A Thin Dark Line

by Tami Hoag

  "What can I do?" she asked. A bead of sweat trickled down her temple. "I'm just a deputy. They don't even let me talk on the radio these days."

  "You already been working the case on your own."

  "Following the case."

  "You wanted in on it. Bad enough to ask me. You wanna be a detective, chère. Show some initiative. You already got a knack for sticking your pretty nose in where it don't belong. Be bold."

  "Is this bold enough for you?" She turned with a five-inch-long, nine-millimeter Kurz Back-Up in hand, chambered a round with quick precision, and pointed it dead at Fourcade's chest.

  "I keep this little sweetheart in the coffee tin. A trick I learned from The Rockford Files. Call my bluff if you want, Fourcade. No one will be too surprised to hear I shot you dead when you broke into my house."

  She expected anger, annoyance at the very least. She didn't expect him to laugh out loud.

  "Way to go, 'Toinette! Good girl! This is just the kinda thing I'm talking 'bout. Initiative. Creativity. Nerve." He rose from his chair and moved toward her. "You got a lotta sass."

  "Yeah, and I'm about to hit you in the chest with a load of it. Stand right there."

  For once, he listened, assuming a casual stance two feet in front of the gun barrel, one leg cocked, hands settled at the waist of his faded jeans. "You're pissed at me."

  "That would be an understatement. Everybody in the department is treating me like a leper because of you. You broke the law and I'm getting punished for it. Then you come into my house and—and terrorize me. Pissed doesn't begin to cover it."

  "You're gonna have to get over it if you're gonna work with me," he said bluntly.

  "Work with you? I don't even want to be in the same room with you!"

  "Ah, that..."

  He moved quickly, knocking her gun hand to the side and up. The Kurz spat a round into the ceiling, and plaster dust rained down. In seconds Fourcade had the gun out of her hand and had her drawn up hard against him with one arm pulled up behind her back.

  "... that would be untrue," he finished.

  He let her go abruptly and went back to the table, scanning her papers on the case. "I can help you, 'Toinette. We want the same end, you and I."

  "Ten minutes ago you thought I was part of a conspiracy against you."

  He still didn't know that she wasn't, he reminded himself. But she wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of building a casebook on Pam Bichon's murder if she wasn't truly interested in seeing it solved.

  "I want the case cleared," he said. "Marcus Renard belongs in hell. If you want to make that happen, if you want justice for Pam Bichon and her daughter, you'll come to me. I've got ten times what you've got lying here on this table— statements, complaints, photographs, lab reports, duplicates of everything that's on file at the sheriff's department."

  This was what she had wanted, Annie thought: To work with Fourcade, to have access to the case, to try—for Josie's sake and to silence the phantom screams in her own mind. But Fourcade was too volatile, too wired, too unpredictable. He was a criminal, and she was the one who had run him in.

  "Why me?" she asked. "You should hate me more than the rest of them do."

  "Only if you sold me out."

  "I didn't, but—"

  "Then I can't hate you," he said simply. "If you didn't sell me out, then you acted on your principles and damned the consequences. I can't hate you for that. For that, I would respect you."

  "You're a very strange man, Fourcade."

  He touched a hand to his chest. "Me, I'm one of a kind, 'Toinette. Ain'tcha glad?"

  Annie didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Fourcade laid her weapon on the table and came toward her, serious again.

  "I don't wanna let go of this case," he said. "I want Renard to go down for what he did. If I can't trust Stokes, then I can't work through him. That leaves you. You said you felt an obligation to Pam Bichon. You want to meet that obligation, you'll come to me. Until then..."

  He started to lower his head. Annie's breath caught. Anticipation tightened her muscles. Her lips parted slightly, as if she meant to tell him no. Then he touched two fingers to his forehead in salute, turned, and walked out of her apartment and into the night.

  "Holy shit," she whispered.

  She stood there as the minutes ticked past. Finally she went out onto the landing, but Fourcade was gone. No tail lights, no fading purr of a truck engine. The only sounds were the night sounds of the swamp: the occasional call of nocturnal prey and predator, the slap of something that broke the surface of the water and dived beneath once more.

  For a long time she stared out at the night. Thinking. Wondering. Tempted. Frightened. She thought of what Fourcade had said to her that night in the bar. "Stay away from those shadows, 'Toinette. ... They'll suck the life outta you."

  He was a man full of shadows, strange shades of darkness and unexpected light. Deep stillness and wild energy. Brutal yet principled. She didn't know what to make of him. She had the distinct feeling that if she accepted his challenge, her life would be altered in a permanent way. Was that what she wanted?

  She thought of Pam Bichon, alone with her killer, her screams for mercy tearing the fabric of the night, unheeded, unanswered. She wanted closure. She wanted justice. But at what price?

  She felt as if she were standing on the edge of an alternate dimension, as if eyes from that other side were watching her, waiting in expectation for her next move.

  Finally she went inside, never imagining that the eyes were real.

  "I feel a sense of limbo, as if I'm holding my breath. It isn't over. I don't know that it will ever be over.

  The actions of one person trigger the actions of another and another, like waves.

  I know the wave will come to me again and sweep me away. I can see it in my mind: a tide of blood.

  I see it in my dreams.

  I taste it in my mouth.

  I see the one it will take next.

  The tide has already touched her."

  15

  The call came at 12:31. Annie had double-checked the locks on her doors and gone to bed, but she wasn't sleeping. She picked up on the third ring because a call in the dead of night could have been something worse than a reporter. Sos and Fanchon could have been in an accident. One of their many relatives might have fallen ill. She answered with a simple hello. No one answered back.

  "Ahhh ... a breather, huh?" she said, leaning back against her pillows, instantly picturing Mullen on the other end of the line. "You know, I'm surprised you guys didn't start in with calls two nights ago. We're talking simple, no-brain harassment. Right up your alley. I have to say, I was actually expecting the 'you fucking bitch' variety. Big bad faceless man on the other end of the line. Oooh, how scary."

  She waited for an epithet, a curse. Nothing. She pictured the dumbfounded look on Mullen's face, and smiled.

  "I'm docking you points for lack of imagination. But I suppose I'm not the first woman to tell you that."

  Nothing.

  "Well, this is boring and I have to work tomorrow—but then, you already knew that, didn't you?"

  Annie rolled her eyes as she hung up. A breather. Like that was supposed to scare her after what she'd been through tonight. She switched off the lamp, wishing she could turn off her brain as easily.

  The pros and cons of Fourcade's offer were still bouncing in her head at five A.M. Exhaustion had pulled her under into sleep intermittently during the night, but there had been no rest in it, only dreams full of anxiety. She finally gave up and dragged herself out of bed, feeling worse than she had when she'd crawled between the sheets at midnight. She splashed cold water on her face, rinsed her mouth out, and pulled on her workout clothes.

  Her brain refused to shut down as she went through her routine of stretching and warm-up. Maybe Fourcade's offer was all part of a revenge plot. If his compadres in the department hated her enough to get back at her, why wouldn't he?

  "If you didn't se
ll me out, then you acted on your principles and damned the consequences. I can't hate you for that. For that, I would respect you."

  Damned if she didn't believe he meant it. Did that make her an astute judge of character or a fool?

  She hooked her feet into the straps on the incline board and started her sit-ups. Fifty every morning. She hated every one.

  Fourcade's ravings about Duval Marcotte, the New Orleans business magnate, should have been enough to put her off for good. She had never heard any scandal attached to Marcotte—which should have made her suspicious. Nearly everyone in power in New Orleans had his good name smeared on a regular basis. Nasty politics was a major league sport in the Big Easy. How was it Marcotte stayed so clean?

  Because he was as pure as Pat Boone ... or as dark as the devil?

  What difference did it make? What did she care about Duval Marcotte? He couldn't possibly have anything to do with the Bichon case ... except there was that real estate connection.

  Annie moved from the incline board to the chin-up bar. Twenty-five every morning. She hated them nearly as much as the sit-ups.

  What if she went to Fourcade? He was on suspension, charged with multiple counts of assault. What kind of trouble could she get in with the sheriff or with Pritchett? She was a witness for the prosecution, for God's sake. Fourcade shouldn't have come within a mile of her and vice versa.

  Maybe that was why he had made the offer. Maybe he thought he could win some points, get her to soften toward him. If he was helping her with the Bichon case, letting her investigate, maybe she wouldn't remember so clearly the events of that night outside Bowen & Briggs.

  But Fourcade didn't seem the kind of man for subterfuge. He was blunt, tactless, straightforward. He was more complicated than French grammar, full of rules with irregularities and exceptions.

  Annie let herself out of the apartment, jogged down the stairs and across the parking lot. A dirt path led up onto the levee and the restricted-use gravel levee road. She ran two miles every morning and despised every step. Her body wasn't built for speed, but if she listened to what her body wanted, she'd have a butt like a quarter horse. The workout was the price she paid for her candy bar habit. More than that, she knew that being in shape might one day save her life.

  So what was the story with Stokes? Could someone have bought him or was Fourcade simply paranoid? If he was paranoid, that didn't mean someone wasn't out to get him. But a setup still didn't make sense to Annie. Stokes had taken Fourcade to Laveau's, true, but Stokes had left. How could he be certain Fourcade would find his way to Bowen & Briggs to confront Renard?

  The phone call.

  Fourcade had taken a call, then split. But if Stokes had meant to set up Fourcade, wouldn't he have had a witness lined up? Did she know he hadn't? Stokes himself could have been watching the whole thing play out with some civilian flunky by his side waiting to step into the role of witness for the prosecution. What sweet irony for him that Annie had stumbled into the scene. She and Fourcade could cancel each other out.

  She dragged herself back up to her apartment, showered, and dressed in a fresh uniform, then dashed down to the store with a Milky Way in hand.

  "Dat's no breakfast, you!" Tante Fanchon scolded. She straightened her slender frame from the task of wiping off the red checkered oilcloths that covered the tables in the cafe portion of the big room. "You come sit down. I make you some sausage and eggs, oui?"

  "No time. Sorry, Tante." Annie filled her giant travel mug with coffee from the pot on the cafe counter. "I'm on duty today."

  Fanchon waved her rag at her foster daughter. "Bah! You all the time workin' so much. What kinda job for a purty young thing is dat?"

  "I meet lots of eligible men," Annie said with a grin. "Of course, I have to throw most of them in jail."

  Fanchon shook her head and fought a smile. "T'es trop grand pour tes culottes!"

  "I'm not too big for my pants," Annie retorted, backing toward the door. "That's why I run every morning."

  "Running." Fanchon snorted, as if the word gave her a bad taste.

  Annie turned the Jeep out of the lot onto the bayou road. She had the juggling act down—coffee mug clamped between her thighs, candy bar and steering wheel in her left hand while she shifted and turned on the radio with her right.

  "You're on KJUN. All talk all the time. Home of the giant jackpot giveaway. Every caller's name is registered— including yours, Mary Margaret in Cade. What's on your mind?"

  "I think gambling is a sin and your jackpot is gambling."

  "How's that, ma'am? There's no fee."

  "Yes, there is. There's the price of the long-distance call if a person don't live in Bayou Breaux. How can y'all sleep nights knowing people take the food out the mouths of their children so they can make those calls to sign up for your jackpot?"

  Traffic picked up with every side-road intersection. People headed into Bayou Breaux to work or do their Saturday errands, or continued on up to Lafayette for a day in the city. Sports headed to the basin for a day of fishing. A big old boat of a Cadillac pulled out onto the blacktop ahead of her. Annie hit the clutch and the brake and reached for the shift, glancing down just enough for something odd to catch her eye. Her duffel bag, on the floor in front of the passenger seat, was moving, the near end rising up slightly.

  She turned her head to look, and her heart vaulted into her throat. Slithering out from under the duffel, its body already edging past the gearshift toward her, was a mottled brown snake as thick as a garden hose. Copperhead.

  "Jesus!"

  She bolted sideways in her seat, jerking the wheel left. The Jeep swerved into the southbound lane, eliciting angry honks from oncoming traffic. Annie looked up and swore again as a ton truck bore down on her, horn blaring. A white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, she hit the gas and gunned for the ditch.

  The Jeep was airborne for what seemed like an eternity. Then the world was a jarred blur in every window. The impact bounced her off the seat and bounced the snake off the floor. Its thick, muscular body hit her across her thighs and fell back down.

  Annie was barely aware of killing the engine. Her only thought was escape. She threw her shoulder against the door, tumbled out of the Jeep, and slammed the door shut behind her. Her heart was thumping like a trip-hammer. Her breath came in ragged, irregular jerks. She hugged the front fender to steady herself.

  "Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod."

  Up on the road, several cars had pulled to the shoulder. One driver had climbed out of his pickup.

  "Please stay with your vehicles, folks! Move it along! I'll handle this."

  Annie raised her head and peered through the strands of hair that had fallen in her face. A deputy was coming toward her, his cruiser parked on the shoulder with the lights rolling.

  "Miss?" he called. "Are you all right, Miss? Should I call an ambulance?"

  Annie straightened up so he could see her uniform. She recognized him instantly, even if he couldn't manage the same with her. York the Dork. He walked as if he had a permanent wedgie. A Hitler mustache perched above his prim little mouth. It twitched now as realization dawned.

  "Deputy Broussard?"

  "There's a copperhead in my Jeep. Somebody put a copperhead in my Jeep."

  While she probably wouldn't have died from a bite, the possibility was there. She certainly could have been killed in the accident, and she may not have been the only casualty. She wondered if her harasser had considered that when he'd been planting his little reptile friend, then wondered which answer would have upset her more.

  "A copperhead!" the Dork chirped with a sniff. He peered into the Jeep. "I don't see anything."

  "Why don't you climb in and crawl around on the floor? When it bites your ass we'll know it's real."

  "It was probably just a belt or something."

  "I know the difference between a snake and a belt."

  "Sure you weren't just looking in the mirror, putting your lipstick on, and lost control of th
e vehicle? You might as well tell the truth. It wouldn't be the first time I heard that story," he said with a chortle. "You gals and your makeup..."

  Annie grabbed him by the shirtsleeve and hauled him around to face her. "Am I wearing lipstick? Do you see any lipstick on this mouth, you patronizing jerk? There's a snake in that Jeep and if you 'little lady' me again, I'll wrap it around your throat and choke you with it!"

  "Hey, Broussard! You're assaulting an officer!"

  The shout came from the road. Mullen. He had parked on the shoulder—a piece-of-crap Chevy truck with a bass boat dragging behind. Encased in tight jeans, his legs were skinny as an egret's. He compensated with a puffed-up green satin baseball jacket.

  "She claims there's a copperhead in there," York said, hooking a thumb at the Jeep.

  "Yeah, like he doesn't already know that," Annie snapped.

  Mullen made a face at her. "There you go again. Hysterical. Paranoid. Maybe you need to get your hormones adjusted, Broussard."

  "Fuck you."

  "Oooh, verbal abuse, assaulting an officer, reckless driving..." He swaggered around to the passenger side to look in the window. "Maybe she's drunk, York. You better put her through the paces."

  "The hell you will." Annie rounded the hood. "Keying me out on the radio was bad enough, and I can take the crap at the station, but somebody other than me could have gotten killed with this stunt. If I can find one scrap of evidence linking you to this—"

  "Don't threaten me, Broussard."

  "It's not a threat, it's a promise."

  He sniffed the air. "I think I smell whiskey. You better run her in, York. The stress must be getting to you, Broussard. Drinking in the morning on your way to work. That's a shame."

  York looked apprehensive. "I didn't smell anything."

  "Well, Christ," Mullen snapped. "She's seeing snakes and driving off the damn road. Tag the vehicle and take her in!"

  Annie planted her hands on her hips. "I'm not going anywhere until you get that snake out of my Jeep."

  "Resisting," Mullen added to her list of sins.