by Tami Hoag
"We're doing everything we can," Stokes said. "We'll want her body transported to Lafayette for an autopsy. Standard procedure. The sheriff's office will be in touch with your morgue."
Unser nodded, then excused himself and went back to his normal duties for the day, the death of a woman in his care just a glitch in the schedule. "These things happen."
Annie ducked into the ladies' room as Stokes started down the hall. She washed her hands and splashed cold water on her face, trying to clear away the images of Lindsay Faulkner seizing. How could it be a coincidence that the woman had gone into arrest not ten minutes after Stokes had been in the room with her? But there would be an autopsy. Stokes knew it. He was the one who had brought it up.
Unser was just coming out of another patient's room with a chart in his hand as Annie stepped back into the hall.
"Are you all right, Deputy?" he asked. "You look a little pale."
"I'll be fine. It was just a shock, that's all. That didn't look like a very pleasant way to die."
"She fought it, but it was over before we could really do anything for her."
"Is that the way it usually happens?"
"It's always a possibility with a head trauma."
"I guess what I'm asking is: was there anything unusual about her death? Any strange readings, abnormal levels of ... whatever?"
Unser shook his head. "Not that I'm aware of. The blood test never came back. You can check with the lab." He stepped up to the counter and handed the chart to the monitor technician, "If they haven't lost it entirely, they might be able to answer your questions."
Annie made her way to the lab and left the number for records with a woman who seemed as if she had just dropped in and offered to mind the place while everyone else went for coffee. Did she know if the Faulkner test results were in? No. Did she know when they might be? No. Did she know the name of the President of the United States? Probably not.
"Never get sick here," Annie muttered as she walked away.
Outside the heat was already edging toward oppressive, an unwelcome joke from Mother Nature. Summer was long enough without adding an early preview. Sweat beaded immediately between her breasts and shoulder blades. The sun burned into her scalp.
"You gonna arrest me now?"
Stokes stood beside his Camaro in the red zone, smoking a cigarette. He had shed his jacket, leaving his lime green shirt free to blind anyone looking directly at it.
"I'm sorry," Annie said without sincerity. "I overreacted."
"You accused me of being a goddamn killer." He flung the cigarette butt down on the asphalt beside a crumpled Snickers wrapper and crushed it out with the toe of his brown and white spectators. "Personally, I take umbrage at that. You know what I'm saying?"
"I said I was sorry."
"Yeah, well, that don't cut it by half. I've had it with you, Broussard."
"And what are you gonna do about it?" she asked quietly. "Shoot me?"
"I hear I'd have to get in line. I've got better things to do."
"Like screw around with the evidence on those rape cases?"
"Don't fuck with me, Broussard. I'll have your badge. I mean it."
He slid behind the wheel of the Camaro and started the engine with a roar. Annie stood on the sidewalk and watched him drive away. He had just lost a victim and his primary concern was getting her fired. A charming, caring individual, that Chaz.
The groundskeeper emerged from behind the statue of Mary and made a beeline for Annie with his hedge clippers. "Police girl! Hey! I pays my taxes! I'm a vet'ran! You go, you arrest dat ol' witchy woman! Stealin' dem flowers out the Vet'rans Park!"
"I'm sorry, sir," Annie said, her eyes on Stokes's car as it turned the corner onto Dumas. "Has she murdered anyone?"
"What?!" he squealed. "No, she ain't killed nobody, but—"
"Then I can't help you."
She walked away from him toward the Jeep, her mind on Stokes, while Donnie Bichon's pearl white Lexus turned out of the parking lot behind her and drove away down the backstreet.
Donnie was shaking like a man with DTs, though it hadn't been all that long since his last drink. He'd been allowing himself a shot every hour since Fourcade had left him, in an attempt to steady his nerves. All it seemed to be doing was acting as an accelerant for the stress eating a hole in the lining of his stomach. The flecks of blood in his vomit had confirmed that suspicion.
After Fourcade's first visit, he had passed out in the bathroom and dreamed of Pam. Dark hair and shining eyes. A sunny smile. A tongue like a pit viper. Hands tipped with claws that dug into him, closed around his balls, and choked his masculinity. He loved her and he hated her. She had grown up and he never wanted to. Life had seemed best when he was twenty, when he had the world by the tail and no responsibilities. Now the world had him by the tail.
Then suddenly Fourcade had him by the scruff of the neck, and Donnie found himself going down face-first into a swirling pool of vomit. Startled, he tried to grab a breath half a second too late, filled his mouth, and came up choking and retching.
"Yeah, you choke on it," Fourcade growled. He bent his body over Donnie's, all but riding him into the porcelain. "That's what your lies taste like the second time around."
Donnie spat into the toilet bowl. The smell of fresh urine was strong as his bladder let go. "Jesus! God!" he gasped and spat again, trying to clear the cold chunks of vomit from his mouth.
"Where were you tonight?" Fourcade demanded.
"You're crazy!"
Nick shoved his head back in the bowl. "Wrong answer, Tulane! Where were you tonight? Where'd you get that mud on your boots?"
"I told you!"
"Don't fuck with me, Donnie. I'm in no mood. Where were you?"
"I told you!" Donnie cried. Tears streamed down his face through the puke on his cheeks. "I don't know what you want from me!"
"You're gonna give me the keys to your car, Tulane. And I'm gonna look through every inch of it. And if I find a rifle, I'm gonna bring it back in here, stick it up your ass, and blow your brains out. Are we clear on this?"
Donnie dug his keys out of his jeans pocket and tossed them on the floor. "I didn't do anything!"
"You better pray to God that's the truth, Donnie," Fourcade said as he bent to scrape up the keys. " 'Cause I don't think you'd know the truth if it bit your dick off."
Terrified and sick, disgusted with himself, Donnie forced himself to his feet and followed Fourcade out to the garage, grabbing a kitchen towel as an afterthought to wipe the mess from his face. He watched from the doorway as Fourcade popped the trunk on the Lexus and dug through the junk—a bag of golf clubs, a nail gun, a filthy Igloo cooler, gloves, crumpled receipts, a toolbox, half a dozen, baseball caps with the Bichon Bayou Development logo.
"You know, you're just as rotten as everybody says, Fourcade," he declared. "You don't have a warrant. You got no call to treat me like this. You're not a cop; you're a goddamn jackbooted thug. I shoulda let you rot in jail."
"You gonna wish you had, Tulane, if I find anything in this car to hook you up with taking a shot at Annie Broussard last night."
"I don't know what you're talking about. And why should you care about Broussard?"
"I got my reasons." He closed the trunk and moved to the passenger's side doors. "You know, you're right for once, Donnie. I'm not a cop, I'm on suspension. That makes me a private citizen, which means I don't need a warrant to seize incriminating evidence. Ain't that a kick in the head?"
"You're trespassing," Donnie declared as Fourcade pulled open a back door.
"Me? Trespassing in the home of my good friend who bailed me outta jail? Who would believe that?"
"Is there any law you won't break?"
He shut the door and strolled back toward Donnie, shining the light in Donnie's face. "Well, I'll tell you, Tulane, me, I believe life is a journey of self-exploration, and lately I'm discovering that I have a greater concern for justice than I have for the law. Can you appreciate the difference?"
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He climbed the two steps to the kitchen door and snatched hold of Donnie's shirtfront before he could backpedal. "The law would dictate that I would have somebody else run you in tonight and interview you with regards to this shooting incident—"
"I didn't shoot anybody—"
"While justice would bypass the formalities and cut to the heart of the matter."
"It's not for you to be judge and jury."
"You left out executioner." He arched a brow. "Was that purposeful or Freudian? Not that it matters. I find it amusing that you bring the point up now, Donnie. You seemed to think it would have been just fine if I'd dispatched Renard to hell the other night. Now it's you standing on that line, and you'd just as soon I keep to the proper side of it. I'd call you a hypocrite, but I have my own problems with the black and white of it all."
He uncurled his fist from Donnie's shirt and took half a step back. "I'm gonna let you off with a warning, Tulane. I didn't find what I thought I might, but if I so much as hear a whisper or come across a hair that might connect you to this, I'll find you, Donnie, and I won't be in a philosophical mood."
The crazy son of a bitch.
Donnie had gone straight back into the bathroom after Fourcade left and puked again, then sat on the edge of the tub and stared at the streaks of blood in the bowl. Scotch, nerves, and imminent financial disaster were not a good mix.
He decided what he needed was a little something of the pharmaceutical variety to settle him down so he could think his way out of this mess. Old Dr. Hollier had obliged, sympathetic to the tragedy in his life. He didn't know the half of it, Donnie thought.
Lindsay Faulkner was dead and Fourcade knew about Marcotte.
With the bitch queen of Bayou Breaux gone, the way was clear to make a deal for the realty—except for one obstacle: Fourcade.
How could Fourcade have possibly known about that phone call? Paranoia had driven Donnie to an assortment of wild conclusions involving phone taps, all of which he had subsequently dismissed in a more sober moment. Fourcade knew only about a single call, last night's call, nothing else, and he was in no position to be in on any phone tap. He was suspended, awaiting trial. Assault charges. He'd nearly beaten Renard to death.
That particular reminder had Donnie reaching for the open bottle of Mylanta he'd wedged into his cup holder. Never should have paid that bail. He had started hoping Fourcade would be bound over for trial next week, and would be thrown back in jail, but Donnie's lawyer had informed him the detective's bail would likely be continued and he would be a free man indefinitely, trial pending or no.
Pam had always told him he acted first and considered consequences too late. He wondered if she had ever realized just how right she'd been.
39
"You are late again."
Myron stood at rigid attention in the middle of the room, his hands knotted together at the buckle of his skinny black belt, his expression sour with disapproval.
"I'm sorry, Myron," Annie said, barely sparing him a glance as she entered his domain and went to the card drawer.
"Mr. Myron," he intoned. "I'll have you know, I've spoken with the sheriff about your poor performance since you were assigned to me as my assistant. You are chronically tardy and run off at your own whim. This is a records department. Records are synonymous with stability. I cannot allow chaos in my records department."
"I'm sorry," she mumbled as she flicked through the evidence cards.
Myron's face pinched tight as he leaned over her shoulder. "What are you doing, Deputy Broussard? Are you listening to me?"
Annie kept her eyes on her task. "I'm a goof-off. You're pissed off. You want Gus to take me off this job, but I'll try to do better. Honest."
She pulled the evidence card from the Nolan rape and ran a fingertip down the inventory. There, listed on the third line: HAIRS. The pubic hair Stokes had fished out of Jennifer Nolan's bathtub drain.
She tapped one foot impatiently. Myron moved into her field of vision again, looking a little uncertain at her lack of response to his tirade.
"What you looking at?" he asked. "What you think you're doing?"
"My job," she said simply, sliding the evidence card back in place.
Hairs had been logged in and checked back out to the lab. That didn't mean the hairs belonged to the rapist. Jennifer Nolan was a redhead. Her pubic hair would have stood out from any darker hair in the drain. Stokes could have picked out what he wanted and left the rest—left his own— to wash away.
Annie's stomach churned. She was on the verge of accusing a detective of being a serial rapist. If she was right, Chaz Stokes was not only a rapist but a murderer—either indirectly or directly. If she was wrong, he'd have her badge. She needed evidence, and he was in charge of every piece of it.
"Whatsa matter with you, Broussard?" Myron squawked. "You sick or something? You been drinking?"
"Yeah, you know, I'm not feeling very well," Annie mumbled, pushing the drawer shut. "I might be sick. Excuse me."
"I don't truck with drinkers," Myron warned as she walked away. "There ain't no place for that kind of thing in records. Alcohol is a tool of the devil."
Annie wound her way through the halls to her locker room, went in, and sat down on her folding chair beneath the dull glow of the bare lightbulb. Someone had drilled a new hole in the wall—breast height. She would need to break out the spackling compound, but what she needed now was a few moments to untangle the threads in her mind.
"Keep the threads separate or you end up with a knot, 'Toinette."
She had a knot all right, and she was trapped in the middle of it. Renard was sending her gifts. Donnie Bichon was in cahoots with Marcotte, who was in cahoots with the mob. Stokes was a bad cop at best and a killer at worst.
"You asked for it," she muttered. "You wanted to be a detective. You had to solve the mystery."
One mystery at a time. Stokes seemed the most pressing problem. If her suspicions about him were right, then other women would be in danger.
"I'll be in danger," she said, a flashback of last night coming to her in jarring black and white: the ink black of the night, the pale crushed shell of the parking lot, the white papers scattering at her feet as she dropped the files. The sharp crack of the rifle, the shattering of glass.
The memory bled back into another and another. The anger in Stokes's eyes as they had argued about the missing evidence. The fury on his face that night months ago when he had fought with her in the parking lot of the Voodoo Lounge because she wasn't interested in going out with him. The aggressive way he had moved toward her, as if he meant to strike her or grab her.
He was a man capable of instant, intense rage, which he covered with loose, easy charm. He was by turns irrational and coldly logical, depending on the subject. Unpredictable. A chameleon. These were traits that had formed over the course of his life, traits he had brought with him when he had come here from Mississippi four years ago. Coincidentally, not long before the Bayou Strangler had begun his reign of terror. He may have even worked one or both of the Partout Parish murders connected to the Strangler: Annie Delahoussaye and Savannah Chandler.
That could be easily checked out, though Annie didn't see the need. Despite the gossip that had run wild since Pam's death, she didn't believe the allegations that the cops had tampered with the evidence in the Strangler case. No, that evil had been burned out of Partout Parish ... and a new one was taking root in the ashes.
What had brought Stokes here in the first place? she wondered. More important, what had he left behind? A good service record? Had his last supervisor been sad to lose him or glad to see the last of him? Had the city or county he worked in experienced a sudden drop in sex crimes after Stokes had gone? Had he left any victims in his wake?
It was rare for a man to become a sexual predator in his thirties. That kind of behavior generally started earlier—late teens or early twenties—and continued on throughout his life. Despite the claims of various tax-sponsored pr
ograms, true sexual predators were seldom if ever rehabilitated. Their heads were wired wrong, their malevolent attitudes toward women carved forever in stone hearts.
She needed to get into Stokes's personnel file, get the name of the last force he had served on in Mississippi. Personnel files were kept in the sheriff's offices under the ever-vitriolic, blue-shadowed glare of Valerie Comb.
A fist struck the door to the locker room with the force of a hurled rock, making Annie jump.
"Broussard? You in there?"
"Who wants to know?"
"Perez." He pulled the door open and stuck his head in. "Shit, I figured the least I could get out of this was to see you naked."
"Get out of what?" she said peevishly.
"The case. Your shooter. I'm your detective. Lucky fucking me. Come on. I need your statement and I ain't got all day."
Perez was as interested in her case as he was in the politics of Uruguay. He doodled on a yellow legal pad as Annie related not only the shooting incident but her run-in with the Cadillac Man the night before, since there was the possibility the two incidents were related.
"Did you get a tag number?"
"No."
"Did you see the driver?"
"He was wearing a ski mask."
"Know anybody with a big car like that?"
"No."
"Why didn't you call it in that night?"
"Would you have done anything?"
He gave her a flat look.
"I wrote it up the next day," she said. "Called around to the body shops looking for the car. Nothing. Checked the log sheets for reports of a stolen Caddy, or something like a Caddy. Nothing."
"And you didn't see the shooter last night?"
"No."
"Didn't see his vehicle?"
"No."
"Any ideas who it might have been?"
Annie looked at him for a long moment, knowing she couldn't name any of her prime suspects without revealing the mess she'd embroiled herself in, and certainly not without pissing Perez off by casting aspersions on two cops.
"I'm not very popular at the moment."
