Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

She walked back and forth from one end of Alphonse to the other, pondering the current situation, ignoring the occasional ringing of the phone. She let the machine pick up -reporters and cranks. No one she wanted to deal with. No one who could solve her need to find justice for Pam Bichon.

She might have been able to talk Fourcade into letting her help with the investigation if it hadn't been for the incident with Renard. Now Stokes had the case and she would never ask Stokes. She would have struck out with him even if she hadn't arrested Fourcade. Stokes had never been able to get over the fact that she didn't find him irresistible. Nor would he let it go. He had taken her simple, polite "No, thank you" first as a challenge, then as a personal insult. In the end, he had accused her of being a racist.

"It's because I'm black, isn't it?" he charged.

They were in the parking lot at the Voodoo Lounge. A hot summer night full of bugs and bats swooping to eat the bugs. Heat lightning sizzled across the southern sky out over the Gulf. The humidity made the air feel like velvet against the skin. They'd gone to the bar with others as a group, as they often did on Friday night. A bunch of cops looking to unwind a little. Stokes had too much to drink, mouthed off enough about her being frigid that Annie had walked out in disgust.

She gaped at his accusation.

"Go ahead. You might as well admit it. You don't want to be seen with the mulatto guy. You don't want to go to bed with a nigger. Say it!"

"You're an idiot!" she declared. "Why can you not accept the fact that I'm simply not attracted to you? And why am I not attracted to you? Let me count the reasons: It could be that you have the maturity of a high school junior. It could be that you have an ego the size of Arkansas. Maybe it's because you have no interest in a conversation that doesn't center on you. It's got nothing to do with what kind of people are climbing around in your family tree."

"Climbing? Like they're monkeys? You're calling my people monkeys?"

"No!"

He came toward her, his face hard with anger. Then a car drove in the lot and some people came out of the bar, and the tension of the moment snapped like a twig.

The scene was so vivid in Annie's memory that she could almost feel the heat of the night on her skin. She opened the French doors at the end of her living room and stepped out onto the little balcony, breathing in the cool damp air and the fecund smell of the swamp. There was just enough moonlight to silver the water and outline the eerie silhouettes of the cypress trees.

Funny, she'd never really thought about it, but she could relate in a small way to Pam Bichon's experience. She did know what it was like to deal with men who wouldn't take no for an answer. Stokes. A.J. Uncle Sos, for that matter. The difference between them and Renard was the difference between sanity and obsession.

"Men," she said aloud to the white cat that jumped up on the balcony railing to beg for attention. "Can't live with 'em, can't open pickle jars without 'em."

The cat offered no opinion.

In all fairness, it wasn't just men, Annie knew. Stalkers came in both sexes. New studies were showing that these people were unable to shut off that focus. The impulse, the fixation, was always there. Simple obsessionals, the shrinks called them. Often these men and women seemed perfectly rational and normal. They were doctors, lawyers, car mechanics. Their level of schooling or intelligence didn't matter. But regarding the object of their fixation, their brains weren't wired right. Some moved on to what was known as erotomania, a condition in which the person imagined and actually believed there was an ongoing romantic relationship with the object of the fixation.

A simple obsessional or an erotomaniac-she wondered which description applied to Marcus Renard. She wondered how he could hide either so well from everyone around him.

Somewhere out in the swamp a bull alligator gave a hoarse roar. Then the shriek of a nutria split the air like a woman's scream. The sound razored along Annie's nerves. She closed her eyes and saw Pam Bichon lying on that floor, moonlight pouring in the window, spilling across her naked corpse. And deep inside her mind, Annie thought she could hear Pam's screams… and the screams of Jennifer Nolan… and the women who had died four years ago at the hands of the Bayou Strangler. Screams of the dead.

"It's cold there, no?"

"Where?"

"In Shadowland."

Goosebumps racing over her flesh, Annie stepped back inside the apartment, closed the doors, and locked them.

"Nice place you got here, 'Toinette."

Heart in her throat, she wheeled around. Fourcade stood just inside the front entry, leaning back against the wall, ankles crossed, hands in the pockets of his old leather jacket.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Not much of a lock you got on this door." He shook his head in reproach as he straightened from the wall. "You'd think a cop would know better. Especially a lady cop, no?"

He moved toward her with deceptive laziness. Even halfway across the room Annie could sense the tension in him. She sidestepped slowly, putting the coffee table between them. Her gun was in her duffel bag, which she had abandoned in the entry. Careless.

Her best hope was to get out. And then what? The store had closed at nine. Sos and Fanchon's house was a hundred yards away and they were out dancing just like every other Friday night of the year. Maybe she could get to the Jeep.

"What do you want?" she asked, edging toward the door. Her keys hung on a peg above the light switch. "You want to beat me up, too? You haven't committed your daily quota of sins? You want to get rid of the witness? You should know enough to hire out that kind of job. You'll be the obvious suspect."

He had the nerve to appear amused. "You think I'm the devil now, don'tcha, Toinette?"

Annie broke for the door, grabbed for the keys with one hand, and knocked them to the floor. With the other hand, she grabbed the knob, twisted, pulled. The door didn't budge. Then Fourcade was on her, trapping her, hands planted against the door on either side of her head.

"Running out on me, 'Toinette?"

She could feel his breath on the back of her neck, laced with the scent of whiskey.

"That's not very hospitable, chère," he murmured.

She was trembling. And he was enjoying it, the son of a bitch. She willed herself to control the shaking, forced herself to turn and face him.

He stood as close as a lover. "We have so much to talk about. For instance, who sent you to Laveau's that night?"

Nick watched her face like a hawk. Her reaction was spontaneous-surprise or shock, a touch of confusion.

"What'd you think, 'Toinette? That I was too drunk to figure it out?"

"Figure what out? I don't know what you're talking about."

His mouth twisted in derision. "I'm in this department six months, you never say boo to me. All of a sudden you show up at Laveau's in a pretty skirt, batting your eyelashes. You want in on the Bichon case-"

"I did want in."

"Then there you are on that street. Just happen to be passing by-"

"I was-"

"The hell you were!" he roared, enjoying the way she flinched. He wanted her frightened of him. She had reason to be frightened of him. "You followed me!"

"I did not!"

"Who sent you?"

"No one!"

"You been talking to Kudrow. Did he set it up? I can't believe Renard would go for it. What if I came at him with a gun or a knife? He'd be stupid to take the chance just to ruin me. And he's not stupid."

"No one-"

"On the other hand, maybe that was Kudrow's justice, heh? He has to know Renard is guilty. So Kudrow gets him off to save his own rep. Works it so I kill Renard. Renard is dead and I'm caged up with the red hats in Angola, twenty-five to life."