Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

"How many… will youuu kill?" she mumbled. "Hoow long before Marcus… knows? He'll hate you."

"He's my son. My sons love me. My sons need me. No one will ever take them from me." The vehemence in Doll's tone sounded practiced, as if she'd chanted those words over and over and over for years and years and years.

"Who tried to take them?" Annie asked. Her legs felt like rubber. Her body wanted to sink to the floor and succumb.

She stepped through a doorway and found herself in the dining room. The beam of the lantern swept across the floor as Doll set it down, illuminating the hasty retreat of a long black indigo snake across the dirty old cypress planks. For an instant she saw Pam lying there, arms outstretched, her body savaged. The head lifted and the decaying face turned toward her, mouth moving.

"You are me. Help me. Help me. Help me!" The words turned to a shriek that pierced through Annie's brain from ear to ear.

Help me, she thought, knowing no one would, knowing help was too much to hope for. Time was running out.

She bent over at the waist, leaning her right shoulder against the wall, trying to marshal what strength she had left. Doll stood two feet in front of her. The doorway to the hall was immediately to the right of Doll, with the stairs to the second floor right there, leading up into darkness. She needed a plan. She needed a weapon.

Doll has the Sig. Doll has the Sig.

Her baton was gone. Her fingers tightened on the slim canister in her palm. She tried to breathe, tried to think, stared at her black cop shoes.

Stupid simple.

"Claude would have," Doll said. "He betrayed us. He would have taken my boys away from me, I couldn't let that happen."

"Your… husband?"

"He forced me to it. He betrayed us. He got what he deserved. I told him so," she said. "Right before. I killed him."

Doll came forward a step. "It's time for you to lie down, Deputy."

"Why the… mask on Pam?" Annie asked, ignoring the dictate. "It led strraight… to youuu."

"I don't know anything about that mask," she said impatiently, gesturing with the gun for Annie to move. "Over there, Deputy. Where that other cunt died."

"I don't think I… can move," Annie said, watching Doll's feet as the sensible matron shoes came another step closer.

"I told you to move," she said with authority. "Move!"

Annie took the command as her signal, calling on the last of her reserves. With her left hand, she batted the Sig to one side. The gun barked, spitting a shot into the ceiling. At the same time, Annie brought up her right hand with the can of Mace and sprayed.

Doll screamed as the pepper spray caught her in the right eye. She stumbled back, clawing at her face with her free hand, swinging the gun back into position with the other. The Sig cracked off another round, the bullet hitting Annie low in the chest, knocking her into the wall. The impact of the slug against her ballistic vest knocked the breath from her lungs, but there was no time to recover. She had to move. Now.

Doubled over, she rushed for the stairs and threw herself up into the darkness as the gun fired again. Arms and legs flailing clumsily, she scrambled for the second floor, slipping, falling, hitting her knee, cracking her elbow. The drug had destroyed her sense of equilibrium. She couldn't tell up from down from flat. When she hit the landing on the second floor, she sprawled on her face. The sound of her chin hitting the wood was almost as sharp as the sound of the shot Doll fired at her from below-but not nearly as sharp as the searing pain of the bullet tearing through the front of her left thigh and exiting through the back.

Scuttling on her belly like a gator, Annie propelled herself through the nearest doorway. Coughing at the dust she'd raised, fighting the sobs of pain, she tipped herself upright with her back against the wall behind the door. She felt for the entrance and exit wounds, her hand coming away wet with blood, but there was no arterial bleeding-a small favor. It would take her longer to die. The dizziness wobbled her like a top. The blackness added to the sense of vertigo. The only light in the room came through a single window, faint and gray.

Time was running out. She tore at the cuff of her uniform trousers. Her fingers felt as huge and unwieldy as sausages. She thought she could hear Doll coming up the steps, the sound of footfalls alternating with the pounding of her puke in her ears.

She pushed herself to her feet with her back against the wall for balance and waited. Her left leg was deadweight, unable to support her at all. The rush of adrenaline and the drag of narcotics fought a tug-of-war within her. Her chest felt as if someone had hit her with a forty-pound hammer. She wondered if the force of the first bullet had cracked a rib and knew it wouldn't matter if she were dead.

The Sig reported a fraction of a second before the shot splintered through the door, six inches in front of Annie's face. Biting back the cry of surprise, she flattened herself against the wall and held her breath. Her hands were sweating, her grip unsure. She said a quick prayer and promised to go to confession more often. The inevitable bargain with God. But if God hadn't listened to Pam Bichon's cries while Doll Renard had tortured and killed her, then why would He listen now?

Somewhere across the hall she could hear the scratching of rats or coons or some other animal squatters. The Sig cracked off another round in that direction, away from the room where Annie stood. She held her position, hidden by the partially opened door, the window across the room giving her enough light to make out shapes, at least.

She would have one solid chance. She could hold herself together long enough for one chance. And if she didn't make good on it, she'd be dead.

Nick put his foot to the floor and ran the truck wide open down the straight sections of road. Woods and swamp flashed past in a blur. He was outrunning the reach of his headlights but not of his imagination.

Annie wasn't in her unit. Her Jeep sat in the parking lot behind the station. Her stuff was in her locker. She'd called in sick, Hooker had said. What the hell did that mean? Had Renard grabbed her and forced her to call in with a gun to her head? Had she wanted to get free of duty to check something out? Nick had no way of knowing. He knew only that he had a fist of apprehension in his gut and another one had him by the throat.

He hit the brakes and skidded past Renard's driveway, slammed the transmission into reverse and roared backward. Without a thought to the restraining order against him, he turned in the Renard drive and gunned it.

Lights glowed on the first floor toward the back of the house. Only one upstairs window was lit. Renard's Volvo sat at a cockeyed angle near the front veranda, the dome light on. It struck Nick as odd. Renard was as anal retentive as they came. To leave anything crooked or ajar was out of character.

He killed the truck's lights and engine, and climbed out. He had thought finding Renard at home would lessen his fears for Annie. Surely Renard would never bring her here. But the night air hung thick and heavy with tension around the old house. The quiet was the unnatural quiet of a world holding its breath.

And then came the shots.

The footsteps came nearer. Annie gulped a breath and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist. Dizzy. Sick. Weaker and weaker. Her vision was blurring. Time was running out.

"You'll die tonight one way or another." Doll's voice sounded in the hall.

She was crying, cursing. The Mace had to be burning like a hot poker in her eye.

"You'll die, you'll die," she promised over and over.

The footsteps shuffled nearer.

Annie could feel her on the other side of the door. And before her Pam suddenly appeared, her rotting corpse standing upright, glowing like a holy vision. Her mouth fell open and a single word spilled out on a tide of blood- justice.