Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

"I went looking for justice," he said softly. "Marcotte bent it over my head like a tire iron. He showed me a side to the system as tangled and oily as the innards of a snake."

"You think Marcotte killed that hooker?"

"Oh, no." He shook his head slightly. "Allan Zander killed Candi Parmantel. Marcotte, he made it all go away- and my career along with it."

"Why would he do that?"

"Zander is married to a cousin of Marcotte. He's nobody, no social climber, just another jerk-off white-collar working stiff. Frustrated with his job, disappointed in his marriage, looking to take it all out on somebody. He left that girl, that fourteen-year-old runaway who was selling her body so she could eat, dead in a back-alley Dumpster like she was so much refuse. And Duval Marcotte covered it up."

"You know this?" Annie asked carefully. "Or you think it?"

"I know. I can't prove it. I tried, and everything I tried turned back around on me. I wasn't the one who tampered with the evidence or lost the lab work."

"Nobody else thought it was strange-all this stuff going wrong on one case?"

"Nobody cared. What's another dead hooker besides bad press? Besides, it didn't any of it look that big. A bad test here, a piece of evidence gone there. You know what they say: New Orleans is a marvelous place for coincidence."

"But you weren't the only detective on the case. What about your partner?"

"He had a kid with leukemia. Big-time medical bills. Who do you think he cared more about-his child or some dead prostitute? I was the only player in the game who gave a damn about that girl. I didn't want Marcotte's money, I wanted Marcotte, and most of all I wanted Zander. Marcotte snapped me like a twig, and I couldn't prove a goddamn thing. The more noise I made, the crazier I looked. The chief wanted my ass on a platter. The captain wanted me out on a psych charge. My lieutenant stuck his neck out and let me resign. I hear he's working security for some oil company in Houston now."

Wincing, he leaned over and dug his cigarettes and lighter out of his discarded jacket. He shook one out and lit up.

"Duval Marcotte, he does something like that for a little nothing/nobody turd like Zander, what you think he'd do for someone like Vic DiMonti?"

Annie sat down on the edge of the tub and stared at her hands. Fourcade wasn't telling her he had crashed and burned in a big way. The rumors that had filtered out of New Orleans on the blue grapevine had whispered words like crazy, paranoid, drunk, violent. She thought of what he had said that night at Laveau's.

"You afraid of me?… You don't listen to gossip?"

"I take it for what it's worth. Half-truths, if that."

"And how do you decide which half is true?"

"Do you believe me, 'Toinette?" he asked.

For a moment the only sound was the insect buzz of the fluorescent lights that flanked the medicine chest. It had been a long time since he'd cared if anyone believed him- not facts and evidence, him. He had put away that need, but now he felt the strange stirrings of hope in his chest, foreign fingers touching him in a way that was intrusive and seductive, and ultimately disturbing.

"It doesn't matter," he said, stubbing his cigarette out on the rim of the sink.

"Yes, it does," Annie corrected him. "Of course it does." She raked a hand back through her hair and exhaled. "It must have been hell. I can't- No, I can imagine… a little bit. I've been learning lately about standing on the wrong side of an issue."

"And I put you there, didn't I, chère ?" He reached out to touch her chin. His smile was bitter and sad. "What a helluva team we make, huh?"

She tried a smile to match his. "Yeah. Who'd believe it?"

"No one. But it's right, you know. We want the same thing… need the same thing…"

His voice died to a whisper as he realized the conversation had shifted onto a new plane, that what was between them was attraction; that what he needed, what he wanted, was Annie. And she knew it. He could see it in her eyes- the surprise, apprehension, anticipation.

He slid his fingers into her hair, leaned forward, and touched his mouth to hers experimentally. A jolt went through him, a deep current that pulled at him, pulled him closer to her. He settled his mouth against hers and tasted her, whiskey warm and sweet with a kind of innocence he could barely remember. His hand cradled the back of her head and he kissed her deeply, without reserve, his tongue sliding against hers.

Annie sat frozen, paralyzed by the emotions and sensations unleashed by his kiss. Heat, fear, need, a dangerous excitement. It shocked her that she allowed him this intimacy, that she wanted it. That she wanted him. Her tongue moved against his and he groaned low in his throat.

The sense of power that rose within her, the passion that rose with it, terrified her. Fourcade was a man of dragons and deep secrets. If he wanted more than sex, he would want her soul.

She pulled away from the kiss, turned her face away, and felt his lips graze her cheek.

"I can't do this," she whispered. "You scare me, Nick."

"What scares you? You think I'm crazy? You think I'm dangerous?"

"I don't know what to think."

"Yes, you do," he murmured. "You're just afraid to admit it. I think, chère, you scare yourself."

He touched her chin. "Look at me. What do you see in me that scares you? You see in me what you're afraid to feel. You think if you go that deep you might drown, lose yourself… like me."

A fine chill threaded through her. She pushed herself past it, pushed to her feet, kicked awake what wits hadn't gone entirely numb.

"You should be in bed-and not with me," she said, letting the plug out of the sink. Her heart was beating too fast. She couldn't quite get her breath. She fumbled with the stopper and dropped it on the floor. "Take some aspirin. Take a cold shower. You probably shouldn't drink too much in case you've got a-"

He caught hold of her wrist as if holding her physically could stop her from prattling on. Annie looked at him with suspicion. She had let him cross a barrier, and suddenly he could touch her. If he could touch her, he could pull her toward him, literally and figuratively. She told herself she didn't want that. She couldn't handle him, didn't know if she could trust him. She'd stood on the edge of a dark parking lot and watched him beat a suspect senseless.

"I need to go," she said. "After last night, God knows what might be on the agenda tonight."

"What happened last night?" he asked, coming slowly to his feet.

Annie backed into the hall, trying to pass off a casual attitude she didn't feel. She told him in the briefest detail, the way she would write a report-without emotion. Nick propped himself up in the bathroom doorway, the near-empty glass of whiskey in his hand. He seemed to concentrate on every word she said.

"What did the lab say about the entrails?"

"Nothing yet. They'll call tomorrow. Pitre insisted it was pig intestines. It probably was. It was probably Mullen and his band of merry jerks just trying to rattle me, but…"

"But what?" Fourcade demanded. "You got a feeling, 'Toinette, let's hear it. Speak your mind. Don't be shy."

"Someone, presumably Renard, left a mutilated animal on Pam's doorstep back in October. Now I'm working the case and this happens."

"You think it could have been Renard."

"I don't know. Does that make sense? He didn't start harassing Pam until she'd rejected him. She rejected him, he punished her. He thinks I'm his champion. Why would he do something to jeopardize that?"

"Maybe punishment wasn't his goal with Pam," Nick suggested. "He was always quick enough to offer his concern after she had something bad happen."