Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

"You got some kind of brain disorder or something? Deputies are supposed to be out arresting crooks, not each other."

"No, sir."

"We never had this kind of trouble when it was just men around here. Throw a female into the mix and suddenly everybody's got some kind of hard-on."

Annie refrained from pointing out that she'd been on the job here two years and had never had any trouble to speak of until now. They stood inside Hooker's office, which a maintenance person had painted chartreuse while Hooker was gone having angioplasty in January. The perpetrator of that joke had yet to come forward. The door stood wide open, allowing anyone within earshot to listen to the diatribe. Annie held on to the hope that this would be the last of the humiliation. She could weather the storm. Hooker would eventually run out of insults or have a stroke, and then she could go out on patrol.

"I've had it, Broussard. I'm tellin' you right now." From somewhere down the hall came another raised voice. "What do you mean, you can't find it?" Annie recognized Smith Pritchett's nasal whine. Dispatch was down the hall. What would Pritchett want from them? What would Pritchett want badly enough to come in on a Saturday?

"Y'all are telling me you keep these 911 tapes for-frigging-ever, but you don't have the one tape from the night of Fourcade's arrest?"

A pulsing vein zigzagged across Pritchett's broad forehead like a lightning bolt. He stood in the hall outside the dispatch center in a lime green Izod shirt, khakis, and golf spikes, a nine iron in hand.

The woman on the other side of the counter crossed her arms. "Yessir, that's what I'm tellin' you. Are you callin' me a liar?"

Pritchett stared at her, then wheeled on A.J. "Where the hell is Noblier? I told you to call him."

"He's on his way," A.J. promised. Bad enough that Pritchett had sent him on this quest on Saturday morning-a surprise attack, he called it-now they could all have a knock-down-drag-out brawl besides. He bet his money on the dispatch supervisor. Even though Pritchett was armed, she had to outweigh him by eighty pounds.

He would have saved the news that the tape was missing, but Pritchett was like an overeager five-year-old at Christmas. He had called in on his cellular phone from the third tee. While Fourcade's lawyer had yet to submit a written account of his client's version of events, Noblier had stated the detective had been responding to a call of a possible prowler in the vicinity of Bowen amp; Briggs. A bald-faced lie, certainly. The 911 tapes would confirm it as such, and the dispatch center in the sheriff's office handled all 911 calls in the parish. But the 911 tape from that fateful night was suddenly nowhere to be found.

The door to the sheriff's office swung open, and Gus came into the hall in jeans and cowboy boots and a denim shirt, the pungent aroma of horses hanging on him like bad cologne. "Don't get your shorts in a knot, Smith. We'll find the damn tape. This is a busy place. Things get mislaid."

"Mislaid, my ass." Pritchett shook the nine iron at the sheriff. "There's no tape because there's no damn call on the tape referring to a prowler in the vicinity of Bowen and Briggs."

"Are you calling me a liar? After all the years I've backed you? You are a small, ungrateful man, Smith Pritchett. You don't believe me, you talk to my deputies on patrol that night. Ask them if they heard the call."

Pritchett rolled his eyes and started down the hall toward the sheriff, his spikes thundering on the hard floor. "I'm sure they'd tell me they heard the archangels singing Dixieland jazz if they thought it would get Fourcade off," he shouted above the racket. "It's a damn shame this has to come between us, Gus. You've got a bad apple in your barrel. Cut him out and be done with it."

Gus squinted at him. "Maybe the reason we don't have that tape is that Wily Tallant came and got it already. As exculpatory evidence."

"What?" Pritchett squealed. "You would just blithely hand something like that over to a defense attorney?"

Gus shrugged. "I'm not saying it happened. I'm saying it might have."

A.J. stepped in between them. "If Tallant has it, he'll have to disclose it, Smith. And if the tape is gone, then they have nothing but biased hearsay that the call ever came in. It's no big deal."

Other than the fact that Pritchett had just been embarrassed again.

"I don't know, Gus," Pritchett lamented as they stepped out into the warm spring sunshine. "Maybe you've been at this too long. Your sense of objectivity has become warped. Just look at Johnny Earl: He's young, smart, untainted by the corruptions of time and familiarity. And he's black. A lot of people think it's time for a black sheriff in this parish-it's progressive."

Gus blew a booger onto the sidewalk. "You think I'm afraid of Johnny Earl? Might I remind you, I carried thirty-three percent of the black vote in the last election, and I was running against two blacks."

"Don't bring it up, Gus," Pritchett said. "It just calls to mind those ugly vote-hauling allegations made against you."

He started toward his Lincoln, where his caddy stood, waiting to drive him back to the country club. "Doucet!" he barked. "You come with me. We have charges to discuss. What all do you know about the statutes on conspiracy?"

Gus watched the lawyers climb into the Lincoln, then stomped back into the station, muttering, "Dickhead college-boy prick. Threaten me, you little-"

"Sheriff?"

The bark came from Hooker. Gus rubbed a hand against his belly. Hell of a Saturday this was turning out to be. He stopped in front of Hooker's open door and stared inside.

"My office, Deputy Broussard."

"You think someone put that snake in your Jeep."

"Yes, sir. It couldn't have gotten there any other way."

"And you think another deputy put it there?"

"Yes, sir, I-"

"Nobody else could have had access to the vehicle?"

"Well-"

"You keep it locked at home, do you?"

"No, sir, but-"

"You got proof another deputy did it? You got a witness?"

"No, sir, but-"

"You live over a goddamn convenience store, Deputy. You telling me no one stopped at the store last night? You telling me folks weren't in and out of that parking lot to do this deed or see it done?"

"The store closes at nine."

"And after that, damn near anybody could have put that snake in your Jeep. Isn't that right?"

Annie blew out a breath. Fourcade. Fourcade could have done it, had motive to do it, was disturbed enough to do it. But she said nothing. The snake seemed an adolescent prank, and Fourcade was no adolescent.

"Hell, I've seen the inside of your Jeep, girl. That snake coulda hatched there, for all I know."

"And you think it was a coincidence that York was patrolling that stretch of road this morning," Annie said. "And that Mullen just happened along."

Gus gave her a steady look. "I'm saying you got no proof otherwise. York was on patrol. You ran off the road. He did his job."

"And Mullen?"

"Mullen's off duty. What he does on his own time is no concern of mine."

"Including interfering in the duty of another officer?"

"You're a fine one to talk on that score, Deputy," he said. " York ran you in 'cause he thought you mighta been drinking."

"I wasn't drinking. They did it to humiliate me. And Mullen was the ringleader. York was just his stooge."

"They found a half-empty pint of Wild Turkey under your driver's seat."

Dread swirled in Annie's stomach. She could be suspended for this. "I don't drink Wild Turkey and I don't drink in my vehicle, Sheriff. Mullen must have put it there."

"You refused to go through the drill."

"I'll take a Breathalyzer." She realized she should have insisted on it at the scene. Now her career was crumbling beneath her feet because she'd been too proud and too stubborn. "I'll take a blood test if you want."