The pen stilled on the form. Annie raised her head. "That's a lie and you know it."
Mullen shrugged. "I know what I saw in that Jeep Saturday morning."
"You know what you put in my Jeep Saturday morning."
"I know the sheriff pulled you off patrol and I'm still driving," he said smugly, flashing his ugly yellow teeth. He put his hands on the counter and leaned in, the gleam in his eye as mean as a weasel's. "Just what kind of witness are you gonna make against Fourcade?" he whispered. "I hear you were drinking that night too."
Annie held back her retort. She'd had a drink before dinner at Isabeau's that night. A glass of wine with the meal. The bartender at Laveau's could testify she had been in the bar. Maybe he wouldn't remember whether he'd served her or not. Maybe someone would make it worth his while to lose his memory. She had by no means been intoxicated that night, but Fourcade's lawyer would have a field day insinuating that she may have been. What that would do for his case would be dubious; what it would do for her reputation would be obvious.
She gave a humorless half-laugh. "I gotta say, Mullen, I wouldn't have given you credit for being that smart," she murmured. "I oughta shake your hand."
As she reached out, she backhanded the specimen cup, knocked the lid askew, and sent Ross Leighton's urine spewing down the front of Mullen's pants.
Mullen jumped back like a scalded dog. "You fuckin' bitch!"
"Oh, gee, look," Annie said loudly, snatching the cup off the counter. "Mullen wet his pants!"
Four people down the hall turned to stare. One of the secretaries from the business office stuck her head out the door. Mullen looked at them with horror. "She did it!" he said.
"Well, that'd be a hell of a trick," Annie said. "I'd need a hose attachment. They know what they're looking at, Mullen."
Fury contracted the muscles of his face. His thin lips tightened against his mouth, making his teeth look as big as a horse's. "You'll pay for this, Broussard."
"Yeah? What're you gonna do? Spill another bucket of pig guts down my steps?"
"What? I don't know what you're talking about. You done pickled your brain, Broussard."
Hooker bulled his way through the gawkers. "Mullen, what the fuck are you doing? You pissed yourself?"
"No!"
"Jesus Christ, clean up the mess and go change."
"Don't forget the Depends!" someone called from down the hall.
"Broussard made the mess," Mullen groused, bristling at the laughter. "She ought to clean it up."
Annie shook her head. "That's not my job. The mess is on your side of the counter, Mr. Patrol Deputy. I'm back here on my side of the counter, Myron's lowly assistant."
The clerk looked up from his paperwork with the dignity of a king. "Mr. Myron."
It became quickly apparent to Annie that there were few advantages to working in records and evidence. Her one perk of the day came in the form of a fax from the regional lab in New Iberia: the preliminary results on the tests of the entrails that had been draped down her steps Sunday night. No detective had been assigned to the case, which meant the fax came into the machine in records and evidence to be passed on to the case deputy. By being right there when the message rolled out of the machine, Annie bypassed any contact with Pitre.
She held her breath as she read the report, as if the words had the power to bring back the smell. The scene flashed through her mind: the blood dripping, the gory garland of intestines, the fear for Fanchon and Sos.
Preliminary findings reported the internal organs to be from a hog. The news brought only a small measure of relief. The lab couldn't tell her where the stuff had come from. Hogs got butchered every day in South Louisiana. Butcher shops sold every part of them to people who made their own sausage. No one kept records of such things. Nor could the lab tell her who had dumped the viscera down her steps. If it hadn't been Mullen, then who? Why? Did it have anything to do with her investigation of Pam's murder?
Did Pam's murder have anything to do with Lindsay Faulkner's attack? The questions led one into another, into another, with no end in sight.
By late afternoon Lindsay Faulkner's status was listed as critical but stable. Suffering from a skull fracture, fractures to a number of facial bones, multiple contusions, and shock, she had not regained consciousness. The doctors were arguing over whether or not she should be transferred from Our Lady of Mercy to Our Lady of Lourdes in Lafayette. Until they could decide which apparition of the Virgin would prove more miraculous, Faulkner remained in Our Lady of Mercy's ICU.
News of the attack had hit the civilian airwaves. The sheriff scheduled a press conference for five. Scuttlebutt around the department was that a task force would be set up to appease the panicking public. With few leads to go on, there would be little for them to concentrate on, but all the ground would be covered again and again until they churned it to dust. If Stokes, who would head the task force, hadn't already checked with the state for recent releases of sex offenders or with the National Crime Information Center to cross-reference MOs of known sex offenders, that would happen now. Acquaintances of the victims would all be questioned again, with the aim of finding a clue, a connection between the women who had been raped.
As Annie sat at her temporary desk in the records room, she felt a pang of envy toward the people who would be working on the task force. It was the kind of job she had set her sights on, but unless she reversed her fortunes in the department, hell would freeze over before Noblier promoted her to detective.
Closing the Bichon homicide would go a long way toward improving her status. But if anyone found out she was conducting her own investigation-and with whom she was conducting that investigation-her career would be toast.
She thought about that as Myron reluctantly left his post for his afternoon constitutional in the men's room. What was she supposed to do if she came up with evidence? Who was she supposed to tell about Renard's apparent fixation on her? If Lindsay Faulkner had given her useful information, where would she have gone with it? Stokes didn't want her near his case, and if she gave him anything useful, he would doubtless claim the credit for himself. If she went to A.J., she would be jumping the food chain in a way that wouldn't win her points with anyone outside the DA's office. Should she go to the sheriff with any findings and risk his wrath for overstepping her boundaries? Or would Fourcade take the opportunity to put his own career back on track and leave her in the dust?
Maybe that was what that kiss had been all about. The closer he pulled her to him, the easier it would be to shove her behind him when he had what he needed.
She doodled on her notepad as her brain ran the slalom of possibilities. She had taken advantage of Myron's absence to pull some of the Bichon homicide file: Renard's initial statement, wherein he related the improbable story of his alibi, for which he had no corroborating witnesses. He had sent Fourcade on a wild-goose chase with his phantom Good Samaritan motorist, and he was trying to send her on the same pointless quest. A test of her loyalty, Annie supposed. Renard believed she was some kind of savior sent to deliver his life from the jaws of hell-or Angola penitentiary, not that there was a big difference between the two.
Mr. Renard states motorist was driving a dark-colored pickup of undetermined make. Louisiana plates possibly bearing the letters.
FJ-
FJ. Annie traced the letters on her scratch pad over and over. Fourcade had run this piddling information through the DMV, had checked the resulting list and come up with nothing. FJ. She worked the J into a fish hook and drew a bug-eyed fish below it with the word witness incorporated into the scales. Renard didn't believe Fourcade had done anything with the information, and turned a blind eye to the fact that his own attorney hadn't come up with an alibi witness for him either. What did he think she would do that no one else had done for him?