A Thin Dark Line

by Tami Hoag

  With all the controversy swirling around the case, Pam was being pushed out of view little by little. No one had helped her when she was alive and believed that Marcus Renard was stalking her, and now that she was dead, attention was being diverted elsewhere.

  "Maybe there wouldn't be a case if Judge Edmonds had taken Pam seriously in the first place," she said, setting her fork down and abandoning her meal. "What's the point of having a stalking law if judges are just gonna blow off every complaint that comes their way as 'boys will be boys'—"

  "We've had this conversation," A.J. reminded her. "For Edmonds to have granted that restraining order, the law would have to be worded so that looking crossways at a woman would be considered criminal. What Pam Bichon brought before the court did not constitute stalking. Renard asked her out, he gave her presents—"

  "He slashed her tires and cut her phone line and—"

  "She had no proof the person doing those things was Marcus Renard. He asked her out, she turned him down, he was unhappy. There's a big leap from unhappy to psychotic."

  "So said Judge Edmonds, who probably still thinks it's okay for men to hit women over the head with mastodon bones and drag them into caves by their hair," Annie said with disgust. "But then that makes him about average around here, doesn't it?"

  "Hey, objection!"

  She broke her scowl with a look of contrition. "It goes without saying, you're above average. I'm sorry I'm such poor company tonight. I'm gonna pass on the movie, go home, soak in the tub, go to bed."

  A.J. reached across the table and hooked a fingertip inside the simple gold bracelet she wore, caressing the tender skin of her inner wrist. "Those aren't necessarily solitary pursuits," he whispered, his eyes rich with a warm promise he had fulfilled from time to time in the past when the currents of their attraction had managed to cross paths.

  Annie drew her hand back on the excuse of reaching for her pocketbook. "Not tonight, Romeo. I have a concussion."

  They said their good-byes in the tiny parking lot alongside the restaurant, Annie offering her cheek for A.J.'s goodnight kiss when he aimed for her lips. Their parting only added to the restlessness she had been feeling all day, as if everything in the world were just a half beat out of sync. She sat behind the wheel of the Jeep, listening with one ear to the radio as A.J. drove out onto La Rue Dumas and turned south.

  "You're on KJUN, all talk all the time. Home of the giant jackpot giveaway. This is your Devil's Advocate, Owen Onofrio. Our topic tonight: today's controversial decision in the Renard case. I've got Ron from Henderson on line one. Go ahead, Ron."

  "I think it's a disgrace that criminals have all the rights in the courts anymore. He had that woman's ring in his house. By God, that oughta be all she wrote right there. Strap him down and light him up!"

  "But what if the detective planted the evidence? What happens when we can't trust the people sworn to protect us? Jennifer in Bayou Breaux on line two."

  "Well, I'm just scared sick by all of it. What's anyone supposed to think? I mean, the police are all over this Renard fella, but what if he didn't do it? I heard they have secret evidence that links this murder to those Bayou Strangler murders. I'm a woman lives alone. I work the late shift down at the lamp factory—"

  Annie switched the radio off, not in the mood. She often listened to the talk station to get a feel for public opinion. But opinions on this case spanned the spectrum. Only the emotions were consistent: anger, fear, and uncertainty. People were nervous, easily spooked. Reports of prowlers and Peeping Toms had tripled. The waiting lists for home alarm systems were long. Gun shops in the parish were doing a brisk, grim business.

  The feelings were no strangers to Annie. The lack of closure, of justice, was driving her crazy. That and her own minimal role in the drama. The fact that, even though she had been in it at the beginning, she had been relegated to bystander. She knew what role she wanted to play. She also knew no one would ever invite her into the game. She was just a deputy, and a woman deputy at that. There was no affirmative-action fast track in Partout Parish. A considerable span of rungs ran up the ladder from where she was to where she wanted to be.

  She was supposed to wait her turn, earn her stripes, and meanwhile ... Meanwhile the need that had pushed her to become a cop simmered and churned inside her ... and Pam Bichon got lost in the shuffle ... and a killer lay watching, waiting, free to slip away or kill again.

  Night had crept in over the town and brought with it a damp chill. Sheer wisps of fog were floating up off the bayou and drifting through the streets like ghosts. Across the street from where Annie sat the black padded door to Laveau's swung open and Chaz Stokes stepped out, blue neon light washing down on him. He stood on the deserted sidewalk for a moment, smoking a cigarette, looking up one side of the street and down the other. He tossed the cigarette in the gutter, climbed into his Camaro, and drove away, turning down the side street that led to the bayou, leaving an empty space at the curb in front of a weathered black pickup. Fourcade's pickup.

  It struck Annie as odd. Another piece out of place. No one hung out at Laveau's. The Voodoo Lounge was the usual spot for cops in Bayou Breaux. Laveau's was the mostly empty companion to the mostly empty Maison Dupre hotel next door.

  Out of place. It was that thought that pushed her out of the Jeep. Even as she told herself that lie, she could clearly see A.J.'s accusatory face in her mind. He thought she had the hots for Fourcade, for all the good that would have done her. Fourcade treated her like a fixture. She could have been a lamp or a hat rack, with all the sexual allure of either. He didn't resent her, didn't harass her, didn't joke around with her. He had no interest in her whatsoever. And her only interest was in the case. She jaywalked across Dumas to the bar.

  Laveau's was a cave of midnight blue walls and mahogany wood black with age. If it hadn't been for the television in the far corner, Annie would have thought she had gone blind walking into the place. The bartender flicked a glance at her and went back to pouring a round of Johnnie Walker for the only table of patrons—a quartet of men in rumpled business suits.

  Fourcade sat at the end of the bar, shoulders hunched inside his battered leather jacket, his gaze on the stack of shot glasses before him. He blew a jet stream of smoke at them and watched it dissipate into the gloom. He didn't turn to look at her, but as she approached Annie had the distinct feeling that he was completely conscious of her presence.

  She slipped between a pair of stools and leaned sideways against the bar. "Tough break today," she said, blinking at the sting of the smoke.

  The big dark eyes were on her instantly, staring out from beneath a heavy sweep of brows. Clear, sharp, showing no foggy effects from the whiskey he had consumed, burning with a ferocious intensity that seemed to emanate from the very core of him. He still didn't turn to face her, presenting her with a profile that was hawkish. He wore his black hair slicked back, but a shock of it had tumbled down across his broad forehead.

  "Broussard," Annie said, feeling awkward. "Deputy Broussard. Annie." She brushed her bangs out of her eyes in a nervous gesture. "I—ah—was on the courthouse steps. We took down Hunter Davidson. I was the one at the bottom of the pile."

  The gaze slid down from her face past the open front of her denim jacket and the thin white T-shirt beneath it to the flower-sprigged skirt that hit her mid-calf to the Keds she wore on her feet ... and eased back up like a long caress.

  "You out of uniform, Deputy."

  "I'm off duty."

  "Are you?"

  Annie blinked at his response and at the smoke, not quite sure what to make of the first. "I was the first officer on the scene at the Bichon homicide. I—"

  "I know who you are. What you think, chère, that this little bit o' whiskey pickled my brain or something?" He arched a brow and chuckled, tapping his cigarette into a plastic ashtray bristling with butts. "You grew up here, enrolled in the academy August 1993, got hired into the Lafayette PD, came to the SO here in '95. You were the second w
oman deputy on patrol in this parish—the first having lasted all of ten months. You got a good record, but you tend to be nosy. Me, I think that's maybe not such a bad thing if you gonna do the job, if you looking to move up, which you are."

  Astonished, Annie gaped at him. In the months Fourcade had been in the department she had never heard him volunteer a sentence of more than ten words. She had certainly never dreamed that he knew enough about her to do so. That he seemed to know quite a lot about her was unnerving—a reaction he read without effort.

  "You were the first deputy on the scene. I needed to know if you were any good, or if you mighta screwed up, or if maybe you knew Pam Bichon. Maybe you had the same boyfriend. Maybe she sold you a house with snakes under the floors. Maybe she beat you out for head cheerleader back in high school."

  "You considered me a suspect?"

  "Me, I consider ever'body a suspect 'til I can find out different."

  He took a long pull on his smoke and watched her as he exhaled. "Does this bother you?" he asked, making a small gesture with the cigarette.

  She tried without success not to blink. "No."

  "Yes, it does," he declared as he stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray. "Say so. Ain't nobody in this world gonna speak up for you, chère."

  "I'm not afraid to speak up."

  "No? You afraid of me?"

  "If I were afraid of you, I wouldn't be standing here."

  His lips twisted in a faint smirk and he gave a very French shrug that said, Maybe, maybe no. Annie felt her temper spike a notch.

  "Why should I be afraid of you?"

  His expression darkened as he turned a shot glass on the bar. "You don't listen to gossip?"

  "I take it for what it's worth. Half-truths, if that."

  "And how you decide which half is true?" he asked. "There is no justice in this world," he said softly, staring into his whiskey. "How's that for a truth, Deputy Broussard?"

  "It's all in your perception, I suppose."

  " 'One man's justice is another man's injustice ... one man's wisdom another's folly.' " He sipped at the whiskey. "Emerson. No reporter will sum up today's events as well ... or with such truth."

  "What they say doesn't change the facts," Annie said. "You found Pain's ring in Renard's house."

  "You don't think I put it there?"

  "If you had put it there, it would have been listed on the warrant."

  "C'est vrai. True enough, Annie." He gave her a pensive look. "Annie—that's short for something?"

  "Antoinette."

  He sipped his whiskey. "That's a beautiful name, why you don't use it?"

  She shrugged. "I—well—everyone calls me Annie."

  "Me, I'm not ever'body, 'Toinette," he said quietly.

  He seemed to have gotten closer or loomed larger. Annie thought she could feel the heat of him, smell the old leather of his jacket. She knew she could feel his gaze holding hers, and she told herself to back away. But she didn't.

  "I came here to ask you about the case," she said. "Or did Noblier pull you off?"

  "No."

  "I'd like to help if I can." She blurted the words, forced the idea out before she could swallow it back. She held up one hand to stave off his reply and gestured nervously with the other. "I mean, I know I'm just a deputy, and technically it isn't my case, and you're the detective, and Stokes won't want me involved, but—"

  "You're a helluva salesman, 'Toinette," Fourcade remarked. "You telling me every reason to say no."

  "I found her," Annie said simply. The image of Pam Bichon's body throbbed in her memory, a dead thing that was too alive, that would give her no rest. "I saw what he did to her. I still see it. I feel ... an obligation."

  "You feel it," Fourcade whispered. "Shadow of the dead."

  He raised his left hand, fingers spread, and reached out, not quite touching her. Slowly he passed his hand before her eyes, skimmed around the side of her head, just brushing his fingertips against her hair. A shiver rippled down her body.

  "It's cold there, no?" he whispered.

  "Where?" Annie murmured.

  "In Shadowland."

  She started to draw a breath, to tell him he was full of shit, to defuse the prickly sensation that had come to life inside her and between them, but her lungs didn't seem to function. She was aware of a phone ringing somewhere, of the canned laughter coming from the television. But mostly she was aware of Fourcade and the pain that shone in his eyes and came from somewhere deep in his soul.

  "You Fourcade?" the bartender called, holding up the telephone receiver. "You got a call."

  He slid off his stool and moved down the bar. Air rushed into Annie's lungs as he walked away, as if his aura had been pressing down on her chest like an anvil. With an unsteady hand, she raised his glass to her lips and took a drink. She stared at Fourcade as he hunched over the bar and listened to the telephone receiver. He had to be drunk. Everyone knew he wasn't quite right at his most sober.

  He hung up the phone and turned toward her.

  "I gotta go." He pulled a twenty out of his wallet and tossed it on the bar.

  "Stay away from those shadows, Toinette," he warned her softly, the voice of too much experience. With one hand he reached up and cradled her face, the pad of his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. "They'll suck the life outta you."

  4

  Nick walked along the boulevard between the road and the bayou. Gloved hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. Shoulders hunched against the damp chill of the night. Fog skimmed off the water and floated past like clouds of perfume, redolent with the scents of rotting vegetation, dead fish, and spider lilies. Something broke the surface with a pop and a splash. A bass snatching a late dinner. Or someone with a heavy case of boredom, tossing rocks.

  Pausing by the trunk of a live oak, he stared out past the branches hung with tattered scraps of Spanish moss and looked up and down the bank. There was no one, no foot traffic, no cars crossing the little drawbridge that spanned the bayou to the north. House lights glowed amber in windows beyond the east bank. The night air had gone heavy with a thick mist that was threatening to become rain. A rainy night did nothing to entice folks outdoors without a purpose.

  And my purpose?

  That remained unclear.

  He was close to drunk. He had given himself the excuse of dulling the pain, but instead had only fueled it. The frustration, the injustice—they were like fire under his skin. They would consume him if he didn't do something to burn them out.

  He closed his eyes, took a breath, and released it, attempting to find his center—that core of deep calm within that he had spent so much time and effort building. He had worked so hard to control the rage, and it was slipping through his grasp. He had worked so hard on the case, and it was crumbling around him. He felt the chill pass over him, through him. The shadow of the dead. He felt the need pull at him. And a part of him wanted very badly to go where it would lead him.

  He wondered if Annie Broussard felt that same pull or if she would even recognize it. Probably not. She was too young. Younger than he had been at twenty-eight. Fresh, optimistic, untainted. He had seen the doubt in her eyes when he had spoken of the shadows. He had also seen the naked truth when she spoke of the obligation she felt to Pam Bichon.

  The key to staying sane in homicide was keeping a distance. Don't let it get personal. Don't get involved. Don't take it home with you. Don't cross the line.

  He had never been good at taking any of that advice. He lived the job. The line was always behind him.

  Had the shadows drawn Pam Bichon? Had she seen Death's phantom coming, felt its cold breath on her shoulders? He knew the answer.

  She had complained to friends about Renard's persistent, if subtle advances. Despite her rebuffs, he had begun sending her gifts. Then came the harassment. Small acts of vandalism against her car, her property. Items stolen from her office—photographs, a hairbrush, work papers, her keys.

  Yes, Pam had seen the ph
antom coming, and no one had listened when she tried to tell them. No one had heard her fear any more than they had heard her tortured screams that night out on Pony Bayou.

  "I still think about what he did to her," Stokes said. "Don't you?"

  All the time. The details had saturated his brain like blood.

  With his back against the tree trunk, Nick lowered himself to sit on his heels and stared across the empty street at the building that housed Bowen & Briggs. A light burned on the second floor. A desk lamp. Renard worked at the third drafting table back and on the south side of the big room there. Bowen & Briggs designed both small commercial and residential buildings, with their commercial work coming out of New Iberia and St. Martinville as well as Bayou Breaux.

  Renard was a partner in the firm, though his name was not on the logo. He preferred designing residential buildings, especially single-family homes, and had a liking for historical styles. His social life was quiet. He had no long-term romantic involvement. He lived with his mother, who collected Mardi Gras masks and created costumes for Carnival revelers, and his autistic brother, Victor, the elder by four years. Their home was a modest, restored plantation house—less than five miles by car from the scene of Pam Bichon's murder. Nearer by boat.

  According to the descriptions of the people who worked with and knew Marcus Renard, he was quiet, polite, ordinary, or a touch odd—depending on whom you asked. But other words came to Nick's mind. Meticulous, compulsive, obsessive, repressed, controlling, passive-aggressive.

  Behind the mask of ordinariness, Marcus Renard was a very different man from the one his co-workers saw every day sitting at his drafting table. They couldn't see the core component Nick had sensed in him from their first meeting —rage. Deep, deep inside, beneath layers and layers of manners and mores and the guise of mild apathy. Rage, simmering, contained, hidden, buried.

  It was rage that had driven those spikes through Pam Bichon's hands.