Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

Up on the stage, the band had announced a break, dropping the decibel level in the bar to something slightly more conducive to conversation. Danny Collett and the Louisiana Swamp Cats blared out of the juke up front. Half the dancers didn't bother to leave the floor.

"You missing the job?" Stokes asked. He'd had a few. There was a vagueness in his pale eyes, an artificial glow on his cheeks.

"Some."

"Gus say when he's bringing you back?"

"Depends on whether or not I take the big vacation to Angola."

Stokes shook his head. "That bitch Broussard. There's a chick more trouble than she's worth. I been thinking on that lesbian thing with her, and I don't see it. I think she just needs her pump primed, you know what I'm saying?"

Nick looked right at him. "Quit ragging on Broussard. She stood up and did what she had to do. That took balls."

Stokes's eyes popped. "What's the matter with you, man? She put your dick in the wringer-"

"I put my dick in the wringer. She just happened to be there at the time."

Stokes gave a snort. "You're singing a new tune. What's up with that?" A sly look swept across his face. He leaned closer, stroking his goatee. "Maybe you got to looking and decided you wanna do the honors for her, huh? Give her an attitude adjustment with the old joystick? There's a challenge to rise to, if you know what I mean."

"You know, Chaz, they say a mind is a terrible thing to waste," Nick said. He pulled on his cigarette and exhaled twin jet streams through his nose. "You been using yours at all lately or have you turned over all the duties to that piece of meat hanging between your legs?"

"I alternate between the two. Christ, who put the bug up your ass tonight?"

"Ah, this one's been there for a few days, mon ami, and I'm still not sure where it came from. Maybe you could help me with that, no?"

"Maybe. If I knew what the hell you're talking about."

Nick leaned a little closer. "Let's go take us a little walk in the night air, Chaz. We'll chat."

Stokes forced an apologetic grin. "Hey, Nicky, I got an agenda here tonight, man. I'll swing by tomorrow. We'll talk a blue streak. But tonight-"

Nick stepped in close and caught hold of his pride and joy in a crushing fist. "Alternate, Chaz," he ordered, his voice a low growl. "You're getting on my nerves."

As he let go, Stokes fell back a step, his face slack and pale with astonishment. He sucked in a gasp and shook himself like a wet cat, glancing around for witnesses. Life was moving on for everyone else in the bar. Fourcade's move had been too slick to draw notice.

"Fuckin" A!" he exclaimed in an outraged whisper. "What the hell's wrong with you, man? You can't do that! You just grab my willy and give it a yank? What the fuck's wrong with you? You can't do that to a brother!"

Nick took a swig of Jax and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I just did it. Now that I got your attention, let's go get some air."

He headed for a side door and Stokes moved with him, hesitant, wary, petulant. They stepped out onto the half-finished gallery where a sawhorse and a keep out! sign blocked the way to the bayou side of the building. Nick ignored the warning.

The gallery facing the bayou had no railing at this point in the construction. The drop was about twelve feet. Enough for the average drunk to fall and break his neck. Nick stepped to the edge of the platform and stood with his hands on his hips, thinking calm, center. Force was a tool of surprise in dealing with Stokes. Something to knock him off balance. A tool to be used sparingly, carefully. His goal was truth.

Still agitated, Stokes paced back and forth. "Man, you are fuckin' crazy, grabbing my dick. What goes through that head of yours, Nick? Jesus!"

"Get over it."

Nick lit another cigarette and stared out at the bayou. The moon shone down on half a dozen pontoon houseboats moored down the way, weekend retreats for people from town and from as far away as Lafayette. There were no lights in the windows tonight.

The music from inside the bar came through the wall in a muddled bass vibration. If he blocked it from his mind and focused, he could just hear the chorus of frog song and the slap and splash of a fish breaking the water. Lightning cracked the sky to the east-a storm sucking up along the Mississippi from the Gulf. A distant storm.

He thought of Marcotte. The distant storm.

"So why ain't you bending my ear, pard?" Stokes said, calming down. He propped a shoulder against a support post and crossed his arms over his chest. "You're the one wanted to chat."

"I heard there was another rape."

"Yeah. So?"

"You catch it?"

"Yeah, I caught it. Looks like it's the same sicko did that Nolan woman the other night. Broke in about one A.M., knocked her around, tied her up, raped her, made her take a shower after. He's a smart son of a bitch, I'll give him that. We got diddly-squat to go on."

"No semen?"

"Nope. He's taking it with him one way or another. Probably uses a condom. Maybe the lab'll find some latex residue on one of the swabs, but big fuckin' deal, you know? What'll that prove? He prefers Trojans?"

"He wear a mask?"

"Yeah. Spooked the shit out of these women, that mask did. Shades of the Bayou Strangler and all that crap."

"And Pam Bichon."

"And Bichon," he conceded. "Confuses the issue, you know what I'm saying? The mask was Renard's thing. So if Renard ain't this rapist, then is this rapist the one did Pam Bichon, folks wanna know. People are so fuckin' stupid. I mean, it's all over the news about that mask Renard left on Pam. This guy's an opportunist, that's all."

"Who was the woman?"

"Kay Eisner. Mid-thirties, single, lives over near Devereaux, works at a catfish plant up in Henderson. What's your interest in all this?" he asked, fishing a cigarette out of the shirt pocket beneath the lyle patch. "I was you, Nicky, I'd be spending my free time a little better."

"Just curious," Nick said. He dropped his cigarette butt on the floorboards, ground it out with the toe of his boot.

Inside the bar, the band had come back onstage. Leonce Comeau wailed the intro to "Snake Bite Love." The drummer pounded the opening and the rest of the band jumped in at a run.

"The past overshadows the present foreshadows the future."

Stokes blinked at him like a man nodding off in church. "Nicky, man, I ain't drunk enough for philosophy."

"We all got a past we drag around behind us," Nick said. "Sometimes it sneaks up and bites our ass."

The shift in the tension between them was subtle, but there. A tightening of muscles. A heightened awareness. Nick watched Stokes's eyes like a poker player.

"What are you saying, Nicky?" Stokes said softly.

Nick let the silence hang, waited.

"I hear teeth snapping behind me," he said. "I feel that shadow on my back." He stepped closer. "All of a sudden a name is turning up again and again like a damn bad penny. Me, I find myself in a bad position and I keep on hearing that name. And I'm thinking there's no such thing as coincidence."

"What name?"

"Duval Marcotte."

Stokes didn't blink.

Anticipation tightened in Nick's belly like a knot. What did he want? The flash of recognition? For Stokes to be guilty? For another cop to have betrayed him? He wanted Marcotte. After all this time, after all the work to put it behind him, he wanted Marcotte-even at the cost of another man's honor. The realization was as heavy as stone, hard and abrasive against his conscience.

"Is he in this thing, Chaz?" he asked. "It would have been a simple errand, piece a' cake. Get me to Laveau's, fill me up with liquor and ideas, point me in the right direction, see if I go off like a cocked pistol. Easy money, and hell, he's got plenty of it."