Someone ran out of the shack where Clarence Gauthier kept his fighting dogs. Annie took a right before she got to the camp, and flinched at the sound of a shotgun going off in warning. Another half mile on the trail that was rapidly disintegrating to bog and she was finally able to climb up onto the levee road.
Clear of the woods, the rain closed around her like a liquid curtain. Only the lightning allowed her nightmare glimpses of the world beyond the beam of her headlights. Black, dead, not a living thing in sight.
She felt ill. She was shaking.
Somebody had just tried to. kill her.
The Corners' store was closed. The light in Sos and Fanchon's living room glowed amber through the gloom across the parking lot. Annie pulled the Jeep in close to the staircase on the south side of the building and ran up to her landing. Her hands were trembling as she worked the lock. She struggled to mentally talk her nerves into calming down. She was a cop, after all. That someone tried to kill her probably shouldn't have bothered her so much. Maybe next time she would shrug it off entirely. Par for the course. Just another day on the job. The hell it was. Once inside the entry, she shed her sneakers, dropped her gear bag, and went straight to the kitchen. She pulled a chair across the floor. A dusty bottle of Jack Daniel's sat in the cupboard over the refrigerator.
She thought of Mullen as she pulled the whiskey down and set it on the counter. He would have liked this moment on videotape-evidence of her sudden alcoholism. Son of a bitch. If she found out he'd been behind the wheel of that car tonight… what? The consequences would go far beyond having him charged with a crime.
Life should have been so much simpler, Annie thought as she unscrewed the cap from the Jack and poured a double shot. She took a long sip, grimacing as the stuff slid down.
"You gonna offer me some of that?"
Heart in her throat, Annie bolted around. The glass hit the floor and shattered.
"I locked that door when I left," she said.
Fourcade shrugged. "And I told you before: It's not much of a lock."
"Where's your truck?"
"Out of sight."
Nick grabbed a dish towel and bent down to clean up the mess. "You're a mite on the edge tonight, 'Toinette."
He looked up at her standing beside the jaunty gator on her refrigerator. Her face was pale as death, her eyes shining like glass beads, her hair hanging in damp strings. He could feel the tension in her like the vibrations of a tuning fork.
"I suppose I am," she said. "Someone just tried to kill me."
"What?" He jerked upright and looked her over as if he expected to see blood.
"Someone tried to run me off the bayou road into the swamp. And he damn near succeeded."
Annie looked around her kitchen, at the old cupboards and the vintage fifties table, at the canisters on the counter and the ivy plant she had started from a sprig in Serena Doucet's bridal bouquet five years ago. She looked at the cat clock, watched its eyes and tail move with the passing seconds. Everything looked somehow different, as if she hadn't seen any of it in a very long time and now found none of it quite matched the images in her memory.
The whiskey boiled in her empty stomach like acid. She could still feel its path down the back of her throat.
"Somebody tried to kill me," she murmured again, amazed. Dizziness swept through her like a wave. With as much cool and dignity as she could muster, she looked at Nick and said, "Excuse me. I have to go throw up now."
31
"This is not one of my finer moments."
Annie sat on her knees in front of the toilet, propped up on one side by the old claw-foot bathtub. She felt like a withering husk, too drained for anything deeper than cursory embarrassment. "So much for my image as a lush."
"Did you get a look at the driver?" Fourcade asked, leaning a shoulder against the door frame.
"Just a glimpse. I think he was wearing a ski mask. It was dark. It was raining. Everything happened so fast. God," she complained in disgust. "I sound like every vic I've ever rolled my eyes at."
"Tags?"
She shook her head. "I was too busy trying to keep my ass out of the swamp.
"I don't know," she murmured. "I thought Renard staged the shooting just to get me over there, but maybe not. Maybe whoever took that shot hung around, watched the cops, watched me come and go."
"Why go after you? Why not wait 'til you're gone and take another crack at Renard?"
The answer might have made her throw up again if she hadn't already emptied her system. If the assailant was after Renard, it made no sense to go after her.
"You're probably right about the shooting," he said. "Renard, he wanted an excuse to call you. That story he gave you is lame as a three-legged dog."
Annie pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the tub. "If that's true, then Cadillac Man was there for one reason-me. He had to have followed me over there."
She looked up at Fourcade as he came into the room, half hoping he would tell her no just to ease her worry. He didn't, wouldn't, wasn't that kind of man. The facts were the facts, he would see no purpose in padding the truth to soften the blows.
With a dubious look he pulled the towel away from the ceramic grasping hand that stuck out from the wall and soaked one end of it with cold tap water.
"You manage to piss people off, 'Toinette," he said, taking a seat on the closed toilet.
"I don't mean to."
"You have to realize that's a good thing. But you're not paying attention. You act first and think later."
"Look who's talking."
She pressed the cold cloth to one cheek, then the other. He looked concerned rather than contrite. She would have been better off with the latter. She was safer thinking of him as a mentor than pondering the meaning of these odd moments when he seemed to be something else.
"Me, I always think first, chère. My logic is occasionally flawed, that's all," he said. "How you doing? You okay?"
He leaned forward and pushed a strand of hair off her cheek. His knee brushed against her thigh, and in spite of everything Annie felt a subtle charge of electricity.
"Sure. I'm swell. Thanks."
She pushed to her feet and went to the sink to brush her teeth.
"So, who wants you dead?"
"I don't know," she mumbled through a mouthful of foam.
"Sure you do. You just haven't put the pieces together yet."
She spat in the sink and glared at him out the corner of her eye. "God, that's annoying."
"Who might want you dead? Use your head."
Annie wiped her mouth. "You know, unlike you, I don't have a past chock-full of psychopaths and thugs."
"Your past isn't the issue," he said, following her to the living room. "What about that deputy-Mullen?"
"Mullen wants me off the job. I can't believe he'd try to kill me."
"Push any man far enough, you don't know what he might do."
"Is that the voice of experience?" she said caustically, wanting to lash out at somebody. Maybe if she took a few swipes at him she would be able to reestablish the boundaries that had blurred last night.
She paced the length of the alligator coffee table, nervous energy rising in a new wave. "What about you, Nick? I got you arrested. You could go down for a felony. Maybe you don't think you've got anything to lose getting rid of the only witness."
"I don't own a Cadillac," he said, his face stony.
"I gotta figure if you'd try to kill somebody, you probably wouldn't have any moral problem with stealing a car."
"Stop it."
"Why? You want me to use my head. You want me to be objective."
"So use your head. I was here waiting for you."
"I came up the levee. It's slower going. You could have ditched the Caddy and beat it over here in your truck."
"You're pissing me off, Broussard."
"Yeah? Well, I guess I do that to people. It's probably a wonder someone didn't kill me a long time ago."