A Thin Dark Line

by Tami Hoag

  A second bulletin board held copies of the crime scene photos—stark, hard reality cast in the harsh light of a camera flash.

  "Wow," Annie murmured. "I guess you believe in bringing your work home with you."

  "It's a duty, not a hobby." He stood in front of one of the bookcases. "You want a time clock and no worries, get a job at the lamp factory. You want to pass the buck on the tough stuff, stay in uniform." He hit her with the Hard Stare. "Is that what you want, 'Toinette? You wanna stay on the surface where everything is simple and safe, or do you want to go deeper?"

  Once again she had the feeling he was the guardian at the gate of some secret world, that if she crossed the threshold, there would be no going back. She resented the idea.

  "I want to be a detective," she said. "I want to help clear this case. I'm not pledging my allegiance to the Dark Lord or becoming a Jedi knight. I want to do the job, not be the job."

  That was Fourcade, the Zen detective. Disapproval hung on him like mist.

  "It's a job, not a religion," Annie said. "You were born out of your time, Fourcade. You'd have made a hell of a Zealot."

  Her gaze shifted to the table, to the bulletin board and the pictures of Pam Bichon's grisly death. She wanted Fourcade's resources. She didn't have to embrace his doctrine of obsessive-compulsive behavior.

  "I want this solved," she said. "End of story."

  She selected Donnie Bichon's file folder and opened it.

  "Why did you go to him?" Fourcade asked. "We looked at him and cleared him."

  "Because Lindsay Faulkner says he's fixing to sell Pam's half of the realty business."

  The news hit Nick like a rock to the chest. He had taunted Donnie with the idea just yesterday, never imagining the man would be fool enough to make such a move so soon after Pam's death. "When did you hear this?"

  "This morning. I stopped by the realty office." She hesitated, weighing the pros and cons of telling the whole truth.

  "You stopped by and what?" he demanded. "If we're partners, we're partners, chère. No holding back."

  She took a deep breath as she set the file aside. "She said Donnie claims he has a possible buyer on the hook ... in New Orleans. Donnie told me it was a bluff."

  Nick had managed to all but banish the idea of Marcotte's involvement. It seemed too far-fetched. He couldn't imagine he had ever meant enough to Marcotte for him to inflict vengeance after all this time. Besides, Marcotte had gotten what he wanted back when, so what would be the point of dragging out the game?

  Unless what he wanted now was Bayou Realty, and Nick's involvement was mere coincidence or karma. The question was: If Marcotte was involved, was the murder a result of that involvement or was his involvement a byproduct of the crime?

  "C'est ein affaire a pus finir," Nick whispered.

  "I figure it's a bluff," Annie said. "We—you've got Donnie's phone records from the period when Pam was being harassed. If the sale of the business was a motive for him to get rid of her, then he would have been in contact with his buyer during that time. Not from his home, if he had any sense, but no one would think twice about him calling New Orleans from the office. We can check it out.

  "But I say if Donnie has this fat cat on the hook, why would he even bother to play games with Lindsay Faulkner?" she went on. "And if he was afraid of having the sale raise a red flag with the cops, then why do anything out in the open? It's not that hard to hide deals. In fact, Donnie's done it before. He had Pam hiding property for him so he wouldn't lose it to the bank. Did you know about that?"

  "Yes."

  Nick forced himself to move. Forward had become a mantra months ago. Move forward physically, psychologically, spiritually, metaphorically. Movement seemed to pull taut the lines upon which facts and ideas aligned themselves in his mind. Movement maintained order. So he moved forward and tried not to be spooked by the shadow that followed him.

  "I'll go over the records," he said. "But I doubt the sale of the business has anything to do with the murder. It's more likely scavengers moving in, taking advantage of an opportunity. A woman killed the way Pam was—that's no money murder. People killed for money reasons—they fall down steps, they drown, they disappear."

  He stopped in front of the table, his gaze on the photographs. "This ... this was personal. This was hate. Contempt. Control. Rage."

  "Or made to look so after the fact."

  "No," he whispered. "I can feel it."

  "Did you know her?" she asked quietly.

  "She sold me this place. Nice lady. Hard to believe someone could have hated her this way."

  "Renard claims he loved her—like a friend. He insists he's being railroaded. He wants me to find the truth for him." Her lips twisted. "Gee, I'm a popular girl lately."

  He didn't pick up on the irony. He concentrated instead on Renard. "You spoke with him? When? Where?"

  "This morning. In his office. He invited me up. He's laboring under the misconception that I'm sympathetic toward him."

  "He trusts you?"

  "I had the great luck to save his sorry ass—twice in one day. He seems to think just because I won't let individuals murder him, I won't want the state to do it, either."

  "You can get close to him, then," Fourcade murmured. "That's something Stokes and I could never do. He regarded us as the enemy from the first. Stokes had been riding him already for the harassment, before the murder. You come to him from a whole other direction."

  "I don't like the way your mind is bending," Annie said. She went to one of the bookcases and stared at the titles. "I told him flat out I think he did it."

  "But he wants to win you over, yes?"

  "I don't know that I'd put it quite like that."

  Fourcade turned her around, his hands cupping her shoulders, and looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. "Mais oui. Oh, yeah. The hair, the eyes, 'bout the same size. You fit the victim profile."

  "So do half the women in South Lou'siana."

  "But you came into his life, chère. Like it was meant to be."

  "You're creeping me out, Fourcade." She tried to wiggle away from his touch. "You talk like he's a serial killer."

  "The potential is there. The psychopathology is there," he said, and began pacing. "Look at him: mid-thirties, white, single, intelligent, domineering mother, absent father, unsuccessful in maintaining relationships with women. It's classic."

  "But he doesn't have any criminal history. No pattern of escalating aberrant behavior."

  "Maybe, maybe not. Before he moved here, he had a girlfriend back in Baton Rouge. She died an untimely death."

  "The papers said she died in a car accident."

  "She was burned beyond recognition in a single-car crash on some back road not long after she told her mother she was going to break it off with Renard. She thought he was too possessive. 'Smothering' was the word she used with her mother."

  He had obviously gone to the source for his information. The only thing the papers had gotten out of Elaine Ingram's mother was that she found Marcus Renard "very pleasant and a gentleman" and that she wished her daughter had married him. If he'd been a monster then, no one had seen it ... except perhaps Elaine.

  "The mother doesn't think he killed her," Annie said.

  Fourcade looked impatient. "It doesn't matter what she thinks. It matters what he did. It matters that he might have killed her. It matters that he might have had that kind of rage in him before and that he might have killed out of that rage.

  "Look at this murder," he said, gesturing to the photos.

  "Rage, power, domination, sexual brutality. Not unlike your Bayou Strangler."

  "Are you saying you think maybe Renard did those women four years ago?" Annie asked. "He moved back here in '93. You think he was the Bayou Strangler?"

  Fourcade shook his head. "No. I've been over those files. I've talked to the people who ended up pinning it on Danjermond: Laurel Chandler and Jack Boudreaux. They live up on the Carolina coast now. Too ma
ny bad memories 'round here, I guess, with her losing her sister to the Strangler and all. They tell a pretty convincing tale. The investigation backed them up."

  He stopped to stare at the crime scene photos. "Besides, there are differences in the murders. Pam Bichon wasn't strangled to death."

  He touched a finger to one of the photos, a close-up of the bruising on the throat. "She was choked manually— these bruises are thumbprints—and her hyoid bone was cracked. He probably choked her unconscious at some point. We can only hope so for her sake. But asphyxiation wasn't the cause of death. Loss of blood from the primary stab wounds was the cause of death." He moved his finger to a shot of the woman's savaged bare chest. "Because of the pattern of the blood splatters, I believe she was stabbed several times in the chest while she was standing, then fell to the floor. The choking happened sometime after she went down but before she was dead. Otherwise you wouldn't have this kind of bruising.

  "The Strangler, he used a white silk scarf around the throat to kill his victims—that was his signature. And he tied them down with strips of white silk. See here? No ligature marks on Bichon's wrists or ankles."

  "But the sexual mutilation—"

  He shook his head. "Similar, but not the same by any means. Danjermond tortured his victims extensively before he killed them. The mutilation of Bichon was largely postmortem, suggesting it was about anger, hatred, disrespect, rather than any kind of erotic sadism—which was the case with the Strangler. That boy got off on it in a big way. Renard was pissed.

  "And then there's the victim profile," he said. "The Strangler hunted women who were easily accessible: women who hung out in bars, looking for men, liked to pass a good time. That wasn't Pam Bichon.

  "No," he declared. "The cases are unrelated. The way I see it, Renard fixated on Pam when he thought she might become available to him—when she separated from Donnie. He probably built a whole fantasy around her, and when she refused to cooperate in turning the fantasy into reality, he went over the line to the dark side."

  He turned and his gaze swept down over Annie. "And now he's lookin' at you, chère."

  "Lucky me," Annie muttered.

  Fourcade ignored the sarcasm. "Oh yeah," he said, moving closer. "You're being presented with a rare opportunity, 'Toinette. You can get close to him, open him up, see what's in his head. He lets you close enough, he'll give himself away."

  "Or kill me, if your theory holds true. I'd rather come across a nice piece of evidence, thanks anyway. The murder weapon. A witness who could put him at the scene. A trophy."

  "We found his trophy—the ring. Don't expect to find another. We never even found the gifts Pam gave back to him. We never found the other things he'd taken from her. He's too smart to make the same mistake twice—and that's what we need, sugar: for him to make a mistake. You could be it." He brushed her bangs with his fingertips, caressed her cheek. The pad of his thumb skimmed the corner of her mouth. "He could fall in love with you."

  She didn't like the way her pulse was pounding. She didn't like the way she saw Pam Bichon's corpse from every angle—torn, ragged, bloody; the feather mask a grotesque contrast.

  "I'm not bait for your bear trap, Fourcade," she said. "If I can get something out of Renard, I will, but I'm not getting close enough for him to lay a finger on me. I don't want to get under his skin. I don't want to get inside his head—or yours, for that matter. I want justice, that's all."

  "Then go after it, chère," he said, too seductively. "Go after it ... every way you can."

  20

  "They should be made to pay for what they've put us through," Doll Renard declared. She moved around the dining room like a hummingbird, flitting here, flitting there, resting nowhere.

  "You've said that ten times," Marcus grumbled.

  "Eight." Victor corrected him automatically and without smugness. "Eight times. Repetition, multiplication. Two times four times, eight times. Even. Equal, equals. Equals sometime equal, sometime odd."

  He shook his head disapprovingly at the trick of the language.

  Doll shot him a look of disgust. "I'll say it 'til I'm blue. The Partout Parish Sheriff's Department has ruined our lives. I can't go anywhere without people staring and whispering. And most of the time they don't bother to whisper. 'There's that Doll Renard,' they say. 'How can she show her face after what her boy did?' It's even worse than after your father betrayed us. Of course, you wouldn't remember that. You were just a little boy. People are hateful, that's all."

  "I didn't do anything wrong," Marcus reminded her. "I'm innocent until proven guilty. Tell them that."

  She sniffed and flitted from the sideboard to the corner china cupboard. "I wouldn't give them the satisfaction. Besides, they would just throw up to me how everyone knows you panted after that Bichon woman and she didn't want you."

  "Throw up," Victor said, rocking from side to side on his chair.

  It had taken an hour to calm him from the fit Fourcade had brought on, and he was still agitated. He was supposed to be helping polish the silver, but had decided tarnish was bacteria and refused to touch any of it. Bacteria, he believed, would run up his arms and gain access to his brain through his ear canals. "Vomit. Puke. Spew. Disgorge. Regorge. Discharge—like excrement."

  "Victor, stop it!" Doll snapped, her bony hand fluttering over her heart. "You're making us nauseous."

  "Talk—vomit words. Sound and sound alike," he said, his eyes glazing over as he looked at something inside his scrambled brain.

  Marcus tuned them both out, staring at his hands. He rubbed a jeweler's cloth up and down the stem of a marrow spoon and contemplated the uselessness of the thing. People didn't eat bone marrow anymore. The practice suggested a voraciousness that had gone out of vogue. To devour a creature's flesh, then crack its bones to suck out the very marrow of its life seemed a rapacious act. The hunger to consume a being whole was frowned upon, repressed.

  He wondered if a need repressed deeply enough, long enough, eventually went into a person's marrow, reachable only if the bones were broken open. He wondered what would drain out of his own marrow. His mother's would be black as tar, he suspected.

  "He beat you," she reiterated, as if he needed reminding of Fourcade's sins. "You could be permanently disfigured. You could be disabled. You could lose your job. It's a pure wonder they haven't fired you after everything that's gone on."

  "I'm a partner, Mother. They can't fire me."

  "Who will come to you with work? Your reputation is ruined—and mine. I've lost every single costume order I've gotten for Mardi Gras. And that man has the gall to come here, to harass us, and the sheriff's department does nothing! Nothing! I swear, we could all be murdered in our beds, and they would do nothing! They should be made to pay for what they've put us through."

  "Nine," Victor said.

  He rose abruptly from his chair as the hall clock struck eight, and hurried from the room.

  "There he goes," Doll muttered bitterly, her features pinching tight. "He'll sleep like the dead. I can't remember the last time I had a decent night's sleep. Every night now I dream about my Mardi Gras masks. All the joy of them has been robbed from me. You know what people say. They say the mask found on that dead woman was from my collection, and, even though I know it wasn't, even though I can account for every single one of them, even though I know people are motivated by jealousy because my collection has won prizes year after year during Carnival, it's just robbed the joy from me."

  If his mother had ever had a moment's joy in her life, Marcus had never heard about it until after it had been "robbed" from her, as if she were aware of the emotion only after the fact. He set the marrow spoon down and folded the jeweler's cloth.

  "I called Annie Broussard," he said. "Perhaps she can do something about Fourcade."

  "What could she possibly do?" Doll asked sourly, annoyed at having the attention shifted from her own suffering.

  "She stopped him from killing me," he pointed out. "I need to lie down. My
head is pounding."

  Doll clucked her tongue. "It's no wonder. You could have a brain injury. A blood vessel could burst in your head months from now, and then where would we be?"

  I would be free of you, Marcus thought. But there were simpler ways to escape than death.

  He went into his bedroom, pausing there only to take a Percodan from the drawer in the nightstand. Pills couldn't be left in the medicine chest where Victor would find them. Victor believed all pills to be both remedial and preventative. As a teenager he had twice had his stomach pumped to empty him of aspirin, stomach aids, vitamins, and Midol.

  Marcus broke the painkiller into pieces, worked them into his mouth, and washed them down with Coca-Cola—a practice his mother had harped against all his life. Doll believed Coca-Cola would react with drugs like alcohol and render a person comatose. He took an extra swig for spite and carried the can into his workroom.

  Tension and anger kept him from going to his drawing table. He moved around the room hunched over because his ribs were especially sore. Everything hurt more tonight because of Fourcade. Because of Fourcade, he had hurried across the lawn, strained muscles, raised his blood pressure.

  That bastard damn well would pay for what he'd done. Kudrow would see to that. Criminal charges, a civil suit. By the time the dust settled, what was left of Fourcade's career would be in shreds. The idea pleased Marcus enormously— using the very system his tormentors had tried to destroy him with to destroy his tormentors. He would ruin Stokes too if he could. Donnie Bichon had already destroyed Pam's trust and made her suspicious of all men. But Marcus would have eventually won her if she hadn't called the sheriff's department. Stokes had wasted no opportunity to turn Pam against him, planting doubts in her mind at every turn.