by Tami Hoag
"You claim you've been treated unfairly," Annie said. "If that's true, if the detectives have overlooked or ignored something that might exonerate you, why hasn't your own investigator—Mr. Kudrow's investigator—cleared up these details for you?"
Marcus looked away. "He's one man. My funds are limited."
"What is it you think we should be looking at?"
"The husband, for one."
"Mr. Bichon has been thoroughly investigated."
He changed tacks without argument. "No real effort has been made to find the man who helped me get my car going that night."
Annie consulted the notes she'd brought with her. "The man whose name you didn't ask?"
"I wasn't thinking."
"The man who was driving 'some kind of dark truck' with a license plate that 'may have' included the letters F and J?"
"It was night. The truck was dirty. I had no reason to take note of the tags, anyway."
"What little you gave us to go on was liberally put forth by the media, Mr. Renard. No one came forward."
"But did the sheriff's office try to find him? I don't think so. Fourcade never believed anything I told him. Can you imagine him wasting his time to check it out?"
"Detective Fourcade is a very thorough man," Annie said. Fourcade also had tunnel vision when it came to Renard. He had been thorough in his efforts to prove Renard's guilt. Had he been as thorough in trying to corroborate the man's claim of innocence? "I'll look into it, but there isn't much to go on."
Renard let out a sigh of relief that seemed out of proportion with her offer. "Thank you, Annie. I can't tell you how much it means to me to have you do this."
"I told you, I don't expect anything to come of it."
"That's not the point. Tea?" He reached for the pitcher that sat in the center of the table beside a pair of glasses and a small vase sprouting daffodils.
Annie accepted the drink, taking a moment between sips to look around the yard. Pony Bayou was a stone's throw away. Downstream it branched around a muddy island of willows and dewberry. Somewhere to the south, beyond the dense growth of woods where the spring birds were singing, was the house where Pam had died. Annie wondered if the burly fisherman sitting in his boat down by the fork realized that or if he might have come here because of it. People were strange that way.
Panic surged through her. Could the fisherman have been someone from the SO? What if Noblier had reinstated the surveillance? What if Sergeant Hooker had come to this spot on his day off in search of bass and sac-a-lait? If someone saw her with Renard, she was going to be way up shit creek.
"Got anything in that boathouse?" Nodding to a small, low shed of rusting corrugated metal that jutted out over the bayou, she shifted the position of her chair, turning her back more squarely to the fisherman.
"An old bass boat. My brother likes to explore the bayou. He's something of a nature buff. Aren't you, Victor?"
Victor stepped out from behind a swath of drapery inside the French door Marcus had left cracked open. There was no guilt on his face, no embarrassment at having been caught spying. He stared at Annie, turning his body sideways, as if that might somehow fool her into thinking he wasn't looking at her.
"Victor," Marcus said, rising gingerly, "this is Annie Broussard. Annie saved my life."
"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that," Annie muttered.
"Why? Because you're modest or because you wish you hadn't?"
"I was doing my job."
Victor sidled toward the table for a better look at her. He was dressed in pants an inch too short and a plaid sport shirt buttoned to the throat. He resembled Marcus in his normal, unremarkable state: plain features, fine brown hair neatly combed. Annie had seen him around town from time to time, always in the company of either Marcus or his mother. He held himself too carefully and stood too close to people in lines, as if his sense of space and the physical world were distorted.
"It's nice to meet you, Victor."
He squinted in suspicion. "Good day." He glanced at Marcus. "Mask, no mask. Sound and sound alike. Mimus polyglottos. Mockingbird. No. No." He shook his head. "Dumetella carolinensis. Suggest the songs of other birds."
"What does that mean?" Annie asked.
Marcus attempted a bland smile. "Probably that you remind him of someone. Or more precisely, that you resemble someone you aren't."
Victor rocked himself a little, muttering, "Red and white. Now and then."
"Victor, why don't you go get your binoculars?" Marcus suggested. "The woods are full of birds today."
Victor cast a nervous look over his shoulder at Annie. "Change, interchange, mutate. One and one. Red and white."
He held himself still for a moment, as if waiting for some silent signal, then hurried back into the house.
"I expect he sees a resemblance between you and Pam," Marcus said.
"Did he know her?"
"They met at the office once or twice. Victor periodically expresses a curiosity in my work. And of course he saw her picture in the papers after ... He reads three newspapers every day, cover to cover, every word. Impressive until you realize he'll be held in thrall by the sight of a semicolon while the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City meant nothing whatsoever to him."
"It must be difficult to deal with his ... condition," Annie said.
Marcus looked to the open door and the empty dining room beyond. "Our cross to bear, my mother says. Of course, she takes great satisfaction from having to shoulder the load." He turned back toward Annie with another wan smile. "Can't pick your relatives. Do you have family here, Annie?"
"In a manner of speaking," she said evasively. "It's a long story."
"Family stories always are. Look at Pam's daughter. What a family story she'll have, poor little thing. What will, become of her grandfather?"
"You'd have to ask the DA," she said, though she thought she could give an accurate guess as to what would become of Hunter Davidson: nothing much. The outcry against his arrest had been considerable. Pritchett would never risk the wrath of his constituents by pressing for a trial. A deal would likely be cut quickly and quietly—maybe already had been—and Hunter Davidson would be doing community service for his attempted sin.
"He tried to kill me," Renard said with indignation. "The media is treating him like a celebrity."
"Yeah. There's a lot of that going around. You're not a well-liked man, Mr. Renard."
"Marcus," he corrected her. "You're at least civil to me. I'd like to pretend we're friends, Annie."
The emotion in his eyes was soft and vulnerable. Annie tried to imagine what had been in those eyes that black November night when he had plunged a knife into Pam Bichon.
"Considering what happened to your last 'friend,' I don't think that's a very good idea, Mr. Renard."
He turned his head as quickly as if she had slapped him, and blinked away tears, pretending to focus on the fisherman down the bayou.
"I would never have hurt Pam," he said. "I've told you that, Annie. That remark was deliberately hurtful to me. I expected better from you."
He wanted her contrition. He wanted her to give him another inch of control, the way he had when he had asked to use her name. A little thing on the surface, but the psychological sleight of hand was smooth and sinister. Or she was blowing it out of proportion and giving this man more credit than he deserved.
"It's just healthy caution on my part," she said. "I don't know you."
"I couldn't hurt you, Annie." He looked at her once again with his watery hazel eyes. "You saved my life. In certain Eastern cultures I would give you my life in return."
"Yeah, well, this is South Lou'siana. A simple thanks is sufficient."
"Hardly. I know you've been suffering because of what you did. I know what it is to be persecuted, Annie. We have that in common."
"Can we move on?" Annie said. The intensity in his expression unnerved her, as if he had already determined that their lives would now be intertwined int
o eternity. Was this how a fixation began? As a misunderstanding of commitment? Had it been this way between him and Pam? Between him and his now-dead girlfriend from Baton Rouge?
"No offense," she prefaced, "but you have to admit you have a bad track record. You wanted to be involved with Pam, and now she's dead. You were involved with Elaine Ingram back in Baton Rouge, and she's dead."
"Elaine's death was a terrible accident."
"But you can see how it might give pause. There's a rumor that she was going to break off your relationship."
"That's not true," he insisted. "Elaine could never leave me. She loved me."
Could never, not would never. The choice of words was telling. Not: Elaine would never leave him of her own accord. But: Elaine could never leave him if he wouldn't allow it. Marcus Renard wouldn't have been the first man to use the "if I can't have her, no one will" rationale. It was common thinking among simple obsessionals.
Doll Renard chose that moment to come onto the terrace. She wore a dotted polyester dress twenty years out of date and an enormous kitchen apron. The ties wrapped around her twice. She was thin in the same way Richard Kudrow was thin—as if her body had burned away from within, leaving bone and tough sinew. She offered no smile of welcome. Her mouth was a thin slash in her narrow face.
Annie thought she saw Marcus wince. She rose and extended her hand.
"Annie Broussard, sheriff's office. Sorry to disturb your Sunday, Mrs. Renard."
Doll sniffed, grudgingly offering a limp hand that collapsed in Annie's like a pouch of twigs. "Our Sunday is the least of what you people have disturbed."
Marcus rolled his eyes. "Mother, please. Annie isn't like the others."
"Well, you wouldn't think so," Doll muttered.
"She's going to be looking into some things that could help prove my innocence. She saved my life, for heaven's sake. Twice."
"I was just doing my job," Annie pointed out. "I am just doing my job."
Doll arched a penciled-on brow and clucked her tongue. "You've managed to misread the situation yet again, Marcus."
He looked away from his mother, his color darkening, tension crackled in the air around him. Annie watched the exchange, thinking maybe she was better off not having any blood relatives. Her memories of her mother were soft and quiet. Better memories than a bitter reality.
"Well," Doll Renard went on, "it's about time the sheriff's office did something for us. Our lawyer will be filing suit, you know, for all the pain and anguish we've been caused."
"Mother, perhaps you could try not to alienate the one person willing to help us."
She looked at him as if he'd called her a filthy name. "I have every right to state my feelings. We've been treated worse than common trash through all of this, while that Bichon woman is held up like some kind of saint. And now her father—all the world's calling him a martyred hero for trying to murder you. He belongs in jail. I certainly hope the district attorney keeps him there."
"I really should be going," Annie said, gathering her file and notebook. "I'll see what I can find out on that truck."
"I'll walk you to your car." Marcus scraped his chair back and sent his mother a venomous look.
He waited until they were along the end of the house before he spoke again.
"I wish you could have stayed longer."
"Did you have something more to say pertinent to the case?"
"Well—ah—I don't know," he stammered. "I don't know what questions you might have asked."
"The truth isn't dependent on what questions I ask," Annie said. "The truth is what I'm after here, Mr. Renard. I'm not out to prove your innocence, and I certainly don't want you telling people that I am. In fact, I wish you wouldn't mention me at all. I've got trouble enough as it is."
He made a show of drawing a fingertip across his mouth. "My lips are sealed. It'll be our secret." He seemed to like that idea too well. "Thank you, Annie."
"There's no need. Really."
He opened the door of the Jeep, and she climbed in. As she backed up to turn around, he leaned against his Volvo. The successful young architect at leisure. He's a murderer, she thought, and he wants to be my friend.
A glint of reflected sunlight caught her eye and she looked up at the second story of the Renard home, where Victor stood in one window, looking down on her with binoculars.
"Man, y'all make the Addams family look like Ozzie and Harriet," she said under her breath.
She thought about that as she drove north and west through the flat sugarcane country. Behind the face of every killer was the accumulated by-product of his upbringing, his history, his experiences. All of those things went to shape the individual and guide him onto a path. It wasn't a stretch to add up those factors in Renard's life and get the psycho-pathology Fourcade had spoken about. The portrait of a serial killer.
Marcus Renard wanted to be her friend. A shiver ran down her back.
She flicked on the radio and turned it up over the static of the scanner.
"... and I just think all these crimes, these rapes and all, are a backlash against the women's lib."
"Are you saying women essentially ask to be raped by taking nontraditional roles?"
"I'm sayin' we should know our place. That's what I'm sayin'."
"Okay, Ruth in Youngsville. You're on KJUN, all talk all the time. In light of last night's reported rape of a Luck woman, our topic is violence against women."
Another rape. Since the Bichon murder and the resurrected tales of the Bayou Strangler, every woman in the parish was living in a heightened state of fear. Rich hunting grounds for a certain kind of sexual predator. That was the rush for a rapist—his victim's fear. He fed on it like a narcotic.
The questions came to Annie automatically. How old was the victim? Where and how was she attacked? Did she have anything in common with Jennifer Nolan? Had the rapist followed the same MO? Were they now looking at a serial rapist? Who had caught the case? Stokes, she supposed, because of the possible tie to the Nolan rape. That was what he needed—another hot case to distract him from the Bichon homicide investigation.
The countryside began to give way to small acreages interspersed with the odd dilapidated trailer house, then the new western developments outside of town. The only L. Faulkner listed in the phone book lived on Cheval Court in the Quail Run development. Annie slowed the Jeep to a crawl, checking numbers on mailboxes.
The neighborhood was maybe four years old, but had been strategically planned to include plenty of large trees that had stood on this land for a hundred years or more, giving the area a sense of tradition. Pam Bichon had lived just a stone's throw from here on Quail Drive. Faulkner's home was a neat redbrick Caribbean colonial with ivory trim and overflowing planters on the front step.
Annie pulled in the drive and parked alongside a red Miata convertible with expired tags. She hadn't called ahead, hadn't wanted to give Lindsay Faulkner the chance to say no. The woman had put her guard up. The best plan would be to duck under it.
No one answered the doorbell. A section of the home's interior was visible through the sidelights that flanked the door. The house looked open, airy, inviting. A huge fern squatted in a pot in the foyer. A cat tiptoed along the edge of the kitchen island. Beyond the island a sliding glass door offered access to a terrace.
The lingering aroma of grilled meat hooked Annie's nose before she turned the corner to the back side of the house. Whitney Houston's testimonial about all the man she'd ever need floated out the speakers of a boom box, punctuated by a woman's throaty laughter.
Lindsay Faulkner sat at a glass-topped patio table, her hair swept back in a ponytail. A striking redhead in tortoise-shell shades came out through the patio doors with a Diet Pepsi in each hand. The smile on Faulkner's face dropped as she caught sight of Annie.
"I'm sorry to interrupt, Ms. Faulkner. I had a couple more questions, if you don't mind," Annie said, trying to resist the urge to smooth the wrinkles from her blazer. Faulkner and he
r companion looked crisp and sporty, the kind of people who never perspired.
"I do mind, Detective. I thought I made myself clear yesterday. I'd rather not deal with you."
"I'm sorry you feel that way, since we both want the same thing."
"Detective?" the redhead said. She set the sodas on the table and settled herself in her chair with casual grace, a wry smile pulling at one corner of a perfectly painted mouth. "What have you done now, Lindsay?"
"She's here about Pam," Faulkner said, never taking her eyes off Annie. "She's the one I was telling you about."
"Oh." The redhead frowned and gave Annie the onceover, a condescending glance intended to belittle.
"If I have to deal with you people at all," Faulkner said, "then I'd sooner deal with Detective Stokes. He's the one I've dealt with all along."
"We're on the same side, Ms. Faulkner," Annie said, undaunted. "I want to see Pam's murderer punished."
"You could have let that happen the other night."
"Within the system," Annie specified. "You can help make that happen."
Faulkner looked away and sighed sharply through her slim patrician nose.
Annie helped herself to a chair, wanting to give the impression she was comfortable and in no hurry to leave. "How well do you know Marcus Renard?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"Did you socialize?"
"Me, personally?"
"He claims you went out together a couple of times. Is that true?"
She gave a humorless laugh, obviously insulted. "I don't believe this. Are you asking if I dated that sick worm?"
Annie blinked innocently and waited.
"We went out in a group from time to time—people from his office, people from mine."
"But never one-on-one?"
Faulkner flicked a glance at the redhead. "He's not my type. What's the point of this, Detective?"
"It's Deputy," Annie clarified at last. "I just want a clear picture of y'all's relationship."
"I didn't have a 'relationship' with Renard," she said hotly. "In his sick mind, maybe. What—"
She stopped suddenly. Annie could all but see the thought strike her—that Renard could have fixed on her as easily as on Pam. Judging by the shade of guilt that passed across her face, it wasn't the first time she had considered her good fortune at her friend's expense. She passed a hand across her forehead as if trying to wipe the thought away.