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To think of a predator like Willard Roache ru
A
He stood no more than a foot from her, near enough that she started at the sight of him.
"Do I know you?" she asked.
His painted face gri
Puzzled, A
"Marcus?"
He raised a finger to his painted mouth and backed away, melting into the crowd, anonymous. But she knew who it was. It made perfect sense. The mask offered both freedom and secrecy. He hadn't been able to walk down the street in this town for months without drawing unwanted attention. Now he moved u
And what would the good townsfolk of Bayou Breaux do to her if they saw her taking romantic tokens from Marcus Renard? What would her fellow cops do? She would be further ridiculed and punished. They already had that in common, she and Marcus.
A
She handed the balloon to a little girl with a Pocahontas T-shirt and chocolate all over her face, and moved down the street.
A clown in a rainbow fright wig staggered toward her on the narrow band of sidewalk. The painted smile was lopsided beneath a rubber hog snout. A
"Hey, Bozo, watch it!" she snapped.
"Sorry, ociffer!" he declared, unrepentant.
From her left side a second drunk stumbled into her, this one wearing a Reagan mask with a vacuous idiot grin. Another eight ounces of beer cascaded down her back.
"Shit!" she yelped. "Watch where you're going!"
"Sorry, ociffer!" he said with singsong insincerity. He looked at the clown and the pair of them chuckled like Beavis and Butthead.
A
"Son of a bitch!" she swore, grabbing hold of him by the shirtfront. "Mullen, is that you inside that empty head?"
The clown hollered, "Shit!"
Reagan stumbled back from her, pulling himself free. The two plunged into the gyrating crowd, laughing.
"Dammit!" A
The beer trickled down into the waistband of her pants, front and back. It ran down inside her body armor in front and soaked through the back. Anyone getting a whiff of her was going to think the stories about her recent sad decline into alcoholism were more than just rumors.
"Sarge, it's Broussard," she said into the two-way as she started up the street. "I just got doused. I'm 10-7 at the station. Back in a few. Out."
"Hurry the hell up."
She made her way north along the back side of the crowd, intending to cut east at the corner of Seventh, where she had parked her cruiser on the side street.
"A
A.J.'s voice caught her ear and she pulled up. He had left three messages on her machine at home and had tried to get her at work twice since she had been shot at, and she had avoided calling him back. She didn't want to explain. She didn't want to lie. She didn't want him trying to tie a knot in the co
He came toward her from the yellow light of a vendor's stand, a red-checked cardboard basket of fried oysters cradled in one hand, a bottle of Abita in the other. He was still in his suit from the day's business, though his tie was jerked loose.
"I thought you were off the street."
A
"I'll walk you to your car."
He fell in step beside her and she glanced up at him, trying to gauge his mood. His face was drawn and a deep line dug in between his brows. The noise of the band and the crowd faded as they turned the corner and walked away from the bright yellow light of the party.
"Why'd you work late?" A
"I-ah-sorta lost my standing date."
She kicked herself mentally for opening that door.
"Task force moved at the speed of light to get the background on Roache, didn't they?"
"Yeah," she said. "Too bad they couldn't have found that enthusiasm earlier. Maybe they could have nailed his ass after Je
"You would have," he said, setting his supper on the hood of her cruiser.
"I would have tried, at least. That's the thing that galls me most about Stokes-he skates over everything and still comes out smelling like a rose. I wouldn't care how big a jerk he was if he did the job."
A.J. shrugged. "Some people do the job, some people live the job."
"I don't live the job," she snapped, not liking the correlation to Fourcade that A.J. couldn't possibly have known. "But I hustle when I'm on it. That should count for something."
"It should."
But they both knew the thing that would count for her would be taking the witness stand on Thursday. A
"So, are you go
"Trying to scare me, that's all," she said, still avoiding his gaze.
"That's all? You could have been killed!"
"It was a scare tactic. I'm not very popular as a witness for the prosecution."
"You think it was Fourcade?" he demanded. "That bastard! I'll get his bail revoked-"
"It wasn't Fourcade."
"How do you know that?"
"It just wasn't," she insisted. "Leave it alone, A.J. You don't know anything about this."
"Because you won't tell me! Christ, somebody tries to shoot you and I have to hear about it from Uncle Sos! You don't even bother to call me back when I try to check up on you-"
"Look," she said, reining back her temper. "Can we have this fight another time? I'm 10-7. Hooker's go
"I don't want to fight," A.J. said wearily. He caught hold of her hand and hung on when she would have backed away. "Just a minute, A
"I'm on duty."
"You're 10-7. Personal time. This is personal."
She drew in a breath to protest and he pressed a finger against her lips. His expression was earnest in the filtered light of the streetlamp.
"I need to say this, A