Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

"A.J.?" she said, looking puzzled. "What's he got to do with you?"

"What's he got to do with you?" Nick asked. "Rumor has it you're an item, you and Mr. Deputy DA."

"Oh, that," Annie said, cringing inwardly. "He'd blow a gasket if he knew you were here."

"Because of what I did to Renard? Or because of what I did with you?"

"Both."

"And on the second count: Does he have cause?"

"He would say yes."

"I'm asking you," Nick said, holding his breath as he waited for her answer.

"No," she said softly. "I'm not sleeping with him, if that's what you're asking."

"That's what I'm asking, 'Toinette," he said. "Me, I don't like to share."

"That's not to say I think this is such a great idea, Nick," Annie admitted. "I'm not saying I regret tonight. I don't. I should." She sighed and tried again. "It's just that… Look at the situation we're in. It's complicated enough, and-and- I don't just do this kind of thing, you know-"

"I know." He stepped closer, settling his hands on her hips, wanting to touch her, to lay claim in a basic way. "Neither do I."

"I sure as hell shouldn't be doing it with you. I-"

He pressed a forefinger to her lips, silencing her. "This isn't about the case. This has nothing to do with what happened with Renard. Understand?"

"But-"

"It's about attraction, need, desire. You felt it that night at Laveau's. So did I. Before any of the rest of this ever started. It's a separate issue. It has to make its own sense outside the context of the situation we're in. You can accept it or you can say no. What do you want, 'Toinette?"

Annie moved away from him. "It must be nice to be so sure of everything," she said. "Who's guilty. Who's innocent. What you want. What I know. Aren't you ever confused, Nick? Aren't you ever uncertain? I am. You were right-I'm in over my head, and if one more thing weighs me down, I'll never come up for air."

She looked for a reaction but his face was as impassive as granite.

"You want me to go?" he asked.

"I think what I want and what's best are two different things."

"You want me to go."

"No," she said in exasperation. "That's not what I want."

He came toward her then, serious, purposeful, predatory. "Then we'll deal with the rest later because I'm telling you, chère, I know what I want."

Then he kissed her, and Annie let his certainty sweep them both away. He carried her back inside, back to bed, leaving the balcony an empty stage with an audience of one shrouded in shadows of midnight.

"I saw her with him. Touching him. Kissing him. THE WHORE.

She has no loyalty. Just like before. It made me wish I had killed her. Love.

Passion.

Greed.

Anger.

Hatred.

Around and around the feelings spin, a red blur. You know, sometimes I can't tell one from the other. I have no power over them. They have all power over me. I wait for their verdict.

Only time will tell."

The black of the night sky was fading to navy in the east when Nick let himself out of Annie's apartment. He didn't want anyone finding him here come first light. Which was why he had parked his truck on a secluded boat landing off the levee road a quarter mile away. If word leaked of an association between the defendant and the key witness in the brutality case, there would be hell to pay for both of them.

He didn't wake Annie. He had no desire to wrestle with more questions. She had needed him, he had wanted her-it was as simple and as complex as that.

He didn't want to wonder where it would go from here. He didn't want to wonder why Antoinette, of all women, when he had allowed himself no woman in longer than he could remember. He had spent the last year trying to rebuild himself. There had been nothing left to give beyond what he gave to the job. He wouldn't have said he had anything to give now, when he was backed into yet another corner and in danger of losing not only his career but his identity. And yet, he found himself drawn to this woman. His accuser.

Antoinette, young, fresh, unspoiled. He was none of those things. Was that it? Did he simply want to touch something good and clean? Or was it about redemption or salvation or coercion?

"Aren't you ever confused, Nick? Aren't you ever uncertain?"

"All the time, chère," he whispered as he drove away.

There was only one Mullen listed in the Bayou Breaux phone book. K. Mullen Jr. lived a block north of the cane mill in a clapboard house built in the fifties and painted once since. Trees kept the lawn as sparse as an adolescent boy's beard. The garage sat back from the house; a bass boat and a Chevy truck were parked on the cracked concrete in front of it.

Nick walked back along the side of the building, peering into windows that hadn't been cleaned in this decade. The space was crammed with junk-old tires, a motorcycle, three lawn mowers, a mud-splattered all-terrain four-wheeler. No Cadillac. At the back of the building, a pair of speckled hunting dogs had worn two crescents of yard to dirt, pacing out to the ends of their chains to crap. The dogs lay tucked into balls between their two small shelters. They didn't crack an eye at Nick.

He went to the back door of the house and let himself in with no resistance from a lock. The kitchen was a depressing little room with dirty dishes on most of the available counter space. Junk mail was stacked up on the small table beside half a loaf of Evangeline Maid white bread, an opened sack of barbeque potato chips, and three empty long-neck bottles of Miller Genuine Draft. Mullen's Sig Sauer lay in its holster on top of the latest Field amp; Stream.

Nick searched through the cupboards and refrigerator, pulling out a cheap frying pan, eggs, butter. As the skillet was heating, he cracked eggs into a bowl, sniffed the milk to check it, then added a splash along with salt and pepper, and whipped it together with a fork. The pan gave a satisfying hiss as the liquid hit the surface.

"Hold it right there!"

Nick glanced over his shoulder. Mullen stood in the doorway in uniform trousers, a shotgun pressed into the hollow of his pasty white shoulder.

"You would hold a gun on me after you've presumed me to be your good friend?" Nick said, scraping a spatula through the bubbling eggs. "That's bad manners, Deputy."

"Fourcade?" Mullen lowered the gun and shuffled a little farther into the room, as if he didn't trust his eyes from a distance of five feet. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Me, I'm making a little breakfast," Nick said. "Your kitchen is a disgrace, Mullen. You know, the kitchen is the soul of the house. How you keep your kitchen is how you keep your life. Looking around here, I'd say you have no respect for yourself."

Mullen made no comment. He laid the shotgun down on the table and scratched at his thin, greasy hair. "Wha-?"

"Got any coffee?"

"Why are you in my house? It's six o'clock in the goddamn morning!"

"Well, I figure we're such good friends, you won't mind. Isn't that right, Deputy?" Giving the eggs one last stir, he slid the pan from the burner, and turned around. "Sorry, I don't have your first name down, but you know I didn't realize we were so close and so I forgot to ever give a shit about it."

Mullen's expression was an ugly knot of perplexity. He looked like a man straining on the toilet. "What are you talking about?"

"What'd you do last night"-Nick leaned over the table and scanned the mailing label on an envelope boasting YOUR NEW NRA STICKER ENCLOSED!-"Keith?"

"Why?"

"It's called small talk. This is what buddies do, I'm told. Why you don't tell me all about what you did last night?"

"Went out to the gun club. Why?"