A Thin Dark Line

by Tami Hoag

  The cheap picnic tables that sat out in front of the restaurant were deserted and poorly lit. A hand-lettered sign in the front window announced: CLOSED for CARNIVAL. Take Out ORDER'S ONLY.

  Doll settled on the bench, fussing with her skirt like a debutante at a cotillion. Annie took her seat, stirred her coffee, and tested it. Dark and bitter, as always; hot but drinkable. She took a long sip, wanting the caffeine to burn off the fatigue of too many late nights. She needed to be sharp now, though it wouldn't do to appear overeager. She left her notebook in her shirt pocket. Under the table, she pressed the record button on the minicassette recorder.

  "I'm not proud of this," Doll began. She rested one hand on the table, her handkerchief clutched at the ready. "He's my son. My loyalty should be to my family."

  "Letting this go on won't be in the interest of your family, Mrs. Renard. You're doing what's best."

  "That's what I keep telling myself. I have to do what's best." She paused to sip at her coffee and compose herself.

  Annie took a drink and waited, rubbing absently at the cut on her fingertip. She sat with her back to the restaurant and a view of the surrounding area. Without turning her head, she scanned the street, the sidewalk, the vacant lot beyond Po' Richard's property, trying to make out every shadow. No sign of Marcus, but then he was very good at staying just out of reach, just out of sight. She imagined him watching them now, his anger building toward the boiling point.

  "It's been very difficult for me," Doll said, "raising the two boys on my own. Especially with Victor's difficulties. The state tried to take him away from me once and put him in a home. I wouldn't have it. He'll be with me 'til I die. He's my child, my burden to bear. I brought him into this world the way he is. I blamed myself for his condition, even though the doctors say it's no one's fault. How can we truly know what gets passed along from one generation to the next?"

  Annie made no comment, but thought fleetingly of her own mother and the father she'd never known. "What ever became of Mr. Renard?"

  Doll's face hardened. "Claude betrayed us. Years ago. And now here I sit, about to betray my son."

  "You shouldn't think of it that way, Mrs. Renard. Why don't you tell me what it is you think Marcus has done wrong."

  "I don't know where to begin," she said, looking down at her crumpled handkerchief.

  "You said you had a fight with Marcus last night. What was that about?"

  "You, I'm afraid."

  "Me?"

  "I'm sure you realize Marcus has become quite taken with you. He does that, you see. He—he gets something in his head and there's no changing it. I can see it happening all over again with you. He's convinced there could be something ... personal between the two of you."

  "I've told him that's not possible."

  "It won't matter. It never has."

  "This has happened before?"

  "Yes. With the Bichon woman. And before her—when we lived in Baton Rouge—"

  "Elaine Ingram?"

  "Yes. Love at first sight, he called it. Within a week of meeting her, he was completely preoccupied. He followed her everywhere. Called her day and night. Lavished her with gifts. It was embarrassing."

  "I thought she returned his feelings."

  "For a time, but it became too much for her. He did the same with that Bichon woman. He suddenly decided he had to have her, even though she wanted no part of him. And I can see it starting again, with you. I confronted him about it."

  "What did he say?"

  "He became irate and went into his workroom. No one is supposed to disturb him there, but I followed him," she confessed. "I never wanted to believe it was anything more than infatuation, what he felt for that woman, but I confess, I'd had a premonition. I'm very sensitive that way. I'd had these feelings, but I just wouldn't believe them.

  "I watched Marcus from the door without him knowing. He went to a cupboard and got some things out of it, and I knew. I just knew."

  "What things?"

  Doll bowed her head over the pocketbook in her lap. She reached into the bag and closed her hand around something, hesitating, withdrawing it slowly.

  As she held the small picture frame out, Annie felt a strange rush shoot up her arms and into her head. She gripped one arm of the chair as the rush became a wave of dizziness. The picture frame that had gone missing from Pam Bichon's office. One of the items the detectives had searched for in order to at least tie Renard to the stalking charges. None of the items had ever been found.

  Annie took it now and looked at it in the artificial light draining out the restaurant's front window. The frame was a delicate antique silver filigree, the glass inside it cracked. The photo was no more than two inches by three inches, but portrayed in that small space was a wealth of emotion—the love between a mother and child. Josie couldn't have been more than five, sitting on her mother's lap, gazing up at her with an angelic smile. Pam, her arms wrapped around her baby, smiling down at her with absolute adoration.

  Marcus Renard had stolen this photograph and destroyed the relationship portrayed within it. He had taken a mother from her child. He had extinguished the spirit of a woman who had loved and had been loved by so many people.

  The dizziness swooped through her again. A reaction to the photograph, Annie supposed. Or to the caffeine. She felt vaguely ill ... at the sure knowledge that the man who had become infatuated with her was in fact the man who had committed unspeakable acts against the woman in this photograph. Fourcade had been right all along: the trail, the logic, led back to Renard.

  "Marcus stole that, didn't he?" Doll said.

  "Yes."

  "There were other things too, but I was afraid to take them. I believe he's stolen things from me," she admitted. "A cameo that was in my mother's family. A locket I'd had for years—since Victor was born. God only knows what he did with them."

  God and me, Annie thought, shuddering inwardly. And Pam Bichon. And probably Elaine Ingram before her. A clammy chill ran across her skin. She worked to pull in a deep breath of the humid night air, and stared down at the photograph that blurred a little before her eyes as the dizziness tipped through her again.

  "I didn't want to believe he would do it again," Doll said. "The preoccupation and all."

  "Do you think he killed those women, Mrs. Renard?" Annie asked, the words sticking on her tongue. She took another drink of her coffee to clear the taste of the question. How awful for a mother to think her son was a murderer.

  Doll pressed her hand over her face and began to weep, her body quivering. "He's my son! He's all I have. I don't want to lose him!"

  And yet she'd brought forward the evidence.

  "I'm sorry," Annie murmured. "But we'll have to take this to the sheriff."

  She pushed her chair back and stood, swaying unsteadily on her feet, the dizziness swarming around her head like a cloud of bees. She felt as if she might just float off the ground, and had no control over whether she would or would not. As she stepped away from the table the ground seemed to dip beneath her feet, and she staggered.

  "Oh, my goodness!" Doll Renard's voice sounded far away. "Are you all right, Deputy Broussard?"

  "Uh, I'm a little dizzy," Annie mumbled.

  "Perhaps you should sit back down?"

  "No, I'll be fine. Too much caffeine, that's all. We need to get to the sheriff."

  She attempted another step and went down hard on one knee. The picture frame fell from her hand.

  "Oh, dear!" Doll gasped. "Let me help you!"

  "This is embarrassing," Annie said, steadying herself against the older woman as she rose. "I'm so sorry."

  Doll sniffed and wrinkled her nose. "Have you been drinking, Deputy?"

  "No, no, that was an assident." Alarm jumped through her at the sound of her own voice, the words slurred and indistinct. Her body felt heavy, as if she were moving through a vat of Jell-O. "I'm just not feeling well. We'll go to the station. I'll be fine."

  They moved slowly toward the Cadillac
, Doll Renard on Annie's right, supporting her. The woman was so much stronger than she looked, Annie thought. Or maybe it was just that she suddenly had no strength at all. An electric buzzing vibrated in her arms and legs. The fingertip she had pricked on the rose stem throbbed like a beating heart.

  The rose thorn. The rose Marcus had given her.

  Poisoned. God, she'd never expected that. But it was certainly poetic—that a token of love would become an instrument of death when the love was spurned. He would think that way, the twisted, sick son of a bitch.

  "Mizzuz Renard?" she said as she collapsed into the passenger's seat of the car. "I think maybe we shhhould go to the hossspital. I think I might be dying."

  He wanted to kill her. He wanted to put his hands around Annie Broussard's throat and watch her face as he choked her. She had played him for a fool. The last joke would be on her. The violent fantasy splashed in vivid color through Marcus's mind as he pushed his way through the crowd.

  The noise of the party was a discordant cacophony in his ears. The lights and colors were too bright, too garish against the black of night and the black of his mood. Faces loomed in at him, laughing mouths and hideous masks. He stumbled into a Ronald Reagan pretender, spilling the man's beer in a geyser onto the sidewalk.

  "Fucking drunk!" Reagan shouted. "Watch where you're going!"

  In retaliation, the man shoved him hard, and Marcus careened into another reveler in a Zorro mask and a porkpie hat. Stokes.

  Stokes stumbled backward, feet scrambling. Marcus fell with him, fell on him amid the forest of legs. He wished he had a knife. He imagined himself stabbing Stokes as they fell, then getting up and walking away before anyone realized.

  "Stupid motherfucker!" Stokes yelled, getting up.

  Before Marcus could right himself, Stokes booted him in the ribs. Holding himself, Marcus struggled to his feet and kept going, half doubled over, laughter ringing behind him. He pressed on through the crowd, then turned the corner and hurried down the side street toward Bowen & Briggs.

  The thick, humid air burned in his lungs. His chest felt banded with steel, the pressure crushing against his cracked ribs. Small, sharp pains burst through him with every breath. His face was on fire. He tore off the painted mask and threw it in the gutter. It was no disguise compared to the mask Annie had worn. Betrayal with the lawyer was the least of her crimes. The slut. He had overlooked and rationalized and made excuses for her, sure that she would see in the end how right it could be between them. She deserved to be punished for what she'd put him through. He punished her in his mind as the emotions tore through him. Love, rage, hate. She would be sorry. In the end, she would be sorry.

  He felt as if he'd been eviscerated. Why did this have to happen to him time and again? Why couldn't the women he loved love him in return? Why did his feelings grab hold so hard and refuse to let go? Love, passion, need, need, need. He was an otherwise normal man. He was intelligent. He had talents. He had a good job. Why did his need have to overwhelm him again and again?

  As he let himself into the Volvo, tears rolled down his face, scalding with both pain and shame. His body was rigid and trembling with anger, the tension magnifying his various injuries, the physical pain further humiliating him. What kind of man was he? The kind other men kicked and scorned, the kind women sneered at, the kind women sought restraining orders against. He didn't think he could endure it any longer. The emotions were too much, too big, too painful. And in the back of his head he could hear his mother's mocking voice, telling him he was pathetic.

  He was pathetic. That truth nearly crushed him with its weight.

  He was sobbing as he passed the drive to the house where Pam had died. Her death would hang over him like a shadow for the rest of his life.

  What kind of life was this to lead? A suspected murderer, a pathetic wretch living with his mother, spurned again and again by the women he loved. How many times had he wished himself away from here, envisioned a better life—with Elaine, with Pam, with Annie? But he would never go, and that better life would never happen. He would never live on the Gulf in a beach house and spend his evenings with Annie or any other woman. He would only become more pathetic, more isolated, be more loathed. What was the point?

  He turned the Volvo down his driveway and gunned the engine. A sense of urgency had joined the other emotions writhing inside him like snakes. He slammed the car into park alongside the house and went inside.

  Victor sat on the landing of the front stairs, wearing one of their mother's feather masks and rocking himself. He sprang to his feet and thundered down the steps, rushing to within inches of Marcus, shrieking, "Red! Red! Red! Red!"

  "Stop it!" Marcus snapped, shoving him back. "You'll wake Mother."

  "Not now. Enter out, Mother. Red! Very red!"

  "What are you talking about?" Marcus demanded, cutting through the dining room. Against his will, he glanced at the wall. Of course the paint didn't match. "It's after midnight. Mother is in bed."

  Victor shook his head vigorously. "Then and now. Enter out, Mother. Red!"

  "I don't know what you mean," Marcus said impatiently. "Where would she have gone? You know Mother doesn't drive at night. You're being ridiculous."

  Frustration grabbed hold of Victor as they reached the door to Marcus's rooms, and he stopped beside the wall and banged his head against it, keening in his throat.

  Marcus grabbed hold of him by the shoulders. "Victor, stop it! Go to your room and calm down. Go look at one of your books."

  "Then and now. Then and now. Then and now!" he chanted.

  Marcus heaved a sigh, feeling a deep sadness for his brother. Poor Victor, locked inside his own mind. Then again, maybe Victor was the lucky one.

  "Come along," he said, quietly.

  Taking Victor by the hand, he led him upstairs to his room, shushing him the whole way.

  "Red! Red!" Victor harped in a whisper, like a bird with laryngitis.

  "Nothing is red, Victor," Marcus said, turning on the lamp.

  Victor sat down on the edge of the bed and rocked himself from side to side. The peacock plumes that arched up from the corners of his mask bobbed like antennae. He looked absurd.

  "I want you to count to five thousand by sixteenths," Marcus said. "And when you're done, you let me know. Can you do that?"

  Victor stared past him, his eyes glassy. Chances were good that by the time he reached five thousand he would have forgotten the source of his distress.

  Marcus left the room and paused, looking at the door to his mother's room farther down the hall. Of course she would be in there, the spider in her nest. She would always be there—physically, psychologically, metaphorically. There was only one escape for any of them.

  Purposeful, he went down to his bedroom, locked the door behind him, and went to the drawer where he kept his Percodan. The doctor had written the prescription for seventy-five pills, probably hoping he would take them all at once. He'd taken a number of them in the days and nights since his beating, but there were plenty left. More than enough. If he could find the bottle. It was gone from the drawer.

  Victor? No. If Victor had taken an overdose of Percodan, agitation would not be the result. He would be lethargic or dead—and better off, either way.

  Marcus turned away from the bed and continued on into his workroom. He had cleaned up the mess his rage had created the night before. Everything was in its place once again, neat and tidy. The pencil portrait of Annie was on the drawing table. How fitting that it was torn, he thought, running his finger over the ragged edge of the paper. He imagined that the blood smeared across it was hers.

  He turned to his worktable and the tools aligned with the precision of surgical instruments, contemplating the sharp razor's edge of the utility knife. Picking it up, he ran his thumb down the blade and watched his blood bloom along the cut, bright crimson. Tears came again, not at the physical pain, but at the enormous emotional burden of what he was about to do. He set the utility knife aside, d
isregarding it for his task. A butcher knife would serve the purpose, symbolically and literally. But first, he wanted the pills.

  Going to the hidden panel in the wainscoting, he opened the cupboard, confronting his past and his perversion. That was what other people would call his love for women who didn't want him—perversion, obsession. They didn't know what obsession was.

  The small tokens he had taken from Elaine and Pam and Annie sat in clusters on a shelf. Memories of things that might have been. A wave of bittersweet nostalgia washed over him as he chose a beautiful glass paperweight that had belonged to Pam. He held it in his hands and touched it to his face. It was cool against his tears.

  "Drop it, you slimy, sick bastard." The voice was low and thick with hate. "That belonged to my daughter."

  The paperweight rolled from Marcus's hands and fell to the floor as he looked up into the face of Hunter Davidson.

  "I hope you're ready to go to hell," the old man said, cocking the hammer on the .45 he held. "Because I've come to send you off."

  46

  He'd been right from the start. The trail, the logic, led back to Renard. And if he had maintained his focus, if he hadn't allowed his past to leach into his present, Marcotte would have remained a bad distant memory.

  Nick lit a cigarette and drew hard on it, trying to burn the bitter taste of the truth from his mouth. The damage was done. He would deal with the repercussions if and when they arose. His focus now had to be on the matter at hand: Renard.

  Annie had apparently yanked his chain a little too hard. She needed backup, which was what Nick now felt he should have been doing all along instead of running off half-cocked at shadows. Focus. Control. He had let himself become distracted when he should have stayed true to his gut. The trail, the logic, led back to Renard.

  He parked on a side street and entered the Carnival crowd, eyes scanning the mob for Broussard. If she had pushed Renard over the edge, then she could be in trouble, and he had no intention of waiting until morning or even waiting until she was off duty to find out. Whatever confrontation had taken place had been while she was working. That meant Renard was here, watching her.