A Thin Dark Line

32

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?"

"Shot a few rounds, huh?" Nick said, dousing the eggs with Tabasco from the bottle sitting on the back of the stove. "What'd you shoot? This handgun you've so carelessly left on your kitchen table?"

"Uh…"

"How about rifles? You shoot some clay?"

"Yeah."

"You have no clean plates," Nick announced with disapproval, picking up the frying pan by the handle. He tasted the eggs and forked up a second mouthful. "You hear about someone taking a shot at Renard last night?"

"Yeah." The uncertainty was still clear in his small mean eyes, but he had decided to pretend a bit of arrogance. They were compadres… maybe. He crossed his arms over his bare chest. A smirk twisted his lips, revealing crowded bad teeth. "Too bad he missed, huh?"

"You might assume I would think that, knowing me like you do," Nick said. "That wasn't you trying to help justice along there, was it, Keith?"

Mullen forced a laugh. "Hell no."

" 'Cause that's against the law, don'tcha know. Now, you might say that didn't stop me the other night. Deputy Broussard stopped me."

Mullen made a rude sound. "That little bitch. She oughta mind her own goddamn business."

"I hear you're trying to help her with that, no? Giving her a hard time and whatnot."

"She don't know nothing about loyalty, turning on one of us. Cunt's got no business being in a uniform."

Nick flinched at the obscenity, but held himself. His smile was sharp as he allowed himself to visualize swinging the frying pan like a tennis racket, Mullen's pointy head bouncing off the door frame, blood spraying from his nose and mouth.

"So, you've taken it upon yourself to avenge this wrong she committed against me," Nick said. "Because we're such good pals, you and me?"

"She hadn't oughta fuck with the Brotherhood."

Nick sent the pan sailing across the kitchen like a Frisbee. It landed in the sink with a crash of glass breaking beneath it.

"Hey!" Mullen yelled.

Nick hit him hard in the chest with the heel of his hand, knocking him backward into the cupboards, and held him there, his knuckles digging into the soft hollow just below Mullen's sternum.

"I am not your brother," he growled, staring into Mullen's eyes. "The mere suggestion of a genetic tie is an insult to my family. Nor would I count you among my friends. I don't know you from something I would scrape off my shoe. And you've not impressed me here this morning, Keith, I have to say. So I think you'll understand when I tell you I take exception to you acting on my behalf.

"I fight my own battles. I take care of my own problems. I won't tolerate being used as an excuse by some redneck asshole who only wants to bully a woman. You got your own problem with Broussard-that's one thing. You drag my name into it, I'll have to hurt you. You'd be smart to just leave her alone so that I don't misinterpret. Have I made myself clear to you?"

Mullen nodded with vigor. Gasping for breath, he doubled over, rubbing his hand against his diaphragm as Nick stepped back.

"I might have guessed a man with no honor would keep his kitchen this way." Nick shook his head as he took in the sorry state of the room one last time. "Sad."

Mullen looked up at him. "Fuck you. You're just as fuckin' nuts as everyone says, Fourcade."

Nick flashed a crocodile smile. "Don't sell me short, Keith. I'm way crazier than people think. You'd do well to remember that."

Annie had watched his truck go down the bayou road. A hollow feeling yawned in the middle of her. She didn't fall into bed with men she barely knew. She could count her lovers on one hand and have most of her fingers left over. Why Fourcade?

Because somewhere in the dark labyrinth that was Fourcade's personality there was a man worthy of more than what his past had dealt him. He believed in justice, a greater good, a higher power. He had destroyed his career for a fourteen-year-old dead girl no one else in the world cared about.

He had beaten a suspect bloody right before her very eyes. His hearing was little more than a week away.

"God, Broussard," she groaned, "the things you get into…"

Last night might have been about wanting and needing, but the future wasn't so simple. Fourcade could pretend to separate the attraction from the rest of it, but what would happen when she got up on the witness stand at his hearing and told the court she'd seen him commit a felony? And she would take the stand. Whatever feelings she had for him now didn't change what had happened or what would happen. She had a duty-to burn a cop on behalf of a killer.

Rubbing her temples, Annie went back into the apartment, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and went through her routine with the energy of a slug. She returned home from her run to the depressing sight of her half-trashed Jeep in the lot and A.J. sitting on the gallery.

He was already dressed for the office in a smart pinstriped suit and a crisp white shirt, his burgundy tie fluttering as he leaned forward with his forearms on his thighs.

His eyes were on her, a ghost of a hopeful smile curved his mouth.

At that moment he'd never been more handsome to Annie, never more dear. It broke her heart to think she was going to hurt him.

"Glad to see you in one piece," he said, rising as she came up the steps. "That Jeep gave me a scare. What happened?"

"Sideswiped. No big deal. Looks worse than it was," she lied.

He shook his head. "Lou'siana drivers. We gotta stop giving away driver's licenses with Wheaties box tops."

Annie found a smile for him and tugged on his tie. "What are you doing out here at this hour?"

"This is what you get for never answering your phone messages."

"I'm sorry. I've been busy."

"With what? From what I hear, you've got time on your hands these days."

She made a face. "So you heard about my change in job description?"

"Heard you got stuck with crime dog duty." He sobered just enough to make her nervous. "Why didn't I hear it from you?"

"I wasn't exactly proud."

"So? Since when do you not call me to whine and complain?" he said, his confusion plain, though he tried to smile.

Annie bit her lip and looked to the left of his shoulder. She would have given anything to wriggle out of this, but she couldn't and she knew it. Better to run through the minefield now and get it over with, "A.J., we need to talk."

He sucked in a breath. "Yeah, I guess we do. Let's go upstairs."

Images of her apartment flashed through Annie's head- the kitchen table spread with files from the Bichon case, her sheets rumpled from sex with Fourcade. She felt cheap and mean, a scarlet woman, a kicker of puppies.

"No," she said, catching his hand. "I need to cool off. Let's go sit on a boat."

She chose the pontoon at the far end of the dock, grabbed a towel from the storage bin, and wiped the dew from the last aqua plastic bench seat. A.J. followed reluctantly, pausing to look at the tip box Sos had mounted near the gate-a white wooden cube with a window in front and a foot-long gator head fixed over the top hole, mouth open in a money-hungry pose. The hand-lettering on the side read: TIP'S (POURBOIRE) MERCI!

"Remember the time Uncle Sos pretended this gator bit his finger off and he had all us kids screaming?"

Annie smiled. " 'Cause your cousin Sonny tried to sneak a dollar out."

"Then old Benoit, he did the trick, only he really didn't have half his fingers. Sonny about wet himself."

He slid onto the bench a few feet from her and reached out to touch her hand. "We got a lotta good memories," he said quietly. "So why you shutting me out now, Annie? What's the deal here? You still mad at me about the Fourcade thing?"

"I'm not mad at you."

"Then, what? We're going along fine, then all of a sudden I'm persona non grata. What-"

"What do you mean, 'going along fine'?"

"Well, you know-" A.J. struggled, clueless as to what he'd said wrong. He shrugged. "I thought-"

"Thought what? That the last hundred times I told you we're just friends I was speaking in some kind of code?"

"Oh, come on," he said, scowling. "You know there's more between us-"

Annie pushed to her feet, gaping at him. "What part of no do you not understand? You spent seven years in higher education and you can't grasp the meaning of a one-syllable word?"

"Of course I can, I just don't see that it applies to us."

"Christ," she muttered, shaking her head. "You're as bad as Renard."

"What's that supposed to mean? You're calling me a stalker?"

"I'm saying Pam Bichon told him no eight ways from Sunday and he just heard what he wanted to hear. How is that different from what you're doing?"

"Well, for starters, I'm not an accused murderer."

"Don't be a smart-ass. I'm serious, A.J. I keep trying to tell you, you want something from me I can't give you! How much plainer can I make it?"

He looked away as if she'd slapped him, the muscles in his jaw flexing. "I guess that's as plain as it gets."

Annie sank back down on the bench. "I don't want to hurt you, A.J.," she said softly. "That's the last thing I want to do. I love you-"

He barked a laugh.

"-just not in the way you need me to," she finished.

"But see," he said, "we've been through this cycle before, and you come around or I come around, and then-"

Annie cut him off with a shake of her head. "I can't do this, A.J. Not now. There's too much going on."

"Which you won't tell me about."

"I can't."

"You can't tell me? Why? What's going on?"

"I can't do this," she whispered, hating the need to keep things from him, to lie to him. Better to push him away so that he wouldn't want to know.

"I'm not the enemy, Annie!" he exploded. "We're on the same side, for crying out loud! Why can't you tell me? What can't you tell me?"

She dropped her face into her hands. Allying herself with Fourcade, investigating on her own, trying to get Renard to fixate on her so she could trick him into showing the ugly truth that lay beneath his bland mask-she could no more tell A.J. any of it than she could tell Sheriff Noblier. They may all have wanted the same outcome, but they weren't all on the same side.

"Oh," he said suddenly, as if an internal lightbulb just went on in his head, bright enough to hurt. "Maybe you didn't mean the job. Jesus." He huffed out a breath and looked at her sideways. "Is there someone else? Is that where you've been lately-with some other guy?"

Annie held her breath. There was Nick, but one night did not a relationship make, and she couldn't see much hope in it lasting.

"Annie? Is that it? Is there someone else?"

"Maybe," she hedged. "But that's not it. That's not… I'm so sorry," she said, weary of the fight. "You can't know how much I wish I felt differently, how much I wish this could be what you want it to be, A.J. But wishing can't make it so."

"Do I know him?"

"Oh, A.J., don't go there."

He stood with his hands on his hips, looking away from her, his pride smarting, his logical mind working to make sense of feelings that seldom bent to the will of reason. He wasn't so different from Fourcade that way-too analytical, too rational, confounded by the vagaries of human nature. Annie wanted to put her arms around him, to offer him comfort as a friend, but knew he wouldn't allow it now. The feeling of loss was a physical pain in the center of her chest.

"I know what you want," she murmured. "You want a wife. You want a family. I want you to have those things, A.J., and I'm not ready to be the person to give them to you. I don't know that I'll ever be."

He rubbed a hand across his jaw, blinked hard, checked his watch. "You know-" He stopped to clear his throat. "I don't have time for this conversation right now. I have to be in court this morning. I'll-ah-I'll call you later."

"A.J.-"

"Oh-ah-Pritchett wants you in his office this afternoon. Maybe I'll see you there."

Annie watched him walk away, stuffing a five in the alligator's mouth as he passed the tip box, her heart as heavy as a stone in her chest.

An old groundskeeper was scrubbing the toes of the Virgin Mary with a toothbrush when Annie wheeled into Our Lady of Mercy. Across the street, a woman smoking a pipe was selling cut flowers out of the back of a rusty Toyota pickup. Annie parked in the visitors' lot and climbed across the passenger's seat to let herself out of the Jeep. "The Heap" she had decided to call it, trashed as it was. The impact of one of the collisions had jammed the driver's door shut.

"Dat ol' woman, she steal dem flowers," the grounds-keeper said, shaking the toothbrush at Annie as she passed. "She steal 'em right out the garden at the Vet'rans Park. Me, I seen her do it. Why you don't arrest her?"

"You'll have to call the police, sir."

His dark face squeezed tight, making his eyes pop out like Ping-Pong balls. "You is the police!"

"No, sir, I'm with the sheriff's office."

"Bah! Dogs is all dogs when you calls 'em for supper!"

"Yes, sir. Whatever that means," Annie muttered as the doors whooshed open in front of her.

The ICU was quiet except for the sound of machines. A woman with cornrows and purple-framed glasses sat behind the desk, watching the monitors and talking on the phone. She barely glanced up as Annie passed. There was no guard at the door to Lindsay Faulkner's room. Good news, bad news, Annie thought. She didn't have to get past a uniform… and neither did anyone else.

Faulkner lay in her bed in the ICU looking like a science experiment gone wrong. Her head and face were swathed mummy-like in bandages. Tubes fed into her and out of her. Monitors and machines of mysterious purpose blinked and cheeped, their display screens filled with glowing medical hieroglyphics. The redhead with the expired license plates rose from her chair beside the bed as Annie approached.

"How's she doing?" Annie asked.

"Better, actually," she said in a hushed tone. "She's out of the coma. She's been in and out of consciousness. She's said a few words."

"Does she know who did this to her?"

"No. She doesn't remember anything about the attack. Not yet, anyway. The other detective was already here and asked."

Two miracles in one morning: Lindsay Faulkner conscious and Chaz Stokes out of bed before eight A.M. Maybe he was making an effort after all. Maybe the spotlight of the task force would bring out some ambition in him.

"Has she had many visitors?"

"They only allow family up here," the redhead said. "We haven't been able to reach her parents. They're traveling in China. Until we can get them here, the hospital has agreed to make exceptions to the rule. Belle Davidson has been in, Grace from the realty, me."

"She'll need y'all to help her through this," Annie said. "She's got a long road ahead of her."

"Don't talk… about me… like I'm not… here."

At the sound of the weak voice, the redhead turned toward the bed, smiling. "You weren't here a minute ago."

"Ms. Faulkner, it's Annie Broussard," Annie said, leaning down. "I came to see how you're doing."

"You… found me… after…"

"Yes, I did."

"Thank… you."

"I wish I could have done more," Annie said. "There's a whole task force looking for the guy who did this to you."

"You… on it?"

"No. I've been reassigned. Detective Stokes is in charge. I hear you had lunch with him the other day. Did you have something to tell him about Pam? Was that why you called me Monday?"

The silence stretched so long Annie thought perhaps consciousness had ebbed away from her again. The sounds of the monitors filled the cubicle. Annie started to draw back from the bed.

"Donnie," Faulkner whispered.

"What about Donnie?"

"Jealous."

"Jealous of who?" Annie asked, bending close.

"Stupid… It wasn't anything."

She was slipping away. Annie touched Faulkner's arm in an attempt to maintain her connection to the waking world.

"Who was Donnie jealous of, Lindsay?"

The silence hung again, like a cold breath in the air.

"Detective Stokes."