A Thin Dark Line

4

Nick walked along the boulevard between the road and the bayou. Gloved hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. Shoulders hunched against the damp chill of the night. Fog skimmed off the water and floated past like clouds of perfume, redolent with the scents of rotting vegetation, dead fish, and spider lilies. Something broke the surface with a pop and a splash. A bass snatching a late dinner. Or someone with a heavy case of boredom, tossing rocks.

Pausing by the trunk of a live oak, he stared out past the branches hung with tattered scraps of Spanish moss and looked up and down the bank. There was no one, no foot traffic, no cars crossing the little drawbridge that spanned the bayou to the north. House lights glowed amber in windows beyond the east bank. The night air had gone heavy with a thick mist that was threatening to become rain. A rainy night did nothing to entice folks outdoors without a purpose.

And my purpose?

That remained unclear.

He was close to drunk. He had given himself the excuse of dulling the pain, but instead had only fueled it. The frustration, the injustice-they were like fire under his skin. They would consume him if he didn't do something to burn them out.

He closed his eyes, took a breath, and released it, attempting to find his center-that core of deep calm within that he had spent so much time and effort building. He had worked so hard to control the rage, and it was slipping through his grasp. He had worked so hard on the case, and it was crumbling around him. He felt the chill pass over him, through him. The shadow of the dead. He felt the need pull at him. And a part of him wanted very badly to go where it would lead him.

He wondered if Annie Broussard felt that same pull or if she would even recognize it. Probably not. She was too young. Younger than he had been at twenty-eight. Fresh, optimistic, untainted. He had seen the doubt in her eyes when he had spoken of the shadows. He had also seen the naked truth when she spoke of the obligation she felt to Pam Bichon.

The key to staying sane in homicide was keeping a distance. Don't let it get personal. Don't get involved. Don't take it home with you. Don't cross the line.

He had never been good at taking any of that advice. He lived the job. The line was always behind him.

Had the shadows drawn Pam Bichon? Had she seen Death's phantom coming, felt its cold breath on her shoulders? He knew the answer.

She had complained to friends about Renard's persistent, if subtle advances. Despite her rebuffs, he had begun sending her gifts. Then came the harassment. Small acts of vandalism against her car, her property. Items stolen from her office-photographs, a hairbrush, work papers, her keys.

Yes, Pam had seen the phantom coming, and no one had listened when she tried to tell them. No one had heard her fear any more than they had heard her tortured screams that night out on Pony Bayou.

"I still think about what he did to her," Stokes said. "Don't you?"

All the time. The details had saturated his brain like blood.

With his back against the tree trunk, Nick lowered himself to sit on his heels and stared across the empty street at the building that housed Bowen amp; Briggs. A light burned on the second floor. A desk lamp. Renard worked at the third drafting table back and on the south side of the big room there. Bowen amp; Briggs designed both small commercial and residential buildings, with their commercial work coming out of New Iberia and St. Martinville as well as Bayou Breaux.

Renard was a partner in the firm, though his name was not on the logo. He preferred designing residential buildings, especially single-family homes, and had a liking for historical styles. His social life was quiet. He had no long-term romantic involvement. He lived with his mother, who collected Mardi Gras masks and created costumes for Carnival revelers, and his autistic brother, Victor, the elder by four years. Their home was a modest, restored plantation house-less than five miles by car from the scene of Pam Bichon's murder. Nearer by boat.

According to the descriptions of the people who worked with and knew Marcus Renard, he was quiet, polite, ordinary, or a touch odd-depending on whom you asked. But other words came to Nick's mind. Meticulous, compulsive, obsessive, repressed, controlling, passive-aggressive.

Behind the mask of ordinariness, Marcus Renard was a very different man from the one his co-workers saw every day sitting at his drafting table. They couldn't see the core component Nick had sensed in him from their first meeting -rage. Deep, deep inside, beneath layers and layers of manners and mores and the guise of mild apathy. Rage, simmering, contained, hidden, buried.

It was rage that had driven those spikes through Pam Bichon's hands.

Rage was no stranger.

The light went out in the second-story window. Out of old habit, Nick checked his watch-9:47 P.M.-and scanned the street in both directions-all clear. Renard's five-year-old maroon Volvo sat in the narrow parking area between the Bowen amp; Briggs building and the antiques shop next door, an area poorly lit by a seventy-five-watt yellow bug light over the side door.

Renard would emerge from that door, climb in his car, and go home to his mother and his brother and his hobby of designing and building elaborate dollhouses. He would sleep in his bed a free man tonight and dream the sinister, euphoric dreams of someone who had gotten away with murder.

He wasn't the first.

"Protect and serve, pard. …"

The rage built…

"Case dismissed."

… and burned hotter…

"I still think about what he did to her…"

"I saw what he did to her… I still see it…"

"Don't you?"

Blood and moonlight, the flash of the knife, the smell of fear, the cries of agony, the ominous silence of death. The cold darkness as the phantom passed over.

The chill collided violently with the fire. The explosion pushed him to his feet.

"He's gonna walk, Nicky. He's gonna get away with murder. …"

Nick crossed the street, hugged the wall of the Bowen amp; Briggs building, out of sight from the elevated first-floor windows. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he hopped silently onto the side stoop, doused the bug light with a twist of his wrist, and dropped down on the far side of the steps.

He heard the door open, heard Renard mutter something under his breath, heard the click, click, click of the light switch being tried. Footsteps on the concrete stoop." A heavy sigh. The door closed.

He waited, still, invisible, until Renard's loafers hit the blacktop and he had stepped past Nick on his way to the Volvo.

"It's not over, Renard," he said.

The architect shied sideways. His face was waxy white, his eyes bulged like a pair of boiled eggs.

"You can't harass me this way, Fourcade," he said, the tremor in his voice mocking his attempt at bravado. "I have rights."

"Is that a fact?" Nick stepped forward, his gloved hands hanging loose at his sides. "What about Pam? She didn't have rights? You take her rights away, tcheue poule, and still you think you got rights?"

"I didn't do anything," Renard said, glancing nervously toward the street, looking for salvation that was nowhere in sight. "You don't have anything on me."

Nick advanced another step. "I got all I need on you, pou. I got the stink of you up my nose, you piece of shit."

Renard lifted a fist in front of him, shaking so badly his car keys rattled. "Leave me alone, Fourcade."

"Or what?"

"You're drunk."

"Yeah." A grin cut across his face like a scimitar. "I'm mean too. What you gonna do, call a cop?"

"Touch me and your career is over, Fourcade," Renard threatened, backing toward the Volvo. "Everybody knows about you. You got no business carrying a badge. You ought to be in jail."

"And you oughta be in hell."

"Based on what? Evidence you planted? That's nothing you haven't done before. You'll be the one in prison over this, not me. "

"That's what you think?" Nick murmured, advancing. "You think you can stalk a woman, torture her, kill her, and just walk away?"

The nightmare images of murder. The false memories of screams.

"You got nothing on me, Fourcade, and you never will have."

"Case dismissed."

"You're nothing but a drunk and a bully, and if you touch me, Fourcade, I swear, I'll ruin you."

"He's gonna walk, Nicky. He's gonna get away with murder. …"

A face from his past loomed up, an apparition floating beside Marcus Renard. A mocking face, a superior sneer.

"You'll never pin this on me, Detective. That's not the way the world works. She was just another whore…"

"You killed her, you son of a bitch," he muttered, not sure which demon he was talking to, the real or the imagined.

"You'll never prove it."

"You can't touch me. "

"He's gonna get away with murder…"

"The hell you say."

The rage burned through the fine thread of control. Emotion and action became one, and restraint was nowhere to be found as his fist smashed into Marcus Renard's face.

Annie walked out of Quik Pik with a pint of chocolate chip ice cream in a bag and a little mouse chewing at her conscience. She could have picked up the treat at the Corners, but she'd had her fill of people for one day, and a prolonged grilling by Uncle Sos was too much to face. The politics of the Renard case had him in a lather. She knew for a fact he had bet fifty dollars on the outcome of the evidentiary hearing-and lost. That, coupled with his opinion of her current platonic relationship with A.J., would have him in rare form tonight.

"Why you don' marry dat boy, 'tite chatte? Andre, he's a good boy, him. What's a matter wit' you, turnin' you purty nose up? You all the time chasin' you don' know what, espesces de tite dure."

Just the imagined haranguing was enough to amplify the thumping in her head. The whole idea of buying ice cream was to be nice to herself. She didn't want to think about A.J. or Renard or Pam Bichon or Fourcade.

She had heard the stories about Fourcade. The allegations of brutality, the rumors surrounding the unsolved case of a murdered teenage prostitute in the French Quarter, the unsubstantiated accusations of evidence tampering.

"Stay away from those shadows, 'Toinette… They'll suck the life outta you."

Good advice, but she couldn't take it if she wanted in on the case. They were a package deal, Fourcade and the murder. They seemed to go together a little too well. He was a scary son of a bitch.

She started the Jeep and turned toward the bayou, flicking the wipers on to cut the thick mist from the windshield. On the radio, Owen Onofrio was still prodding his listeners for reactions to the scene at the courthouse.

" Kent in Carencro, you're on line two."

"I think that judge oughta be unpoached-"

"You mean impeached?"

As she slowed for a stop sign, her eyes automatically scanned for traffic… and hit on a black Ford pickup with a dent in the driver's-side rear panel. Fourcade's truck, parked in front of a shoe repair place that had gone out of business two years ago.

Annie doused her lights and sat there, double-parked, engine grumbling. This was not a residential street. There were no businesses open. A third of the places on this stretch of road were vacant… but the offices of Bowen amp; Briggs were located two blocks south.

She put the Jeep in gear and crept forward. She could see the building that housed Bayou Realty and Bowen amp; Briggs. There were no lights. There were no cars parked on the street. The sheriff had pulled the surveillance on Renard after the hearing, hoping the press would back off. Renard had been working evenings for the same reason. Fourcade was parked two blocks away.

" 'One man's justice is another man's injustice… one man's wisdom another's folly.' "

Annie pulled to the curb in front of Robichaux Electric, cut the engine, and grabbed her big black flashlight from the debris on the floor behind the passenger's seat. Maybe Fourcade was taking it upon himself to continue the surveillance. But if that were the case, he wouldn't park two blocks away or leave his vehicle.

She pulled her Sig P-225 out of her duffel bag and stuck the gun in the waistband of her skirt, then climbed out of the Jeep. Keeping the flashlight off, she made her way down the sidewalk, her sneakers silent on the damp pavement.

"There is no justice in this world. How's that for a truth, Deputy Broussard?"

"Shit, shit, shit," she chanted under her breath, her step quickening at the first sound from the direction of Bowen amp; Briggs. A scrape. A shoe on asphalt. A thump. A muffled cry.

"Shit!" Pulling the gun and flicking the switch on the flashlight, she broke into a run.

She could hear the sound of flesh striking flesh even before she entered the narrow parking lot. Instinct rushed her forward, overriding procedure. She should have called it in. She didn't have any backup. Her badge was in her pocketbook in the Jeep. Not one of those facts slowed her step.

"Sheriff's office, freeze!" she yelled, sweeping the bright halogen beam across the parking area.

Fourcade had Renard up against the side of a car, swinging at him with the rhythm of a boxer at a punching bag. A hard left turned Renard's face toward Annie, and she gasped at the blood that obscured his features. He lunged toward her, arms outstretched, blood and spittle spraying from his mouth in a froth as a wild animal sound tore from his throat and his eyes rolled white. Fourcade caught him in the stomach and knocked him back into the Volvo.

"Fourcade! Stop it!" Annie shouted, hurling herself against him, trying to knock him away from Renard. "Stop it! You're killing him! Arrete! C'est assez!"

He shrugged her off like a mosquito and cracked Renard's jaw with a right.

"Stop it!"

Using the big flashlight like a baton, she swung it as hard as she could into his kidneys, once, twice. As she drew back for a third blow, Fourcade spun toward her, poised to strike.

Annie scuttled backward. She turned the full beam of the flashlight in Fourcade's face. "Hold it!" she ordered. "I've got a gun!"

"Get away!" he roared. His expression was feral, his eyes glazed, wild. One corner of his mouth curled in a snarl.

"It's Broussard," she said. "Deputy Broussard. Step back, Fourcade! I mean it!"

He didn't move, but the look on his face slipped toward uncertainty. He glanced around with the kind of hesitancy that suggested he had just come to and didn't know where he was or how he had gotten there. Behind him, Renard dropped to his hands and knees on the blacktop, vomited, then collapsed.

"Jesus," Annie muttered. "Stay where you are."

Squatting beside Renard, she stuck her gun back in her waistband and felt for the carotid artery in his neck, her fingers coming away sticky with blood. His pulse was strong. He was alive but unconscious, and probably glad for it. His face looked like raw hamburger, his nose was an indistinct mass. She wiped the blood from her hand on his shoulder, pulled the Sig again, and stood, her knees shaking.

"What the hell were you thinking?" she asked, turning toward Fourcade.

Nick stared down at Renard lying in his own puke as if seeing him for the first time. Thinking? He couldn't remember thinking. What he did remember didn't make sense. Echoes of voices from another place… taunts… The red haze was slowly dissipating, leaving him with a sick feeling.

"What were you gonna do?" Annie Broussard demanded. "Kill him and dump him in the swamp? Did you think nobody would notice? Did you think nobody would suspect? My God, you're a cop! You're supposed to uphold the law, not take it into your own hands!"

She hissed a breath through her teeth. "Looks like I believed the wrong half of those rumors about you, after all, Fourcade."

"I-I came here to talk to him," he muttered.

"Yeah? Well, you're a helluva conversationalist."

Renard groaned, shifted positions, and settled back into oblivion. Nick closed his eyes, turned away, and rubbed his gloved hands over his face. The smell of Renard's blood in the leather gagged him.

"C'est ein affaire a pus finir," he whispered. It is a thing that has no end.

"What are you talking about?" Broussard demanded.

Shadows and darkness, and the kind of rage that could swallow a man whole. But she knew of none of these things, and he didn't try to tell her.

"Go call an ambulance," he said with resignation.

She looked to Renard and back, weighing the options.

"It's all right, 'Toinette. I promise not to kill him while you're gone."

"Under the circumstances, you'll forgive me if I don't believe a word you say." Annie glanced at Renard again. "He's not going anywhere. You can come with me. And by the way," she added, gesturing him toward the street with her gun, "you're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent…"