A Thin Dark Line

Pissed doesn't begin to cover it.'

'You're gonna have to get over it if you're gonna work with me,' he said bluntly.

'Work with you? I don't even want to be in the same room with you!'

'Ah, that…'

He moved quickly, knocking her gun hand to the side and up. The Kurz spat a round into the ceiling, and plaster dust rained down. In seconds Fourcade had the gun out of her hand and had her drawn up hard against him with one arm pulled up behind her back.

'… that would be untrue,' he finished.

He let her go abruptly and went back to the table, scanning her papers on the case. 'I can help you, 'Toinette. We want the same end, you and I. '

'Ten minutes ago you thought I was part of a conspiracy against you.'

He still didn't know that she wasn't, he reminded himself. But she wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of building a casebook on Pam Bichon's murder if she wasn't truly interested in seeing it solved.

'I want the case cleared,' he said. 'Marcus Renard belongs in hell. If you want to make that happen, if you want justice for Pam Bichon and her daughter, you'll come to me. I've got ten times what you've got lying here on this table- statements, complaints, photographs, lab reports, duplicates of everything that's on file at the sheriff's department.'

This was what she had wanted, Annie thought: To work with Fourcade, to have access to the case, to try-for Josie's sake and to silence the phantom screams in her own mind. But Fourcade was too volatile, too wired, too unpredictable. He was a criminal, and she was the one who had run him in.

'Why me?' she asked. 'You should hate me more than the rest of them do.'

'Only if you sold me out.'

'I didn't, but-'

'Then I can't hate you,' he said simply. 'If you didn't sell me out, then you acted on your principles and damned the consequences. I can't hate you for that. For that, I would respect you.'

'You're a very strange man, Fourcade.'

He touched a hand to his chest. 'Me, I'm one of a kind, 'Toinette. Ain'tcha glad?'

Annie didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Fourcade laid her weapon on the table and came toward her, serious again.

'I don't wanna let go of this case,' he said. 'I want Renard to go down for what he did. If I can't trust Stokes, then I can't work through him. That leaves you. You said you felt an obligation to Pam Bichon. You want to meet that obligation, you'll come to me. Until then…'

He started to lower his head. Annie's breath caught. Anticipation tightened her muscles. Her lips parted slightly, as if she meant to tell him no. Then he touched two fingers to his forehead in salute, turned, and walked out of her apartment and into the night.

'Holy shit,' she whispered.

She stood there as the minutes ticked past. Finally she went out onto the landing, but Fourcade was gone. No tail lights, no fading purr of a truck engine. The only sounds were the night sounds of the swamp: the occasional call of nocturnal prey and predator, the slap of something that broke the surface of the water and dived beneath once more.

For a long time she stared out at the night. Thinking. Wondering. Tempted. Frightened. She thought of what Fourcade had said to her that night in the bar. 'Stay away from those shadows, 'Toinette… They'll suck the life outta you.'

He was a man full of shadows, strange shades of darkness and unexpected light. Deep stillness and wild energy. Brutal yet principled. She didn't know what to make of him. She had the distinct feeling that if she accepted his challenge, her life would be altered in a permanent way. Was that what she wanted?

She thought of Pam Bichon, alone with her killer, her screams for mercy tearing the fabric of the night, unheeded, unanswered. She wanted closure. She wanted justice. But at what price?

She felt as if she were standing on the edge of an alternate dimension, as if eyes from that other side were watching her, waiting in expectation for her next move.

Finally she went inside, never imagining that the eyes were real.

'I feel a sense of limbo, as if I'm holding my breath. It isn't over. I don't know that it will ever be over.

The actions of one person trigger the actions of another and another, like waves.

I know the wave will come to me again and sweep me away. I can see it in my mind: a tide of blood.

I see it in my dreams.

I taste it in my mouth.

I see the one it will take next.

The tide has already touched her.'

15

The call came at 12:31. Annie had double-checked the locks on her doors and gone to bed, but she wasn't sleeping. She picked up on the third ring because a call in the dead of night could have been something worse than a reporter. Sos and Fanchon could have been in an accident. One of their many relatives might have fallen ill. She answered with a simple hello. No one answered back.

'Ahhh… a breather, huh?' she said, leaning back against her pillows, instantly picturing Mullen on the other end of the line. 'You know, I'm surprised you guys didn't start in with calls two nights ago. We're talking simple, no-brain harassment. Right up your alley. I have to say, I was actually expecting the 'you fucking bitch' variety. Big bad faceless man on the other end of the line. Oooh, how scary.'

She waited for an epithet, a curse. Nothing. She pictured the dumbfounded look on Mullen's face, and smiled.

'I'm docking you points for lack of imagination. But I suppose I'm not the first woman to tell you that.'

Nothing.

'Well, this is boring and I have to work tomorrow-but then, you already knew that, didn't you?'

Annie rolled her eyes as she hung up. A breather. Like that was supposed to scare her after what she'd been through tonight. She switched off the lamp, wishing she could turn off her brain as easily.

The pros and cons of Fourcade's offer were still bouncing in her head at five A.M. Exhaustion had pulled her under into sleep intermittently during the night, but there had been no rest in it, only dreams full of anxiety. She finally gave up and dragged herself out of bed, feeling worse than she had when she'd crawled between the sheets at midnight. She splashed cold water on her face, rinsed her mouth out, and pulled on her workout clothes.

Her brain refused to shut down as she went through her routine of stretching and warm-up. Maybe Fourcade's offer was all part of a revenge plot. If his compadres in the department hated her enough to get back at her, why wouldn't he?

'If you didn't sell me out, then you acted on your principles and damned the consequences. I can't hate you for that. For that, I would respect you.'

Damned if she didn't believe he meant it. Did that make her an astute judge of character or a fool?

She hooked her feet into the straps on the incline board and started her sit-ups. Fifty every morning. She hated every one.

Fourcade's ravings about Duval Marcotte, the New Orleans business magnate, should have been enough to put her off for good. She had never heard any scandal attached to Marcotte-which should have made her suspicious. Nearly everyone in power in New Orleans had his good name smeared on a regular basis. Nasty politics was a major league sport in the Big Easy. How was it Marcotte stayed so clean?