Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

"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.