A Thin Dark Line

39

"You are late again."

Myron stood at rigid attention in the middle of the room, his hands knotted together at the buckle of his skinny black belt, his expression sour with disapproval.

"I'm sorry, Myron," Annie said, barely sparing him a glance as she entered his domain and went to the card drawer.

"Mr. Myron," he intoned. "I'll have you know, I've spoken with the sheriff about your poor performance since you were assigned to me as my assistant. You are chronically tardy and run off at your own whim. This is a records department. Records are synonymous with stability. I cannot allow chaos in my records department."

"I'm sorry," she mumbled as she flicked through the evidence cards.

Myron's face pinched tight as he leaned over her shoulder. "What are you doing, Deputy Broussard? Are you listening to me?"

Annie kept her eyes on her task. "I'm a goof-off. You're pissed off. You want Gus to take me off this job, but I'll try to do better. Honest."

She pulled the evidence card from the Nolan rape and ran a fingertip down the inventory. There, listed on the third line: HAIRS. The pubic hair Stokes had fished out of Jennifer Nolan's bathtub drain.

She tapped one foot impatiently. Myron moved into her field of vision again, looking a little uncertain at her lack of response to his tirade.

"What you looking at?" he asked. "What you think you're doing?"

"My job," she said simply, sliding the evidence card back in place.

Hairs had been logged in and checked back out to the lab. That didn't mean the hairs belonged to the rapist. Jennifer Nolan was a redhead. Her pubic hair would have stood out from any darker hair in the drain. Stokes could have picked out what he wanted and left the rest-left his own- to wash away.

Annie's stomach churned. She was on the verge of accusing a detective of being a serial rapist. If she was right, Chaz Stokes was not only a rapist but a murderer-either indirectly or directly. If she was wrong, he'd have her badge. She needed evidence, and he was in charge of every piece of it.

"Whatsa matter with you, Broussard?" Myron squawked. "You sick or something? You been drinking?"

"Yeah, you know, I'm not feeling very well," Annie mumbled, pushing the drawer shut. "I might be sick. Excuse me."

"I don't truck with drinkers," Myron warned as she walked away. "There ain't no place for that kind of thing in records. Alcohol is a tool of the devil."

Annie wound her way through the halls to her locker room, went in, and sat down on her folding chair beneath the dull glow of the bare lightbulb. Someone had drilled a new hole in the wall-breast height. She would need to break out the spackling compound, but what she needed now was a few moments to untangle the threads in her mind.

"Keep the threads separate or you end up with a knot, 'Toinette."

She had a knot all right, and she was trapped in the middle of it. Renard was sending her gifts. Donnie Bichon was in cahoots with Marcotte, who was in cahoots with the mob. Stokes was a bad cop at best and a killer at worst.

"You asked for it," she muttered. "You wanted to be a detective. You had to solve the mystery."

One mystery at a time. Stokes seemed the most pressing problem. If her suspicions about him were right, then other women would be in danger.

"I'll be in danger," she said, a flashback of last night coming to her in jarring black and white: the ink black of the night, the pale crushed shell of the parking lot, the white papers scattering at her feet as she dropped the files. The sharp crack of the rifle, the shattering of glass.

The memory bled back into another and another. The anger in Stokes's eyes as they had argued about the missing evidence. The fury on his face that night months ago when he had fought with her in the parking lot of the Voodoo Lounge because she wasn't interested in going out with him. The aggressive way he had moved toward her, as if he meant to strike her or grab her.

He was a man capable of instant, intense rage, which he covered with loose, easy charm. He was by turns irrational and coldly logical, depending on the subject. Unpredictable. A chameleon. These were traits that had formed over the course of his life, traits he had brought with him when he had come here from Mississippi four years ago. Coincidentally, not long before the Bayou Strangler had begun his reign of terror. He may have even worked one or both of the Partout Parish murders connected to the Strangler: Annie Delahoussaye and Savannah Chandler.

That could be easily checked out, though Annie didn't see the need. Despite the gossip that had run wild since Pam's death, she didn't believe the allegations that the cops had tampered with the evidence in the Strangler case. No, that evil had been burned out of Partout Parish… and a new one was taking root in the ashes.

What had brought Stokes here in the first place? she wondered. More important, what had he left behind? A good service record? Had his last supervisor been sad to lose him or glad to see the last of him? Had the city or county he worked in experienced a sudden drop in sex crimes after Stokes had gone? Had he left any victims in his wake?

It was rare for a man to become a sexual predator in his thirties. That kind of behavior generally started earlier-late teens or early twenties-and continued on throughout his life. Despite the claims of various tax-sponsored programs, true sexual predators were seldom if ever rehabilitated. Their heads were wired wrong, their malevolent attitudes toward women carved forever in stone hearts.

She needed to get into Stokes's personnel file, get the name of the last force he had served on in Mississippi. Personnel files were kept in the sheriff's offices under the ever-vitriolic, blue-shadowed glare of Valerie Comb.

A fist struck the door to the locker room with the force of a hurled rock, making Annie jump.

"Broussard? You in there?"

"Who wants to know?"

"Perez." He pulled the door open and stuck his head in. "Shit, I figured the least I could get out of this was to see you naked."

"Get out of what?" she said peevishly.

"The case. Your shooter. I'm your detective. Lucky fucking me. Come on. I need your statement and I ain't got all day."

Perez was as interested in her case as he was in the politics of Uruguay. He doodled on a yellow legal pad as Annie related not only the shooting incident but her run-in with the Cadillac Man the night before, since there was the possibility the two incidents were related.

"Did you get a tag number?"

"No."

"Did you see the driver?"

"He was wearing a ski mask."

"Know anybody with a big car like that?"

"No."

"Why didn't you call it in that night?"

"Would you have done anything?"

He gave her a flat look.

"I wrote it up the next day," she said. "Called around to the body shops looking for the car. Nothing. Checked the log sheets for reports of a stolen Caddy, or something like a Caddy. Nothing."

"And you didn't see the shooter last night?"

"No."

"Didn't see his vehicle?"

"No."

"Any ideas who it might have been?"

Annie looked at him for a long moment, knowing she couldn't name any of her prime suspects without revealing the mess she'd embroiled herself in, and certainly not without pissing Perez off by casting aspersions on two cops.

"I'm not very popular at the moment."

"What a news flash." He narrowed his eyes and stroked a finger across one side of his bushy mustache. "I figured you'd point the finger at Fourcade. He's gotta hate you more than anyone else. We all know how you feel about him."

"You don't know shit about me. It wasn't Fourcade."

"How do you know?"

"Because Fourcade would be man enough to show his face, and if he wanted me dead, we wouldn't be having this conversation," she said, rising from her chair. "Are we finished, Detective? We both know this is pointless and I've got work to do."

Perez shrugged. "Yeah. I know where to find you… 'til somebody wises up and boots your tight little ass outta here."

Annie left the interview room, glad she hadn't bothered to tell him about the crucified cat. Back in records, Myron seemed in danger of spontaneous combustion.

"Look at the time!" he ranted, scurrying around the office like a windup toy gone mad. "Look at the time! You been gone half the day!"

Annie rolled her eyes. "Well, excuse me for being the victim of a crime. You know, Myron, you are an extremely unsympathetic individual. I practically witnessed someone dying this morning. Someone took a shot at me last night. My life is basically in the toilet here, and all you do is rag on me."

"Sympathy? Sympathy?" He chirped the word as if it were a questionable noun from another language. "Why should I show you sympathy? You are my assistant. I'm the one needs sympathy."

"Your wife has all my sympathy," Annie said, pulling her chair back from her desk. "You must have about ruined all the upholstery on her furniture by now with that stick up your ass."

Myron gave an indignant sniff. Annie ignored him. She was past currying his favor. With everything that was happening or about to happen, she figured she would be either dead or fired inside a week. Where she wouldn't be was working in this clerical hell for the rest of her life.

Two minutes later she received the summons to Noblier's office.

Valerie Comb was not at her post when Annie arrived at the sheriff's office. The room was empty, the file cabinets with the personnel records unguarded. The door to Gus's inner office was closed. Annie went to it and pressed her ear against the blond wood. No conversation sounds. No chair creaks. Nothing.

She glanced longingly at the file cabinets again. It wouldn't take more than a minute-open the S drawer, find Stokes, one glance and she'd be done. There might not be another chance.

Swallowing at the hard lump of fear wedged in her throat like a chicken bone, she crossed the room to the cabinets, reached for the handle on the S drawer.

"May I help you?"

Annie swung around at the sound of the sharp voice, hastily crossing her arms over her chest. Valerie Comb stood with one hand on the doorknob, the other holding a steaming cup of coffee. Her overdone eyes were narrowed in suspicion, her mouth pressed into a thin painted line.

"I'm here to see the sheriff," Annie said, beaming innocence.

Without comment, Valerie went to her desk, set the coffee down, and settled her fanny in her chair. Eyes on Annie, she pulled a pencil from her rat's nest of bleached hair and punched the intercom button with the eraser end of the pencil so as not to chip her slut red nails. Rumor had it she'd done half the guys in the department. She'd probably done Stokes.

"Sheriff, Deputy Broussard is here to see you."

"Send her in!" Gus bellowed, his voice too big for the plastic box to contain.

Heart beating three steps too fast, Annie let herself into Noblier's inner sanctum. The shades were drawn. He sat back in his chair rubbing his eyes as if he might just have awakened from an afternoon nap.

"You must be out for some kind of record, Deputy," he said, shaking his head.

"Sir?"

He waved at the chair across the desk from him. "Sit down, Annie. Myron's been bending my ear. He says you're unreliable and you might be drinking on the job."

"That's not true, sir."

"That's the second time in a week I've heard your name and alcohol mentioned in the same breath."

"I haven't been drinking, sir. I'll gladly take any test you want me to."

"What I want is to know why two weeks ago I barely knew more than your name, now suddenly you're the burr up everybody's ass." He leaned against his forearms on the desktop. To his right, paperwork was stacked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. To his left lay a giant ceremonial ribbon-cutting scissors like something out of Gulliver's Travels.

"An unfortunate coincidence?" Annie suggested.

"Deputy, there are three things I do not believe in: UFOs, moderate Republicans, and coincidence. What the hell is going on with you? Every time I turn around you're in the middle of something you shouldn't be. You're working in records, for Christ's sake. How the hell can you get in trouble working in records?"

"Bad luck."

"You're tripping over bodies, fighting with other deputies. Stokes was in here this morning telling me you were at the hospital when that Faulkner woman died. Why is that?"

Annie explained her absences from records as best she could, painting a picture of innocence that had been misinterpreted by Myron. She managed to depict herself as an unfortunate bystander regarding Lindsay Faulkner's attack and demise-in the wrong place at the wrong time. Noblier listened, his skepticism plain on his face.

"And this business about you getting shot at last night? What was that about?"

"I don't know, sir."

"I sincerely doubt that," Gus said, rising from his chair. He rubbed at a kink in his lower back as he walked away from the desk. "Has Detective Fourcade made any effort to contact you since his release on bail?"

"Sir?"

"He's got a big ax to grind with you, Annie. As much as I respect Nick's abilities as a detective, you and I both know he's wrapped a little too tight."

"With all due respect, sir, the harassment I've experienced since Detective Fourcade's arrest has come from other sources."

"Yeah, you've managed to bring out the worst in a lot of people."

Annie refrained from pointing out that blaming the victim was politically incorrect these days. The less she drew the sheriff into this mess at this time, the better. She had no proof of anything against anybody. He had already decided she was probably more trouble than she was worth. If she started making accusations against Stokes, it might just push him beyond tolerance.

"Maybe you should take some personal time, Annie," he suggested, coming back to the desk. He pulled a file from the top of the stack and flipped it open. "According to your record, you carried over all your sick days from last year. You could take yourself a little vacation."

"I'd rather not, sir," Annie said, holding herself stiff in her chair. "I don't think that would send a very good message. It might look to the press like you're trying to force me out because of the Fourcade thing. Punishing your only female patrol officer for stopping a bad cop from killing a suspect-that's a pretty volatile story."

Gus's head came up and he regarded her with a piercing stare. "Are you threatening me, Deputy Broussard?"

She did her best to look doe-eyed. "No, sir. Never. I'm just saying how it might look to some people."

"People after my hide," he muttered, talking aloud to himself. He scratched at his afternoon beard stubble. "Smith Pritchett would love that, the ungrateful swine. He'll call me corrupt, a racist, and a sexist. Small-minded, that's what he is. Doesn't see the big picture. All he really wants is revenge on Fourcade for screwing that search at Renard's. He wanted to prosecute the big slam-dunk, media-circus case. Mr. Big Headlines."

He snatched a folded newspaper off his blotter and snapped a big finger against a photograph of Pritchett at the Tuesday press conference, looking stern and authoritative. The headline read: "Task Force Named in Mardi Gras Rapist Cases."

"Look at that," Gus complained. "Like it was Pritchett's task force. Like he had squat to do with trying to solve these cases. You think you know a man…"

Annie tuned out the lament. She took the paper from the sheriff's hands as he walked away. The task force was page two news in the Wednesday Daily Advertiser from Lafayette. The article gave a brief encapsulation of the news conference and details of the three attacks that had taken place in Partout Parish over the last week's time. But it was the small sidebar that drew Annie's attention. Just two paragraphs with the headline "Task Force Leader Experienced."

Heading the Partout Parish task force in the investigation of what has come to be called the "Mardi Gras Rapist" cases will be Detective Charles Stokes. Stokes, 32, has been with the Partout Parish Sheriff's Office since 1993 and is described by Sheriff August F. Noblier as "a diligent and thorough investigator."

Prior to joining the force in Partout Parish, Stokes served with the Hattiesburg (Mississippi) Police Department, where he also worked as a detective, and was part of the team credited with solving a series of sexual assaults against female students on the campus of William Carey College.

Chaz Stokes knew all about rape cases. He'd been there before. The question was: Had he solved the William Carey College rapes cases or had he committed them?