Free A Thin Dark Line by Tami Hoag Page A

over so simple a task.
    She set her notebook on the bedside stand, poured half a glass of water, and handed it to him. The knuckles of his right hand were skinned raw and painted orange with iodine. This was the hand he would have held the knife in as he butchered a woman he claimed to love as a friend.
    He tried to sip at the water, avoiding the mended split in his lip by pressing the glass against the left corner of his mouth. A stream dribbled down his chin onto his hospital gown. He should have had a straw, but the nurses hadn’t left him one. Annie supposed he’d be lucky if they hadn’t poisoned the water.
    “Thank you, again . . . Deputy,” he said, attempting a smile that made him look more ghoulish. “You’re very kind.”
    “Do you want to press charges?” Annie asked abruptly.
    He made a choking sound that might have been a laugh. “He tried to kill me. Yes . . . I want to press charges. He should be . . . in prison. You’ll help me put him there . . . Deputy. You’re my witness.”
    The pen stilled in Annie’s hand as the prospect went through her like a skewer. “You know something, Renard? I wish I’d never turned down that street tonight.”
    He tried to shake his head. “You don’t . . . want me dead . . . Annie. You saved me today. Twice.”
    “I already wish I hadn’t.”
    “You don’t . . . look for revenge. You look . . . for justice . . . for truth. I’m not . . . a bad man . . . Annie.”
    “I’ll feel better if a court decides that,” she said, closing her notebook. “Someone from the department will get back to you.”
    Marcus watched her walk away, then closed his eyes and conjured up her face in his mind’s eye. Pretty, rectangular, a hint of a cleft in the chin, skin the color of fresh cream and new Georgia peaches. She believed in the good in people. She liked to help. He imagined her voice—soft, a little husky. He thought of what she might have said to him if she hadn’t come in her capacity as deputy. Words of sympathy and comfort, meant to soothe his pain.
    Annie Broussard. His angel of mercy.

6
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    T he rain fell steadily, reducing the reach of the headlights, making the night close in like a tunnel. The sky seemed too low, the trees that grew thick seemed to hunch over the road. Jennifer Nolan’s imagination ran wild with movie images of maniacs leaping out in front of her and cars suddenly looming up in the rearview mirror.
    She hated working the late shift. But then, she hated being home at night, too. She had been raised to fear basically everything about the night: the dark, the sounds in the dark, the things that might lurk in the dark. She wished she had a roommate, but the last one had stolen her best jewelry and her television and run off with some no-account biker, and so she was living alone.
    Headlights came up behind her, and Jennifer’s breath caught. All anybody ever talked about anymore was murder and how women weren’t safe to walk the streets. She’d heard that Bichon woman had been dismembered. That wasn’t what had been reported on the news, but she’d heard it and knew it was probably true. Rumors leaked out—like the detail of the Mardi Gras mask. The police didn’t want anyone to know that either, but everyone did.
    Just imagining the terror that woman must have felt was enough to give Jennifer nightmares. She didn’t even want to think about Mardi Gras, which was less than two weeks away, on account of that mask business. And now she had this car on her tail. For all she knew, this could have been what happened to Pam Bichon. She could have been forced off the road and herded up that driveway to her death.
    The car swept up alongside her and her panic doubled. Then the car sailed on past, taillights glowing in the gloom. Relief ran through her like water. She hit the blinker and turned in at the trailer park.
    She had her key in her hand as she went up the steps to the front door, the way she’d read in
Glamour
. Have the key