A Thin Dark Line

18

Even on a bright day the house had a sinister look. The brilliant spring sun failed to remove the shawl of shadows that fell down from the newly leafed trees. Shrouded in murky light and gray with neglect, it squatted amid the sprouting growth like a toothless crone, ugly and abandoned.

Nick stared at the house from the pirogue, fascinated by the possibility that evil could linger in a place like a scent. The house hadn't been bad off at the time of the murder. Recently vacated by renters at the time, and scheduled for some renovation work, the electricity had still been turned on. Since the murder, the place had been let go. Kids had thrown rocks through the windows. The stigma of death clung to it like grime.

Nick would not go inside. Some people would have called him superstitious, but they would have been people who had never stepped close to the boundary between good and evil; they didn't know the power or the possibilities. Still, it was telling that on a day as fine as this one, when other parts of Pony Bayou were thick with weekend fishermen, there were none within a quarter mile of this place.

He had set out in the pirogue intending to distance himself from thoughts of the case. But this place had drawn him like a magnet.

Another battle lost, and so he would give himself over to the obsession until a conclusion could be reached.

Would it be over now, he wondered, had I killed Renard that night?

Pony Bayou here was narrow, even this time of year, when the brown water was high and spilling into the forest. The banks were crowded with hackberry saplings and tangles of dewberry and poison ivy. The limbs of the black willow and water locust reached out over the column of water from both sides, like bony fingers stretching to touch one another.

The trees were alive with the sounds of birds excited by the early arrival of spring. The songs and shrieks and squawks blended into a cacophony that seemed to take on an especially discordant and unnerving quality. And on every available limb, log, and stump, water snakes had crawled out to sun themselves in an eerie ritual of spring. The forest along the banks seemed hung with reptiles, like dark, muscular ropes of live bunting.

Taking up the push-pole, Nick rose at the back of the pirogue and sent it gliding north and west. The route was twisted, his passing witnessed by no one. Nature claimed the land here for several miles and no man in recent history had challenged Her. Then the channel widened slightly and the forest came to an abrupt halt on the western bank, marking the edge of the first piece of domesticated property away from the murder scene. Marcus Renard's home.

The house stood a hundred yards or so away, elegant in its simplicity. Clean lines, plain columns. The modest home of a modest indigo planter in a past century. Tall French windows opened onto a brick veranda where Victor Renard sat at a patio table.

Victor was slightly bigger than Marcus, thicker bodied. While he had the social awareness of a small child, he had the physical strength of a thirty-seven-year-old man and had once been turned out of a group home for destroying a bed in a fit of temper. Emotions-his own or those of others- were difficult for him to comprehend or process. The autistic mind seemed unable to decode feelings. For the most part, he expressed none, though odd things would sometimes trigger agitation and occasionally anger. At the same time, Victor was mathematically gifted, able to easily work equations that could stump college students, and he could name the genus and species of thousands of animals and plants and describe each in textbook detail.

People around Bayou Breaux didn't understand Victor Renard's condition. They were frightened of him. They mistook him for being retarded or schizophrenic. He was neither.

Nick had considered it his duty to discover these things about Victor and his autism. An arsenal of information was far more useful to a detective than any other kind of weapon. The smallest, seemingly insignificant fact or detail could prove to be the one piece that made the rest of the puzzle work.

Victor Renard's mind was itself a complex mystery. If somewhere in the labyrinth he held a clue to his brother's guilt, Nick suspected they would never know. If they could ever bring Marcus to trial, Smith Pritchett would never attempt to use Victor as a witness. Aside from the familial connection, Victor's autism precluded him from appearing reliable or even coherent in court.

Nick leaned lightly against the push-pole, holding the pirogue against the slow current. He stood at the edge of his legal boundary. Kudrow had sought and been granted a temporary restraining order for his client, specifically outlining how near Nick could come to him. If he tested those limits too strongly or too often, he could be brought up on stalking charges. The irony both amused and disgusted him.

He watched as Victor became aware of him, sitting up straighter, then reaching for a pair of binoculars on the table. He came up out of his chair as if someone had set it on fire. He rushed twenty yards across the lawn, his gait strange, his arms straight down at his sides. He stopped and raised the binoculars again. Then he dropped the binoculars on the strap around his neck and began to rock himself from side to side in jerky, irregular movements, like a windup toy gone wrong.

"Not now!" Victor shouted, pointing at him. "Red, red! Very red! Enter out!"

When Nick made no move to leave, Victor rushed forward another ten steps, wrapped his arms tight around his chest, and rocked himself around in a circle. Strange, piercing shrieks tore from him.

At the house, one of the French doors opened and Doll Renard rushed onto the veranda. Her agitation almost equaled her son's. She started toward Victor, then turned back toward the house. Marcus emerged, and limped across the lawn to his brother.

"Very red!" Victor screamed as Marcus took hold of his arm. "Enter out!"

He screamed again as Marcus took the binoculars from him.

Nick expected shouting, then remembered Renard's fractured jaw and felt not remorse, but discomfort at the power of his own anger. Renard came toward the bank.

"You're violating the court order," he said, hands curled into fists at his sides.

"I think not," Nick said. "I'm on a public waterway."

"You're a criminal!"

Nick clucked his tongue. "A matter of perspective, that."

"We're calling the police, Fourcade!"

"This is the jurisdiction of the sheriff's office. You really think they'll come to your aid? You have no friends there, Marcus."

"You're wrong," Renard insisted. "And you're breaking the law. You're harassing me."

Yards behind him, Victor had fallen to his knees to rock himself. His banshee shrieks drove the birds from the trees.

Nick looked innocent. "Who, me? I'm just fishing." Lazily he straightened away from the push-pole, moving the pirogue from the bank. "Ain't no law against fishing, no."

He let the craft drift backward, following the curve of the land until his view of Renard's house and his brother was gone and only Renard himself remained in his line of vision. Focus, he thought. Focus, calm, patience. Exist within the current, and the goal will be reached.

Annie sat in an old ladder-back chair with a seat woven from the rawhide of some unfortunate long-dead cow. The view of the bayou was pretty from Fourcade's small gallery. She wondered if Fourcade ever idled his motor long enough to appreciate it. He didn't seem a man to care about such things, but then he had proven to be full of surprises, hadn't he?

It didn't surprise her that he lived in such a remote, inaccessible place. He was a remote, inaccessible man. It surprised her that his yard was neat, that he was obviously working on the house.

Her stomach growled. She'd been waiting an hour. Fourcade's truck was here, but Fourcade was not. God only knew where he'd gone. The sun was going down and her resolve was running out in direct proportion to her increasing need for a meal. To occupy her mind she tried to imagine a hiding spot in the Jeep where she might have tucked away an emergency Snickers and forgotten about it. She'd already been through the glove compartment and looked under the seats. She concluded that Mullen had stolen the candy, and was perfectly happy to waste another few moments hating him for it.

A pirogue came into view, skating through a patch of cypress deadheads. Nerves tightened in Annie's stomach, and she rose from the chair. Fourcade guided the boat in alongside the dock, took his time tying off the pirogue and walking up the bank. He wore a black T-shirt that fit him like a coat of paint and fatigue pants tucked into a pair of trooper boots. He didn't smile. He didn't blink.

"How did you find this place?" he asked.

"I'd be a poor candidate for detective if I couldn't manage to dig up an address." Annie stepped behind the chair, resting her hands on its back.

"That you would, chérie. But no. You got initiative. You came to take the bull by the horns, out?"

"I want to see what you have on the case."

He nodded. "Good."

"But you have to know up front this doesn't change what happened Wednesday night. If that's what you're really after, then say so now and I'll just go on home."

Nick studied her for a moment. She kept one hand close to the open flap of her faded denim jacket. She doubtless had the Sig Sauer handy. She didn't trust him. He didn't blame her.

He shrugged. "You saw what you saw."

"I'll have to testify. That doesn't make you angry? That doesn't make you want to-oh, say, plant a live snake in my Jeep?"

He leaned toward her and gently patted her cheek. "If I wanted to hurt you, chère, I wouldn't leave it up to no snake."

"Should I be relieved or afraid for my life?"

Fourcade said nothing.

"I don't trust you," she admitted.

"I know."

"If you pull any more of that crazy shit like you did last night, I'm gone," she declared. "And if I have to shoot you, I will."

"I'm not your enemy, 'Toinette."

"I hope that's true. I have enough of them right now. And I have them because of you," Annie pointed out.

"Who ever said life was fair? Sure as hell wasn't me."

He turned and walked away. He didn't invite her in; he expected her to follow him. No social niceties for Fourcade. They passed through the parlor, a room furnished with a toolbox and a sledgehammer. The floor was covered with a dirty canvas drop cloth. The kitchen was an absolute contrast -clean, bright, newly Sheetrocked, and painted the color of buttermilk. As tidy as a ship's galley. Nothing adorned the walls. Fresh herbs grew in a narrow tray on the windowsill above the sink.

Fourcade went to the sink to wash his hands.

"What changed your mind?" he asked.

"Noblier pulled me off patrol because the other deputies won't play nice. I gotta figure he won't promote me into your job anytime soon. So, if I want in on this case, you're my ticket."

He expressed no sympathy, and asked for no details about her trouble with Mullen or the others. It was her problem, not his.

"Get yourself assigned to Records and Evidence," he said, turning around, drying his hands on a plain white towel. "You can read the files all day, study the reports."

"I'll see what I can do. It's up to the sheriff."

"Don't be passive," he snapped. "Ask for what you want."

"And you think I'll just get it?" Annie laughed. "You're really not from this planet, are you, Fourcade?"

His face grew hard. "You won't get anything you don't ask for one way or another, sugar. You better learn that lesson fast, you want this job. People don't just give up their secrets. You gotta ask, you gotta pry, you gotta dig."

"I know that."

"Then do it."

"I will. I have," she insisted. "I spoke with Donnie Bichon today."

Fourcade looked surprised. "And?"

"And he seems like a man with a conscience problem. But then maybe you don't wanna hear that-the two of you being so close and all."

"I have no ties to Donnie Bichon."

"He bailed you out of jail to the tune of a hundred thousand dollars."

He rested his hands at the waist of his fatigue pants. "As I said to Donnie, I will say to you: He bought my freedom, he did not buy me. No one buys me. "

"A refreshing policy for a New Orleans cop."

"I'm no longer in New Orleans. I didn't assimilate well."

"That's not what I've been reading," Annie said. "I spent the better part of the afternoon at the library. According to the Times-Picayune, you were the quintessential corrupt cop. You got a lotta ink down there. None of it good."

"The press is easily manipulated by powerful people."

Annie winced. "Oooh, you know, it's remarks like that that lead people to draw unflattering conclusions about your sanity."

"People think what they want. I know the truth. I lived the truth."

"And your version of the truth would be what?" she pressed.

He simply stared at her, and she saw the bleakness of a soul who had lived a long, hard life and had seen too much that wasn't good.

"The truth is that I did my job too well," he said at last.

"And I made the mistake of caring too deeply for justice in a place that has none, existentially speaking."

"Did you beat that suspect?"

He said nothing.

"Did you plant that evidence?"

He bowed his head for a moment, then turned his back to her and pulled a cast-iron skillet from a lower cupboard.

She wanted to go to him, demand the truth, but she was afraid to get that near him. Afraid something might rub off on her-his intensity, his compulsion, the darkness that permeated his being. She was already involving herself in this case beyond the call of duty. She didn't want to go beyond reason, and she had a strong feeling Fourcade could take her there in a heartbeat.

"I need an answer, Detective."

"It's irrelevant to the present case."

"Prior bad acts inadmissible on the ground they may taint the opinion of the court? Bull. More often than not they establish a pattern of behavior," Annie argued. "Besides, we're not in court; we're in the real world. I have to know who I'm dealing with, Fourcade, and I already told you, I'm not long on trust at the moment."

"Trust is of no use in an investigation," he said, moving between stove, refrigerator, and butcher block. He set an assortment of vegetables on the chopping block and selected a knife of frightening proportions.

"It is with regards to partners," Annie insisted. "Did you plant that ring in Renard's desk?"

He looked up at her then, unblinking. "No."

"Why should I believe you? How do I know Donnie Bichon didn't pay you to plant it? He could have paid you to kill Renard the other night, for all I know."

He sliced into a red bell pepper as if it were made of thin paper. "Now who's paranoid?"

"There's a difference between healthy suspicion and delusion."

"Why would I invite you into the investigation if I was dirty?"

"So you can use me like a puppet to achieve your own end."

He smiled. "You are far too smart for that, 'Toinette."

"Don't waste your flattery."

"I don't believe in flattery. Me, I say what's true."

"When it suits you."

She sighed as they came around the circle again. A conversation with Fourcade was like shadowboxing-all effort and no satisfaction.

"Why me?" she asked. "Why not Quinlan or Perez?"

"It's a small division. We live in each other's pockets. One itches, another one scratches. You're outside the circle -that's an advantage." He flashed the grin again, bright with a charm he never used. "You're my secret weapon, 'Toinette."

She tried one last time to talk herself out of this lunacy. But she didn't want to, and he knew it.

"You feel an obligation, a tie to Pam Bichon," he said, "and to those who've gone before her. You feel the shadows. That's why you're here. That and you know we want the same end, you and I: Renard in hell."

"I want the case cleared," Annie said. "If Renard did it-"

"He did it."

"-then fine. I'll dance in the street the day they send him from Angola to the next life. If he didn't do it-"

He jabbed the point of the knife into the butcher block. "He did it."

Annie said nothing. She had to be out of her mind to come here to him.

"It's simple," he said, calmer. He pulled the knife out of the block and began to dice an onion. "I have what you need, 'Toinette. Facts, statements, answers to questions you have yet to ask. All of it can be checked if need be. You have an inquisitive mind, a free will, an appropriate skepticism. I have no power over you…" The knife stilled. He looked at her from under his brow. "Do I?"

"No," she said quietly, glancing away.

"Then we can proceed. But first, we eat."