Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

"I win."

"Christ, Broussard, what's the matter with you? You think I'm a killer?" he demanded, a flush creeping up his neck. "Is that what you think? You think I'd walk into a hospital and kill a woman? You're out of your fucking mind!"

He sank down onto a chair and hung his long hands and the smashed hat between his knees.

"Maybe you oughta check yourself into this place," he said. "You need your damn head examined. First you go after Fourcade, now me. You're some kinda goddamn lunatic. You're like that crazy broad in Fatal Attraction. Obsessed -that's what you are."

"She was better yesterday," Annie insisted. "I talked to her. Why would this happen?"

Stokes gave a helpless shrug. "Do I look like George Fucking Clooney? I ain't no ER doc. It was some kind of seizure, that's all I know. Jesus, somebody bashed her head in with a telephone. What'd you expect?"

"If she dies, it's murder," Annie declared.

Stokes pushed to his feet. "I told you, Broussard-"

"It's murder," she repeated. "If she dies as a result of her injuries, the assault becomes a murder rap."

"Well, yeah." He dragged a jacket sleeve across his sweating forehead.

Annie stepped toward Faulkner's room again, trying to get a glimpse of her between the bodies of her rescue crew. The electric buzz and snap of the defibrillator was followed by another barrage of orders.

"Epinephrine and lidocaine! Dobutamine-run it wide open! Labs?"

"Not back."

"Charging!"

"Clear!"

Buzz. Snap!

"Flat line!"

"We're losing her!"

They repeated the process so many times it seemed as if time, and hope, had become snagged in a continuous loop. Annie held herself rigid, directing her will at Lindsay Faulkner. Live. Live. We need you. But the loop broke. Motion in the room slowed to a stop.

"She's gone."

"Damn."

"Call it."

Annie looked at the wall clock. Time of death: 7:49 A.M. Just like that, it was all over. Lindsay Faulkner was dead. A dynamic, capable, intelligent woman was gone. The suddenness of it stunned her. She had believed Faulkner would pull through, put her life back together, help solve the mysteries that had marred her life and taken her partner. But she was gone.

The staff trailed out of the room looking defeated, disgusted, blank. Annie wondered if any of them had known Lindsay Faulkner outside the walls of the hospital. She might have sold them a house or known them from the Junior League. It was a small-enough town.

The doctor came toward the waiting area, a frown digging deep into his long face. He looked fifty, his hair thick and the color of gunmetal. The name on his badge was forbes unser. "Are either of you family?"

"No," Annie said. "We're with the sheriff's office. I'm Deputy Broussard. I-ah-I knew her."

"I'm sorry. She didn't make it," he said succinctly.

"What happened? I thought she was doing better."

"She was," Unser said. "The seizure was likely brought on by the trauma to her head. It led to cardiac arrest. These things happen. We did everything we could."

Stokes stuck his hand out. "Detective Stokes. I'm in charge of the Faulkner case."

"Well, I hope you get the animal who attacked her," Unser said. "I've got a wife and two teenage daughters. I barely let them out of my sight these days. Madeline wants me to keep a gun under my pillow at night."

"We're doing everything we can," Stokes said. "We'll want her body transported to Lafayette for an autopsy. Standard procedure. The sheriff's office will be in touch with your morgue."

Unser nodded, then excused himself and went back to his normal duties for the day, the death of a woman in his care just a glitch in the schedule. "These things happen."

Annie ducked into the ladies' room as Stokes started down the hall. She washed her hands and splashed cold water on her face, trying to clear away the images of Lindsay Faulkner seizing. How could it be a coincidence that the woman had gone into arrest not ten minutes after Stokes had been in the room with her? But there would be an autopsy. Stokes knew it. He was the one who had brought it up.

Unser was just coming out of another patient's room with a chart in his hand as Annie stepped back into the hall.

"Are you all right, Deputy?" he asked. "You look a little pale."

"I'll be fine. It was just a shock, that's all. That didn't look like a very pleasant way to die."

"She fought it, but it was over before we could really do anything for her."

"Is that the way it usually happens?"

"It's always a possibility with a head trauma."

"I guess what I'm asking is: was there anything unusual about her death? Any strange readings, abnormal levels of… whatever?"

Unser shook his head. "Not that I'm aware of. The blood test never came back. You can check with the lab." He stepped up to the counter and handed the chart to the monitor technician, "If they haven't lost it entirely, they might be able to answer your questions."

Annie made her way to the lab and left the number for records with a woman who seemed as if she had just dropped in and offered to mind the place while everyone else went for coffee. Did she know if the Faulkner test results were in? No. Did she know when they might be? No. Did she know the name of the President of the United States? Probably not.

"Never get sick here," Annie muttered as she walked away.

Outside the heat was already edging toward oppressive, an unwelcome joke from Mother Nature. Summer was long enough without adding an early preview. Sweat beaded immediately between her breasts and shoulder blades. The sun burned into her scalp.

"You gonna arrest me now?"

Stokes stood beside his Camaro in the red zone, smoking a cigarette. He had shed his jacket, leaving his lime green shirt free to blind anyone looking directly at it.

"I'm sorry," Annie said without sincerity. "I overreacted."

"You accused me of being a goddamn killer." He flung the cigarette butt down on the asphalt beside a crumpled Snickers wrapper and crushed it out with the toe of his brown and white spectators. "Personally, I take umbrage at that. You know what I'm saying?"

"I said I was sorry."

"Yeah, well, that don't cut it by half. I've had it with you, Broussard."

"And what are you gonna do about it?" she asked quietly. "Shoot me?"

"I hear I'd have to get in line. I've got better things to do."

"Like screw around with the evidence on those rape cases?"

"Don't fuck with me, Broussard. I'll have your badge. I mean it."

He slid behind the wheel of the Camaro and started the engine with a roar. Annie stood on the sidewalk and watched him drive away. He had just lost a victim and his primary concern was getting her fired. A charming, caring individual, that Chaz.

The groundskeeper emerged from behind the statue of Mary and made a beeline for Annie with his hedge clippers. "Police girl! Hey! I pays my taxes! I'm a vet'ran! You go, you arrest dat ol' witchy woman! Stealin' dem flowers out the Vet'rans Park!"

"I'm sorry, sir," Annie said, her eyes on Stokes's car as it turned the corner onto Dumas. "Has she murdered anyone?"

"What?!" he squealed. "No, she ain't killed nobody, but-"

"Then I can't help you."

She walked away from him toward the Jeep, her mind on Stokes, while Donnie Bichon's pearl white Lexus turned out of the parking lot behind her and drove away down the backstreet.

Donnie was shaking like a man with DTs, though it hadn't been all that long since his last drink. He'd been allowing himself a shot every hour since Fourcade had left him, in an attempt to steady his nerves. All it seemed to be doing was acting as an accelerant for the stress eating a hole in the lining of his stomach. The flecks of blood in his vomit had confirmed that suspicion.