A Thin Dark Line

out of control. She lay perfectly still, waiting.

She had left the night-light on in the bathroom down the hall, and a faint shaft of illumination spilled out the partly opened door into the hallway.

She saw him coming. The black figure of doom. No features, no face, as silent as death.

Death.

Why me? Kim wondered as he slipped into the bedroom. Why did he pick me? What did I do to deserve this?

She would know later, she thought, as he came toward the bed. She would find out after she killed him.

In one smooth motion, and without hesitation, Kim Young sat up, swung the gun out from under her husband's pillow, and pulled the trigger.

42

The dream was washed in filtered shades of red. Soft red light as grainy as dust. Deep red shadows as liquid as blood. She stood in front of what she thought was a mirror, but the face staring back was not her own. Lindsay Faulkner looked through the glass at her, her expression accusatory, scornful. Annie reached out a hand to touch the mirror. The apparition came through the glass and passed over her, passed through her.

She twisted around and tried to run, but her body was bound in place by raw red muscle growing up from the floor and reaching out of the walls. Across the room, the apparition suddenly fell backward onto the floor, screaming. Then the floor heaved upward and became a wall, and the apparition became Pam Bichon, blood running like wine from her gaping wounds, her dark eyes burning blankly into Annie's.

With a shout, Annie clawed her way out of the dream, out of sleep. The sheet was twisted around her body like a sarong. She struggled free of it and sat up on the couch with her knees drawn up and her head in her hands. Her hair was wild and damp with sweat. Her T-shirt was soaked through. The air conditioner kicked on and blew its cold breath over her, raising gooseflesh. The disturbing quality of the dream clung to her like body odor. Shadows and blood. Shadowland:

'I'm doing the best I can, Pam,' she whispered. 'I'm doing the best I can.'

Too edgy to lie back down, she went into her bedroom and changed T-shirts. Fourcade had cleaned up the mess for her, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to sleep in the bed. Maybe after the images had some time to fade from her mind. Maybe after this was all over and she had a chance to put a fresh coat of paint on the wall and buy some new pillows… Or maybe this was just one of the more obvious ways in which her life would never be the same.

She went to the kitchen for a drink, then pulled a Snickers bar from the freezer instead. Nibbling at the frozen chocolate, she wandered around her living room, using only the lights from the stereo system and the scanner to keep her from running into anything. Nick was outside somewhere. Stakeout duty. She didn't want to alarm him by turning on lights at two-thirty in the morning, even though it would have been nice to have some company. She was getting to like his company a little too much, she feared.

She sank down on the sofa and rubbed the taxidermized alligator's snout affectionately with her bare foot.

'Maybe I need to get a live pet, huh, Alphonse?' she muttered. The gator gave her his usual toothy grin.

Across the room the scanner scratched out a call.

'All units in the vicinity: We've got a possible 245 and a 261 at 759 Duff Road in Luck. Shots fired. Code 3.'

A possible assault and rape. All deputies were to come fast with lights and sirens.

'The caller says she shot him,' the dispatcher said. 'We've got an ambulance on the way.'

Luck was just down the road and across the bayou. And, if Annie's hunch was right, Chaz Stokes may just have been lying in a pool of blood at 759 Duff Road.

Two units made the scene ahead of her. The cars sat at flamboyant angles in the front yard of the little brick house, beacons rolling. One officer sat on the concrete front steps, either watching out for the ambulance or being sick. The latter, Annie guessed as she crossed the lawn.

He grabbed hold of the wrought iron railing to steady himself as he rose to his feet. The front-porch light gleamed off his red hair like the sun on a new copper penny and Annie thanked heaven for small favors. This cop was a Doucet. Blood was thicker than the Brotherhood. Blood was thicker than anything in South Louisiana.

'Hey, Annie, that you?'

'Hey, Tee-Rouge, where y'at?'

'Tossing my cookies. What you doing here, chere?'

'Caught it on the scanner. I thought the victim might appreciate having another woman here,' she lied.

Tee-Rouge gave a snort and waved a hand in dismissal. 'That's some victim. Somebody oughta lift that li'l gal's nightie and see what kind of hairy balls she's hiding under there. She shot this son of a bitch point-blank in the face with a cut-down shotgun.'

'Youch. Who is he?' Annie asked, trying for casual, feeling anything but. In her mind's eye she pictured Stokes creeping toward the woman's bed, the woman raising the shotgun, Stokes's face exploding.

Tee-Rouge shrugged. 'Chere, his mama wouldn't know him if he sat up and called her name. He's got no ID, but he was wearing the mask. There's feathers all over the damn scene. This is our scumbag of the season right here.'

'You call the detectives?'

'Yeah, but Stokes, he's who-knows-where. In bed with some chick, probably-no offense.'

Annie's heartbeat quickened. 'He's not answering his page?'

'Not so far. Quinlan's on his way, but he lives clear up in Devereaux. It'll take him some time to get down here.'

'Who's inside?' she asked, starting for the door.

'Pitre.'

Groaning to herself, Annie went on into the house as a third cruiser came screaming down the road. Every patrol in the parish was being abandoned in favor of the excitement of a 'hot crime scene. Everybody wanted in on wrapping the Mardi Gras case.

The living room was empty. There was no immediate sign of the victim. The bedroom looked to be a straight shot down the hall to the left. Pitre stood just inside the doorway, at the feet of the fallen assailant. Annie took a deep breath and marched down the hall.

'I'm not gonna want pizza any time soon,' Pitre muttered, then looked up at the source of the footfalls. 'Broussard, what the hell are you doing here? You're not on tonight. Hell, you're barely on the force at all.'

Annie ignored him, turning to look at the dead man. He wasn't her first. He wasn't even her first by shotgun. But he was the first hit at close range, and the sight was by no means pretty.

The rapist lay on the floor, arms outflung. He was dressed in black, covering every inch of his body, including his hands. He could have been black, white, Indian-there was no telling. There was virtually nothing left of his face. The flesh-and-bone mask that set one human being apart from the next had been obliterated. The raw meat, shattered bone, and exposed brain matter could have belonged to anyone. The hair was saturated with blood, its color indistinguishable. A fragment of the black feather mask was stuck to a jagged piece of cranium. The stench of violent death was thick in the air.

'Oh my Lord,' Annie breathed, her knees wilting a bit. The Snickers bar threatened a return trip, and she had to steel herself against spewing it all over the crime scene.

Scraps and chunks of the assailant's face had been sprayed up onto the ceiling and on the pale yellow wall. The sawed-off shotgun lay abandoned on the bed.

'If you can't take it, leave, Broussard. Nobody asked you here,' Pitre said, moving around the bed to check out the shotgun. 'Stokes won't be amused to see you.'

'Yeah? Well, maybe the joke's on him,' Annie muttered, trying to think ahead. Should she pull Quinlan aside when he arrived and tell him about the possibility? Or should she just step back and let the thing unravel on its