Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

He looked away from his mother, his color darkening, tension crackled in the air around him. Annie watched the exchange, thinking maybe she was better off not having any blood relatives. Her memories of her mother were soft and quiet. Better memories than a bitter reality.

"Well," Doll Renard went on, "it's about time the sheriff's office did something for us. Our lawyer will be filing suit, you know, for all the pain and anguish we've been caused."

"Mother, perhaps you could try not to alienate the one person willing to help us."

She looked at him as if he'd called her a filthy name. "I have every right to state my feelings. We've been treated worse than common trash through all of this, while that Bichon woman is held up like some kind of saint. And now her father-all the world's calling him a martyred hero for trying to murder you. He belongs in jail. I certainly hope the district attorney keeps him there."

"I really should be going," Annie said, gathering her file and notebook. "I'll see what I can find out on that truck."

"I'll walk you to your car." Marcus scraped his chair back and sent his mother a venomous look.

He waited until they were along the end of the house before he spoke again.

"I wish you could have stayed longer."

"Did you have something more to say pertinent to the case?"

"Well-ah-I don't know," he stammered. "I don't know what questions you might have asked."

"The truth isn't dependent on what questions I ask," Annie said. "The truth is what I'm after here, Mr. Renard. I'm not out to prove your innocence, and I certainly don't want you telling people that I am. In fact, I wish you wouldn't mention me at all. I've got trouble enough as it is."

He made a show of drawing a fingertip across his mouth. "My lips are sealed. It'll be our secret." He seemed to like that idea too well. "Thank you, Annie."

"There's no need. Really."

He opened the door of the Jeep, and she climbed in. As she backed up to turn around, he leaned against his Volvo. The successful young architect at leisure. He's a murderer, she thought, and he wants to be my friend.

A glint of reflected sunlight caught her eye and she looked up at the second story of the Renard home, where Victor stood in one window, looking down on her with binoculars.

"Man, y'all make the Addams family look like Ozzie and Harriet," she said under her breath.

She thought about that as she drove north and west through the flat sugarcane country. Behind the face of every killer was the accumulated by-product of his upbringing, his history, his experiences. All of those things went to shape the individual and guide him onto a path. It wasn't a stretch to add up those factors in Renard's life and get the psycho-pathology Fourcade had spoken about. The portrait of a serial killer.

Marcus Renard wanted to be her friend. A shiver ran down her back.

She flicked on the radio and turned it up over the static of the scanner.

"… and I just think all these crimes, these rapes and all, are a backlash against the women's lib."

"Are you saying women essentially ask to be raped by taking nontraditional roles?"

"I'm sayin' we should know our place. That's what I'm sayin'."

"Okay, Ruth in Youngsville. You're on KJUN, all talk all the time. In light of last night's reported rape of a Luck woman, our topic is violence against women."

Another rape. Since the Bichon murder and the resurrected tales of the Bayou Strangler, every woman in the parish was living in a heightened state of fear. Rich hunting grounds for a certain kind of sexual predator. That was the rush for a rapist-his victim's fear. He fed on it like a narcotic.

The questions came to Annie automatically. How old was the victim? Where and how was she attacked? Did she have anything in common with Jennifer Nolan? Had the rapist followed the same MO? Were they now looking at a serial rapist? Who had caught the case? Stokes, she supposed, because of the possible tie to the Nolan rape. That was what he needed-another hot case to distract him from the Bichon homicide investigation.

The countryside began to give way to small acreages interspersed with the odd dilapidated trailer house, then the new western developments outside of town. The only L. Faulkner listed in the phone book lived on Cheval Court in the Quail Run development. Annie slowed the Jeep to a crawl, checking numbers on mailboxes.

The neighborhood was maybe four years old, but had been strategically planned to include plenty of large trees that had stood on this land for a hundred years or more, giving the area a sense of tradition. Pam Bichon had lived just a stone's throw from here on Quail Drive. Faulkner's home was a neat redbrick Caribbean colonial with ivory trim and overflowing planters on the front step.

Annie pulled in the drive and parked alongside a red Miata convertible with expired tags. She hadn't called ahead, hadn't wanted to give Lindsay Faulkner the chance to say no. The woman had put her guard up. The best plan would be to duck under it.

No one answered the doorbell. A section of the home's interior was visible through the sidelights that flanked the door. The house looked open, airy, inviting. A huge fern squatted in a pot in the foyer. A cat tiptoed along the edge of the kitchen island. Beyond the island a sliding glass door offered access to a terrace.

The lingering aroma of grilled meat hooked Annie's nose before she turned the corner to the back side of the house. Whitney Houston's testimonial about all the man she'd ever need floated out the speakers of a boom box, punctuated by a woman's throaty laughter.

Lindsay Faulkner sat at a glass-topped patio table, her hair swept back in a ponytail. A striking redhead in tortoise-shell shades came out through the patio doors with a Diet Pepsi in each hand. The smile on Faulkner's face dropped as she caught sight of Annie.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, Ms. Faulkner. I had a couple more questions, if you don't mind," Annie said, trying to resist the urge to smooth the wrinkles from her blazer. Faulkner and her companion looked crisp and sporty, the kind of people who never perspired.

"I do mind, Detective. I thought I made myself clear yesterday. I'd rather not deal with you."

"I'm sorry you feel that way, since we both want the same thing."

"Detective?" the redhead said. She set the sodas on the table and settled herself in her chair with casual grace, a wry smile pulling at one corner of a perfectly painted mouth. "What have you done now, Lindsay?"

"She's here about Pam," Faulkner said, never taking her eyes off Annie. "She's the one I was telling you about."

"Oh." The redhead frowned and gave Annie the onceover, a condescending glance intended to belittle.

"If I have to deal with you people at all," Faulkner said, "then I'd sooner deal with Detective Stokes. He's the one I've dealt with all along."

"We're on the same side, Ms. Faulkner," Annie said, undaunted. "I want to see Pam's murderer punished."

"You could have let that happen the other night."

"Within the system," Annie specified. "You can help make that happen."

Faulkner looked away and sighed sharply through her slim patrician nose.

Annie helped herself to a chair, wanting to give the impression she was comfortable and in no hurry to leave. "How well do you know Marcus Renard?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Did you socialize?"

"Me, personally?"

"He claims you went out together a couple of times. Is that true?"

She gave a humorless laugh, obviously insulted. "I don't believe this. Are you asking if I dated that sick worm?"

Annie blinked innocently and waited.

"We went out in a group from time to time-people from his office, people from mine."

"But never one-on-one?"