A Thin Dark Line

2

He's guilty," Nick declared. Ignoring the chair he had been offered, he prowled the cramped confines of the sheriff's office, adrenaline burning inside him like a blue gas flame.

"Then why don't we have squat on him, Nick?"

Sheriff August F. Noblier kept his seat behind his desk. Rawboned and rough-edged, he was working hard to affect an air of calm and rationality, even though the concepts seemed to bounce right off Fourcade. Gus Noblier had ruled Partout Parish off and on for fifteen of his fifty-three years three consecutive terms, one election lost to the vote hauling and assorted skullduggery of Duwayne Kenner, then a fourth victory. He loved the job. He was good at the job. Only in the last six months-since hiring Fourcade-had he found a sudden yen for antacid tablets.

"We had the damn ring," Fourcade snapped, slicking his black hair back with one hand.

"You knew it wasn't on the warrant. You had to know it'd get thrown out. "

"No. I thought for once maybe someone in the system would use some common sense. Mais sa c'est fou!"

"It's not crazy," Gus insisted, translating the Cajun French automatically. "We're talking about the rules, Nick. The rules are there for a reason. Sometimes we gotta bend 'em. Sometimes we gotta sneak around 'em. But we can't just pretend they're not there."

"So what the hell were we supposed to do?" Fourcade asked with stinging sarcasm and an exaggerated shrug. "Leave the ring at Renard's house, come back, and try to get another warrant? Can't use the 'plain view' argument to get the warrant. Hell, the ring wasn't in plain sight. So then what? Track down some of Pam Bichon's family and play Twenty Questions?"

He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingertips against his forehead. "I'm thinking of something of Pam's that might be missing. Can y'all guess what that something might be? Mais non, I can't just come right out and tell you. That would be against the fucking rules!"

"Goddammit, Nick!"

Frustration pushed Gus to his feet and flooded his face with unhealthy color. Even his scalp glowed pink through the steel gray of his crew cut. He jammed his hands against his thick waist and glared at Fourcade leaning across his desk. At six-three he had a couple inches on the detective, but Fourcade was built like a light heavyweight boxer-all power and muscle and 3 percent body fat.

"And while we were all chasing our tails, trying to follow the rules," Fourcade went on, "you don't think Renard would be pitching that ring in the bayou?"

"You could have left Stokes there and come back. And why hadn't Renard pitched the ring already? We'd been to his house twice-"

"Third time's a charm."

"He's smarter than that."

Of all the things Nick had expected Gus Noblier to say to him, to insinuate, he hadn't anticipated this. He felt blind-sided, then foolish, then told himself it didn't matter. But it did.

"You think I planted that ring?" he asked in a voice gone dangerously soft.

Gus blew a sigh between his lips. His narrow eyes glanced a look off Nick's chin and ricocheted elsewhere. "I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. Hell, you don't think I'm smarter than that? You don't think if I knew what I was gonna find before I went there, I woulda had sense enough to list the ring on the goddamn warrant?"

The sheriff scowled, accentuating the sagging lines of his big face. "I'm not the one who thinks you're a rogue cop, Nick. That's Kudrow's game, and he's got the press playing with him."

"And I'm supposed to give a shit?"

"You, of all people. This case has folks spooked. They're seeing killers in every shadow and they want someone put away."

"Renard-"

Gus held a hand up. "Save your breath. We all want a conviction on this. I'm just telling you how it can look. I'm just telling you how this thing can be twisted. Kudrow plants enough doubt, we'll never get this creep. I'm telling you to mind your manners."

Nick let out the breath he'd been holding and turned away from the cluttered desk, resuming his pacing with less energy. "I'm a detective, not a damn community relations officer. I've got a job to do."

"You can't just do it all over Marcus Renard. Not now."

"So I'm supposed to do what? Have a gypsy conjure me up some more suspects? Cast suspicion on someone else, just to be fair? Buy into that bullshit theory this murder is the work of a serial killer everybody knows got his ticket punched for him four years ago?"

"You can't keep leaning on Renard, Nick. Not without some solid evidence or a witness or something. That's harassment, and he'll sue our asses eight ways from Sunday."

"Oh, well, God forbid he should sue us," Nick sneered. "A murderer!"

"A citizen!" Gus yelled, thumping the desktop between stacks of paperwork. "A citizen with rights and a damn good lawyer to make sure we respect them. This ain't some lowlife dirtbag you're dealing with here. He's an architect, for Christ's sake."

"He's a killer."

"Then you nail him and you nail him by the book. I've got enough trouble in this parish with half the people thinking the Bayou Strangler's been raised from the dead and half of them spoiling for a lynching-Renard's, yours, mine. This fire's burning hot enough, I don't need you throwing gasoline on it. You don't want to defy me on this, Nick. I'm telling you right now."

"Telling me what?" Nick challenged. "To back off? Or you want me off the case altogether, Gus?"

He waited impatiently for Noblier's reply. It frightened him a little, how much it mattered. The first murder he'd handled since leaving New Orleans and it had sucked him in, consumed his life, consumed him. The Bichon murder had taken precedence over everything else on his desk and in his head. Some would have called it an obsession. He didn't think he had crossed that line, but then again maybe he was in the middle of the deep woods seeing nothing but trees. It wouldn't have been the first time.

His hands had curled into fists at his sides. Holding on to the case. He couldn't make himself let go.

"Keep a low profile, for crying out loud," Gus said with resignation as he lowered himself into his chair. "Let Stokes take a bigger part of the case. Don't get in Renard's face."

"He killed her, Gus. He wanted her and she didn't want him. So he stalked her. He terrorized her. He kidnapped her. He tortured her. He killed her."

Gus cupped his hands together and held them up. "This is our evidence, Nick. Everybody in the state of Lou'siana can know Marcus Renard did it, but if we don't get more than what we've got now, he's a free man."

"Merde," Nick muttered. "Maybe I shoulda let Hunter Davidson shoot him."

"Then it'd be Hunter Davidson going on trial for murder."

"Pritchett's filing charges?"

"He doesn't have a choice." Gus picked up an arrest report from his desk, glanced at it, and set it aside. "Davidson tried to kill Renard in front of fifty witnesses. Let that be a lesson to you if you're fixing to kill someone."

"Can I go?"

Gus gave him a long look. "You're not fixing to kill someone, are you, Nick?"

"I got work to do."

Fourcade's expression was inscrutable, his dark eyes unreadable. He slipped on his sunglasses. Gus's stomach called loudly for Mylanta. He jabbed a finger at his detective. "You keep that coonass temper in check, Fourcade. It's already landed your butt in water hot enough to boil crawfish. Blaming the cops is in vogue these days. And your name is on the tip of everyone's tongue."

Annie loitered in the open doorway to the briefing room, a leaking Baggie of melting ice cubes pressed to the knot on the back of her head. She had changed out of her torn, dirty uniform into the jeans and T-shirt she kept in her locker. She strained to make out the argument going on in the sheriff's office down the hall, but only the tone was conveyed. Impatient, angry.

The press had been speculating even before the evidentiary hearing that Fourcade would lose his job over the screwup on the warrant, but then the press liked to make noise and understood little of the intricacies of police work. They had written much about the public's frustration with the SO's failure to make an arrest, but they brushed off the frustration of the cops working the case. They all but called for a public hanging of the suspect based on nothing more than hearsay evidence, then spun around 180 degrees and pointed their fingers at the detective in charge of the case when he finally came up with something tangible.

No one had any evidence Fourcade had planted that ring in Renard's desk drawer. It didn't make sense that he would have planted evidence but not listed that evidence on the warrant. There was every possibility Renard had put the ring in that drawer himself, never imagining his house would be searched a third time. Perpetrators of sex-related homicides tended to keep souvenirs of their victims. Everything from pieces of jewelry to pieces of bodies. That was a fact.

Annie had attended the seminar on sexual predators at the academy in Lafayette three months before the Bichon murder. She took as many extra courses as she could in preparation for one day making detective. That was her goal -to work in plain clothes, dig deep into the mysteries of the crimes she now dealt with only at the outset of a case.

The crime-scene slides the class instructor had shown them had been horrific. Crimes of unspeakable cruelty and brutality. Victims tortured and mutilated in ways no sane person could ever have imagined in their worst nightmares. But then she no longer had to imagine. She had been the one to discover Pam Bichon's body.

She had been off duty the weekend the real estate agent was reported missing. On routine patrol Monday morning, Annie had found herself drawn to a vacant house out on Pony Bayou. The place had been for sale for months, though the renters had moved out only five or six weeks previous. A rusted Bayou Realty sign had fallen over on one side of the overgrown drive. Something she had read in Police magazine made Annie turn in the driveway-an article about how many female real estate agents each year are lured to remote properties, then raped or murdered.

Hidden in the brambles behind the dilapidated house sat a white Mustang convertible, top up. She recognized the car from the briefing, but ran it to be certain. The plates came back to Pamela K. Bichon, no wants, no warrants, reported missing two days previous. And in the dining room of the old house it was Pam Bichon she found… or what was left of her.

She still saw the scene too often when she closed her eyes. The nails in her hands. The mutilation. The blood. The mask. The flashbacks still awakened her in the night, the images entwining with a nightmare four years old, forcing her to rush to the surface of consciousness like a swimmer coming up from the depths, running out of air. The smell still burned in her nostrils from time to time, when she least expected it. The putrid miasma of violent death. Cloying, choking, thick with the scent of fear.

A chill ran through her now, twisting and coiling in the bottom of her stomach.

The Baggie dribbled ice water down the back of her neck, and she flinched and swore under her breath.

"Hey, Broussard." Deputy Ossie Compton sucked in his stomach and sidled past her through the doorway to the break room. "I heard you were a cold one. How come that ice is melting?"

Annie shot him a wry look. "Must be all your hot air. Compton."

He gave her a wink, his grin flashing white in his dark face. "My hot charm, you mean."

"Is that what you call it?" she teased. "Here I thought it was gas."

Laughter rolled behind her, Compton 's included.

"You got him again, Annie," Prejean said.

"I quit keeping score," she said, glancing back down the hall toward the sheriff's office. "It got to where it was just cruel."

The shift would change in twenty minutes. Guys coming on for the evening wandered in to BS with the day shift before briefing. The Hunter Davidson incident was the hot topic of the day.

"Man, you shoulda seen Fourcade!" Savoy said with a big grin. "He moves like a damn panther, him! Talk about!"

"Yeah. He was on Davidson like that." Prejean snapped his fingers. "And there's women screaming and the gun going off and nine kinds of hell all at once. It was a regular goddamn circus."

"And where were you during all this, Broussard?" Chaz Stokes asked, turning his pale eyes on Annie.

Tension instantly rose inside her as she returned the detective's stare.

"At the bottom of the pile," Sticks Mullen snickered, flashing a small mouth overcrowded with yellow teeth. "Where a woman belongs."

"Yeah, like you'd know." She tossed her dripping ice bag into the trash. "You read that in a book, Mullen?"

"You think he can read?" Prejean said with mock astonishment.

"Penthouse," someone suggested.

"Naw," Compton drawled, elbowing Savoy. "He just looks at the pictures and milks his lizard."

"Fuck you, Compton." Mullen rose and headed for the candy machine, hitching up his pants on skinny hips and digging in his pocket for change.

"Jesus, don't fish it out here, Sticks!"

"Christ," Stokes muttered in disgust.

He had the kind of looks that drew a woman's eye. Tall, trim, athletic. An interesting combination of features hinted at his mixed family background-short dark hair curled tight to his head, skin that was just a shade more brown than white. He had a slim nose and a Dudley Do-Right mouth framed by a neat mustache and goatee.

His face would have looked good on a recruiting poster with its square jaw and chin, the light turquoise eyes piercing out from beneath heavy black brows. But Stokes wasn't the type in any other respect. He cultivated a laid-back, free-spirit image advertised by his unconventional clothing, which today consisted of baggy gray janitor's pants and a square-bottomed shirt printed with bucking broncos, Indian tipis, and cacti. He pulled his black straw snap-brim down at an angle over one eye.

"You steal that off Chi Chi Rodriguez?" Annie asked.

"Come on, Broussard," he murmured with a sly smile. "You want me. You're always looking at me. Am I right or am I right?"

"You're full of shit and you're kind of hard to miss in that getup. So where were you during all the fun? You been working the Bichon case as much as Fourcade."

He leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, glancing out into the hall. "Nick's the primary. I had to go to St. Martinville. They picked up my meth dealer on a DUI."

"And that required your personal attention?"

"Hey, I've been working to nail that rat bastard for months."

"If they had him in their jail, what's the big hurry?"

Stokes flashed his teeth. "Hey, no time like the present. You know what I'm saying. The warrants came out of this parish. I want Billy Thibidoux on my resume ASAP."

"You left Fourcade swinging in the breeze so you could have Billy Thibidoux in your jacket. Yeah, I'd want to be your partner, Chaz," Annie said with derision.

"Nicky's a big boy. He didn't need me. And you…" His eyes hardened a bit, even though the smile stayed firmly in place. "I thought we'd already covered that ground, Broussard. You had your chance. But hey, I'm a generous guy. I'd be willing to give you another shot… out of uniform, so to speak."

I'd rather mud wrestle alligators in the nude. But she kept the remark to herself, when she would have readily tossed it at any of her other co-workers. She knew from experience Chaz didn't take rejection well.

He reached out unexpectedly and pressed his thumb against the darkening bruise along the crown of her left cheekbone. "You're gonna have a shiner, Broussard." He dropped his hand as she pulled back. "Looks good on you."

"You're such a jerk," she muttered, turning away, knowing she was the only one in the department who thought so. Chaz Stokes was everybody's pal… except hers.

The door to the sheriff's office swung open and Fourcade stormed out, his expression ominous, his tie jerked loose at the throat of his tan shirt. He dug a cigarette out of his breast pocket.

"We're fucked!" he snapped at Stokes, not slowing his stride.

"I heard."

Annie watched them go down the hall. Stokes had worked the Bichon case when Pam was alive and claiming Renard was stalking her. He had missed the homicide call, but had worked the murder as Fourcade's partner. They weren't being held up to public scrutiny and ridicule as a team, however. It was Fourcade's name in the papers. Fourcade, who had come to Partout Parish with a checkered past. Fourcade, who had come up with the ring. Stokes wouldn't be raked over the coals after today's court ruling. He had assured that by making himself scarce.

"Billy Thibidoux, my ass," she grumbled under her breath.

Annie stayed late to finish her report on the Davidson incident. When she came out of the building at 5:06, the parking lot behind the law enforcement center was deserted except for a pair of trustees washing the sheriff's new Suburban. The day-shift deputies had split for home or second jobs or stools in their favorite bars. The press had taken Smith Pritchett's brief official statement on Hunter Davidson's situation and gone off to meet their deadlines.

A sense of false peace held the moment. Any stranger walking through Bayou Breaux would have remarked on the lovely afternoon. Spring had arrived unusually early, filling the air with the perfume of sweet olive and wisteria. Window boxes on the second-floor galleries of the historic business district were bursting with color and overflowing greenery, ivy trailing down the wrought iron and wood railings. Store windows had been decorated for the upcoming Mardi Gras carnival. Down on the corner, old Tante Lucesse sat on a folding chair weaving a pine-needle basket and singing hymns for passersby.

But underlying the veneer of peace was something sinister. A raw nerve of disquiet. As the sun went down on Bayou Breaux, a killer sat somewhere in the gathering gloom. That knowledge tainted the shabby beauty here like a stain seeping across a tablecloth. Murder. Whether you believed Renard was the killer or not, a murderer was loose among them, free to do as he pleased.

It wasn't the first time, which made it impossible to discount as an aberration. Death had stalked this patch of South Louisiana before. The memories had barely gone stale. The death of Pam Bichon had dredged them to the surface, had awakened fear and stirred up doubt.

Six women in five different parishes had died over an eighteen-month period between 1992 and 1993, raped, strangled, and sexually mutilated. Two of the victims had come from Bayou Breaux-Savannah Chandler and Annick Delahoussaye-Gerrard, whom Annie had known her entire life. The crimes had shocked the people of Louisiana 's French Triangle into a state of near panic, and the conclusion of the case had shocked them even more.

The murders had stopped with the death of Stephen Danjermond, son of a wealthy New Orleans Garden District shipping family. The investigation had revealed a long history of sexual sadism and murder, hobbies Danjermond had practiced since his college days. Trophies from his victims had been discovered during a search of his home. At the time of his death Danjermond had been serving his first term as Partout Parish district attorney.

The story had put Bayou Breaux in the spotlight for a short time, but the glare had faded and the horror was put aside. The case was closed. The evil had been burned out. Life had returned to normal. Until Pam Bichon.

Her death was too close for comfort, too similar. All the old fears had bubbled to the surface, divided, and multiplied. People wondered if Danjermond had been the killer at all, their new panic clouding the memory of the evidence against him. Killed in a fire, he had never publicly confessed to his crimes. Other folks were eager to embrace Renard as the suspect in the Bichon killing-better a tangible evil than a nebulous one. But even with a target to point their fingers at, the underlying fear remained: a superstition, a half-conscious belief that the evil was indeed a phantom, that this place had been cursed.

Annie felt it herself-an edginess, a low-frequency hum that skimmed along her nerves at night, an instinct that heightened the awareness of every sound, a sense of vulnerability. Every woman in the parish felt it, perhaps more so this time than the last. The Bayou Strangler's victims had been women of questionable reputation. Pam Bichon had led a normal life, had a good job, came from a nice family… and a killer had chosen her. If it could happen to Pam Bichon…

Annie felt the uneasiness within her now, felt it press in around her as if the air had suddenly become more dense. The sense of being watched itched across the back of her neck. But when she turned around, it was no evil gargoyle staring at her. A small face with big sad eyes peered at her over the steering wheel of her Jeep. Josie Bichon.

"Hey, Josie," she said, letting herself in on the passenger's side. "Where y'at?"

The little girl laid her cheek against the steering wheel and shrugged. She was a beautiful child with straight brown hair that hung like a thick curtain to her waist and brown eyes too soulful for her years. In a denim jumper and floppy denim hat, the brim pinned up in front with a big silk sunflower, she could have been modeling for a GAP Kids fashion shoot.

"You here on your own?"

"No. I came with Grandma to see Grandpa. They wouldn't let me go in."

"Sorry, Jose. They've got rules about letting kids into the jail."

"Yeah. Everybody's got rules for everything when it comes to kids. I wish I could make a rule for once." She reached out and tapped her finger against the plastic alligator that hung from the rearview mirror. The gator wore sunglasses, a red beret, and a leering grin designed to amuse, but Josie was in a place beyond amusement. "Rule number one: No treating me like a baby, 'cause I'm not. Rule number two: No lying to me for my own good."

"You heard about what happened in front of the courthouse?" Annie asked gently.

"It was on the radio when we were having art class. Grandpa tried to shoot the man that killed my mom, and he was arrested. At first, Grandma tried to tell me he just tripped and fell down the courthouse steps. She lied to me. "

"I'm sure she didn't mean it to be a lie, Josie. Imagine how scared she must have been. She didn't want to scare you too."

Josie gave her an expression that spoke eloquently of her feelings on the subject. From the moment her family had been notified of her mother's death, Josie had been fed half-truths, gently pushed aside while the adults whispered concerns and secrets. Her father and her grandparents and aunts and uncles had done their best to wrap her in an insulation of misinformation, never imagining that what they were doing only hurt her more. But Annie knew.

"Mama, Mama! We're home! Look what Uncle Sos got me at Disney World! It's Minnie Mouse!"

The kitchen door banged shut and she stopped in her tracks.

The person sitting at the kitchen table wasn't her mother. Father Goetz rose from the chrome-legged chair, his face grave, and Enola Meyette, a fat woman who always smelled of sausage, came away from the sink drying her hands on a red checked towel.

"Allons, chérie," Mrs. Meyette said, holding out one dimpled hand. "We go down the store. Get you a candy, oui?"

Annie had known right then something was terribly wrong. The memory still brought back the same sick twisting in her stomach she had felt that day as Enola Meyette led her from the kitchen. She could see herself clearly at nine, eyes wide with fear, a choke hold on her new stuffed Minnie Mouse, as she was pulled away from the truth Father Goetz had come to deliver: that while Annie was on her first-ever vacation trip with Tante Fanchon and Uncle Sos, Marie Broussard had taken her own life.

She remembered the gentle lies of well-meaning people, and the sense of isolation that grew with each of those lies. An isolation she had carried inside her for a long, long time.

Annie had taken it upon herself to answer Josie's questions when the sheriff's office had sent its representatives to break the news to Hunter Davidson and his wife. And Josie, perhaps sensing a kindred spirit, had made an instant and yet-to-be-severed connection.

"You could have come to the sheriff's office and asked for me," Annie said.

Josie tapped the alligator again and watched it swing. "I didn't want to be with people. Not if I couldn't see Grandpa Hunt and ask him what really happened."

"I was there."

"Did he really try to kill that guy?"

Annie chose her words with care. "He might have if Detective Fourcade hadn't seen the gun in time."

"I wish he had shot him dead," Josie declared.

"People can't take the law into their own hands, Jose."

"Why? Because it's against the rules? That guy killed my mom. What about the rules he broke? He should have to pay for what he did."

"That's what the courts are for."

"But the judge let him go!" Josie cried, frustration and pain tangling in a knot in her throat. The same frustration and pain Annie had heard in Hunter Davidson's broken sobs.

"Just for now," Annie said, hoping the promise wasn't really as empty as it felt to her. "Just until we can get some better evidence against him."

Tears welled up in Josie's eyes and spilled over. "Then why can't you find it? You're a cop and you're my friend. You're supposed to understand! You said you'd help! You're supposed to make sure he gets punished! Instead, you put my grandpa in jail! I hate this!" She hit her hand against the steering wheel, blasting the horn. "I hate everything!"

Josie scrambled from the driver's seat and dashed toward the law enforcement center. Annie hopped out of the Jeep and started after her. But she pulled herself up short as she caught sight of Belle Davidson and Thomas Watson, the Davidsons' attorney, coming out the side door.

Belle Davidson was a formidable woman in a demure sweater-and-pearls disguise. A steel magnolia of the first order. The woman's lips thinned as her gaze lit on Annie. She disconnected herself from Josie's embrace and started across the lot.

"You have an awful nerve, Deputy Broussard," she declared. "Throwing my husband in jail instead of my daughter's murderer, then playing up to my granddaughter as if you have a right to her devotion."

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Mrs. Davidson," Annie said. "But we couldn't let your husband shoot Marcus Renard."

"He wouldn't have been driven to such desperation if not for the incompetence of you people in the sheriff's department. You let a guilty man run free all over town due to carelessness and oversight. By God, I've got half a mind to shoot him myself."

"Belle!" the lawyer whined as he caught up with his client. "I told you, you hadn't ought to say that in front of people!"

"Oh, for God's sake, Thomas. My daughter has been murdered. People would think it strange if I didn't say these things."

"We're doing the best we can, Mrs. Davidson," Annie said.

"And what have you come up with? Nothing. You're a disgrace to your uniform-when you're wearing one."

She gave Annie's faded T-shirt a sharply dubious look that had likely sent many a Junior Leaguer home in tears.

"I'm not working your daughter's case, ma'am. It's up to Detectives Fourcade and Stokes."

Belle Davidson's expression only hardened. "Don't make excuses, Deputy. We all have obligations in this life that go beyond boundaries. You found my daughter's body. You saw what-" She cut herself off, glancing down at Josie. When she turned back to Annie, her dark eyes glittered with tears. "You know. How can you turn your back on that?

How can you turn your back on that and still show your face to my granddaughter?"

"It's not Annie's fault, Grandma," Josie said, though the gaze she lifted to Annie's face was tainted with disappointment.

"Don't say that, Josie," Belle admonished softly as she slipped an arm around her granddaughter's shoulders and pulled her close. "That's what's wrong with the world today. No one will take responsibility for anything."

"I want justice, too, Mrs. Davidson," Annie said. "But it has to happen within the system."

"Deputy, the only thing we've gotten within the system so far is injustice."

As they walked away, Josie looked back over her shoulder, her brown eyes huge and sad. For an instant Annie felt as if she were watching herself walking away into the painful haze of her past, the memory pulling out from the core of her like a string.

"What happened, Tante Fanchon? Where's Mama?"

"Your maman, she's in heaven, ma 'tite fille."

"But why?"

"It was an accident, chérie. God, He looked away."

"I don't understand."

"Non, chère 'tite bete. Someday. When you get older…"

But she had hurt right then, and promises of later had done nothing to soothe the pain.