A Thin Dark Line

'I mean, I'm looking right at the inventories and I don't see any feathers. They were never logged in here. Sorry.'

Annie thanked the woman and hung up.

'No feathers,' she murmured as Myron marched back into the office.

'Deputy Broussard, what are you mumbling about?' he demanded.

Paying no attention to him, Annie went to the drawer at the counter and pulled the evidence card for the Faulkner case. She ran her finger down the inventory of items. The black feather-like fiber was listed fourth. The last name on the chain of custody list was Det. Chs. Stokes, who had signed out the entire list of items for the purpose of turning them over to the lab for examination.

She pulled the card for Nolan and ran her finger down the lines. The feather had been listed. The evidence had been checked out to Stokes for the purpose of turning it over to the lab. But the lab had no record of any feathers being checked in.

'What are you doing?' Myron asked, snatching the card from her fingers and squinting at it.

Annie grabbed the fax sheets from her desk and started for the door.

'Where do you think you're going?' the clerk demanded.

'To see Detective Stokes. He's got some explaining to do.'

34

The detectives had their own building across the alley from the main facility. Known affectionately as the Pizza Hut for the volume of pepperoni with extra cheese pies delivered there on a regular basis, it was a low, snot green cinder-block job that had once been office space for a road construction outfit. The sheriff's office had bought the property, converted the parking yard for the heavy equipment into an impound lot, and given the building to a detective division that had outgrown its allotted space in the aging law enforcement center.

Annie buzzed the door and was let in by the detective named Perez, his name spelled out in Magic Marker across the front of the Kevlar vest he wore over a T-shirt. His dark hair was scraped back into a short rattail. The mustache that covered his upper lip was bushy enough to hide small rodents. He gave Annie a sour once- over.

'I need to see Stokes.'

'You got a warrant?'

'Screw you, Perez.'

As she walked past him, he cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted, 'Hey, Chaz, you got the right to remain silent!'

The building was as cold as a walk-in freezer. Two window air conditioners groaned at the effort to maintain the temperature while electric fans blew the chilled air around the single front room. The room that had been given over to the rape task force was at the back. It had probably been the construction foreman's office at one time. A twelve-by-twelve cube paneled in cheap wood grain. Someone had started a soda can pyramid on the ledge of the barred window. The files Annie and Myron had gathered were strewn in haphazard piles over the long table that was the room's main piece of furniture. The hard-driving Cajun-spiced rock of Sonny Landreth's 'Shootin' for the Moon' was wailing out of a boom box on top of a corner file cabinet.

Mullen was on the phone. Stokes pranced behind the table, playing air guitar and mouthing lyrics, his crumpled porkpie hat tipped back on his head.

Annie rolled her eyes. 'Oh yeah, the women of this parish will sleep better knowing you're on the job, Stokes.'

He swung toward her. 'Broussard, you are a boil on the butt of my day. You know what I'm saying?'

'Like I care.' She held the faxes up. 'Your preliminary lab results on Faulkner. Where's the feather?'

He snatched the papers away from her and scanned them, frowning.

'Don't bother to pretend you're looking for it in there,' Annie said. 'The lab says they've never seen it or the one from the Nolan scene. I want to know why.'

Mullen still had the phone receiver pressed to his head, but his eyes were on them.

'Man, I need this like I need root canal,' Stokes muttered, turning for the back door.

Annie followed him out. The area behind the building was a wasteland of crushed shell, rock, and weeds with a view of the abandoned junkers in the impound lot.

'What'd you do with them, Chaz?' she demanded.

'I told you to keep your nose out of my cases,' he snapped, thrusting a finger at her.

'So you can feel free to fuck up with impunity?'

'Shut up!' he shouted, charging her. 'Shut the fuck up!'

Annie backpedaled into the side of the building.

'I'm just about half past sick of your shit, Broussard,' he snarled, his face inches from hers. His pale eyes were neon-bright with temper. The tendons in his neck stood out like iron rods. 'I know what I'm doing. How do you think I got this job? You think I got this job 'cause I'm browner than you? You think I skated in on my color?'

Annie glared right back at him. 'No. I think you got it because you're a man and you're full of bullshit. You talk a big game, and when somebody calls you on it, then they're suddenly a racist. I've had it up to my back teeth with that game. I don't hear Quinlan calling anybody a racist. I don't hear Ossie Compton calling anybody a racist. I don't hear anybody but you, and what you got is barely a suntan.'

She ducked under the arm he had braced against the building, and backed away from him. 'You're a jerk. You'd be a jerk if you were snow white. You'd be a jerk if you looked like Mel Gibson. End of topic. I want to know what you did with the evidence I collected. You can tell me or we can take it to the sheriff.'

Stokes paced, trying to school his temper or weigh his options or both. 'Don't you threaten me, Broussard,' he muttered. 'You're nothing but a little prick-teaser troublemaker.'

'Gus is still in his office,' Annie bluffed. 'I could have gone straight to him, you know.'

And run the risk of not only looking like a fool but renewing every hard feeling the men held toward her. Stokes would say the same thing to Gus he'd just said to her. He'd call her a troublemaker, and there wasn't a soul in the department who wouldn't believe him on some level.

'You dumped evidence,' she prodded, not wanting to give him time to think. 'What possible excuse do you have for that?'

'I didn't dump nothing,' he growled. 'The feathers went to the state lab.'

'Where's the receipt?'

'Fuck you! I don't have to answer to you, Broussard! Who the fuck do you think you are?'

'Maybe I'm the only person paying attention,' Annie shot back. 'Why would you send everything to New Iberia except the feathers?'

'Because I know a guy in the state lab and he owes me a favor. That's why. They got some brainiac fibers expert can look at a feather and tell if it came off a duck's ass in Outer Mongolia. So I sent him the goddamn feathers and the mask from the Bichon homicide. For all the good that'll do us.

'Those damn masks are a dime a dozen. What are we gonna do? Track down every manufacturer in Bumfuck, Thailand, and ask them what? Go to every five-and-dime and cheap-shit souvenir shop in South Lou'siana and ask them if they sold any masks to rapists? A hundred goddamn miles of legwork that'll get us jack shit.'

'Unless the feathers match up,' Annie said. 'Then you might be able to tie the first two rapes to Faulkner, at least. Even just by a thread would be more than you've got now. Faulkner doesn't remember anything about the attack. She may never.'

She knew instantly she'd made a mistake. Stokes's posture tightened, his gaze turned cold and hard.

'How do you know that?' he asked quietly.

Oh, shit. Annie jumped in with both feet. 'I went to see her this morning.'

'Fuck-in' A!' Stokes shouted in disbelief. Then his voice dropped to a near whisper, and yet it skated sharply across Annie's nerves. 'You just do not listen, do you, bitch?

'This is my case,' he said, thumping a fist to his chest. 'I will make it. I don't have to answer to you. I find out you called the state lab to check my story, I'll haul your ass into Noblier's office-and if you think he isn't ready to