Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

"You make me want to puke, lawyer," Gus snarled. "You get a murderer off and go after the cops. Somebody oughta turn you ass-end up and knock some decency into you."

Kudrow shook his head, smile in place. "You even preach brutality. How the press will prick up their ears when they hear about this."

"His guts aren't the only thing that's cancerous in him," Gus grumbled as Kudrow followed the others down the hall. "That man's soul is black with rot.

"He pulled Pritchett's tail," he said, seeming to talk to himself. "That's my fault. I should have called Pritchett myself last night. Now he's got it into his head this is some kind of pissing contest. That man has an ego bigger than my granddaddy's dick.

"And Johnny Earl… I don't know who put the bug up his ass. The man is contrary. Doesn't understand the rhythms of life around here. That's what happens when the city council hires outsiders. They bring in Johnny Fucking Earl from Cleveland or some goddamn place where don't nobody know jack about life in this place. The man has an attitude. He thinks I'm some lazy, crooked, racist cracker out of a goddamn movie. Like I don't have blacks working in my department. Like I'm not friends with blacks. Like I didn't win thirty-three percent of the black vote in the last election."

He turned his attention squarely on Annie with a ferocious scowl as he backed her toward Pritchett's empty office. "I told you not to talk to Kudrow."

"I didn't talk to him."

"Then what's this bullshit he's spewing about an arrest report?" he whispered. "And how come your sergeant told me he saw the two of you in the goddamn parking lot not twenty feet from the building?"

"I didn't tell him anything."

"And that's exactly what you're gonna say at this press conference, Deputy. Nothing."

Annie swallowed hard. "Press conference?"

"Come on," he ordered as he strode down the hall.

Pritchett opened the show with a statement about Marcus Renard's alleged attack. He announced Detective Nick Fourcade had been taken into custody by the Bayou Breaux PD. He promised to get to the bottom of the allegations and expressed outrage at the idea of anyone attempting to circumvent the justice system.

Kudrow, looking wan and tragic, quietly reminded everyone of Fourcade's checkered past, and asked that justice be served. "I will state again my client's innocence. He has been proven guilty of nothing. In fact, while he lay in the hospital last night, put there by Detective Fourcade, the real criminal was at large and may well have committed a brutal rape."

And then began the feeding frenzy.

The questions and comments of the reporters were pointed and barbed. They had been chasing the story of Renard in one form or another for better than three months with no solid conclusion as to his innocence or guilt. While they couldn't find sympathy for the officers who had endured the same frustration, they didn't hesitate to vent their own. They went after everybody, sided with no one, and homed in on the chance for fresh blood.

"Sheriff, is that true-that another woman was attacked last night?"

"No comment."

"Deputy Broussard, is it true you formally arrested Detective Fourcade last night?"

Annie squinted into the blinding light of a portable sun gun as Gus nudged her forward. "Ah-I can't comment."

"But you are the officer who called in the ambulance. You did return to the sheriff's department with Detective Fourcade."

"No comment."

"Sheriff, if Renard was in the hospital while this other woman was being attacked, doesn't that prove his innocence?"

"No."

"Then you're confirming the attack occurred?"

"Deputy Broussard, can you confirm taking a statement from Mr. Renard at the hospital last night? And if so, why was Detective Fourcade not in custody this morning?"

"Ah-I-"

Gus leaned in front of her at the microphone. "Detective Fourcade was responding to a report of a prowler in the area. Deputy Broussard was off duty and did not hear the call. She came across a situation she found questionable, contained it, and accompanied Detective Fourcade back to the sheriff's department. It's as simple as that.

"I immediately suspended Detective Fourcade with pay, pending further investigation. And that's where this case stands as far as I'm concerned. My department has nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. If the district attorney wants to have the police investigate the matter, I welcome the scrutiny. I stand behind my people one hundred percent, and that's all I have to say on the matter."

Pritchett stepped back up to the microphone, determined to have the last word, while Gus herded Annie away from the podium toward the door. Annie kept at Noblier's heels like a faithful dog and wondered if that made her some kind of hypocrite. She expected the sheriff to protect her but not Fourcade. I didn't try to kill anyone. All I did was lie and file a false report.

Disgusted with herself, with her boss, with the vultures trying to pick at her on the fly as she made her escape from the courthouse and went to her cruiser, she kept her mouth shut and her eyes forward. The mob split into factions then, some of them running back up the courthouse steps as Kudrow emerged, some trailing after Noblier as he drove away in his Suburban. Half a dozen tailed Annie to the law enforcement center and chased her across the parking lot to the officers' entrance to the building.

Hooker stood in the foyer, staring out at the show, arms crossed over his round belly. "Where's the follow-up report on that cemetery vandalism?"

"I turned it in two days ago."

"The hell you did."

"I did!"

"Well, I don't have it, Broussard," he stated. "Do it again. Today."

"Yes, sir," Annie said, biting down on the urge to call him a liar. Hooker was an asshole, but fair in that he usually treated everyone with equal disrespect.

"Like it's not bad enough to have to do paperwork once," she grumbled as she came up on the briefing room. "I get to do mine twice."

"Who you want to do twice, Broussard?" Mullen sneered. He and Prejean stood in the hall, drinking coffee. "Your little pervert friend, Renard? I hear when he nails a woman, she stays nailed-to the floor." He snickered, flashing his bad teeth.

"Very funny, Mullen," Annie said. "And in such good taste. Maybe you could get a job doing stand-up comedy down at the funeral home."

"I'm not the one gonna be looking for a job, Broussard," he returned. "We heard about you going over to the townies to suck Johnny Earl's dick."

"I hate to spoil your sordid daydreams, but I didn't go over there because I wanted to, and the chief wasn't exactly happy when I left."

Mullen smirked. "Can't even get a blow job right?"

"You'll sure as hell never find out."

Annie looked to Prejean, who was usually quick with a smile and a smart remark when she bested Mullen. He looked at her now as if he didn't know her. The snub hurt.

"That's okay, Prejean," she said. "It's not like I ever covered for you when your wife was working nights and you wanted a little extra time at lunch to, shall we say, satisfy your appetite."

Prejean looked at his shoes. Annie shook her head and walked away. She needed ten minutes alone, just to sit down and regroup. Ten minutes to marshal her disappointment and corral the fear that was beginning to skitter around inside her. She had fallen into a deep hole and no one was reaching in to help her out. Instead, the men she had thought were her comrades stood around the rim, ready to kick dirt on her.

She headed for her locker room. But she knew before she even set foot inside that her sanctuary had been breached.

The smell hit her as she turned the doorknob-sickening, rotten. She flipped the light switch and barely managed to clamp her hand over her mouth before the scream could escape.