A Thin Dark Line

38

The flower woman was setting up at her station in the shade across the street from Our Lady, her pipe clenched between her teeth. The groundskeeper prowled the boulevard, a growling Weed Eater clutched in his hands.

"Here's the police gonna come arrest you, old witchy woman!" he screamed as Annie turned in the drive. He charged at the Jeep. "Police girl! You gonna get her dis time or what?"

"Not me!" Annie called, driving past.

She parked the Jeep and, with the scarf and brooch in her pocketbook, headed for the building. If Pam had shown Renard's gifts to anyone, it would have been Lindsay. Annie hoped she was improved enough to tell her whether or not the things Renard had given her were the same tokens of affection being recycled to a new object of fixation.

The hospital was bustling with morning rounds for meals and medications. The strange plastic smell of antiseptics commingled with toast and oatmeal. The clang of meal trays and bedpans accented the hushed conversations and occasional moans as Annie walked down the halls.

The long, sleepless night hung heavy on her shoulders. The day stretched out in front of her like eighty miles of bad road. She would have to face an interview with the detective assigned to her shooting incident, and had already concocted a worst-case scenario in which Chaz Stokes caught the case and she would have to go to the sheriff and ask Stokes to be removed because she not only believed he was a suspect, but she also thought he could be a rapist and a murderer. She wouldn't have to worry about Stokes or anyone else killing her. She'd never make it out of Gus Noblier's office alive.

For a second or two she tried again to imagine Stokes sneaking up to her apartment to nail a dead cat to her wall, but she couldn't see it. He might have had the temperament for it, but she couldn't believe he would take the risk. She couldn't imagine anyone in the SO would.

Who then? Who could have slipped into the store, found those stairs, made it up to her apartment and down again unnoticed?

Renard had been to the Corners to leave gifts for her- twice. Fanchon hadn't noticed him either time. If he had stalked Pam, he'd done so without detection.

Annie turned the corner to the ICU, and stepped directly into the path of Stokes.

His scowl was ferocious. He descended on her like a hawk, clamping a hand on her forearm and driving her away from the traffic flow in the hall.

"What the fuck are you doing here, Broussard?"

"Who put you in charge of visitors? I came to see my real estate agent."

"Oh, really?" he sneered. "Is she showing you something in a nice little two-bed room on the second floor?"

"She's an acquaintance and she's in the hospital. Why shouldn't I see her?" Annie challenged.

"Because I say so!" he barked. "Because I know you ain't nothing but trouble, Broussard. I told you to stay the hell away from my cases." His grip tightening on her arm, he pushed her another step toward the corner. "You think I just like to hear myself talk? You think I won't come down on you like a ton of bricks?"

"Don't threaten me, Stokes," Annie returned as she tried to wrench her arm free. "You're in no position to-"

Alarms sounded at the ICU desk.

"Oh, shit!" someone yelled. "She's seizing! Call Unser!"

Two nurses dashed for a room. Lindsay Faulkner's room.

Jerking free of Stokes, Annie rushed to the room and stared in horror at the scene. Faulkner's arms and legs were flailing, jerking like a marionette on the strings of a mad puppet master. A horrible, unearthly wail tore from her, accompanied by the shrieks of the monitors. Three nurses swarmed around her, trying to restrain her. One grabbed a padded tongue blade from the nurse server and worked to get it in Faulkner's mouth.

"Get an airway!"

"Got it!"

A doctor in blue scrubs burst past Annie into the room, calling, "Diazepam: 10-milligram IV push!"

"Jesus H.," Stokes breathed, pressing in close behind Annie. "Jesus Fucking Christ."

Annie glanced at him over her shoulder. His expression was likely no different from hers-shock, horror, anxious anticipation.

Another monitor began to bleat in warning and another round of expletives went up from the staff.

"She's in arrest!"

"Standard ACLS," Unser snapped, thumping the woman on the chest. "Phenytoin: 250 IV push. Phenobarbital: 55 IV push. I want a chem 7 and blood gases STAT! Tube and bag her!"

"She's in fine v-fib."

"Shit!"

"Charge it up!"

One of the nurses spun around, a tube of blood in her hands. "I'm sorry, we need you people out of here." She herded Annie and Stokes from the door. "Please go to the waiting area."

Stokes's face was chalky. He rubbed his goatee. "Jesus H.," he said again, pulling his porkpie hat off and crumpling it with his fingers.

Annie hit him in the chest with both hands. "What did you do to her?"

He looked as if she'd smacked him across the face with a dead carp. "What? Nothing!"

"You come out of her room and two minutes later this happens!"

"Keep your voice down!" he ordered, reaching for her arm.

She jerked away from him. What if Stokes was the rapist? What if he was something worse?

"I went in to talk to her," he said, as they entered the waiting area. "She wasn't awake. Ask the nurse."

"I win."

"Christ, Broussard, what's the matter with you? You think I'm a killer?" he demanded, a flush creeping up his neck. "Is that what you think? You think I'd walk into a hospital and kill a woman? You're out of your fucking mind!"

He sank down onto a chair and hung his long hands and the smashed hat between his knees.

"Maybe you oughta check yourself into this place," he said. "You need your damn head examined. First you go after Fourcade, now me. You're some kinda goddamn lunatic. You're like that crazy broad in Fatal Attraction. Obsessed -that's what you are."

"She was better yesterday," Annie insisted. "I talked to her. Why would this happen?"

Stokes gave a helpless shrug. "Do I look like George Fucking Clooney? I ain't no ER doc. It was some kind of seizure, that's all I know. Jesus, somebody bashed her head in with a telephone. What'd you expect?"

"If she dies, it's murder," Annie declared.

Stokes pushed to his feet. "I told you, Broussard-"

"It's murder," she repeated. "If she dies as a result of her injuries, the assault becomes a murder rap."

"Well, yeah." He dragged a jacket sleeve across his sweating forehead.

Annie stepped toward Faulkner's room again, trying to get a glimpse of her between the bodies of her rescue crew. The electric buzz and snap of the defibrillator was followed by another barrage of orders.

"Epinephrine and lidocaine! Dobutamine-run it wide open! Labs?"

"Not back."

"Charging!"

"Clear!"

Buzz. Snap!

"Flat line!"

"We're losing her!"

They repeated the process so many times it seemed as if time, and hope, had become snagged in a continuous loop. Annie held herself rigid, directing her will at Lindsay Faulkner. Live. Live. We need you. But the loop broke. Motion in the room slowed to a stop.

"She's gone."

"Damn."

"Call it."

Annie looked at the wall clock. Time of death: 7:49 A.M. Just like that, it was all over. Lindsay Faulkner was dead. A dynamic, capable, intelligent woman was gone. The suddenness of it stunned her. She had believed Faulkner would pull through, put her life back together, help solve the mysteries that had marred her life and taken her partner. But she was gone.

The staff trailed out of the room looking defeated, disgusted, blank. Annie wondered if any of them had known Lindsay Faulkner outside the walls of the hospital. She might have sold them a house or known them from the Junior League. It was a small-enough town.

The doctor came toward the waiting area, a frown digging deep into his long face. He looked fifty, his hair thick and the color of gunmetal. The name on his badge was forbes unser. "Are either of you family?"

"No," Annie said. "We're with the sheriff's office. I'm Deputy Broussard. I-ah-I knew her."

"I'm sorry. She didn't make it," he said succinctly.

"What happened? I thought she was doing better."

"She was," Unser said. "The seizure was likely brought on by the trauma to her head. It led to cardiac arrest. These things happen. We did everything we could."

Stokes stuck his hand out. "Detective Stokes. I'm in charge of the Faulkner case."

"Well, I hope you get the animal who attacked her," Unser said. "I've got a wife and two teenage daughters. I barely let them out of my sight these days. Madeline wants me to keep a gun under my pillow at night."

"We're doing everything we can," Stokes said. "We'll want her body transported to Lafayette for an autopsy. Standard procedure. The sheriff's office will be in touch with your morgue."

Unser nodded, then excused himself and went back to his normal duties for the day, the death of a woman in his care just a glitch in the schedule. "These things happen."

Annie ducked into the ladies' room as Stokes started down the hall. She washed her hands and splashed cold water on her face, trying to clear away the images of Lindsay Faulkner seizing. How could it be a coincidence that the woman had gone into arrest not ten minutes after Stokes had been in the room with her? But there would be an autopsy. Stokes knew it. He was the one who had brought it up.

Unser was just coming out of another patient's room with a chart in his hand as Annie stepped back into the hall.

"Are you all right, Deputy?" he asked. "You look a little pale."

"I'll be fine. It was just a shock, that's all. That didn't look like a very pleasant way to die."

"She fought it, but it was over before we could really do anything for her."

"Is that the way it usually happens?"

"It's always a possibility with a head trauma."

"I guess what I'm asking is: was there anything unusual about her death? Any strange readings, abnormal levels of… whatever?"

Unser shook his head. "Not that I'm aware of. The blood test never came back. You can check with the lab." He stepped up to the counter and handed the chart to the monitor technician, "If they haven't lost it entirely, they might be able to answer your questions."

Annie made her way to the lab and left the number for records with a woman who seemed as if she had just dropped in and offered to mind the place while everyone else went for coffee. Did she know if the Faulkner test results were in? No. Did she know when they might be? No. Did she know the name of the President of the United States? Probably not.

"Never get sick here," Annie muttered as she walked away.

Outside the heat was already edging toward oppressive, an unwelcome joke from Mother Nature. Summer was long enough without adding an early preview. Sweat beaded immediately between her breasts and shoulder blades. The sun burned into her scalp.

"You gonna arrest me now?"

Stokes stood beside his Camaro in the red zone, smoking a cigarette. He had shed his jacket, leaving his lime green shirt free to blind anyone looking directly at it.

"I'm sorry," Annie said without sincerity. "I overreacted."

"You accused me of being a goddamn killer." He flung the cigarette butt down on the asphalt beside a crumpled Snickers wrapper and crushed it out with the toe of his brown and white spectators. "Personally, I take umbrage at that. You know what I'm saying?"

"I said I was sorry."

"Yeah, well, that don't cut it by half. I've had it with you, Broussard."

"And what are you gonna do about it?" she asked quietly. "Shoot me?"

"I hear I'd have to get in line. I've got better things to do."

"Like screw around with the evidence on those rape cases?"

"Don't fuck with me, Broussard. I'll have your badge. I mean it."

He slid behind the wheel of the Camaro and started the engine with a roar. Annie stood on the sidewalk and watched him drive away. He had just lost a victim and his primary concern was getting her fired. A charming, caring individual, that Chaz.

The groundskeeper emerged from behind the statue of Mary and made a beeline for Annie with his hedge clippers. "Police girl! Hey! I pays my taxes! I'm a vet'ran! You go, you arrest dat ol' witchy woman! Stealin' dem flowers out the Vet'rans Park!"

"I'm sorry, sir," Annie said, her eyes on Stokes's car as it turned the corner onto Dumas. "Has she murdered anyone?"

"What?!" he squealed. "No, she ain't killed nobody, but-"

"Then I can't help you."

She walked away from him toward the Jeep, her mind on Stokes, while Donnie Bichon's pearl white Lexus turned out of the parking lot behind her and drove away down the backstreet.

Donnie was shaking like a man with DTs, though it hadn't been all that long since his last drink. He'd been allowing himself a shot every hour since Fourcade had left him, in an attempt to steady his nerves. All it seemed to be doing was acting as an accelerant for the stress eating a hole in the lining of his stomach. The flecks of blood in his vomit had confirmed that suspicion.

After Fourcade's first visit, he had passed out in the bathroom and dreamed of Pam. Dark hair and shining eyes. A sunny smile. A tongue like a pit viper. Hands tipped with claws that dug into him, closed around his balls, and choked his masculinity. He loved her and he hated her. She had grown up and he never wanted to. Life had seemed best when he was twenty, when he had the world by the tail and no responsibilities. Now the world had him by the tail.

Then suddenly Fourcade had him by the scruff of the neck, and Donnie found himself going down face-first into a swirling pool of vomit. Startled, he tried to grab a breath half a second too late, filled his mouth, and came up choking and retching.

"Yeah, you choke on it," Fourcade growled. He bent his body over Donnie's, all but riding him into the porcelain. "That's what your lies taste like the second time around."

Donnie spat into the toilet bowl. The smell of fresh urine was strong as his bladder let go. "Jesus! God!" he gasped and spat again, trying to clear the cold chunks of vomit from his mouth.

"Where were you tonight?" Fourcade demanded.

"You're crazy!"

Nick shoved his head back in the bowl. "Wrong answer, Tulane! Where were you tonight? Where'd you get that mud on your boots?"

"I told you!"

"Don't fuck with me, Donnie. I'm in no mood. Where were you?"

"I told you!" Donnie cried. Tears streamed down his face through the puke on his cheeks. "I don't know what you want from me!"

"You're gonna give me the keys to your car, Tulane. And I'm gonna look through every inch of it. And if I find a rifle, I'm gonna bring it back in here, stick it up your ass, and blow your brains out. Are we clear on this?"

Donnie dug his keys out of his jeans pocket and tossed them on the floor. "I didn't do anything!"

"You better pray to God that's the truth, Donnie," Fourcade said as he bent to scrape up the keys. " 'Cause I don't think you'd know the truth if it bit your dick off."

Terrified and sick, disgusted with himself, Donnie forced himself to his feet and followed Fourcade out to the garage, grabbing a kitchen towel as an afterthought to wipe the mess from his face. He watched from the doorway as Fourcade popped the trunk on the Lexus and dug through the junk-a bag of golf clubs, a nail gun, a filthy Igloo cooler, gloves, crumpled receipts, a toolbox, half a dozen, baseball caps with the Bichon Bayou Development logo.

"You know, you're just as rotten as everybody says, Fourcade," he declared. "You don't have a warrant. You got no call to treat me like this. You're not a cop; you're a goddamn jackbooted thug. I shoulda let you rot in jail."

"You gonna wish you had, Tulane, if I find anything in this car to hook you up with taking a shot at Annie Broussard last night."

"I don't know what you're talking about. And why should you care about Broussard?"

"I got my reasons." He closed the trunk and moved to the passenger's side doors. "You know, you're right for once, Donnie. I'm not a cop, I'm on suspension. That makes me a private citizen, which means I don't need a warrant to seize incriminating evidence. Ain't that a kick in the head?"

"You're trespassing," Donnie declared as Fourcade pulled open a back door.

"Me? Trespassing in the home of my good friend who bailed me outta jail? Who would believe that?"

"Is there any law you won't break?"

He shut the door and strolled back toward Donnie, shining the light in Donnie's face. "Well, I'll tell you, Tulane, me, I believe life is a journey of self-exploration, and lately I'm discovering that I have a greater concern for justice than I have for the law. Can you appreciate the difference?"

He climbed the two steps to the kitchen door and snatched hold of Donnie's shirtfront before he could backpedal. "The law would dictate that I would have somebody else run you in tonight and interview you with regards to this shooting incident-"

"I didn't shoot anybody-"

"While justice would bypass the formalities and cut to the heart of the matter."

"It's not for you to be judge and jury."

"You left out executioner." He arched a brow. "Was that purposeful or Freudian? Not that it matters. I find it amusing that you bring the point up now, Donnie. You seemed to think it would have been just fine if I'd dispatched Renard to hell the other night. Now it's you standing on that line, and you'd just as soon I keep to the proper side of it. I'd call you a hypocrite, but I have my own problems with the black and white of it all."

He uncurled his fist from Donnie's shirt and took half a step back. "I'm gonna let you off with a warning, Tulane. I didn't find what I thought I might, but if I so much as hear a whisper or come across a hair that might connect you to this, I'll find you, Donnie, and I won't be in a philosophical mood."

The crazy son of a bitch.

Donnie had gone straight back into the bathroom after Fourcade left and puked again, then sat on the edge of the tub and stared at the streaks of blood in the bowl. Scotch, nerves, and imminent financial disaster were not a good mix.

He decided what he needed was a little something of the pharmaceutical variety to settle him down so he could think his way out of this mess. Old Dr. Hollier had obliged, sympathetic to the tragedy in his life. He didn't know the half of it, Donnie thought.

Lindsay Faulkner was dead and Fourcade knew about Marcotte.

With the bitch queen of Bayou Breaux gone, the way was clear to make a deal for the realty-except for one obstacle: Fourcade.

How could Fourcade have possibly known about that phone call? Paranoia had driven Donnie to an assortment of wild conclusions involving phone taps, all of which he had subsequently dismissed in a more sober moment. Fourcade knew only about a single call, last night's call, nothing else, and he was in no position to be in on any phone tap. He was suspended, awaiting trial. Assault charges. He'd nearly beaten Renard to death.

That particular reminder had Donnie reaching for the open bottle of Mylanta he'd wedged into his cup holder. Never should have paid that bail. He had started hoping Fourcade would be bound over for trial next week, and would be thrown back in jail, but Donnie's lawyer had informed him the detective's bail would likely be continued and he would be a free man indefinitely, trial pending or no.

Pam had always told him he acted first and considered consequences too late. He wondered if she had ever realized just how right she'd been.