Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

"So are you!" she snapped. "It didn't stop you from breaking the law."

Her words slapped everything to a halt. She felt a sting of guilt that aggravated her. She wasn't the one who had something to feel guilty about. And yet, she couldn't let go of the feeling that she'd hurt him. Fourcade, the granite cop, the pillar of cold logic. No one else would have thought him capable of feeling hurt.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. "That was bitchy."

"No. It's true enough. C'est vrai."

He went to a dormer window and stared out at nothing.

"I just think it's another possibility," Annie said. "It's an angle no one's considered."

An angle he didn't want to consider, Nick admitted. For exactly the reason she had said. Bichon had been his case. If he'd worked side by side with her killer and never seen it, what kind of cop did that make him?

He ran the possibility through his mind, trying to see it as if he'd never had anything to do with the case or with Stokes.

"I don't buy it," he said. "Stokes has been here four or five years, suddenly he butchers a woman and becomes a serial rapist? Uh-uh. That's not the way it works."

He turned around and walked slowly back toward Annie. "What other evidence was there in the rapes?"

"No blood, no semen, no skin. Nothing from the rape kits." Then a memory surfaced. "At the Nolan rape, I saw Stokes picking pubic hairs out of Jennifer Nolan's bathtub with a tweezers."

"Check it out. Meanwhile, get me the case numbers on the rapes. I'll call Shreveport and tell them I'm Quinlan. See what they have to say."

Annie nodded. "Thanks," she said, looking up at him. "I'm sorry-"

"Don't be sorry, 'Toinette," he ordered. "It's a waste of energy. You had something on your mind, you laid it out. We'll see where it takes us, but I don't want you getting sidetracked. These rapes aren't your focus. The murder is your focus and Renard is your number one suspect. Pam Bichon herself, she told us that. You don't wanna listen to me, you listen to her."

He was right. Pam had seen Renard for a monster and no one had listened to her. In turning away from Renard to look at other possibilities, was she also ignoring Pam's cries for help-or was she simply doing the job?

"Why couldn't I have been a cocktail waitress?" she asked on a weary sigh.

"If you weren't a cop, you wouldn't get to drive that hot car," Nick murmured.

The humor was unexpected and welcome. Annie looked at his rugged face, the eyes that had seen too much. Logic told her to stay away from him, but the temptation to feel something other than uncertainty and apprehension was strong. He had the power to sweep it all away for a few hours, to blind her to everything but passion and raw need. A brief interlude of oblivion and obsession.

Obsession didn't seem like such a good thing to succumb to, considering where it had gotten Fourcade. But was it obsession she was afraid of or Fourcade or herself?

Annie forced herself to go to the board of crime scene photos and look at what had been left of Pam Bichon. A shudder of revulsion went through her, as sobering as a dousing of ice water.

Could Stokes have done this? With what motive? Lindsay Faulkner said he had flirted with Pam, that Donnie had been jealous. She never said that Pam had objected to Stokes's attentions. If Pam had put him off because she feared repercussions from Donnie, he had only to bide his time until the divorce went through. But Chaz Stokes was not a patient man, and not always a rational one. In a moment of blind fury could he have crossed the line?

It sounded weak to her. Maybe she wanted to look at Stokes only because he yanked her chain or because she knew he was a lazy cop.

Could Donnie have done this? In her mind's eye she could see him in the intimate light of his office, standing too close to her, that strange look of false remembrance and regret hanging crooked on his face. In a fit of anger, jealousy pushing him far beyond his limits, could he have butchered the mother of his child?

He had been drinking the night of the murder, as he had been tonight. Liquor was the key that opened the floodgates on ugly emotions. She'd seen it happen time and again. But to this level of brutality?

"You were in it from the start," she said to Nick. "Did you ever think Donnie could have done it?"

He joined her at the table. "I've seen people driven to all manner of atrocities. I've seen parents kill their children, children kill their parents, husbands kill their wives, wives set their husbands on fire while they're passed out drunk. But this? I never believed he had the stomach for it. Motive, maybe, but the rest… no, I never believed it.

"I talked to the bartender who served Donnie at the Voodoo Lounge that night." He shook a cigarette out of the pack on the table and played with it between his fingers. "He swore Donnie had more than his share."

"I know. I read the statement. But it was Friday night," Annie reminded him. "They were busy. Can he be sure Donnie drank everything he was served? And even if he drank it, how do we know he didn't just go in the men's room and puke it all up? If he's capable of doing this to a woman, then he's clever enough to build himself an alibi."

"There's one big stumbling block, chère. Il a pas d'esprit. Donnie, he's not clever at all," he said. "He's a whiner not a doer, and a screwup to boot. There's no way in hell Donnie Bichon commits a crime like this and he doesn't fuck up somewhere along the way. Fingerprints, fibers, skin under her fingernails, semen, something. There was damn near nothing at that crime scene-on or around the body. He consented to a search of his town house-nothing. No bloody clothes, no bloody towels, no bloody footprints in the garage, no traces of blood anywhere in the house."

"What about this possible connection to Marcotte and Marcotte's connection to DiMonti?"

"That's no mob hit," he said. "Mob wants somebody dead, they take 'em out in the swamp and shoot 'em. They wrap eighty pounds of chain around the body and throw it in the Atchafalaya. Bump 'em and dump 'em. No boss would have this kind of psycho on his payroll. Killer like this, he's too unpredictable, he's a risk. I've said it all along and I say it again: This was personal."

Annie turned her back to the photos and rubbed her hands over her face. "My brain hurts."

"Keep your eyes on the prize, 'Toinette. Don't turn your back on Renard just because you see other possibilities. He's calling you, sending you presents-same as he did with Pam. Same as he did with that gal up in Baton Rouge. There's two dead women in his wake. You leave Donnie and Marcotte to me. Renard is your focus. You got him on the hook, 'tite fille. Reel him in."

And then what? she thought, but she didn't ask the question. She simply let the silence settle between them, too hot and too tired to go any further with it tonight. The loft was warm and stuffy, the unexpected heat of the day having risen up into the rafters. The ceiling fans only stirred it around.

"Had enough for one day?" Nick asked. He brought the cigarette to his lips, then pulled it away and tossed it on the table beside the pack.

Annie nodded, following the move with her eyes. She wondered if he had changed his mind or if he had set it aside because he knew she didn't like it. Dangerous thinking. Foolish thinking. Fourcade did what he wanted.

"Stay the night," he said. As if he had flipped a switch, the energy he radiated became instantly sexual. She felt it touch her, felt her own body stir in response.

"I can't," she said softly. "With everything that's gone on lately, Sos and Fanchon worry. I need to be home."

"Then stay awhile," he said, tilting her chin up. "I want you, 'Toinette," he murmured, lowering his head. "I want you in my bed."