A Thin Dark Line

red. Enter out. Enter out now!'

'He'll be ranting for days,' Doll said bitterly.

Marcus cut her a look. 'Mother, please. We're all upset. Victor has as much reason as the rest of us. More than you- he could have been killed.'

Doll's jaw dropped as if he'd struck her. 'I never said he shouldn't be upset! How dare you talk to me that way in front of a guest!'

'I'm sorry, Mother. Forgive my short temper. My manners aren't what they should be. Someone meant to kill me earlier.'

Annie cleared her throat to draw his attention. 'Where were you sitting?'

He glanced toward the shattered door. Dozens of insects had flocked in through the hole and now swarmed around the light fixture. Gnats dotted the ceiling like flecks of black ink. 'I was out of the room.'

'You weren't sitting here when the shot was fired?'

'No. I had left the room several moments prior.'

'Why?'

'To use the bathroom. We'd been sitting here drinking coffee.'

'Do you own a handgun or a rifle?'

'Of course not,' he said, a flush creeping up his neck.

'I wouldn't have a gun in this house,' Doll said with great affront. 'I wouldn't even let Marcus have a BB gun as a boy. They're filthy instruments of violence and nothing more. His father had guns,' she said with accusation. 'I got rid of every one of them. Temptations to violence.'

'You can't think I staged this,' Marcus said, looking hard at Annie.

'Staged it?' Doll shrilled. 'What do you mean- 'staged' it?'

Annie turned her back on them and went to the wall where the slug had buried itself in the thick horsehair plaster. It looked as if the call deputies had dug the thing out with a pickax. Plaster littered the floor in crumbled chunks and fine dust. The bullet had struck a good foot above the heads of anyone seated at the table. One of the things any marksman had to consider when aiming was the drop of the bullet as it traveled away from the barrel of the gun. To hit where this shot had hit, the triggerman had to have been aiming still higher.

'Either he was a piss-poor shot or he never meant to hit anyone,' she said.

'What do you mean?' Doll asked. 'Someone shot at us! We were sitting right here!'

'Had you noticed anyone hanging around earlier in the day?' Annie asked. 'Today or any other day recently?'

'Fishermen go past on the bayou,' she said, fluttering one bony hand in the direction of the waterway as she clutched the bodice of her baggy housedress with the other. 'And those horrible reporters come and go, though we have nothing to say to them. They do as they will. I've never seen such an ill-mannered lot in all my life. There was a time in this country when etiquette meant something-'

Marcus squeezed his eyes shut. 'Mother, could we please stick to the subject? Annie isn't interested in a discussion of the decline of formal manners and mores.'

Doll's complexion mottled pink and white. Her face went tight, pulling skin against bone and tendon. 'Well, excuse me if my views aren't important to you, Marcus,' she said tightly. 'Pardon me if you believe Annie doesn't want to hear what I think.'

'This has been traumatic for all of you, I'm sure,' Annie said diplomatically.

'Don't patronize me!' Doll snapped. Her entire body was trembling with anger. 'You think we're either criminals or fools. You're no better than any of the others.'

'Mother-'

'Red! Red! No!' Victor shrieked, rocking so hard the chair legs came up off the floor. He slapped the tabletop over and over.

'If you believe she cares about us, Marcus, you are a fool.' Doll turned away from him to her other son. 'Come along, Victor. You're going to bed. No one here needs our presence.'

'Not now! Not now! Very red!' Victor's voice screeched upward like metal rending. He curled himself into a ball as his mother clamped a white-knuckled hand on his shoulder.

'Come along, Victor!'

Sobbing, Victor Renard unfolded his body from the chair and allowed his mother to tow him from the room.

Marcus hung his head and stared at the floor, embarrassment and anger coloring his battered face. 'Well, wasn't that lovely? Another night in the life of the happy Renard family. I'm sorry, Annie. Sometimes I think my mother doesn't any more know what to do with her emotions than does Victor.'

Annie made no comment. It was more useful for her to see the Renards coming apart at the seams than to see them wrapped tightly in control. She moved toward the French doors, stepping around the broken glass. 'I'd like to look around outside.'

'Of course.'

Out on the terrace she filled her lungs with air that tasted of copper. Clouds appeared to sag to the treetops, bloated with rain that had yet to fall.

'Just to set things straight,' Marcus said, 'my mother has never believed in the good in people. She's been waiting for a lynch mob to show up on the front lawn, and never misses the opportunity to point out that it's all my fault. I'm sure she's secretly pleased by this in her own twisted way.'

'I didn't come here to discuss your mother, Mr. Renard.'

'Please call me Marcus.' He turned toward her. The light that filtered out from the house softened and shadowed his bruises and stitches. With the swelling gone he was no longer grotesque, merely homely. He didn't look dangerous, he looked pathetic. 'Please, Annie. I need to at least pretend I have a friend in all this.'

'Your lawyer is your friend. I'm a cop.'

'But you're here and you don't have to be. You came for me.'

She wanted to tell him differently, had tried to set him straight, but either he didn't listen or he twisted the truth to suit himself.

It was the kind of thinking that applied to stalkers and other obsessive personalities. The unwillingness or inability to accept the truth. There was nothing overt in Renard's attitude. Nothing that could have been deemed crazy, and yet this subtle insistence to bend reality to his wishes was disturbing.

She wanted to distance herself from him. But the truth was the closer she got to him, the more likely she was to see something the detectives had missed. He might let down his guard, make a mistake. 'He could fall in love with you…' and she'd be there to nail him.

'All right… Marcus,' she said, his name sticking in her mouth like a gob of peanut butter.

He let out a breath, as if in relief, and slid his hands into his pants pockets. 'Fourcade,' he said. 'You asked if anyone had come by recently. Fourcade was here on Saturday. On the bayou.'

'Do you have any reason to believe Detective Fourcade is the one who took that shot tonight?'

He made a choking laugh, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and dabbed at the corners of his mouth. 'He tried to kill me last week, why not this week?'

'He wasn't himself that night. He'd lost a tough decision in court. He'd been drinking. He-'

'You're not going to make excuses for him at the hearing next week, are you?' he asked, looking at her with shock. 'You were there. You saw what he was doing to me. You said it yourself: He was trying to kill me.'

'We're not talking about last week. We're talking about tonight. Did you see him tonight? Have you seen him since Saturday? Has he called you? Has he threatened you?'

'No.'

'And of course you didn't see the shooter because you happened to be in the bathroom at the precise moment-'

'You don't believe me,' he said flatly.

'I believe if Detective Fourcade wanted you dead, you'd be meeting your maker right now,' Annie said. 'Nick Fourcade isn't going to mistake your brother for you or put a shot in the wall a foot above your head. He'd blow your skull apart like a rotten melon, and I don't doubt but that he could do it in the dark at a hundred yards.'