A Thin Dark Line

3

"We'll get him one way or another, Slick."

Fourcade cast Chaz Stokes a glance out the corner of his eye as he raised his glass. "There's plenty of people who think we already tried 'another.' "

"Fuck 'em," Stokes declared, and tossed back a shot. He stacked the glass on the bar with the half dozen others they had accumulated. "We know Renard's our man. We know what he did. The little motherfucker is wrong. You know it and I know it, my friend. Am I right or am I right?"

He clamped a hand on Fourcade's shoulder, a buddy gesture that was met with a stony look. Camaraderie was the rule in police work, but Fourcade didn't have the time or the energy to waste on it. His focus was, by necessity, on his caseload and himself-getting himself back on the straight and narrow path he had fallen from in New Orleans.

"The state ought to plug his dick into a socket and light him up like a goddamn Christmas tree," Stokes muttered. "Instead, the judge lets him walk on a fucking technicality, and Pritchett throws Davidson in the can. The world's a fucking loony bin, but I guess you already knew that."

Par for the damn course, Nick thought, but he kept it to himself, choosing to treat Stokes's invitation to share as a rhetorical remark. He didn't talk about his days in the NOPD or the incident that had ultimately forced him out of New Orleans. As far as he had ever seen, the truth was of little interest to most people, anyway. They chose to form their opinions based on whatever sensational tidbit of a story took their fancy. The fact that he had been the one to find Pamela Bichon's small amethyst ring, for instance.

He wondered if anyone would have suspected Chaz Stokes of planting the ring, had Stokes been the one to discover it. Stokes had come to Bayou Breaux from somewhere in Crackerland, Mississippi, four years ago, a regular Joe with no past to speak of. If Stokes had found the ring, would the focus now be solely on the injustice of Renard walking free, or would the waters of public opinion have been muddied anyway? Lawyers had a way of stirring up the muck like catfish caught in the shallows, and Richard Kudrow was kingfish of that particular school of bottom feeders.

Nick had to think Kudrow would have cast aspersions on the evidence regardless of who had recovered it. He didn't want to think that his finding it had tainted it, didn't want to think that his presence on the case would block Pam Bichon from getting justice.

Didn't want to think. Period.

Stokes poured another shot from the bottle of Wild Turkey. Nick tossed it back and lit another cigarette. The television hanging in one corner of the dimly lit lounge was showing a sitcom to a small, disinterested audience of businessmen who had come in from the hotel next door to bullshit over chunky glasses of Johnnie Walker and Cajun Chex mix served in plastic ashtrays.

There were no other customers, which was why Stokes had suggested this place over the usual cop hangouts. Nick would have sooner done his brooding in private. He didn't want questions. He didn't want commiseration. He didn't want to rehash the day's events. But Stokes was his partner on the Bichon case, and so Nick made this concession-to pound down a few together, as if they had something more in common than the job.

He shouldn't have been drinking at all. It was one of the vices he had tried to leave in New Orleans, but it and some others had trailed after him to Bayou Breaux like stray dogs. He should have been home working through the intricate and consuming moves of the Tai Chi, attempting to cleanse his mind, to focus the negative energy and burn it out. Instead, he sat here at Laveau's, stewing in it.

The whiskey simmered in his belly and in his veins, and he decided he was just about past caring where he was. Well on his way toward oblivion, he thought. And he'd be damn glad when he got there. It was the one place he might not see Pam Bichon lying dead on the floor.

"I still think about what he did to her," Stokes murmured, fingers absently peeling away strips of the label from his beer bottle. "Don't you?"

Day and night. During consciousness and what passed for sleep. The images stayed with him. The paleness of her skin. The wounds: gruesome, hideous, so at odds with what she had been like in life. The expression in her eyes as she stared up through the mask-stark, hopeless, filled with a kind of terror that couldn't be imagined by anyone who hadn't faced a brutal death.

And when the images came to him, so did the sense of violence that must have been thick in the air at the time of her death. It hit him like a wall of sound, intense, powerful, poisonous rage that left him feeling sick and shaken.

Rage was no stranger. It boiled inside him now.

"I think about what she went through," Stokes said. "What she must have felt when she realized… what he did to her with that knife. Christ." He shook his head as if to shake loose the images taking root there. "He's gotta pay for that, man, and without that ring we got shit for a bill. He's gonna walk, Nicky. He's gonna get away with murder."

People did. Every day. Every day the line was crossed and souls disappeared into the depths of an alternate dimension. It was a matter of choice, a battle of wills. Most people never came close enough to the edge to have any knowledge of it. Too close to the edge and the force could pull you across like an undertow.

"He's probably sitting in his office thinking that right now," Stokes went on. "He's been working nights, you know. The rest of his firm can't stand to have him around. They know he's guilty, same as we do. Can't stand looking at him, knowing what he did. I'll bet he's sitting there right now, thinking about it."

Right across the alley. The architectural firm of Bowen amp; Briggs was housed in a narrow painted brick building that faced the bayou; flanked by a shabby clapboard barbershop and an antiques store. The same building that housed Bayou Realty on the first floor. Bowen amp; Briggs was likely the only place on the block inhabited tonight.

"You know, man, somebody ought to do Renard," Stokes whispered, cutting a wary glance at the bartender. He stood at the end of the bar, chuckling over the sitcom.

"Justice, you know," Stokes said. "An eye for an eye."

"I shoulda let Davidson shoot him," Nick muttered, and wondered again why he had not. Because there was still a part of him that believed the system was supposed to work. Or maybe he hadn't wanted to see Hunter Davidson sucked over to the dark side.

"He could have an accident," Stokes suggested. "It happens all the time. The swamp is a dangerous place. Just swallows people up sometimes, you know."

Nick looked at him through the haze of smoke, trying to judge, trying to gauge. He didn't know Stokes well enough. Didn't know him at all beyond what they had shared on the job. All he had were impressions, a handful of adjectives, speculation hastily made because he didn't care to waste his time on such things. He preferred to concentrate on focal points; Stokes was part of the periphery of his life. Just another detective in a four-man department. They worked independently of one another most of the time.

Stokes's mouth twisted up on one corner. "Wishful thinking, pard, wishful thinking. Idn' that what they do down in New Orleans? Pop the bad guys and dump 'em in the swamp?"

" Lake Pontchartrain, mostly."

Stokes stared at him a moment, uncertain, then decided it was a joke. He laughed, drained his beer, and slid off the stool, reaching into his hip pocket for his wallet. "I gotta split. Gotta meet with the DA on Thibidoux in the morning." The grin flashed again. "And I got a hot date tonight. Hot and sweet between the sheets. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'."

He dropped a ten on the bar and clamped a hand on Nick's shoulder one last time. "Protect and serve, pard. Catch you later."

Protect and serve, Nick thought. Pamela Bichon was dead. Her father was sitting in jail, and the man who had killed her was free. Just who had they protected and what purpose had been served today?

"Pritchett's fit to kill somebody."

"I'd suggest Renard," Annie muttered, scowling at her menu.

"More apt to be your idol, Fourcade."

She caught the sarcasm, the jealousy, and rolled her eyes at her dinner partner. She had known A. J. Doucet her whole life. He was one of Tante Fanchon and Uncle Sos's brood of actual nephews and nieces, related by blood rather than by serendipity, as she was. As children, they had chased each other around the big yard out at the Corners-the cafe/boat landing/convenience store Sos and Fanchon ran south of town. During their high school years, A.J. had taken on the often unappreciated role of protector. Since then he had gone from friend to lover and back as he proceeded through college and law school and into the Partout Parish District Attorney's Office.

They had yet to agree on a description for their current relationship. The attraction that had come and gone between them over the years seemed never to come or go for both of them at the same time.

"He's not my idol," she said irritably. "He happens to be the best detective we've got, that's all. I want to be a detective. Of course I watch him. And why should you care? You and I are not, I repeat, not an item, A.J."

"You know how I feel about that too."

Annie blew out a sigh. "Can we skip this argument tonight? I've had a rotten day. You're supposed to be my best friend. Act like it."

He leaned toward her across the small white-draped table, his brown eyes intense, the hurt in them cutting at her conscience. "You know there's more there than that, Annie, and don't give me that 'we're practically related' bullshit you've been wading in recently. You are no more related to me than you are related to the President of the United States."

"Which I could be, for all I know," she muttered, sitting back, retreating in the only way she could without making a scene.

As it was, they had become the object of speculation for another set of diners across the intimate width of Isabeau's. She suspected it was her blackening eye that had caught the other woman's attention. Out of uniform, she supposed she looked like an abused partner rather than an abused cop.

"It's not the cops Pritchett should be pissed at," she said. "Judge Monahan made the ruling. He could have let that ring in."

"And left the door open for appeal? What would be the point of that?"

The waitress interrupted the discussion, bringing their drinks, her gaze cutting from Annie's battered face to A.J.

"She's gonna spit in your etouffee, you know," Annie remarked.

"Why should she assume I gave you that shiner? I could be your high-priced, ass-kicking divorce lawyer."

Annie sipped her wine, dismissing the subject. "He's guilty, A.J."

"Then bring us the evidence-obtained by legal means."

"By the rules, like it's a game. Josie wasn't far wrong."

"What about Josie?"

"She came to see me today. Or, rather, she came with her grandmother to see Hunter Davidson in jail."

"The formidable Miss Belle."

"They both tore into me. "

"What for? It's not your case."

"Yeah, well…" she hedged, sensing that A.J. wouldn't understand the strong pull she was feeling. Everything in its place-that was A.J. Every aspect of life was supposed to fit into one of the neat little compartments he had set up, while everything in Annie's life seemed to be tossed into one big messy pile she was continually sorting through, trying to make sense of. "I'm tied to it. I wish I could do more to help. I look at Josie and…"

A.J.'s expression softened with concern. He was too handsome for his own good. Curse of the Doucet men with their square jaws and high cheekbones and pretty mouths. Not for the first time, Annie wished things between them could have been as simple as he wanted.

"The case has been hell on everyone, honey," he said. "You've done more than your part already."

Therein lay the problem, Annie thought as she picked at her dinner. What exactly was her part? Was she supposed to draw the boundary at duty and absolve herself of any further responsibility?

"We all have obligations in this life that go beyond boundaries."

She had already gone above and beyond the call involving herself with Josie. But, even without Josie, she would have felt this case pulling at her, would have felt Pam Bichon pulling at her from that limbo inhabited by the restless souls of victims.

With all the controversy swirling around the case, Pam was being pushed out of view little by little. No one had helped her when she was alive and believed that Marcus Renard was stalking her, and now that she was dead, attention was being diverted elsewhere.

"Maybe there wouldn't be a case if Judge Edmonds had taken Pam seriously in the first place," she said, setting her fork down and abandoning her meal. "What's the point of having a stalking law if judges are just gonna blow off every complaint that comes their way as 'boys will be boys'-"

"We've had this conversation," A.J. reminded her. "For Edmonds to have granted that restraining order, the law would have to be worded so that looking crossways at a woman would be considered criminal. What Pam Bichon brought before the court did not constitute stalking. Renard asked her out, he gave her presents-"

"He slashed her tires and cut her phone line and-"

"She had no proof the person doing those things was Marcus Renard. He asked her out, she turned him down, he was unhappy. There's a big leap from unhappy to psychotic."

"So said Judge Edmonds, who probably still thinks it's okay for men to hit women over the head with mastodon bones and drag them into caves by their hair," Annie said with disgust. "But then that makes him about average around here, doesn't it?"

"Hey, objection!"

She broke her scowl with a look of contrition. "It goes without saying, you're above average. I'm sorry I'm such poor company tonight. I'm gonna pass on the movie, go home, soak in the tub, go to bed."

A.J. reached across the table and hooked a fingertip inside the simple gold bracelet she wore, caressing the tender skin of her inner wrist. "Those aren't necessarily solitary pursuits," he whispered, his eyes rich with a warm promise he had fulfilled from time to time in the past when the currents of their attraction had managed to cross paths.

Annie drew her hand back on the excuse of reaching for her pocketbook. "Not tonight, Romeo. I have a concussion."

They said their good-byes in the tiny parking lot alongside the restaurant, Annie offering her cheek for A.J.'s goodnight kiss when he aimed for her lips. Their parting only added to the restlessness she had been feeling all day, as if everything in the world were just a half beat out of sync. She sat behind the wheel of the Jeep, listening with one ear to the radio as A.J. drove out onto La Rue Dumas and turned south.

"You're on KJUN, all talk all the time. Home of the giant jackpot giveaway. This is your Devil's Advocate, Owen Onofrio. Our topic tonight: today's controversial decision in the Renard case. I've got Ron from Henderson on line one. Go ahead, Ron."

"I think it's a disgrace that criminals have all the rights in the courts anymore. He had that woman's ring in his house. By God, that oughta be all she wrote right there. Strap him down and light him up!"

"But what if the detective planted the evidence? What happens when we can't trust the people sworn to protect us? Jennifer in Bayou Breaux on line two."

"Well, I'm just scared sick by all of it. What's anyone supposed to think? I mean, the police are all over this Renard fella, but what if he didn't do it? I heard they have secret evidence that links this murder to those Bayou Strangler murders. I'm a woman lives alone. I work the late shift down at the lamp factory-"

Annie switched the radio off, not in the mood. She often listened to the talk station to get a feel for public opinion. But opinions on this case spanned the spectrum. Only the emotions were consistent: anger, fear, and uncertainty. People were nervous, easily spooked. Reports of prowlers and Peeping Toms had tripled. The waiting lists for home alarm systems were long. Gun shops in the parish were doing a brisk, grim business.

The feelings were no strangers to Annie. The lack of closure, of justice, was driving her crazy. That and her own minimal role in the drama. The fact that, even though she had been in it at the beginning, she had been relegated to bystander. She knew what role she wanted to play. She also knew no one would ever invite her into the game. She was just a deputy, and a woman deputy at that. There was no affirmative-action fast track in Partout Parish. A considerable span of rungs ran up the ladder from where she was to where she wanted to be.

She was supposed to wait her turn, earn her stripes, and meanwhile… Meanwhile the need that had pushed her to become a cop simmered and churned inside her… and Pam Bichon got lost in the shuffle… and a killer lay watching, waiting, free to slip away or kill again.

Night had crept in over the town and brought with it a damp chill. Sheer wisps of fog were floating up off the bayou and drifting through the streets like ghosts. Across the street from where Annie sat the black padded door to Laveau's swung open and Chaz Stokes stepped out, blue neon light washing down on him. He stood on the deserted sidewalk for a moment, smoking a cigarette, looking up one side of the street and down the other. He tossed the cigarette in the gutter, climbed into his Camaro, and drove away, turning down the side street that led to the bayou, leaving an empty space at the curb in front of a weathered black pickup. Fourcade's pickup.

It struck Annie as odd. Another piece out of place. No one hung out at Laveau's. The Voodoo Lounge was the usual spot for cops in Bayou Breaux. Laveau's was the mostly empty companion to the mostly empty Maison Dupre hotel next door.

Out of place. It was that thought that pushed her out of the Jeep. Even as she told herself that lie, she could clearly see A.J.'s accusatory face in her mind. He thought she had the hots for Fourcade, for all the good that would have done her. Fourcade treated her like a fixture. She could have been a lamp or a hat rack, with all the sexual allure of either. He didn't resent her, didn't harass her, didn't joke around with her. He had no interest in her whatsoever. And her only interest was in the case. She jaywalked across Dumas to the bar.

Laveau's was a cave of midnight blue walls and mahogany wood black with age. If it hadn't been for the television in the far corner, Annie would have thought she had gone blind walking into the place. The bartender flicked a glance at her and went back to pouring a round of Johnnie Walker for the only table of patrons-a quartet of men in rumpled business suits.

Fourcade sat at the end of the bar, shoulders hunched inside his battered leather jacket, his gaze on the stack of shot glasses before him. He blew a jet stream of smoke at them and watched it dissipate into the gloom. He didn't turn to look at her, but as she approached Annie had the distinct feeling that he was completely conscious of her presence.

She slipped between a pair of stools and leaned sideways against the bar. "Tough break today," she said, blinking at the sting of the smoke.

The big dark eyes were on her instantly, staring out from beneath a heavy sweep of brows. Clear, sharp, showing no foggy effects from the whiskey he had consumed, burning with a ferocious intensity that seemed to emanate from the very core of him. He still didn't turn to face her, presenting her with a profile that was hawkish. He wore his black hair slicked back, but a shock of it had tumbled down across his broad forehead.

"Broussard," Annie said, feeling awkward. "Deputy Broussard. Annie." She brushed her bangs out of her eyes in a nervous gesture. "I-ah-was on the courthouse steps. We took down Hunter Davidson. I was the one at the bottom of the pile."

The gaze slid down from her face past the open front of her denim jacket and the thin white T-shirt beneath it to the flower-sprigged skirt that hit her mid-calf to the Keds she wore on her feet… and eased back up like a long caress.

"You out of uniform, Deputy."

"I'm off duty."

"Are you?"

Annie blinked at his response and at the smoke, not quite sure what to make of the first. "I was the first officer on the scene at the Bichon homicide. I-"

"I know who you are. What you think, chère, that this little bit o' whiskey pickled my brain or something?" He arched a brow and chuckled, tapping his cigarette into a plastic ashtray bristling with butts. "You grew up here, enrolled in the academy August 1993, got hired into the Lafayette PD, came to the SO here in '95. You were the second woman deputy on patrol in this parish-the first having lasted all of ten months. You got a good record, but you tend to be nosy. Me, I think that's maybe not such a bad thing if you gonna do the job, if you looking to move up, which you are."

Astonished, Annie gaped at him. In the months Fourcade had been in the department she had never heard him volunteer a sentence of more than ten words. She had certainly never dreamed that he knew enough about her to do so. That he seemed to know quite a lot about her was unnerving-a reaction he read without effort.

"You were the first deputy on the scene. I needed to know if you were any good, or if you mighta screwed up, or if maybe you knew Pam Bichon. Maybe you had the same boyfriend. Maybe she sold you a house with snakes under the floors. Maybe she beat you out for head cheerleader back in high school."

"You considered me a suspect?"

"Me, I consider ever'body a suspect 'til I can find out different."

He took a long pull on his smoke and watched her as he exhaled. "Does this bother you?" he asked, making a small gesture with the cigarette.

She tried without success not to blink. "No."

"Yes, it does," he declared as he stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray. "Say so. Ain't nobody in this world gonna speak up for you, chère."

"I'm not afraid to speak up."

"No? You afraid of me?"

"If I were afraid of you, I wouldn't be standing here."

His lips twisted in a faint smirk and he gave a very French shrug that said, Maybe, maybe no. Annie felt her temper spike a notch.

"Why should I be afraid of you?"

His expression darkened as he turned a shot glass on the bar. "You don't listen to gossip?"

"I take it for what it's worth. Half-truths, if that."

"And how you decide which half is true?" he asked. "There is no justice in this world," he said softly, staring into his whiskey. "How's that for a truth, Deputy Broussard?"

"It's all in your perception, I suppose."

" 'One man's justice is another man's injustice… one man's wisdom another's folly.' " He sipped at the whiskey. "Emerson. No reporter will sum up today's events as well… or with such truth."

"What they say doesn't change the facts," Annie said. "You found Pain's ring in Renard's house."

"You don't think I put it there?"

"If you had put it there, it would have been listed on the warrant."

"C'est vrai. True enough, Annie." He gave her a pensive look. "Annie-that's short for something?"

"Antoinette."

He sipped his whiskey. "That's a beautiful name, why you don't use it?"

She shrugged. "I-well-everyone calls me Annie."

"Me, I'm not ever'body, 'Toinette," he said quietly.

He seemed to have gotten closer or loomed larger. Annie thought she could feel the heat of him, smell the old leather of his jacket. She knew she could feel his gaze holding hers, and she told herself to back away. But she didn't.

"I came here to ask you about the case," she said. "Or did Noblier pull you off?"

"No."

"I'd like to help if I can." She blurted the words, forced the idea out before she could swallow it back. She held up one hand to stave off his reply and gestured nervously with the other. "I mean, I know I'm just a deputy, and technically it isn't my case, and you're the detective, and Stokes won't want me involved, but-"

"You're a helluva salesman, 'Toinette," Fourcade remarked. "You telling me every reason to say no."

"I found her," Annie said simply. The image of Pam Bichon's body throbbed in her memory, a dead thing that was too alive, that would give her no rest. "I saw what he did to her. I still see it. I feel… an obligation."

"You feel it," Fourcade whispered. "Shadow of the dead."

He raised his left hand, fingers spread, and reached out, not quite touching her. Slowly he passed his hand before her eyes, skimmed around the side of her head, just brushing his fingertips against her hair. A shiver rippled down her body.

"It's cold there, no?" he whispered.

"Where?" Annie murmured.

"In Shadowland."

She started to draw a breath, to tell him he was full of shit, to defuse the prickly sensation that had come to life inside her and between them, but her lungs didn't seem to function. She was aware of a phone ringing somewhere, of the canned laughter coming from the television. But mostly she was aware of Fourcade and the pain that shone in his eyes and came from somewhere deep in his soul.

"You Fourcade?" the bartender called, holding up the telephone receiver. "You got a call."

He slid off his stool and moved down the bar. Air rushed into Annie's lungs as he walked away, as if his aura had been pressing down on her chest like an anvil. With an unsteady hand, she raised his glass to her lips and took a drink. She stared at Fourcade as he hunched over the bar and listened to the telephone receiver. He had to be drunk. Everyone knew he wasn't quite right at his most sober.

He hung up the phone and turned toward her.

"I gotta go." He pulled a twenty out of his wallet and tossed it on the bar.

"Stay away from those shadows, Toinette," he warned her softly, the voice of too much experience. With one hand he reached up and cradled her face, the pad of his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. "They'll suck the life outta you."