A Thin Dark Line

by Tami Hoag

  She jerked around at the sound of his voice. He stood in the doorway in jeans that were zipped but not buttoned, his chest and feet bare.

  "I didn't mean to wake you."

  "You didn't." He came forward, reaching for the strip of pale silk. "He gave you this?"

  "Yes."

  "Just like he did with Pam."

  "I have a creepy feeling it might be the same scarf," Annie said. "Do you know?"

  He shook his head. "I never saw the stuff. What he did with it after she gave it back to him is a mystery. Stokes might know if that's the one, but I doubt it. He'd have no reason to have taken note. It's not against the law to send a woman pretty things."

  "White silk," she said. "Like the Bayou Strangler. Do you think that's intentional?"

  "If it was important to him that way, then I think he would have killed her with it."

  Shuddering a little at the thought, Annie hugged herself and wandered back into the living room. She hit the power button on her small stereo system in the bookcase, conjuring up a bluesy piano number. On the other side of the French doors the rain was still coming down. Softer, though. The bulk of the storm had moved on to Lafayette. Lightning ran across the northern sky in a neon web.

  "Why did you go to Renard's Saturday, Nick?" she asked, watching his reflection in the glass. "He could have had you arrested. Why risk that?"

  "I don't know."

  "Sure you do." She glanced at him over her shoulder, surprised as always by the brilliance of his sudden smile.

  "You're learning, 'tite fille," he said, wagging a finger at her as he came to stand beside her.

  He pulled open one of the doors and breathed deeply of the cool air.

  "I went to the house where Pam died," he said, sobering. "And then I went to see how her killer was living.

  "Outrage is a voracious beast, you know. It needs to be fueled on a regular basis or eventually it dies out. I don't want it to die out. I want to hold it in my fist like a beating heart. I want to hate him. I want him punished."

  "What if he didn't do it?"

  "He did. You know he did. I know he did."

  "I know he's guilty of something," Annie said. "I know he was obsessed with her. I believe he stalked her. His thought process frightens me—the way he justifies, rationalizes, turns things around. So subtle, so smooth most people would never even notice. I believe he could have killed her. I believe he probably killed her.

  "On the other hand, someone tried to kill Lindsay Faulkner the very night she called to tell me something that might be pertinent to the case. And now someone's tried to kill me, and it wasn't Renard."

  "Keep the threads separate or you end up with a knot, 'Toinette," Nick said sharply. "One: You got a rapist running around loose. He chose Faulkner because she fit his pattern. Two: You've got a personal enemy in Mullen. He wants to scare you, maybe hurt you a little. Say he follows you over to Renard's and this gets him crazy—you not only turned on one of your own, you're consorting with the enemy. It pushed him over the line."

  "Maybe," Annie conceded. "Or maybe I'm making somebody nervous, poking around this case. Maybe Lindsay remembered something about Donnie and those land deals. You're the one who drew the possible connection between Donnie and Marcotte," she reminded him. "You're willing to look at that, but only in how it relates after the murder. Leave yourself open to possibilities, Detective, or you might shut the door on a killer."

  "I've considered the possibilities. I still believe Renard killed her."

  "Of course you do, because if Renard isn't the killer, then what does that make you? An avenging angel without motive is just a thug. Justice dispensed on an innocent man is injustice. If Renard isn't a criminal, then you are."

  The same line of thinking had drawn through Nick's mind as he drove back from New Orleans, aching from the beating DiMonti's goons had given him. What if the focus he had directed at Renard prevented him from seeing other possibilities? What did that make him, indeed?

  "Is that what you think of me, Toinette? You think I'm a criminal?"

  Annie sighed. "I believe what you did to Renard was wrong. I've always wanted to believe in the rules, but I see them getting bent every day, and sometimes I think it's bad and sometimes I think it's fine—as long as I like the outcome. So what does that make me?"

  "Human," he said, staring out at the night. "The rain's stopped."

  He went out onto the balcony. Annie followed, bare feet on the cool wet planks. To the north the sky was opaque with storm clouds. To the south, starlight studded the Gulf sky like diamonds.

  "What are you gonna do about the Cadillac Man?" Nick asked. "You didn't call it in."

  "I have a feeling I'd be wasting my time." Annie swept water off the railing, pushed up the sleeves of her robe, and rested her forearms on the damp wood. "No one in the department wants to rush to my aid these days. I'm not saying they're all against me, but I'd get apathy at best. Besides, I don't have a tag number on the car. I'm not sure about the make. I can't describe the driver.

  "I'll file a report in the morning and call around to the body shops myself, see if I can find a big car with half my paint job on the side. I could probably get better odds on the Saints winning the Super Bowl."

  "I'll check out Mullen's alibi," Nick offered. "It's time I had a little chat with him, anyhow."

  "Thanks."

  "I saw Stokes tonight. He says the Faulkner woman is stable but still unconscious."

  Annie nodded. "She saw him over lunch yesterday. Did he say anything about that?"

  "No."

  "Did he say anything about me?"

  "That you're a pain in the ass. Same old, same old. Do you think she might have said something to him about you digging around?"

  "I don't see why she wouldn't have. When I saw her Sunday, she told me she'd sooner deal with Stokes. She wasn't happy about me saving Renard's hide. So she sees Stokes over lunch, presumably to tell him something about Pam. Then she calls me that night: apologetic, wants to get together."

  "Why the change of heart?"

  "I don't know. Maybe Stokes didn't think what she had to say was important. But if she did mention me, why didn't he call me on it?" she asked. "I don't get that. This afternoon he told me to stay away from his cases, but why wouldn't he go to the sheriff? He knows I'm already in trouble. He might have a chance of getting me suspended. Why wouldn't he go for it?"

  "But if he tells Noblier, that opens a can of worms for him too, sugar," Nick said. "If it looks like he's not working the case hard enough, maybe Gus takes it away from him— especially now that Stokes has the rape task force. He doesn't want to give up the Bichon homicide any more than I did."

  "Yeah ... I guess that makes sense." She tried to shrug off her uneasiness. "Maybe Lindsay didn't say anything. I guess I won't know 'til she comes around. If she comes around. I hope she comes around. I wish I knew what she wanted to tell me."

  The sounds of the night settled around them—wind in the trees, a splash in the water, the staccato quock of a black-crowned night heron out on one of the willow islands. The air was ripe with the smell of green growth and fish and mud.

  Odd, Annie thought as she watched Fourcade watch the night, these brief stretches of calm quiet that sometimes lay between them, as if they were old partners, old friends. Other moments the air around them crackled with electricity, sexuality, temper, suspicion. Volatile, unstable, like the atmosphere in a newly forming world. The description fit both Fourcade and whatever was growing between them.

  "This is where you grew up," he said.

  "Yeah. Once, when I was eight, I tied a rope to that corner post and tried to rappel down to the ground. I kicked in a screen down below and landed smack in the middle of a table of tourists from France."

  He chuckled. "Destined for trouble from an early age."

  His words brought an unexpected image of her mother, coming here alone and pregnant, never revealing to anyone the father of her child. She had been trouble
from conception, apparently. Every once in a while she felt a pinch of guilt for that, even though she'd had no say in the matter. The pain bloomed quick and bright, like a drop of blood from the prick of a thorn.

  Nick watched as melancholy came over her like a veil and wondered at its source, wondered if that source was the reason she preferred the surface to the depths of life. He felt a sadness at the sudden absence of her usual spark. Was it that surface light in her that attracted him or the reserves of strength she had yet to tap?

  "Me, I grew up out that way," he said, pointing off to the southeast. "The middle of nowhere was the center of my world. At least until I was twelve."

  Annie was surprised that he had offered the information. She tried to picture him as a carefree swamp kid, but couldn't.

  "How did you go from there to here?" she asked.

  The expression in his eyes turned remote and reflective. His voice sounded road-weary. "The long way."

  "I actually thought you might have died last night," she admitted belatedly.

  "Disappointed?"

  "No."

  "Some folks would be. Marcotte, Renard, Smith Pritchett." He thought back to the comment Stokes had made that afternoon. "What about Mr. Doucet with the DA's office?"

  "A.J.?" she said, looking puzzled. "What's he got to do with you?"

  "What's he got to do with you?" Nick asked. "Rumor has it you're an item, you and Mr. Deputy DA."

  "Oh, that," Annie said, cringing inwardly. "He'd blow a gasket if he knew you were here."

  "Because of what I did to Renard? Or because of what I did with you?"

  "Both."

  "And on the second count: Does he have cause?"

  "He would say yes."

  "I'm asking you," Nick said, holding his breath as he waited for her answer.

  "No," she said softly. "I'm not sleeping with him, if that's what you're asking."

  "That's what I'm asking, 'Toinette," he said. "Me, I don't like to share."

  "That's not to say I think this is such a great idea, Nick," Annie admitted. "I'm not saying I regret tonight. I don't. I should." She sighed and tried again. "It's just that ... Look at the situation we're in. It's complicated enough, and—and— I don't just do this kind of thing, you know—"

  "I know." He stepped closer, settling his hands on her hips, wanting to touch her, to lay claim in a basic way. "Neither do I."

  "I sure as hell shouldn't be doing it with you. I—"

  He pressed a forefinger to her lips, silencing her. "This isn't about the case. This has nothing to do with what happened with Renard. Understand?"

  "But—"

  "It's about attraction, need, desire. You felt it that night at Laveau's. So did I. Before any of the rest of this ever started. It's a separate issue. It has to make its own sense outside the context of the situation we're in. You can accept it or you can say no. What do you want, 'Toinette?"

  Annie moved away from him. "It must be nice to be so sure of everything," she said. "Who's guilty. Who's innocent. What you want. What I know. Aren't you ever confused, Nick? Aren't you ever uncertain? I am. You were right—I'm in over my head, and if one more thing weighs me down, I'll never come up for air."

  She looked for a reaction but his face was as impassive as granite.

  "You want me to go?" he asked.

  "I think what I want and what's best are two different things."

  "You want me to go."

  "No," she said in exasperation. "That's not what I want."

  He came toward her then, serious, purposeful, predatory. "Then we'll deal with the rest later because I'm telling you, chère, I know what I want."

  Then he kissed her, and Annie let his certainty sweep them both away. He carried her back inside, back to bed, leaving the balcony an empty stage with an audience of one shrouded in shadows of midnight.

  "I saw her with him. Touching him. Kissing him. THE WHORE.

  She has no loyalty. Just like before. It made me wish I had killed her. Love.

  Passion.

  Greed.

  Anger.

  Hatred.

  Around and around the feelings spin, a red blur. You know, sometimes I can't tell one from the other. I have no power over them. They have all power over me. I wait for their verdict.

  Only time will tell."

  32

  The black of the night sky was fading to navy in the east when Nick let himself out of Annie's apartment. He didn't want anyone finding him here come first light. Which was why he had parked his truck on a secluded boat landing off the levee road a quarter mile away. If word leaked of an association between the defendant and the key witness in the brutality case, there would be hell to pay for both of them.

  He didn't wake Annie. He had no desire to wrestle with more questions. She had needed him, he had wanted her—it was as simple and as complex as that.

  He didn't want to wonder where it would go from here. He didn't want to wonder why Antoinette, of all women, when he had allowed himself no woman in longer than he could remember. He had spent the last year trying to rebuild himself. There had been nothing left to give beyond what he gave to the job. He wouldn't have said he had anything to give now, when he was backed into yet another corner and in danger of losing not only his career but his identity. And yet, he found himself drawn to this woman. His accuser.

  Antoinette, young, fresh, unspoiled. He was none of those things. Was that it? Did he simply want to touch something good and clean? Or was it about redemption or salvation or coercion?

  "Aren't you ever confused, Nick? Aren't you ever uncertain?"

  "All the time, chère," he whispered as he drove away.

  There was only one Mullen listed in the Bayou Breaux phone book. K. Mullen Jr. lived a block north of the cane mill in a clapboard house built in the fifties and painted once since. Trees kept the lawn as sparse as an adolescent boy's beard. The garage sat back from the house; a bass boat and a Chevy truck were parked on the cracked concrete in front of it.

  Nick walked back along the side of the building, peering into windows that hadn't been cleaned in this decade. The space was crammed with junk—old tires, a motorcycle, three lawn mowers, a mud-splattered all-terrain four-wheeler. No Cadillac. At the back of the building, a pair of speckled hunting dogs had worn two crescents of yard to dirt, pacing out to the ends of their chains to crap. The dogs lay tucked into balls between their two small shelters. They didn't crack an eye at Nick.

  He went to the back door of the house and let himself in with no resistance from a lock. The kitchen was a depressing little room with dirty dishes on most of the available counter space. Junk mail was stacked up on the small table beside half a loaf of Evangeline Maid white bread, an opened sack of barbeque potato chips, and three empty long-neck bottles of Miller Genuine Draft. Mullen's Sig Sauer lay in its holster on top of the latest Field & Stream.

  Nick searched through the cupboards and refrigerator, pulling out a cheap frying pan, eggs, butter. As the skillet was heating, he cracked eggs into a bowl, sniffed the milk to check it, then added a splash along with salt and pepper, and whipped it together with a fork. The pan gave a satisfying hiss as the liquid hit the surface.

  "Hold it right there!"

  Nick glanced over his shoulder. Mullen stood in the doorway in uniform trousers, a shotgun pressed into the hollow of his pasty white shoulder.

  "You would hold a gun on me after you've presumed me to be your good friend?" Nick said, scraping a spatula through the bubbling eggs. "That's bad manners, Deputy."

  "Fourcade?" Mullen lowered the gun and shuffled a little farther into the room, as if he didn't trust his eyes from a distance of five feet. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  "Me, I'm making a little breakfast," Nick said. "Your kitchen is a disgrace, Mullen. You know, the kitchen is the soul of the house. How you keep your kitchen is how you keep your life. Looking around here, I'd say you have no respect for yourself."

  Mullen made no comment. He lai
d the shotgun down on the table and scratched at his thin, greasy hair. "Wha—?"

  "Got any coffee?"

  "Why are you in my house? It's six o'clock in the goddamn morning!"

  "Well, I figure we're such good friends, you won't mind. Isn't that right, Deputy?" Giving the eggs one last stir, he slid the pan from the burner, and turned around. "Sorry, I don't have your first name down, but you know I didn't realize we were so close and so I forgot to ever give a shit about it."

  Mullen's expression was an ugly knot of perplexity. He looked like a man straining on the toilet. "What are you talking about?"

  "What'd you do last night"—Nick leaned over the table and scanned the mailing label on an envelope boasting YOUR NEW NRA STICKER ENCLOSED!—"Keith?"

  "Why?"

  "It's called small talk. This is what buddies do, I'm told. Why you don't tell me all about what you did last night?"

  "Went out to the gun club. Why?"

  "Shot a few rounds, huh?" Nick said, dousing the eggs with Tabasco from the bottle sitting on the back of the stove. "What'd you shoot? This handgun you've so carelessly left on your kitchen table?"

  "Uh..."

  "How about rifles? You shoot some clay?"

  "Yeah."

  "You have no clean plates," Nick announced with disapproval, picking up the frying pan by the handle. He tasted the eggs and forked up a second mouthful. "You hear about someone taking a shot at Renard last night?"

  "Yeah." The uncertainty was still clear in his small mean eyes, but he had decided to pretend a bit of arrogance. They were compadres ... maybe. He crossed his arms over his bare chest. A smirk twisted his lips, revealing crowded bad teeth. "Too bad he missed, huh?"

  "You might assume I would think that, knowing me like you do," Nick said. "That wasn't you trying to help justice along there, was it, Keith?"

  Mullen forced a laugh. "Hell no."

  " 'Cause that's against the law, don'tcha know. Now, you might say that didn't stop me the other night. Deputy Broussard stopped me."

  Mullen made a rude sound. "That little bitch. She oughta mind her own goddamn business."