Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

"Hey, man, don't fuck with my drink."

The biker curled his lip. "You want a drink, go stick your head in a toilet."

Stokes's eyes widened. "You got a problem with me being here, Junior Dickhead? You think maybe I'm a little too brown for this bar?"

Junior took a swig of the Jax and belched. He glanced over his shoulder at his partner. "This is the kind of trouble you get when niggers breed with white women."

Stokes dropped a shoulder and hit him running, knocking Junior into the pool table. The biker sprawled on his back, his head banging hard on the slate. Balls bounced and scattered. The other biker stepped away, holding his cue stick like a baseball bat, as Chaz pulled his badge and shoved it in Junior's face.

"This make me any lighter, asshole?" he bellowed.

"How about this?" He pulled a Glock nine-millimeter from his belt holster and jammed the barrel into Junior's left nostril. "You think you're the superior race, you Nazi cocksucker? What you thinkin' now?"

He slapped the biker hard on the cheek with the badge, then dropped it on the table and jammed his hand up under the man's chin. "Don't you call me nigger! I ain't no nigger, you motherfucking cracker piece of shit! Call me a nigger and I'll blow your fuckin' head off and say you assaulted an officer!"

Junior made a strangled sound, his big face turning a shade redder than his beard.

Nick took in the wild rage in Stokes's eyes, knowing he was close to an edge, surprised by it, surprised to see it in someone else. Maybe they had something more in common than the job after all.

Nick braced his hands on the pool table, and leaned into Junior's bug-eyed field of vision. "See what you get for being politically incorrect these days, Junior? People just don't take being abused like they used to."

Stokes backed off and Junior rolled over, choking up phlegm on the green felt.

Stokes blew out a breath and forced a grin, twitching the tension out of his shoulders. "Damn, Nicky, you spoiled my fun."

Nick shook his head and started toward the door. "And you say I'm the crazy one."

Stokes shrugged off the responsibility. "Hey, what can I say? He crossed my line."

Annie sat at her kitchen table, a fork in a carton of kung pow chicken, Jann Arden singing in the background. The strange, voyeuristic lyrics of "Living Under June" touched off thoughts of her own situation. The experiences of one person seeping into another's life, that person's life touching someone else.

Had she really believed she could become involved in this investigation and float from point to point in a bubble of invisibility? People talked to one another. The case was open and ongoing. Stokes was supposed to be working it; of course he would speak to Lindsay Faulkner. Lindsay had spoken with Annie. Why wouldn't she mention it to Stokes? She had no reason not to.

"Except that it could mean my ass," Annie muttered.

If Stokes took this to the sheriff… It made her stomach hurt to imagine what Noblier would have to say about it. They'd have to bury her in that damn dog suit.

But Gus had said nothing outright when he'd called her into his office about the Faulkner attack, which could only mean Stokes hadn't brought it up… yet.

"Hooker was right," Gus had growled, fixing her with his classic look of disgruntlement. "It seems if there's a pile of shit around, you'll find one way or another to step in it. Just how did you come to be at Lindsay Faulkner's home, Deputy Broussard?"

She stuck with the lie she'd told Stokes, wondering too late if she'd trapped herself. There would be no paperwork at Bayou Realty to back her up. What if Stokes walked into the realty office and requested a file that didn't exist?

She would have to deal with that burning bridge when she came to it, she decided, setting her dinner aside. The question that nagged her more was this: If Stokes knew she was sniffing around his case and he didn't want her there, why hadn't he gone to the sheriff?

Maybe Faulkner hadn't told him about their meetings. There was no way of knowing until either Stokes made a move or Lindsay Faulkner regained consciousness.

"Why can't you just mind your own business, Annie?" she mused aloud.

Downstairs in the store, Stevie the night clerk was watching Speed again, deep in lust with Sandra Bullock. The sounds of crashes and explosions came up through the floor as if a small war were going on below. Ordinarily Annie was able to shut out the noise. Tonight she found herself wishing for the quiet of Fourcade's study, but she had no intention of seeking it out. She needed a night off, time to clear her head and take a hard look at what she'd gotten herself into. For all the good that would do her now.

Still, in spite of herself, she wondered how Fourcade was doing. She had called from a pay phone at noon and left a message on his machine about Lindsay Faulkner. He hadn't called her back. She occasionally lapsed into panicked thoughts of him lying on his floor dead from internal bleeding, but then talked herself out of them. It wasn't the first time he'd been on the receiving end of a pounding. He knew better than she did the extent of his own injuries.

He certainly hadn't kissed like a man on the brink of death.

No, he had kissed her like a blind man sensing light, like a man who needed to make a connection with another soul and wasn't quite sure how.

"Don't be stupid," she muttered, turning her attention to the papers she had brought home with her from Nick's place the night before-the reports of the harassment Pam Bichon had endured before her murder, copies of reports from the Bayou Breaux PD on incidents that had occurred at her office.

Pam had feared for her safety and for Josie's. But her level of fear had seemed out of proportion to the officers who had taken the calls. While they had drawn no conclusions in the reports, it wasn't hard for another cop to read between the lines. They thought she was overreacting, being unreasonable, wasting their time. Why would she be afraid of Marcus Renard? He seemed so normal, so harmless. Why should she think he was the one making the breather calls? What proof did she have he was stalking the shadows of her Quail Run property? How could it possibly frighten her to receive a silk scarf from an anonymous admirer?

Gooseflesh swept down Annie's arms. She knew Renard had given Pam a number of small gifts, but the only gift ever mentioned in detail in any of the paperwork or news reports had been a necklace with a heart-shaped pendant. He tried to give it to her on her birthday, shortly before her death.

Annie pulled her binder of news clippings and paged through the pockets, hunting for the one burning in her memory. It was a piece from the Lafayette Daily Advertiser that had run shortly after Renard's arrest, and it spoke specifically of Pam's birthday, when she had gone into the Bowen amp; Briggs office with a cardboard box containing the gifts he had given her during the preceding weeks. She had reportedly hurled the box at Renard, shouting angrily for him to leave her alone, that she wanted nothing to do with him.

She had given back to him everything he had ever given her, and among those gifts was a silk scarf. Annie could find no detailed description of it. The detectives had looked for the rejected gifts during a search of Renard's home but had never found them, and didn't consider them important. How would anyone consider a lovely silk scarf proof of harassment?

Nausea swirled through Annie as an idea hit. She reached across the table for the box, lifted the scarf and ran it through her fingers, her mind racing.

"You look like her, you know," Donnie said, his voice strangely dreamy. "The shape of your face… the hair… the mouth…"

"You fit the victim profile," Fourcade said. "… you came into his life, chère. Like it was meant to be… He could fall in love with you."