Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

Faulkner flicked a glance at the redhead. "He's not my type. What's the point of this, Detective?"

"It's Deputy," Annie clarified at last. "I just want a clear picture of y'all's relationship."

"I didn't have a 'relationship' with Renard," she said hotly. "In his sick mind, maybe. What-"

She stopped suddenly. Annie could all but see the thought strike her-that Renard could have fixed on her as easily as on Pam. Judging by the shade of guilt that passed across her face, it wasn't the first time she had considered her good fortune at her friend's expense. She passed a hand across her forehead as if trying to wipe the thought away.

"Pam was too sweet," she said softly. "She didn't know how to discourage men. She never wanted to hurt anyone's feelings."

"I'm curious about something else," Annie said. "Donnie was making noise about challenging Pam for custody of Josie, but I can't see that he had any grounds. Was there something? Another man, maybe?"

Faulkner looked down at her hands on the tabletop and picked at an imagined cuticle flaw. "No."

"She wasn't seeing anyone."

"No."

"Then why would Donnie think-"

"Donnie is a fool. If you haven't figured that out by now, then you must be one, too. He thought he could paint Pam as a bad mother because she sometimes worked nights and met with male clients for drinks and dinner, as if the realty was just a front for a personal dating service. The idiot. It was ridiculous. He was grasping at straws. He would have used the stalking against her if he could have."

"Did Pam take him seriously?"

"We're talking about custody of her child. Of course she took him seriously. I don't see what this has to do with Renard."

"He says Pam told him she didn't dare date until the divorce went through because she was afraid of what Donnie might do."

"Yes, well, it turned out it wasn't Donnie she needed to be afraid of, was it?"

"You said she had a hard time discouraging men who were interested in her. Were there many sniffing around?"

Faulkner pressed two fingers against her right temple. "I've been over all this with Detective Stokes. Pam had that girl-next-door quality. Men liked to flirt with her. It was reflexive. My God, even Stokes did it. It didn't mean anything."

Annie wanted to ask if it hadn't meant anything because Pam was no longer interested in men. If Pam and Lindsay Faulkner had become partners beyond the office and Donnie found out, he certainly would have tried to use it in the divorce. That kind of discovery-the ultimate insult to masculinity-could have pushed a man on the edge over the edge. A motive that applied to Renard as easily as to Donnie.

She wanted to ask. Fourcade would have asked. Blunt, straight out. Were you and Pam lovers? But Annie held her tongue. She couldn't afford to piss off Lindsay Faulkner any more than she already had. If Faulkner complained about her to the sheriff or to Stokes, she'd be pulling the graveyard shift in detox for the rest of her broken career.

She pushed her chair back and rose slowly, pulling a business card from the pocket of her jacket. She had scratched out the phone number for the sheriff's office and replaced it with her home phone. She slid the card across the table toward Faulkner. "If you think of anything else that might be helpful, I'd appreciate it if you'd call me. Thank you for your time."

She turned to the redhead. "I'd get those tags renewed on the Miata if I were you. It's a nasty fine."

Out in the Jeep, Annie sat for a moment, staring at the house and trying to glean something useful from the conversation. More what-ifs. More maybes. Stokes and Fourcade had been over this ground enough to wear it smooth. What did she think she was going to find?

The truth, the key, the missing piece that would tie everything together. It was here in the maze somewhere, half hidden beneath some rock they hadn't quite overturned, lurking amid the lies and dead ends. Someone had to find it, and if she worked hard enough, looked long enough, dug a little deeper, she would be that someone.

The Voodoo Lounge had come into being as the indirect result of a gruesome murder, a fact that attracted the local cops in a way no other bar could. For years the place had been known as Frenchie's Landing, the hangout of farm-hands and factory workers, blue-collars and rednecks. It was known for boiled crawfish, cold beer, loud Cajun music, and the occasional brawl. Still known for all of those things, the place had changed ownership in the fall of 1993, some months after the murder of Annick Delahoussaye-Gerrard at the hands of the Bayou Strangler. Worn-out with grief, Frenchie Delahoussaye and his wife had sold out to local musician and sometime bartender Leonce Comeau.

The cops had started hanging out there immediately after the murder, a show of respect and associated guilt that had quickly turned into routine. The habit lived on.

The parking lot was two-thirds full. The building stood on the bank of the bayou, raised off the ground on a sturdy set of stilts for times when the bayou rushed nearer. A new gallery was under construction around three sides of the building. Loud rocking zydeco music blasted through the walls, the volume rising as the screen door swung open and a pair of couples descended the steps, laughing.

Nick let himself in, walking past the framed photographs of celebrities and pseudocelebrities that had come here over the last four years to soak up the atmosphere. He took the place in at a glance. The house band, led by the bar's owner, belted out Zachary Richard's "Ma Petite Fille Est Gone," Comeau contorting his face and body like a man with a neurological disorder. The dance floor was swarming with couples young and old bouncing and swinging to the infectious beat. Smoke hung in the air over the bar and tables. The smell of frying fish and gumbo was like a heavy perfume.

Stokes was in his usual spot, standing at the corner of the bar that afforded a view of the place and all the women in it. He wore a gray mechanic's shirt from a Texaco station with the name lyle on a patch over the pocket. His porkpie hat perched on the back of his head like a mutant yarmulke. He caught sight of Nick and raised his glass.

"Hey, brothers, if it ain't our tarnished comrade!" he called, his square smile flashing bright in the center of his goatee. "Nicky! Hey, man, you decide to go social or something?"

Nick wove his way between patrons, tolerating the slaps on the back that came from two different cops whose names he couldn't have said on pain of death. He stepped around a waitress with a tight T-shirt and inviting smile as if she were a post set into the floor.

Stokes shook his head at the wasted opportunity. He kissed the cheek of the bleached blonde on the stool next to him and gave her ass a farewell squeeze.

"Hey, sugar, how 'bout you go powder that pretty nose and let my man Nicky here take a load off. He's a legend, don'tcha know."

The blonde slid down off the stool, letting her breasts graze Nick's arm. "Hope you're back on the job soon, Detective."

Stokes elbowed him as the woman walked away, her ass packed into a pair of jeans a size too small for comfort, just right for lust. "That Valerie. Man, that girl's some piece of poontang, let me tell you. Got a pussy like a Vise-Grip. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'. You ever done her?"

"I don't even know her," Nick said with strained patience.

"She's Noblier's secretary, for Christ's sake. Hot for cops. Man, Nicky, sometimes I swear your hormones have gone dormant," he declared with disgust. "You could have your pick of the chicks in this joint, you know."

Ignoring the vacant stool, Nick leaned against the bar, ordered a beer, and lit a cigarette. He didn't give a shit about Stokes's assessment of his sexual appetites. He didn't believe in sex as a casual pastime. There needed to be meaning, significance, intensity. But he made no effort to explain this to Stokes.