Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

"You considered me a suspect?"

"Me, I consider ever'body a suspect 'til I can find out different."

He took a long pull on his smoke and watched her as he exhaled. "Does this bother you?" he asked, making a small gesture with the cigarette.

She tried without success not to blink. "No."

"Yes, it does," he declared as he stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray. "Say so. Ain't nobody in this world gonna speak up for you, chère."

"I'm not afraid to speak up."

"No? You afraid of me?"

"If I were afraid of you, I wouldn't be standing here."

His lips twisted in a faint smirk and he gave a very French shrug that said, Maybe, maybe no. Annie felt her temper spike a notch.

"Why should I be afraid of you?"

His expression darkened as he turned a shot glass on the bar. "You don't listen to gossip?"

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

"And how you decide which half is true?" he asked. "There is no justice in this world," he said softly, staring into his whiskey. "How's that for a truth, Deputy Broussard?"

"It's all in your perception, I suppose."

" 'One man's justice is another man's injustice… one man's wisdom another's folly.' " He sipped at the whiskey. "Emerson. No reporter will sum up today's events as well… or with such truth."

"What they say doesn't change the facts," Annie said. "You found Pain's ring in Renard's house."

"You don't think I put it there?"

"If you had put it there, it would have been listed on the warrant."

"C'est vrai. True enough, Annie." He gave her a pensive look. "Annie-that's short for something?"

"Antoinette."

He sipped his whiskey. "That's a beautiful name, why you don't use it?"

She shrugged. "I-well-everyone calls me Annie."

"Me, I'm not ever'body, 'Toinette," he said quietly.

He seemed to have gotten closer or loomed larger. Annie thought she could feel the heat of him, smell the old leather of his jacket. She knew she could feel his gaze holding hers, and she told herself to back away. But she didn't.

"I came here to ask you about the case," she said. "Or did Noblier pull you off?"

"No."

"I'd like to help if I can." She blurted the words, forced the idea out before she could swallow it back. She held up one hand to stave off his reply and gestured nervously with the other. "I mean, I know I'm just a deputy, and technically it isn't my case, and you're the detective, and Stokes won't want me involved, but-"

"You're a helluva salesman, 'Toinette," Fourcade remarked. "You telling me every reason to say no."

"I found her," Annie said simply. The image of Pam Bichon's body throbbed in her memory, a dead thing that was too alive, that would give her no rest. "I saw what he did to her. I still see it. I feel… an obligation."

"You feel it," Fourcade whispered. "Shadow of the dead."

He raised his left hand, fingers spread, and reached out, not quite touching her. Slowly he passed his hand before her eyes, skimmed around the side of her head, just brushing his fingertips against her hair. A shiver rippled down her body.

"It's cold there, no?" he whispered.

"Where?" Annie murmured.

"In Shadowland."

She started to draw a breath, to tell him he was full of shit, to defuse the prickly sensation that had come to life inside her and between them, but her lungs didn't seem to function. She was aware of a phone ringing somewhere, of the canned laughter coming from the television. But mostly she was aware of Fourcade and the pain that shone in his eyes and came from somewhere deep in his soul.

"You Fourcade?" the bartender called, holding up the telephone receiver. "You got a call."

He slid off his stool and moved down the bar. Air rushed into Annie's lungs as he walked away, as if his aura had been pressing down on her chest like an anvil. With an unsteady hand, she raised his glass to her lips and took a drink. She stared at Fourcade as he hunched over the bar and listened to the telephone receiver. He had to be drunk. Everyone knew he wasn't quite right at his most sober.

He hung up the phone and turned toward her.

"I gotta go." He pulled a twenty out of his wallet and tossed it on the bar.

"Stay away from those shadows, Toinette," he warned her softly, the voice of too much experience. With one hand he reached up and cradled her face, the pad of his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. "They'll suck the life outta you."

Nick walked along the boulevard between the road and the bayou. Gloved hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. Shoulders hunched against the damp chill of the night. Fog skimmed off the water and floated past like clouds of perfume, redolent with the scents of rotting vegetation, dead fish, and spider lilies. Something broke the surface with a pop and a splash. A bass snatching a late dinner. Or someone with a heavy case of boredom, tossing rocks.

Pausing by the trunk of a live oak, he stared out past the branches hung with tattered scraps of Spanish moss and looked up and down the bank. There was no one, no foot traffic, no cars crossing the little drawbridge that spanned the bayou to the north. House lights glowed amber in windows beyond the east bank. The night air had gone heavy with a thick mist that was threatening to become rain. A rainy night did nothing to entice folks outdoors without a purpose.

And my purpose?

That remained unclear.

He was close to drunk. He had given himself the excuse of dulling the pain, but instead had only fueled it. The frustration, the injustice-they were like fire under his skin. They would consume him if he didn't do something to burn them out.

He closed his eyes, took a breath, and released it, attempting to find his center-that core of deep calm within that he had spent so much time and effort building. He had worked so hard to control the rage, and it was slipping through his grasp. He had worked so hard on the case, and it was crumbling around him. He felt the chill pass over him, through him. The shadow of the dead. He felt the need pull at him. And a part of him wanted very badly to go where it would lead him.

He wondered if Annie Broussard felt that same pull or if she would even recognize it. Probably not. She was too young. Younger than he had been at twenty-eight. Fresh, optimistic, untainted. He had seen the doubt in her eyes when he had spoken of the shadows. He had also seen the naked truth when she spoke of the obligation she felt to Pam Bichon.

The key to staying sane in homicide was keeping a distance. Don't let it get personal. Don't get involved. Don't take it home with you. Don't cross the line.

He had never been good at taking any of that advice. He lived the job. The line was always behind him.

Had the shadows drawn Pam Bichon? Had she seen Death's phantom coming, felt its cold breath on her shoulders? He knew the answer.

She had complained to friends about Renard's persistent, if subtle advances. Despite her rebuffs, he had begun sending her gifts. Then came the harassment. Small acts of vandalism against her car, her property. Items stolen from her office-photographs, a hairbrush, work papers, her keys.

Yes, Pam had seen the phantom coming, and no one had listened when she tried to tell them. No one had heard her fear any more than they had heard her tortured screams that night out on Pony Bayou.

"I still think about what he did to her," Stokes said. "Don't you?"

All the time. The details had saturated his brain like blood.

With his back against the tree trunk, Nick lowered himself to sit on his heels and stared across the empty street at the building that housed Bowen amp; Briggs. A light burned on the second floor. A desk lamp. Renard worked at the third drafting table back and on the south side of the big room there. Bowen amp; Briggs designed both small commercial and residential buildings, with their commercial work coming out of New Iberia and St. Martinville as well as Bayou Breaux.