Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

Had Pam Bichon held this very scarf in her hands, feeling the same strange sense of disquiet Annie felt right now?

The phone rang, sending her half a foot off her chair. She tossed the scarf aside and went into the living room.

The machine picked up on the fourth ring and she listened to herself advise the caller.

"If you're someone I'll actually want to talk to, leave a message after the tone. If you're a reporter, a salesman, a heavy breather, a crank, or someone with an opinion of me I don't want to hear, just don't bother. I'll only erase you."

The warning hadn't seemed to deter anyone. The tape had been full by the time she'd gotten home. Word of her involvement in the Faulkner case had leaked out of the department like oil through a bad gasket. Three reporters had been lying in wait for her on the store gallery when she got home. But it wasn't a reporter who waited for the tone.

"Annie, this is Marcus." His voice was tight. "Could you please call me back? Someone took a shot at me tonight."

Annie grabbed the receiver. "I'm here. What happened?"

"Just what I said. Someone took a shot at me through a window."

"Why are you calling me? Call 911."

"We did. The deputies who came said it was a pity the guy was such a poor shot. They dug the bullet out of the wall and left. I'd like someone to look around, investigate."

"And you'd like that someone to be me?"

"You're the only one who cares, Annie. You're the only one in that whole damn department who cares about justice being done. If it were up to the rest of them, I'd have been alligator bait weeks ago."

He was silent for a moment. Annie waited, apprehension coiling around her stomach like a python.

"Please, Annie, say you'll come. I need you."

Out over the Atchafalaya, thunder rumbled like distant cannon fire. He wanted her. He needed her. He was probably a killer. She had immersed herself in this case up to her chin. She took a breath and went deeper.

"I'll be right there."

"We were sitting here having coffee like civilized people," Doll Renard said, gesturing to her dining room table like a tour guide, "when suddenly the glass in that door shattered. I nearly had a heart attack! We're not the kind of people who have guns or know about guns! To think that someone would shoot into our home! What kind of world are we living in? To think I used to believe in the good of people!"

"Where were y'all sitting? Which chairs?"

Doll sniffed. "The other officers didn't even bother to ask. I was right here, in my usual place," she said, going to the chair at the end of the table.

"Victor was here in his usual seat." Marcus claimed a chair that put his brother's back to the French doors.

At the mention of his name, Victor shook his head and slapped the palm of one hand on the table. He now sat at the head of the table, rocking himself, muttering incessantly. "Not now. Not now. Very red. Enter out. Enter out now!"

"He'll be ranting for days," Doll said bitterly.

Marcus cut her a look. "Mother, please. We're all upset. Victor has as much reason as the rest of us. More than you- he could have been killed."

Doll's jaw dropped as if he'd struck her. "I never said he shouldn't be upset! How dare you talk to me that way in front of a guest!"

"I'm sorry, Mother. Forgive my short temper. My manners aren't what they should be. Someone meant to kill me earlier."

Annie cleared her throat to draw his attention. "Where were you sitting?"

He glanced toward the shattered door. Dozens of insects had flocked in through the hole and now swarmed around the light fixture. Gnats dotted the ceiling like flecks of black ink. "I was out of the room."

"You weren't sitting here when the shot was fired?"

"No. I had left the room several moments prior."

"Why?"

"To use the bathroom. We'd been sitting here drinking coffee."

"Do you own a handgun or a rifle?"

"Of course not," he said, a flush creeping up his neck.

"I wouldn't have a gun in this house," Doll said with great affront. "I wouldn't even let Marcus have a BB gun as a boy. They're filthy instruments of violence and nothing more. His father had guns," she said with accusation. "I got rid of every one of them. Temptations to violence."

"You can't think I staged this," Marcus said, looking hard at Annie.

"Staged it?" Doll shrilled. "What do you mean- 'staged' it?"

Annie turned her back on them and went to the wall where the slug had buried itself in the thick horsehair plaster. It looked as if the call deputies had dug the thing out with a pickax. Plaster littered the floor in crumbled chunks and fine dust. The bullet had struck a good foot above the heads of anyone seated at the table. One of the things any marksman had to consider when aiming was the drop of the bullet as it traveled away from the barrel of the gun. To hit where this shot had hit, the triggerman had to have been aiming still higher.

"Either he was a piss-poor shot or he never meant to hit anyone," she said.

"What do you mean?" Doll asked. "Someone shot at us! We were sitting right here!"

"Had you noticed anyone hanging around earlier in the day?" Annie asked. "Today or any other day recently?"

"Fishermen go past on the bayou," she said, fluttering one bony hand in the direction of the waterway as she clutched the bodice of her baggy housedress with the other. "And those horrible reporters come and go, though we have nothing to say to them. They do as they will. I've never seen such an ill-mannered lot in all my life. There was a time in this country when etiquette meant something-"

Marcus squeezed his eyes shut. "Mother, could we please stick to the subject? Annie isn't interested in a discussion of the decline of formal manners and mores."

Doll's complexion mottled pink and white. Her face went tight, pulling skin against bone and tendon. "Well, excuse me if my views aren't important to you, Marcus," she said tightly. "Pardon me if you believe Annie doesn't want to hear what I think."

"This has been traumatic for all of you, I'm sure," Annie said diplomatically.

"Don't patronize me!" Doll snapped. Her entire body was trembling with anger. "You think we're either criminals or fools. You're no better than any of the others."

"Mother-"

"Red! Red! No!" Victor shrieked, rocking so hard the chair legs came up off the floor. He slapped the tabletop over and over.

"If you believe she cares about us, Marcus, you are a fool." Doll turned away from him to her other son. "Come along, Victor. You're going to bed. No one here needs our presence."

"Not now! Not now! Very red!" Victor's voice screeched upward like metal rending. He curled himself into a ball as his mother clamped a white-knuckled hand on his shoulder.

"Come along, Victor!"

Sobbing, Victor Renard unfolded his body from the chair and allowed his mother to tow him from the room.

Marcus hung his head and stared at the floor, embarrassment and anger coloring his battered face. "Well, wasn't that lovely? Another night in the life of the happy Renard family. I'm sorry, Annie. Sometimes I think my mother doesn't any more know what to do with her emotions than does Victor."

Annie made no comment. It was more useful for her tosee the Renards coming apart at the seams than to see them wrapped tightly in control. She moved toward the French doors, stepping around the broken glass. "I'd like to look around outside."

"Of course."

Out on the terrace she filled her lungs with air that tasted of copper. Clouds appeared to sag to the treetops, bloated with rain that had yet to fall.

"Just to set things straight," Marcus said, "my mother has never believed in the good in people. She's been waiting for a lynch mob to show up on the front lawn, and never misses the opportunity to point out that it's all my fault. I'm sure she's secretly pleased by this in her own twisted way."