A Thin Dark Line

He could feel his patience fraying like an old rope, and he resented her for it. He had come home from the library with his head full of Annie, a pleasant warmth glowing just under his skin. Shutting out Victor's incessant noise, he had spent the drive home replaying the encounter in his mind, from Annie's look of surprise when she'd first turned to face him to the subtle messages in her tone of voice. She couldn't publicly accept his attentions until she had cleared him of Pam's murder. He understood. He would have to be discreet. It would be like a game between them, another secret only they shared.

'It's not forest,' Doll muttered, moving to examine the spot from another angle. 'It's just as I saw it in my premonition. The color won't match no matter what we do, and every time I look at that wall I'll be taken with the fear of that night. Fear and shame-that's all my life has become. I can barely bring myself to leave the house these days.'

Marcus bit back the words that sprang instantly to his tongue. She had hounded him all morning to take her into town because she needed to go to the drugstore and the supermarket. She didn't trust him to get the brands she liked and she refused to write them down because she didn't necessarily go by names, but by the colors and graphics on the packages. And of course she couldn't take her own car and go herself on account of her nerves and the mysterious undiagnosed palsy mat had been coming on her lately- because of him and the unwanted attention he'd drawn to the family.

'All because of your infatuation with that woman,' she said now, as if she was simply jumping back into the conversation they'd had nine hours ago. 'I don't know why you can't content yourself, Marcus.'

Content myself with what? With you? He looked at her out the corner of his eye as he climbed down from the step stool and began the process of cleaning up. He envisioned forcing her head into the paint can and drowning her in her damned forest paint, but of course he wouldn't do that any more than he would cram the paint-soaked sponge into her mouth and suffocate her, or stab her in the base of her throat with the screwdriver he'd used to open the can.

'Look what happened. Look what it's done to our lives.'

'What happened was not my fault, Mother,' he said, tapping the lid of the can down with a rubber mallet. If wielded with enough fury, would it do the same damage as a hammer?

'Of course it is,' Doll insisted. 'You were infatuated with that woman, and now she's dead and everyone naturally believes you did it. You should have left her alone.'

'It was a misunderstanding,' he said, gathering up his tools and the can. The spot would need a second application, but the paint couldn't be left out. Victor enjoyed the texture and viscosity of paint, and would put his hands into it and spill it out to watch it pool on the floor. 'Annie will clear it up for us. She's working on the case day and night.'

'Annie.' Doll shook her head, following him into the kitchen. 'She's no better than the rest of them, Marcus. You mark my words, she's not your friend.'

He stopped at the back door and stared at his mother, defiant. 'She saved my life. She's going out of her way to help me. I believe that would define the word friend.'

He pushed the door open with his elbow and went out to the small, locked shed where he kept things like paint and power tools. A single bulb illuminated the rough cypress walls. He put the paint and tools away and shut the light off. If he waited long enough, he knew his mother would go to bed and he wouldn't have to speak to her again until morning. It was nearly ten o'clock. She had to be in her room for the start of the news, though he could never imagine why. The news never failed to agitate and disgust her for one reason or another. Ritual. She was as bound to it as Victor.

She couldn't understand about Annie, he told himself as he waited for the kitchen light to go out. What did his mother know of friends? She'd never had one that he'd ever been aware of. He doubted even his father had been a friend to her. She would never understand about Annie.

The lights went out in the kitchen, then the dining room. Cutting across the terrace, Marcus went to his workroom and let himself in through one of the French doors with the key he kept under a flowerpot. He went first into his bedroom for a Percodan, to calm both his pains and his nerves, then came back into his studio and gathered his things from his private cupboard.

The drug began to work quickly, relaxing him, giving him a vaguely floaty feeling, insulating him from both physical pain and emotional unpleasantness. Staring at his sketch, he drove everything from his mind except Annie.

Of course he was taken with her. She was pretty. She was intelligent. She was fair-minded. She was his angel. That was what he called her when he imagined the two of them together-Angel. It would be his secret name for her, another little something they would share only with each other. He drew a finger across his lips like closing a zipper, then smiled to himself. That had already become a pet signal between them. They had to be careful. They had to be discreet. She was risking so much by helping him.

He lifted the small keepsake from the drafting table and let it swing from his fingertips, smiling at the whimsy of it. It was a silly thing, hardly appropriate for a grown woman with a serious profession, and yet it suited her. She was still a girl in many respects-fresh, unspoiled, fun, uncertain. He recalled in perfect detail the uncertainty on her face as she turned and saw him tonight in the library. It made him want to hold her. Instead, he held the comical little plastic alligator with the sunglasses and red beret that he had taken down from the rearview mirror in Annie's Jeep.

She wouldn't mind that he had taken it, he reasoned. It was just another small secret between them. He pressed a phantom kiss to the alligator's snout and smiled. The Percodan felt like warm wine flowing through his veins. He closed his eyes for a moment and felt as if his body were going to drift up out of the chair.

He had brought out several of his treasures. Setting the alligator down on the ledge of the drawing table, he picked up the small, ornate photo frame and ran a fingertip along the filigreed edge, smiling sadly at the woman in the picture. Pam. Pam and her darling daughter. The things that might have been if Stokes and Donnie Bichon hadn't poisoned her against him…

Regretfully, he set the photograph aside and picked up the locket. There would be a certain symbolism in passing it to Annie. A thread of continuity.

Holding the locket in one hand, he took up his pencil in the other and touched it to the paper.

'I knew it.'

Three words could not have held more accusation. Despite the melting effect of the drug, Marcus straightened his spine at the sound of the voice. His mother stood directly behind him. He hadn't heard her come in through the bedroom, he'd been so engrossed in his fantasies.

'Mother-'

'I knew it,' Doll said again. She stared past him at the drawing on the tilt-top table. Tears rose in her eyes and she began to tremble. 'Oh, Marcus, not again.'

'You don't understand, Mother,' he said, sliding from his chair, the locket still dangling from his fist.

'I understand that you're pathetic,' she spat. 'You think that woman wants you? She wants you in jail! Do you belong there, Marcus?'

'No! Mama!'

Lunging past him, she grabbed the framed photograph from his table and held it so tightly in her hand that the metal cut into her fingers. She stared hard at the picture of Pam, her whole body trembling, then, sobbing, she threw the frame across the room.

'Why?' she cried. 'How could you do this?'

'I'm not a killer!' Marcus cried, his own tears burning his eyes. 'How can you think that, Mama?'

'Liar!' She slapped him hard on his chest with her open palm, staining his shirt with her blood. 'You're killing me now!'

Screaming, she turned and swept everything off the drawing table with a wild gesture.

'Mama, no!' Marcus cried, grabbing her arm as she reached for the portrait.

'Oh, Marcus!' Doll dragged her hand down her cheek, smearing her face with blood. 'I don't understand you.'

'No, you don't!' he shouted, pain tearing through his face as he strained against the wires in his jaw. 'I love Annie. You couldn't understand love. You don't know what love is. You know possession. You know manipulation. You don't know love. Get out. Get out of my room. I never asked you here. It's the one place I can be free of you.