A Thin Dark Line

him about it.'

'What did he say?'

'He became irate and went into his workroom. No one is supposed to disturb him there, but I followed him,' she confessed. 'I never wanted to believe it was anything more than infatuation, what he felt for that woman, but I confess, I'd had a premonition. I'm very sensitive that way. I'd had these feelings, but I just wouldn't believe them.

'I watched Marcus from the door without him knowing. He went to a cupboard and got some things out of it, and I knew. I just knew.'

'What things?'

Doll bowed her head over the pocketbook in her lap. She reached into the bag and closed her hand around something, hesitating, withdrawing it slowly.

As she held the small picture frame out, Annie felt a strange rush shoot up her arms and into her head. She gripped one arm of the chair as the rush became a wave of dizziness. The picture frame that had gone missing from Pam Bichon's office. One of the items the detectives had searched for in order to at least tie Renard to the stalking charges. None of the items had ever been found.

Annie took it now and looked at it in the artificial light draining out the restaurant's front window. The frame was a delicate antique silver filigree, the glass inside it cracked. The photo was no more than two inches by three inches, but portrayed in that small space was a wealth of emotion-the love between a mother and child. Josie couldn't have been more than five, sitting on her mother's lap, gazing up at her with an angelic smile. Pam, her arms wrapped around her baby, smiling down at her with absolute adoration.

Marcus Renard had stolen this photograph and destroyed the relationship portrayed within it. He had taken a mother from her child. He had extinguished the spirit of a woman who had loved and had been loved by so many people.

The dizziness swooped through her again. A reaction to the photograph, Annie supposed. Or to the caffeine. She felt vaguely ill… at the sure knowledge that the man who had become infatuated with her was in fact the man who had committed unspeakable acts against the woman in this photograph. Fourcade had been right all along: the trail, the logic, led back to Renard.

'Marcus stole that, didn't he?' Doll said.

'Yes.'

'There were other things too, but I was afraid to take them. I believe he's stolen things from me,' she admitted. 'A cameo that was in my mother's family. A locket I'd had for years-since Victor was born. God only knows what he did with them.'

God and me, Annie thought, shuddering inwardly. And Pam Bichon. And probably Elaine Ingram before her. A clammy chill ran across her skin. She worked to pull in a deep breath of the humid night air, and stared down at the photograph that blurred a little before her eyes as the dizziness tipped through her again.

'I didn't want to believe he would do it again,' Doll said. 'The preoccupation and all.'

'Do you think he killed those women, Mrs. Renard?' Annie asked, the words sticking on her tongue. She took another drink of her coffee to clear the taste of the question. How awful for a mother to think her son was a murderer.

Doll pressed her hand over her face and began to weep, her body quivering. 'He's my son! He's all I have. I don't want to lose him!'

And yet she'd brought forward the evidence.

'I'm sorry,' Annie murmured. 'But we'll have to take this to the sheriff.'

She pushed her chair back and stood, swaying unsteadily on her feet, the dizziness swarming around her head like a cloud of bees. She felt as if she might just float off the ground, and had no control over whether she would or would not. As she stepped away from the table the ground seemed to dip beneath her feet, and she staggered.

'Oh, my goodness!' Doll Renard's voice sounded far away. 'Are you all right, Deputy Broussard?'

'Uh, I'm a little dizzy,' Annie mumbled.

'Perhaps you should sit back down?'

'No, I'll be fine. Too much caffeine, that's all. We need to get to the sheriff.'

She attempted another step and went down hard on one knee. The picture frame fell from her hand.

'Oh, dear!' Doll gasped. 'Let me help you!'

'This is embarrassing,' Annie said, steadying herself against the older woman as she rose. 'I'm so sorry.'

Doll sniffed and wrinkled her nose. 'Have you been drinking, Deputy?'

'No, no, that was an assident.' Alarm jumped through her at the sound of her own voice, the words slurred and indistinct. Her body felt heavy, as if she were moving through a vat of Jell-O. 'I'm just not feeling well. We'll go to the station. I'll be fine.'

They moved slowly toward the Cadillac, Doll Renard on Annie's right, supporting her. The woman was so much stronger than she looked, Annie thought. Or maybe it was just that she suddenly had no strength at all. An electric buzzing vibrated in her arms and legs. The fingertip she had pricked on the rose stem throbbed like a beating heart.

The rose thorn. The rose Marcus had given her.

Poisoned. God, she'd never expected that. But it was certainly poetic-that a token of love would become an instrument of death when the love was spurned. He would think that way, the twisted, sick son of a bitch.

'Mizzuz Renard?' she said as she collapsed into the passenger's seat of the car. 'I think maybe we shhhould go to the hossspital. I think I might be dying.'

He wanted to kill her. He wanted to put his hands around Annie Broussard's throat and watch her face as he choked her. She had played him for a fool. The last joke would be on her. The violent fantasy splashed in vivid color through Marcus's mind as he pushed his way through the crowd.

The noise of the party was a discordant cacophony in his ears. The lights and colors were too bright, too garish against the black of night and the black of his mood. Faces loomed in at him, laughing mouths and hideous masks. He stumbled into a Ronald Reagan pretender, spilling the man's beer in a geyser onto the sidewalk.

'Fucking drunk!' Reagan shouted. 'Watch where you're going!'

In retaliation, the man shoved him hard, and Marcus careened into another reveler in a Zorro mask and a porkpie hat. Stokes.

Stokes stumbled backward, feet scrambling. Marcus fell with him, fell on him amid the forest of legs. He wished he had a knife. He imagined himself stabbing Stokes as they fell, then getting up and walking away before anyone realized.

'Stupid motherfucker!' Stokes yelled, getting up.

Before Marcus could right himself, Stokes booted him in the ribs. Holding himself, Marcus struggled to his feet and kept going, half doubled over, laughter ringing behind him. He pressed on through the crowd, then turned the corner and hurried down the side street toward Bowen amp; Briggs.

The thick, humid air burned in his lungs. His chest felt banded with steel, the pressure crushing against his cracked ribs. Small, sharp pains burst through him with every breath. His face was on fire. He tore off the painted mask and threw it in the gutter. It was no disguise compared to the mask Annie had worn. Betrayal with the lawyer was the least of her crimes. The slut. He had overlooked and rationalized and made excuses for her, sure that she would see in the end how right it could be between them. She deserved to be punished for what she'd put him through. He punished her in his mind as the emotions tore through him. Love, rage, hate. She would be sorry. In the end, she would be sorry.

He felt as if he'd been eviscerated. Why did this have to happen to him time and again? Why couldn't the women he loved love him in return? Why did his feelings grab hold so hard and refuse to let go? Love, passion, need, need, need. He was an otherwise normal man. He was intelligent. He had talents. He had a good job. Why did his need have to overwhelm him again and again?

As he let himself into the Volvo, tears rolled down his face, scalding with both pain and shame. His body was rigid and trembling with anger, the tension magnifying his various injuries, the physical pain further humiliating