If I paint it tonight, the spot will show." He walked away as she clucked her tongue behind him.

He wanted out of the house, needed air, needed quiet. He wanted to see Annie. He had tried to call her, to thank her again for coming to his rescue, to ask her if she had made any progress on his case, but she wasn't home, which made him wonder what she was doing. As much as he didn't want to, he couldn't help but question if she was with a man tonight.

The thought aroused his jealousy. Men would want her. He did. And she might take a lover, not fully realizing yet what could be between them. He imagined tearing her from the arms of another man, striking her, punishing her, disciplining her for betraying him, taking her sexually with force and dominance. She would realize her mistake then. She would see the truth of his feelings for her. And in seeing that truth she would recognize her own feelings.

Strange, he thought as he washed the plaster residue from his hands, after Elaine had died, he hadn't wanted anyone to take her place for a long time. He hadn't expected to think of another woman after Pam's death. He still grieved for her. He still missed her. But the sharpness of that pain had faded and was being replaced by something else-hunger, need. Pam had ultimately rejected him. She had believed the lies of her husband and Stokes, and failed to see the truth of his devotion to her. He thought less and less of Pam, more and more of Annie, his angel.

He went through his bedroom to his sanctuary and turned on the lights and radio. A Haydn string quartet played softly as he took the portrait from its special place in the small secret storage cupboard hidden behind a panel of wainscoting. The cubbyhole had been there for more than a century. No telling what the original owners of the house had protected in it. Marcus lined the shelves with keepsakes he would share with no one. Treasured mementos of past loves. Things he wanted no one in his family to taint with so much as their mere knowledge of them. He touched several pieces now.

Closing the panel, he moved to his drawing table and arranged things to his satisfaction. The sketch was taking shape nicely. He stared at it for a long time, thinking, imagining. He concentrated first on her eyes with their slightly exotic shape. Then the slim, pert nose. Then the mouth- her incredibly sexy mouth with its full lower lip and quirking corners. He imagined touching her mouth with his, imagined her mouth moving over his naked body. He imagined her hands touching him. The arousal built until he finally went back to the secret cupboard and returned with a pair of women's black silk underpants. He opened his trousers and masturbated with the panties, his eyes on the portrait. He thought of what it would be like to be inside her, to press her body down beneath his and impale his shaft between her legs again and again and again, until she screamed with the ecstasy of it.

When it was over, he washed himself at the utility sink in the corner, rinsed out the panties, and put them away with his other treasures. He watched the clock and waited, too restless to work on the drawing. When the house was quiet and he knew his mother and Victor were likely both asleep, he let his restlessness drive him from the house into the night.

Nick paced his study as Annie recounted the events of the evening to him, culminating with Marcotte's call to Donnie. Things were starting to happen. The screws were turning.

Marcotte was in it now, and Nick couldn't help but wonder if that was his own doing. That Marcotte might never have taken an interest in Bayou Breaux if he hadn't drawn the man's attention to it didn't sit well. The possibility that Marcotte had been involved from the start pleased him even less.

The focus of the investigation was broadening rather than narrowing, suggesting he hadn't done the job right the first time around, and he didn't want to believe that. He had worked too hard to come back from the debacle of New Orleans and the Parmantel case.

"I feel like I'm balancing on the head of a pin, juggling bowling balls," Annie muttered, starting to pace as Nick slowed, as if it were essential for one of them to keep in motion.

"If Marcotte was in contact with Donnie before Pam's murder, then that only adds to Donnie's motive," she said. "He was angry with Pam for leaving him. I think she was probably holding his property hostage in order to get him to drop the custody threat-which Lindsay Faulkner hinted might have been about Pam seeing male clients. I know Donnie was angry over the relationship he imagined between her and Stokes. If it was imagined.

"What do you know about that?" she asked. "Was he talking about her around the office? Did he say anything to you?"

Nick shook his head. "Not that I recall, but I don't listen to that crap, anyway. I don't care who's screwing who unless there's a felony involved. I sure as hell didn't listen to Stokes. He's got a new one every week, at least. I know he was friendly with her. He was quieter after her murder. He might have wanted to be the primary on the case, but he was tied up with the DA the morning you found her. I caught it instead, and Noblier left it that way, even though Stokes had worked the stalking angle. It was a matter of experience. I've worked more murders than the rest of them put together."

"But Stokes never said anything personal about Pam, about the two of them?"

"Not in a sexual way, no. He admitted he wished he had done more for her during the harassment. He didn't take it seriously enough."

"No kidding," Annie said sarcastically. "I've gone over those reports. He gave her pamphlets on domestic violence and told her to call the phone company to see if she couldn't get them to put a tap on her line. Lazy son of a bitch."

She marched back toward him, her eyes bright with anger and adrenaline. She looked ready to wrestle tigers. Her anger pleased him.

"And what if Stokes is something worse than lazy?" Annie asked quietly, giving voice to the thought for the first time. She felt as if she had just let a poisonous snake loose in the room.

Fourcade looked at her with suspicion. "What exactly are you saying, 'Toinette?"

"I had a little run-in with Stokes today over some of the evidence in those rapes. He claims he sent it in to the lab in Shreveport for analysis, but he threatened me not to check up on it. He says he'll go to Noblier and make a formal complaint about me digging around in his cases. But what's the big deal if I call-if the stuff is really there?"

"You think he didn't send it?" Nick said. "Why wouldn't he?"

"This rapist knows everything we'll look for-hairs, fibers, fingerprints, body fluids. He goes so far as to make the victims clean under their fingernails after he's through with them. Who would know to be that careful? A pro… or a cop."

"You think Stokes is the rapist? Mais sa c'est fou! That's crazy!" He actually laughed. Annie didn't see the humor.

"Why is that crazy?" she demanded. "Because he's got all the women he wants? You know as well as I do it doesn't always work that way."

"Come on, 'Toinette. Stokes is suddenly a rapist? Overnight he's a rapist? No way."

"You think he's not capable of violence against a woman?" Annie said. "Good ol' Chaz. Everybody's buddy. I can tell you from experience he doesn't like the word no."

The import of her words struck Nick hard, awakening feelings of jealousy and protectiveness he would have said he didn't possess. "He laid a hand on you?"

"He never got the chance," Annie said. "But that doesn't mean he didn't want to or that he hasn't thought about it a hundred times since. He's got an ugly temper with a touchy trigger."

True enough, Nick thought. He'd seen Stokes's temper in action just yesterday.

"You thought he turned on you," Annie reminded him.

And he wasn't entirely sure it wasn't true. But Nick couldn't decide if he suspected Stokes because Stokes was deserving of it or because Nick didn't want to accept 100 percent of the culpability for beating up Renard.

"There's a big jump from selling me out to being a rapist," he said.

"But look at the connections to Stokes in all of this," Annie said. "Every time I turn around, there he is. He's got control of the rape task force, has access to all the evidence. Now he's checked out the feathers from the mask in two of the rapes and the mask from Pam Bichon's homicide, and he doesn't want me calling the lab to check on the stuff."

Nick lifted his hands. "Oh, hold on, 'Toinette. You're not gonna try to tie him to Bichon."

"Why not?" Annie said. "Stokes investigated Pam's stalking complaints. Donnie was jealous of the time Pam spent with him-so said Lindsay Faulkner, who met Stokes over lunch on Monday and had her head bashed in that same night."

"You're way off the beam here," Nick said, shaking his head. "I was there, remember. Bichon was my case. You think I wouldn't have seen that?"

"Were you looking?" Annie challenged. "Where did Stokes steer you? To Renard."

"Nobody steers me. I went to Renard because the logic took me there. Stokes turns up in all of this because he's a cop, for God's sake. If you follow your line of thinking, you could tie me to the murder, I could tie you to the rapes."

"I'm not the one trying to hide evidence," Annie shot back.

"You don't know that he is, either. Maybe he just wants you out of his hair."

"And maybe I'm right and you don't wanna hear it because it would make you look like a fool."

"I don't wanna hear it because it's a waste of time," he said stubbornly.

"Because it's my theory and not yours," Annie argued. "I told you at the start of this I wouldn't be your puppet, Nick. Don't blow me off now because I'm not stuck in the same tunnel with you. I think Stokes is a legitimate suspect."

"He's a cop."

"So are you!" she snapped. "It didn't stop you from breaking the law."

Her words slapped everything to a halt. She felt a sting of guilt that aggravated her. She wasn't the one who had something to feel guilty about. And yet, she couldn't let go of the feeling that she'd hurt him. Fourcade, the granite cop, the pillar of cold logic. No one else would have thought him capable of feeling hurt.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. "That was bitchy."

"No. It's true enough. C'est vrai."

He went to a dormer window and stared out at nothing.

"I just think it's another possibility," Annie said. "It's an angle no one's considered."

An angle he didn't want to consider, Nick admitted. For exactly the reason she had said. Bichon had been his case. If he'd worked side by side with her killer and never seen it, what kind of cop did that make him?

He ran the possibility through his mind, trying to see it as if he'd never had anything to do with the case or with Stokes.

"I don't buy it," he said. "Stokes has been here four or five years, suddenly he butchers a woman and becomes a serial rapist? Uh-uh. That's not the way it works."

He turned around and walked slowly back toward Annie. "What other evidence was there in the rapes?"

"No blood, no semen, no skin. Nothing from the rape kits." Then a memory surfaced. "At the Nolan rape, I saw Stokes picking pubic hairs out of Jennifer Nolan's bathtub with a tweezers."

"Check it out. Meanwhile, get me the case numbers on the rapes. I'll call Shreveport and tell them I'm Quinlan. See what they have to say."

Annie nodded. "Thanks," she said, looking up at him. "I'm sorry-"

"Don't be sorry, 'Toinette," he ordered. "It's a waste of energy. You had something on your mind, you laid it out. We'll see where it takes us, but I don't want you getting sidetracked. These rapes aren't your focus. The murder is your focus and Renard is your number one suspect. Pam Bichon herself, she told us that. You don't wanna listen to me, you listen to her."

He was right. Pam had seen Renard for a monster and no one had listened to her. In turning away from Renard to look at other possibilities, was she also ignoring Pam's cries for help-or was she simply doing the job?

"Why couldn't I have been a cocktail waitress?" she asked on a weary sigh.

"If you weren't a cop, you wouldn't get to drive that hot car," Nick murmured.

The humor was unexpected and welcome. Annie looked at his rugged face, the eyes that had seen too much. Logic told her to stay away from him, but the temptation to feel something other than uncertainty and apprehension was strong. He had the power to sweep it all away for a few hours, to blind her to everything but passion and raw need. A brief interlude of oblivion and obsession.

Obsession didn't seem like such a good thing to succumb to, considering where it had gotten Fourcade. But was it obsession she was afraid of or Fourcade or herself?

Annie forced herself to go to the board of crime scene photos and look at what had been left of Pam Bichon. A shudder of revulsion went through her, as sobering as a dousing of ice water.

Could Stokes have done this? With what motive? Lindsay Faulkner said he had flirted with Pam, that Donnie had been jealous. She never said that Pam had objected to Stokes's attentions. If Pam had put him off because she feared repercussions from Donnie, he had only to bide his time until the divorce went through. But Chaz Stokes was not a patient man, and not always a rational one. In a moment of blind fury could he have crossed the line?

It sounded weak to her. Maybe she wanted to look at Stokes only because he yanked her chain or because she knew he was a lazy cop.

Could Donnie have done this? In her mind's eye she could see him in the intimate light of his office, standing too close to her, that strange look of false remembrance and regret hanging crooked on his face. In a fit of anger, jealousy pushing him far beyond his limits, could he have butchered the mother of his child?

He had been drinking the night of the murder, as he had been tonight. Liquor was the key that opened the floodgates on ugly emotions. She'd seen it happen time and again. But to this level of brutality?

"You were in it from the start," she said to Nick. "Did you ever think Donnie could have done it?"

He joined her at the table. "I've seen people driven to all manner of atrocities. I've seen parents kill their children, children kill their parents, husbands kill their wives, wives set their husbands on fire while they're passed out drunk. But this? I never believed he had the stomach for it. Motive, maybe, but the rest… no, I never believed it.

"I talked to the bartender who served Donnie at the Voodoo Lounge that night." He shook a cigarette out of the pack on the table and played with it between his fingers. "He swore Donnie had more than his share."

"I know. I read the statement. But it was Friday night," Annie reminded him. "They were busy. Can he be sure Donnie drank everything he was served? And even if he drank it, how do we know he didn't just go in the men's room and puke it all up? If he's capable of doing this to a woman, then he's clever enough to build himself an alibi."

"There's one big stumbling block, chère. Il a pas d'esprit. Donnie, he's not clever at all," he said. "He's a whiner not a doer, and a screwup to boot. There's no way in hell Donnie Bichon commits a crime like this and he doesn't fuck up somewhere along the way. Fingerprints, fibers, skin under her fingernails, semen, something. There was damn near nothing at that crime scene-on or around the body. He consented to a search of his town house-nothing. No bloody clothes, no bloody towels, no bloody footprints in the garage, no traces of blood anywhere in the house."

"What about this possible connection to Marcotte and Marcotte's connection to DiMonti?"

"That's no mob hit," he said. "Mob wants somebody dead, they take 'em out in the swamp and shoot 'em. They wrap eighty pounds of chain around the body and throw it in the Atchafalaya. Bump 'em and dump 'em. No boss would have this kind of psycho on his payroll. Killer like this, he's too unpredictable, he's a risk. I've said it all along and I say it again: This was personal."

Annie turned her back to the photos and rubbed her hands over her face. "My brain hurts."

"Keep your eyes on the prize, 'Toinette. Don't turn your back on Renard just because you see other possibilities. He's calling you, sending you presents-same as he did with Pam. Same as he did with that gal up in Baton Rouge. There's two dead women in his wake. You leave Donnie and Marcotte to me. Renard is your focus. You got him on the hook, 'tite fille. Reel him in."

And then what? she thought, but she didn't ask the question. She simply let the silence settle between them, too hot and too tired to go any further with it tonight. The loft was warm and stuffy, the unexpected heat of the day having risen up into the rafters. The ceiling fans only stirred it around.

"Had enough for one day?" Nick asked. He brought the cigarette to his lips, then pulled it away and tossed it on the table beside the pack.

Annie nodded, following the move with her eyes. She wondered if he had changed his mind or if he had set it aside because he knew she didn't like it. Dangerous thinking. Foolish thinking. Fourcade did what he wanted.

"Stay the night," he said. As if he had flipped a switch, the energy he radiated became instantly sexual. She felt it touch her, felt her own body stir in response.

"I can't," she said softly. "With everything that's gone on lately, Sos and Fanchon worry. I need to be home."

"Then stay awhile," he said, tilting her chin up. "I want you, 'Toinette," he murmured, lowering his head. "I want you in my bed."

"I wish it were that simple."

"No, you don't. Because then it would be only sex, and you'd feel cheap and cheated and used. That's not what you want."

"What is it, then, if it's not just sex?" Annie asked, surprised at his allusion to something more. He struck her as the kind of man who would want uncomplicated affairs, straightforward sex, no gray areas, no untidy emotions.

He stroked her cheekbone with his thumb, his expression pensive. "It is what it is," he whispered, touching his mouth to hers. If the answer was there, he didn't want to see it or wasn't ready to see it any more than she was ready to put a label on it.

"Stay and we can explore the possibilities," he said against her lips.

He opened her mouth with his, touched his tongue to hers. A shiver ran through her like quicksilver.

"I want you," he murmured, moving his hands down her back. "You want me, yes?"

"Yes," she admitted.

His gaze held hers. "Don't be afraid of it, 'Toinette. Come deeper with me, chère."

Deeper. Into the black water, the unknown. Sink or swim. She thought of A.J.'s accusation that she was pushing him away because he knew her too well, and Nick's assertion that she was afraid to know herself, afraid of what might lie beneath the surface. She thought of the sense of expectation she'd been feeling for weeks, the sense that she was treading water, waiting for something.

Fourcade was reaching out to her. The unknown was whether she would buoy him or he would pull her down into his darkness so deep she would drown.

He waited. Silent. Still and as taut as a clenched fist.

"I'll stay awhile," she said.

He swept her off her feet and carried her to the bed. They stood beside it and undressed each other, fingers hurrying, fumbling at buttons. The heat of the room pressed in on them. Skin went slick with the heat of desire. Their bodies kissed, hot and wet, flesh to flesh, man to woman. His hands explored her: the soft fullness of a breast, the pearled tip of a nipple, the moist lips of femininity. She touched everything male about him: the hard-ridged muscles of his belly, the crisp dark hair that matted his chest, the shaft of his erection, as smooth and hard as a column of marble.

They fell across the crisp sheets, a tangle of limbs, her dark hair spilling across the pillow. She arched her body into the touch of his mouth as he kissed the beads of sweat from between her breasts and followed the trail down her belly to the point of her hip, the crease of her thigh, the back of her knee. She opened herself to the touch of his hand. He took her to the brink of fulfillment and left her hanging there, aching with the need to join her body with his.

He pulled a foil packet from the drawer of the nightstand. Annie took it from his fingers. Nick sat back against the headboard and held himself still against the exquisite torture of her small hands fitting the condom over his shaft. She looked up at him, her eyes wide, her mouth swollen and cherry red from his kisses. She looked both wanton and hesitant. He had never wanted a woman more-this woman who held sway over the fate of his career. This woman- sweet, normal Annie, who had never seen the dark side and probably never wanted to. He should have left her to her nice life, but she had wandered into his realm, and his need to touch her, to hold her to him, far outweighed his capacity for nobility.

He held his hand out to her. "Viens ici, chérie," he murmured, pulling her toward him. "Come take what you want."

Hands at her waist, he guided her astride him. She eased herself down, taking him deep, her fingertips biting into his shoulders. They moved together. He held her tight. Their kisses tasted dark and salty-sweet.

Annie felt suspended in the rhythm of it, consumed by the intensity of it. She fell back in the support of his arms and floated while he sucked at her breast. She banded her arms around his shoulders and held tight as the urgency built.

"Open your eyes, chère," he commanded. "Open your eyes and look at me."

Her gaze locked on his as the end came for both of them. One and then the other. Powerful. Intimate. More than sex.

In a week she would testify against him.

The thought trailed through her mind like a slug as she lay beside him. She wanted to know if his lawyer would try to cut a deal, but she didn't ask. She tried to imagine visiting him in prison. The image turned her stomach.

She supposed no jury in South Louisiana would convict him, given the false testimony any number of other officers were willing to give about the bogus 10-70 call that night, and the fact that almost everyone in Partout Parish believed Renard should have gotten worse than a beating. And so she was hoping that the justice system she had sworn to serve would corrupt itself to suit her wishes, and somehow that would be okay when Fourcade going after Renard in the first place was not.

Shades of gray, Noblier had told her. Like layers of soot and dirt. She felt it rubbing off on her.

"I have to go," she said, a mix of reluctance and urgency struggling within her. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, reaching for her T-shirt.

Nick said nothing. He didn't expect her to stay-tonight or for the long haul. Why would she? A relationship between them would be difficult, and she had a nice tame lawyer waiting in the wings to give her a simple, normal life. Why would she not take that? He told himself it didn't matter. He was the kind of man meant to be alone. He was used to it. Solitude allowed him concentration for the job.

The job that would be taken from him forever if he was convicted of beating Marcus Renard. The hearing was a week away. The key witness stood with her back to him, scraping her dark hair into a messy ponytail. His accuser, his partner, his lover. He'd have been a hell of a lot better off hating her. But he didn't.

He climbed out of bed and picked up his jeans. "I'll follow you home. In case Cadillac Man comes back for an encore."

He stayed well back on the drive to the Corners. There were times when Annie thought he must have left off with the tail, and then she would catch a glimpse of his lights. He wasn't following her to prevent Cadillac Man from making another run at her, he was letting her run ahead, a rabbit to lure their predator. If her assailant took the bait, Fourcade would be there to bust the jerk.

Not exactly the way most lovers topped off a romantic interlude. But then, Fourcade was by no means typical. And they weren't exactly most lovers. Most lovers never had to face each other across a courtroom.

She turned in at the Corners and parked in front of the store. Moments later, Fourcade drove past, flashing his headlights once. He didn't stop.

She sat in the Jeep for a time, half listening to the radio -an argument about whether or not women should carry handguns in these dangerous times.

"You think a rapist is just gonna stand back when y'all say, 'Oh, wait, let me get my gun out my pocketbook so I can shoot you'?" the male caller said in a high falsetto. "Marital arts-that's what women need."

"You mean martial arts?"

"That's what I said."

Annie shook her head and pulled her keys. She climbed to the passenger seat and gathered her stuff, slinging the strap of her duffel over one shoulder and scooping the files Fourcade had sent with her into her other arm. She added the detritus of her dinner and a sandal that had worked its way out from under the seat.

Overburdened, the duffel strap slipping on her shoulder, she climbed out of the Jeep and bumped the door shut with her hip. The load in her arm shifted precariously. As she came around the back of the Jeep, the shoe slipped off the pile and took the dinner garbage with it. The duffel strap fell, the weight of the bag jerking her right arm so that the files and other junk spilled to the ground.

"Shit," she muttered, dropping to her knees.

The sound of the rifle shot registered in her mind a split second before the bullet hit.