A Thin Dark Line

by Tami Hoag

  As she sent Tom O'Connor on his way with his reports, the fax machine rang and kicked on. Annie watched the cover sheet roll out, her interest piquing at the letterhead— the regional crime lab in New Iberia. The transmission was addressed to Det. Stokes, but the fax number was for records instead of for the detectives' machine—one digit off.

  She watched the sheets roll into the tray, plucking them up one at a time. Preliminary lab results on the meager physical evidence collected at Lindsay Faulkner's crime scene and from Lindsay Faulkner's person. Negative. Nothing from the rape kit—no semen, no hair, no skin from under her nails, though they knew she'd put up a fight. Blood samples from the carpet runner appeared to be hers. Same type, at least. More sophisticated tests for DNA would take weeks.

  Just as Stokes had predicted, they had nothing, just as they had nothing from the Jennifer Nolan rape or the Kay Eisner rape. Lack of evidence was the one thing tying the cases together. And the black feather mask—if the fragment Annie had picked off Faulkner's rug matched the one she'd found at Nolan's trailer park. Nolan and Eisner had both seen their assailant, had both seen the mask. So far, Lindsay Faulkner remembered nothing. If that situation didn't improve, then the feather from the mask could be the only link to the other attacks.

  She looked back through the transmission for mention of the feather, finding none. There should have been a note, at least.

  Annie glanced at the clock. Myron would be another five minutes in men's room seclusion. The world's official timekeepers could have set their watches by Myron's bowels. She dialed the number for the lab from her desk and connected with the person she needed, rattling off the case number and what she was after.

  She waited, scanning through the fax pages, frustrated by the lack of evidence. They had to be dealing with a pro, someone savvy enough and cold enough to force the women to wash away all trace evidence or, in the case of Lindsay Faulkner, to wash it away himself. He knew everything they would look for, down to pubic hairs and skin under the fingernails.

  She wondered if the task force had gleaned anything from the old files, wondered if Stokes had heard back from the state pen, wondered if the NCIC or VICAP computers would come up with anything. She wished she was the person who would be finding out instead of the person waiting on sweaty insurance guys in the records department.

  "Excuse me?" the woman's voice came back on the line. "You said a black feather, didn't you?"

  "Yes. There was one with the Nolan case, and what might have been a fragment of a black feather with the Faulkner case."

  "Not here, there isn't."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, I'm looking right at the inventories and I don't see any feathers. They were never logged in here. Sorry."

  Annie thanked the woman and hung up.

  "No feathers," she murmured as Myron marched back into the office.

  "Deputy Broussard, what are you mumbling about?" he demanded.

  Paying no attention to him, Annie went to the drawer at the counter and pulled the evidence card for the Faulkner case. She ran her finger down the inventory of items. The black feather-like fiber was listed fourth. The last name on the chain of custody list was Det. Chs. Stokes, who had signed out the entire list of items for the purpose of turning them over to the lab for examination.

  She pulled the card for Nolan and ran her finger down the lines. The feather had been listed. The evidence had been checked out to Stokes for the purpose of turning it over to the lab. But the lab had no record of any feathers being checked in.

  "What are you doing?" Myron asked, snatching the card from her fingers and squinting at it.

  Annie grabbed the fax sheets from her desk and started for the door.

  "Where do you think you're going?" the clerk demanded.

  "To see Detective Stokes. He's got some explaining to do."

  34

  The detectives had their own building across the alley from the main facility. Known affectionately as the Pizza Hut for the volume of pepperoni with extra cheese pies delivered there on a regular basis, it was a low, snot green cinder-block job that had once been office space for a road construction outfit. The sheriff's office had bought the property, converted the parking yard for the heavy equipment into an impound lot, and given the building to a detective division that had outgrown its allotted space in the aging law enforcement center.

  Annie buzzed the door and was let in by the detective named Perez, his name spelled out in Magic Marker across the front of the Kevlar vest he wore over a T-shirt. His dark hair was scraped back into a short rattail. The mustache that covered his upper lip was bushy enough to hide small rodents. He gave Annie a sour once-over.

  "I need to see Stokes."

  "You got a warrant?"

  "Screw you, Perez."

  As she walked past him, he cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted, "Hey, Chaz, you got the right to remain silent!"

  The building was as cold as a walk-in freezer. Two window air conditioners groaned at the effort to maintain the temperature while electric fans blew the chilled air around the single front room. The room that had been given over to the rape task force was at the back. It had probably been the construction foreman's office at one time. A twelve-by-twelve cube paneled in cheap wood grain. Someone had started a soda can pyramid on the ledge of the barred window. The files Annie and Myron had gathered were strewn in haphazard piles over the long table that was the room's main piece of furniture. The hard-driving Cajun-spiced rock of Sonny Landreth's "Shootin" for the Moon" was wailing out of a boom box on top of a corner file cabinet.

  Mullen was on the phone. Stokes pranced behind the table, playing air guitar and mouthing lyrics, his crumpled porkpie hat tipped back on his head.

  Annie rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, the women of this parish will sleep better knowing you're on the job, Stokes."

  He swung toward her. "Broussard, you are a boil on the butt of my day. You know what I'm saying?"

  "Like I care." She held the faxes up. "Your preliminary lab results on Faulkner. Where's the feather?"

  He snatched the papers away from her and scanned them, frowning.

  "Don't bother to pretend you're looking for it in there," Annie said. "The lab says they've never seen it or the one from the Nolan scene. I want to know why."

  Mullen still had the phone receiver pressed to his head, but his eyes were on them.

  "Man, I need this like I need root canal," Stokes muttered, turning for the back door.

  Annie followed him out. The area behind the building was a wasteland of crushed shell, rock, and weeds with a view of the abandoned junkers in the impound lot.

  "What'd you do with them, Chaz?" she demanded.

  "I told you to keep your nose out of my cases," he snapped, thrusting a finger at her.

  "So you can feel free to fuck up with impunity?"

  "Shut up!" he shouted, charging her. "Shut the fuck up!"

  Annie backpedaled into the side of the building.

  "I'm just about half past sick of your shit, Broussard," he snarled, his face inches from hers. His pale eyes were neon-bright with temper. The tendons in his neck stood out like iron rods. "I know what I'm doing. How do you think I got this job? You think I got this job 'cause I'm browner than you? You think I skated in on my color?"

  Annie glared right back at him. "No. I think you got it because you're a man and you're full of bullshit. You talk a big game, and when somebody calls you on it, then they're suddenly a racist. I've had it up to my back teeth with that game. I don't hear Quinlan calling anybody a racist. I don't hear Ossie Compton calling anybody a racist. I don't hear anybody but you, and what you got is barely a suntan."

  She ducked under the arm he had braced against the building, and backed away from him. "You're a jerk. You'd be a jerk if you were snow white. You'd be a jerk if you looked like Mel Gibson. End of topic. I want to know what you did with the evidence I collected. You can tell me or we can take it to the sheriff."

/>   Stokes paced, trying to school his temper or weigh his options or both. "Don't you threaten me, Broussard," he muttered. "You're nothing but a little prick-teaser troublemaker."

  "Gus is still in his office," Annie bluffed. "I could have gone straight to him, you know."

  And run the risk of not only looking like a fool but renewing every hard feeling the men held toward her. Stokes would say the same thing to Gus he'd just said to her. He'd call her a troublemaker, and there wasn't a soul in the department who wouldn't believe him on some level.

  "You dumped evidence," she prodded, not wanting to give him time to think. "What possible excuse do you have for that?"

  "I didn't dump nothing," he growled. "The feathers went to the state lab."

  "Where's the receipt?"

  "Fuck you! I don't have to answer to you, Broussard! Who the fuck do you think you are?"

  "Maybe I'm the only person paying attention," Annie shot back. "Why would you send everything to New Iberia except the feathers?"

  "Because I know a guy in the state lab and he owes me a favor. That's why. They got some brainiac fibers expert can look at a feather and tell if it came off a duck's ass in Outer Mongolia. So I sent him the goddamn feathers and the mask from the Bichon homicide. For all the good that'll do us.

  "Those damn masks are a dime a dozen. What are we gonna do? Track down every manufacturer in Bumfuck, Thailand, and ask them what? Go to every five-and-dime and cheap-shit souvenir shop in South Lou'siana and ask them if they sold any masks to rapists? A hundred goddamn miles of legwork that'll get us jack shit."

  "Unless the feathers match up," Annie said. "Then you might be able to tie the first two rapes to Faulkner, at least. Even just by a thread would be more than you've got now. Faulkner doesn't remember anything about the attack. She may never."

  She knew instantly she'd made a mistake. Stokes's posture tightened, his gaze turned cold and hard.

  "How do you know that?" he asked quietly.

  Oh, shit. Annie jumped in with both feet. "I went to see her this morning."

  "Fuck-in' A!" Stokes shouted in disbelief. Then his voice dropped to a near whisper, and yet it skated sharply across Annie's nerves. "You just do not listen, do you, bitch?

  "This is my case," he said, thumping a fist to his chest. "I will make it. I don't have to answer to you. I find out you called the state lab to check my story, I'll haul your ass into Noblier's office—and if you think he isn't ready to cut you loose, you better think again, Broussard. You'll be working security at a gator farm by the time I'm through with you.

  "Faulkner is my vic, my witness. You stay the hell away from her. You stay the hell away from my cases," he warned, poking her sternum with a forefinger. "You stay the hell away from me."

  He went back into the building, the barred storm door hissing shut behind him. Mullen stared out the window at her. A moment later, a car's engine roared to life on the other side of the building and tires squealed on pavement. She caught a glimpse of Stokes's black Camaro as it shot past toward the bayou.

  What now? Annie couldn't imagine Stokes being so diligent as to send the feathers to a specialist, but if she called the state lab to check, he'd have her ass on a platter. If he had in fact taken the feathers to Shreveport, he would have kept the receipt with the case file, and the case file was in his possession. And if he hadn't sent the feathers to the state lab?

  He admitted he didn't want to do the legwork, didn't want to chase down the source of the feathers. The chance of getting anything useful out of it was too big a long shot. He didn't want the feathers to match up with the mask from the Bichon homicide because that might mean someone other than Marcus Renard killed Pam Bichon. He didn't want the work. He didn't want the headache. He didn't want to be proved wrong.

  A wanderer on the path of least resistance, that was Stokes. His problem had absolutely nothing to do with his color or anyone's perception of his color. It had to do with his own perception of the world and his priorities regarding it. He would rather have spent his time playing air guitar than seeing through the tedious business of tracking down a long-shot lead. He would rather have spent his time flirting with Pam Bichon than doing the grunt work that could have proved her stalking case. He hadn't perceived her to be in danger, so why follow up on anything?

  Annie wondered what else he might have screwed up— on this case and on Pam's case. What might he have overlooked when Pam was being stalked? Something that could have been used against Renard when Pam filed for the restraining order? How differed might things have turned out if someone else had caught Pam's case in the beginning—Quinlan or Perez or Nick?

  Now Stokes had charge of a task force that could affect the lives of any number of women. They were up against a criminal who knew the system, knew procedure, had left them virtually nothing at the scenes of three rapes. Only a pro would know what they needed—

  Or a cop.

  The idea swept a chill over her. Fear scratched at the back of her neck, and she turned her eyes on the Pizza Hut.

  A cop would know exactly what went into building a rape case.

  Stokes a rapist? It was crazy. He had more women than he could keep track of. But then, rape wasn't about sex. Plenty of rapists had wives or girlfriends. Rape was about anger and power. She thought of the way Stokes had looked as he charged her moments ago; the fury in his eyes. She thought of the way he had looked months ago when she had argued with him in the parking lot at the Voodoo Lounge, the hot blue flame of hate that had flared at her rejection of him.

  But it was a long jump from anger to aggression to rape. It made more sense that Stokes was lazy than a sexual predator. It made more sense that their rapist was a career criminal than a career cop.

  Still...

  Stokes had control of all the evidence in three rapes that shared traits with Pam Bichon's homicide.

  Stokes had investigated Pam's stalking complaints.

  Donnie Bichon had been jealous of Pam's relationship with the detective. So said Lindsay Faulkner, who had met with Stokes over lunch on Monday and had her head bashed in that same night.

  Donnie had been jealous of Stokes.

  "Stupid ... It was nothing," Faulkner had said.

  Annie wondered who might have broken that news to Stokes.

  She finished her shift in clerical hell, changed clothes in her makeshift locker room, and went in search of estimates for the damage to the Heap, one eye peeled for a Cadillac with matching dents. The last of the three garages sat across the street from Po' Richard's sandwich shop.

  Stomach growling, she contemplated supper. Going home this early would almost certainly mean a confrontation with Uncle Sos. She had avoided him and his questions this morning, but she wouldn't be that lucky again. He would want to know why A.J. had come and gone so quickly this morning. Going to Fourcade's place would mean what? Would they sit down and talk about what was going on between them or would they just end up in his bed, solving nothing, complicating everything?

  She pulled up to the drive-through window and ordered a fried shrimp po'boy basket and a Pepsi. The kid at the window didn't recognize her. He didn't look like the type to watch the news. Shunning the picnic tables that sat out in front of the restaurant and the half-dozen people taking their suppers there, she drove down the block and parked in front of a vacant lot strewn with beer cans and broken glass. As she munched her dinner she stared out her broken window across the street to Bichon Bayou Development.

  The office had been closed nearly two hours, but Donnie's Lex's sat alongside the building and a light shone in two of the windows. Why had Donnie been jealous of the time Pam spent with Stokes? Had he expected Pam to turn to him instead of to the cops during the stalking? Had that been his plan—to stalk Pam himself, frighten her anonymously, get her to turn to him, and win her back? It seemed like the kind of juvenile grand plan that would appeal to Donnie's arrested adolescent ego. And when the plan failed, he would have wanted to blame someone other than himsel
f —Stokes, or Pam herself.

  Annie picked the last shrimp from the cardboard tray and chewed it slowly, thinking of Lindsay. Faulkner disliked Donnie. Hate may not have been too strong a word. She may have come up with her latest revelation simply to make trouble for him. According to the receptionist at the realty, Donnie and Lindsay had argued Monday morning. Lindsay may have thought defaming Donnie would scare off his prospective buyer for the realty. And how would Donnie have reacted to that plan?

  If he was capable of terrorizing the mother of his child, if he was capable of killing her, then what would stop him from beating Lindsay Faulkner's head in with a telephone?

  She let herself out of the Jeep, crossed the street, and walked through the open side gate to Bichon Bayou Development. She chose a side door, near the window with the light shining through, rang the bell twice, and waited. A moment later Donnie pulled the door open and stared at her, a vague sheen glossing his eyes.

  "Well, if it isn't the chick filler in my cop sandwich," he drawled. He had shed his tie and left his shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled up. The scent of whiskey hung on him like a faint cologne. "I've got Fourcade on my ass, Stokes in my face, and you ... What part of me do you want, Ms. Broussard?"

  "How much have you had to drink, Mr. Bichon?"

  "Why? Is there now some law against a man drowning his sorrows in the privacy of his own office?"

  "No, sir," Annie said. "I'm just wondering if this conversation will be worth my while, that's all."

  He raked a hand through his brown hair, mussing it, and propped a shoulder on the door frame. The smile he flashed her seemed thin and forced. He looked tired, physically, spiritually. Sad, Annie decided, though she was careful not to let the assessment taint her feelings toward him. Donnie was the type of man a lot of women would want to mother —the perpetual boy in a man's body, full of charm and mischief and confusion and potential. Had it been that boyish quality that had attracted Pam? Lindsay Faulkner had said Pam had always seen the potential in Donnie, but had never imagined he wouldn't live up to it.