by Tami Hoag
"You think it was Fourcade?" he demanded. "That bastard! I'll get his bail revoked—"
"It wasn't Fourcade."
"How do you know that?"
"It just wasn't," she insisted. "Leave it alone, A.J. You don't know anything about this."
"Because you won't tell me! Christ, somebody tries to shoot you and I have to hear about it from Uncle Sos! You don't even bother to call me back when I try to check up on you—"
"Look," she said, reining back her temper. "Can we have this fight another time? I'm 10-7. Hooker's gonna chew me out if I don't go and get back."
"I don't want to fight," A.J. said wearily. He caught hold of her hand and hung on when she would have backed away. "Just a minute, Annie. Please."
"I'm on duty."
"You're 10-7. Personal time. This is personal."
She drew in a breath to protest and he pressed a finger against her lips. His expression was earnest in the filtered light of the streetlamp.
"I need to say this, Annie. I care about you. I don't want to see you hurt by anyone for any reason. I don't want to see you taking crazy chances. I want to take care of you. I want to protect you. I don't know who this other guy is—"
"A.J., don't—"
"And I don't know what he's got that I don't. But I love you, Annie. And I'm not gonna just walk away from this, from us. I love you."
His admission stunned her silent. They hadn't been that close lately. There had been a time when she had expected him to say it, and he never had. Now he wanted her to say it and she couldn't—not with the meaning he wanted. The story of their lives. They were never quite in the same place at the same time. He wanted something from her she couldn't give, and she wanted a man she might just send on the road to prison in a week's time.
"I know you better than anyone, Annie," he murmured. "I won't give you up without a fight."
He lowered his head and kissed her, slowly, sweetly, deeply. He pulled her against him, heedless of her beer-soaked shirt, and pressed her to him—breast to chest, belly to groin. Longing to regret.
"God, you think you mean it, don't you?" he whispered as he raised his head. "That it's over."
The hurt in his eyes brought tears to Annie's. "I'm sorry, A.J."
He shook his head. "It's not over," he pledged quietly. "I won't let it be."
Just like Donnie Bichon, Annie thought. Determined to hold on to Pam even after she'd served him with papers. Like Renard—seeing what he wanted to see, bending reality to open possibilities for the outcome he wanted. The difference was that she felt only frustration with A.J.'s bullheadedness, not fear. He hadn't crossed the line from tenacity to terror.
"Fair warning," he said. Stepping back from her, he picked up his fried oysters and his beer. "I'll see you around."
Annie sat back against the car as he walked away. "I need this like I need a hole in my head."
She gave herself a moment to try to clear away the thought that she had somehow managed to become part of a romantic triangle, an idea that was too absurd for words. Instead, she tried to focus once again on the world around her: the noise of the band, the intermittent bang of firecrackers, the warm moist air, the silver light from the streetlamp, and the darkness beyond its reach.
The sensation of being watched crawled over her. The feeling that she suddenly wasn't alone on the deserted side street. She straightened slowly away from the car and strained to see into the shadows at the back of the paint store she had parked beside. At the mouth of the dark alley a white face seemed to float in the air.
"Marcus?" Annie said, straightening away from the cruiser, moving cautiously toward the building.
"You kissed him," he said. "That filthy lawyer. You kissed him!"
Anger vibrated in his voice. He took a step toward her.
"Yes, he kissed me," Annie said. Pulse racing, she tried to settle her hands casually on her hips—the right one within reach of her baton, a can of Mace, the butt of her Sig. The tip of her middle finger pressed against the stem of the rose Renard had given her and a thorn bit deep into her skin, the pain sharp and surprising.
"Does that upset you, Marcus? That I let him kiss me?"
"He's—he's one of Them!" he stammered, the words slurring as he forced them through his teeth. "He's against me. Like Pritchett. Like Fourcade. How could you do this, Annie?"
"I'm one of 'them' too, Marcus," she said simply. "I've told you that all along."
He shook his head in denial, the grinning mask a macabre contrast to the shock and fury vibrating from him in waves. "No. You're trying to help me. The work you've done. The way you've come to my aid. You saved my life— twice!"
"And I keep telling you, Marcus, I'm only doing my job."
"I'm not your job," he said. "You came to help me time and again when you didn't have to. You didn't want anyone to know. I thought..."
He trailed oft, unable to bring himself to say the words. Annie waited, marveling at the ease with which he had turned everything in his mind to fit his own wishes. It was crazy, and yet he sounded perfectly rational, as if any man would have made the same assumptions, as if he had every right to be angry with her for leading him on.
"You thought what?" she prodded.
"I thought you were special."
"Like you thought Pam was special?"
"You're just like her after all," he muttered, reaching into the deep pocket of his baggy black trousers.
Annie's hand moved to the butt of the Sig and slipped the lock strap free. A thousand people were having a party two hundred feet away, and she was standing alone with a probable murderer. The noise of the band seemed to fade to nothing.
"How do you mean?" she asked while her mind raced forward. Would he pull a knife? Would she have to take him down right here, right now? That wasn't how she thought it would go down. She didn't know what she had expected. A taped confession? The murder weapon surrendered without a fight?
"She took my friendship," he said. "She took my heart. And then she turned on me. And you're doing the same."
"She was afraid of you, Marcus. That was you calling her, prowling around her house, slashing her tires—wasn't it?"
"I would never have hurt her," he said, and Annie wondered if the answer was denial or guilt. "She took my gifts. I thought she enjoyed my company."
"And when she told you to get lost, you thought what —that maybe you could scare her anonymously and offer her comfort in person?"
"No. They turned her against me. She couldn't see how much I really cared. I tried to show her."
"Who turned her against you?"
"Her sorry excuse for a husband. And Stokes. They both wanted her and they turned her against me. What's your excuse, Annie?" he asked, bitterly. "You want that lawyer? He's using you to do his dirty work for him. Can't you see that?"
"He's got nothing to do with this, Marcus. I want to solve Pam's murder. I told you that from the first."
"You'll be sorry," he said quietly. "In the end, you'll be sorry."
He started to pull his hand from his pocket. Heart pounding, Annie pulled the Sig and pointed it at his chest.
"Slowly, Marcus," she ordered.
Slowly he drew his hand free, balled into a fist, and held it out to the side.
"Whatever it is, drop it."
He opened his fingers, letting fall something small that hit the sidewalk with a soft rattle. With her left hand, Annie pulled her flashlight from her belt and took a step closer, the Sig still raised. Renard moved back toward the alley.
"Stand right there."
She swept the beam of the flashlight down on the concrete and it reflected back off a strand of gold chain, a necklace lying like a length of discarded string with a heart-shaped locket attached.
"I thought you were special," he said again.
Annie holstered the Sig and picked the necklace up.
"Is this the necklace you tried to give Pam?"
He stared at her through the empty eyes of the smil
ing mask and took another step back from her. "I don't have to answer your questions, Deputy Broussard," he said coldly. "And I believe I'm free to go."
With that, he turned and went back down the alley.
"Great," Annie said under her breath, closing her fist on the locket.
Her edge with him had been her similarity to Pam, the woman he had fallen in love with. She had gained his trust, his respect, his attraction. In a heartbeat that was gone. Now she was more like Pam, the woman he may have butchered.
The two-way crackled against her hip and she jumped half a foot. "Broussard? Where the fuck are you? Are you back on or what?"
Annie plucked at her wet shirt and bit back a groan. "On my way, Sarge. Out."
Sucking on the fingertip the thorn had lacerated, she wove her way through the crowd across France to the old Canal gas station. The place had been closed since the oil bust, and the old pumps had been taken out long ago, leaving weeds to sprout where they had once stood. The BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY FOR SALE sign had been propped in the front window so long it had turned yellow. A herd of teenage boys in baggy clothes and backward baseball caps milled around on the cracked concrete, drinking Mountain Dew and smoking cigarettes. Eyeing Annie with suspicion, they scattered like a pack of scruffy young dogs as she passed through their midst.
She went to the side of the building, where a pay phone was still in service. She dialed Fourcade and flapped her wet shirtfront as the phone on the other end rang. His machine clicked on with a curt "Leave a message."
"It's Annie. I just had a run-in with Renard. It's a long story, but the bottom line is I might have pushed him over the edge. He said some things that make me nervous. Um— I'm stuck working the dance, then I'm going home. I'm off tomorrow. I'll see you when I see you."
She hung up feeling vaguely sick. She may have pushed a killer over the line from love to hate. Now what?
She watched the party from the corner of the vacant station, as removed from it as if she were standing behind a wall of glass. Inside her mind, she didn't hear the music of the band or the sounds from the crowd.
"I would never have hurt her."
Not that he hadn't hurt Pam. He had made that verbal distinction before.
"She couldn't see how much I really cared. I tried to show her."
How had he tried to show her? With his gifts or with the concern he had shown after he had scared her half to death? The same creepy, voyeuristic concern he had shown Annie when she'd told him about someone taking a shot at her.
"Were you alone? You must have been frightened. ... Having a stranger reach into your life and commit an act of violence —it's a violation. It's rape. You feel so vulnerable, so powerless ... so alone. ... Don't you?"
Words of comfort that weren't comforting at all. He had made her feel vulnerable, made her feel violated, and he had done the same to Pam. She knew he had.
"I thought you were special"
"Like you thought Pam was special?"
"You're just like her, after all. ... You'll be sorry ... In the end, you'll be sorry."
In the same way Pam must have been sorry? Sorry no one else could have seen the monster in him. Sorry no one had listened to her pleas for help. Sorry no one had heard her screams that night out on Pony Bayou.
Annie dug the necklace out of her pocket and held it up, watching the small gold locket sway back and forth. Renard had tried to give Pam a necklace for her birthday two weeks before she was killed.
"Officer Broussard?"
The soft voice broke Annie's concentration. She caught the locket in her fist and turned. Doll Renard stood beside her in a prison gray June Cleaver shirtwaist that had been intended for a woman with breasts and hips. In her hands she played nervously with the stem of a delicate butterfly-shaped mask covered in iridescent sequins. The elegant beauty of the mask seemed at odds with the woman holding it—plain, unadorned, her mouth a bitter knot.
"Mrs. Renard. Can I help you?"
Doll glanced away, anxious. "I don't know if you can. I swear, I don't know what I'm doing here. It's a nightmare, that's what. A terrible nightmare."
"What is?"
Tears glazed across the woman's eyes. One hand left the stem of her mask to pat at her heart. "I don't know. I don't know what to do. All this time I thought we'd been wronged. All this time. My boys are all I have, you know. Their father betrayed us, and now they're all I have in the world."
Annie waited. In her previous meetings with Doll she had found the woman melodramatic and shrill, but the stress stretched taut in Doll Renard's voice now had the ring of genuineness. Her small, sharp nose was red at the tip, her eyes rimmed in crimson from crying.
"I knew motherhood would be a joy and a trial," she said, rubbing a hankie under her nose. "But all the joy of it has been robbed from me. And now I fear it's become a nightmare." Tears skimmed down her thin, pale cheeks. "I'm so afraid."
"Afraid of what, Mrs. Renard?"
"Of Marcus," she confessed. "I'm afraid my son has done something terribly wrong."
45
"Could we go somewhere and talk?" Doll asked, glancing anxiously around at the masked revelers that moved up and down the street. She raised her own mask to partially hide her face. "Marcus is here somewhere. I don't want him to see me speaking to you. We had a terrible quarrel last night. It was horrible. I never left my bed today, I was so distraught. I don't know what to do. You've been so kind, so fair to us, I thought..."
She paused, fighting the need to cry. Annie put a hand on her shoulder, torn between a woman's sympathy and a cop's excitement.
"I'm afraid I'm on duty—" she began.
"I wouldn't ask— I didn't want to— Oh, dear..." Doll raised a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes for a moment, working to compose herself. "He's my son," she said in a tortured whisper. "I can't bear the thought that he might have—" Breaking off again, she shook her head. "I shouldn't have come here. I'm sorry."
She turned to go, shoulders hunched.
"Wait," Annie said.
If Marcus Renard's mother had something, anything, that could connect him to the murder, she couldn't put off getting it. It was clear Doll's conscience had won the internal battle to bring her to this point, and just as clear that in a heartbeat she could back away in order to save her son.
"Where are you parked?"
"Down the street. Near Po' Richard's."
"I'll meet you down there in five minutes. How's that?"
She shook her head a little. Her whole body seemed to be trembling. "I don't know. I think this is a mistake. I shouldn't have—"
"Mrs. Renard," Annie said, touching her arm. "Please don't back down now. If Marcus has done something bad, he needs to be stopped. It can't go on. You can't let it."
She held her breath as Doll closed her eyes again, looking within herself for an answer that had to be tearing her mother's heart in two.
"No," she whispered to herself. "It can't go on. I can't let it go on."
"I'll meet you at your car," Annie said. "We can have a cup of coffee. Talk. We'll sort it all out. What kind of car do you drive?"
Doll sniffed into her handkerchief. "It's gray," she said, sounding resigned. "A Cadillac."
Annie couldn't find Hooker in the sea of people, which was just as well. She didn't want him to see her going off in the opposite direction of the station. Ducking into a door well on the side street, she called him on the two-way to tell him she'd been stricken ill.
"What the hell's wrong with you, Broussard? You been drinking?"
"No, sir. Must be that stomach flu going around." She paused to groan for effect. "It's awful, Sarge. Out."
Hooker swore his usual blue streak, but let her off. Deputies vomiting in public were bad for the image of the department. "If I hear you been drinking, I'll suspend your ass! Out."
Banishing the threat from her mind, she went to the cruiser and dumped the radio, afraid the chatter might frighten or distract Doll. Grabbing her minicassette record
er, she shoved it in a pants pocket and hustled down the dark side street toward Po' Richard's.
Doll Renard drove a gray Cadillac. If the passenger's side was damaged, then Marcus was the one who had terrorized her on the road that night. That would confirm Annie's Jekyll and Hyde theory. The adrenaline rush of finally catching a break was incredible. She felt almost light-headed with it. Renard's own mother was going to give him up. To her. Because of the work she had done on the case. Losing Marcus's trust wouldn't matter.
As she hurried down the sidewalk between closed businesses and parked cars, she tensed at every shadow, bolted past the openings to alleys. Marcus was lurking somewhere, hurt and angry over what he saw as her betrayal.
God only knew what he might do if he saw her with his mother. The relationship there was too twisted to fathom. The mother relying on the support of a son whom she never ceased to criticize and belittle; the grown man staying out of obligation to a woman he resented to the marrow of his bones. The line between their love and hate had to be a hairbreadth. What would it trigger in him to know his mother was about to commit the ultimate betrayal? The rage, the pain, would be incredible.
Annie had seen what his rage had done to Pam Bichon.
The car was parked at the curb, just east of Po' Richard's. Doll Renard paced beside it, one arm banded across her waist as if her stomach hurt, the other hand rubbing her sternum. Even in the poor light that reached over from the restaurant Annie could see the scars along the side of the Cadillac.
"Did you have an accident, Mrs. Renard?"
Doll looked blank, then glanced at the car. "Oh, that," she said, moving again. "Marcus must have done that. I rarely drive. It's such a big car. I can't imagine why he bought me such a big car. So conspicuous. It's vulgar, really. And difficult to park. It preys on my nerves to drive it.
"I've developed a slight palsy from my nerves, you know. You can't imagine the strain it's been. Wondering, wanting to believe ... Then last night ... I can't stand it anymore."
"Why don't we sit down and talk about it?" Annie suggested.
"Yes. Yes," Doll repeated almost to herself, as if to reinforce the decision she had made. "I took the liberty of getting coffee. It's just over here on this table."