A Thin Dark Line

A storm would have suited her, she thought, except that a spring rainstorm would blow over and be forgotten, while the metaphorical storm in which she had landed herself would do neither.

"Deputy Broussard, might I have a moment of your time?"

A

"I'm sorry. No. I don't have time," she said quickly, stepping off the sidewalk and heading across the parking lot toward her cruiser. She cast a nervous glance over her shoulder at the building.

"You'll have to talk to me sooner or later," the lawyer said, falling in step beside her.

"Then it'll have to be later, Mr. Kudrow. I'm on duty."

"Taxpayer time. Need I point out to you, Miss Broussard, that I myself pay mightily into August Noblier's fat coffers and am, therefore, technically, one of your employers?"

"I'm not interested in your technicalities." She unlocked the car door with one hand while balancing her clipboard, files, and ticket books in the other arm. "It's my sergeant who's go

"Your sergeant? Or Gus Noblier-for talking to me?"

"I don't know what you mean," she lied. She added the car keys to the pile on her arm and started to pull the cruiser's door open.

"Can I hold something for you?" Kudrow offered gallantly, reaching toward her.

"No," A

The sudden movement sent the pile sliding off the clipboard. The keys, the ticket books, the files tumbled to the ground, the Renard file spilling its contents. Panicking, A

She lunged for it, cracking her elbow hard on the blacktop, crumpling the form in her fist as she grabbed it.

"I've got it. I've got it," she stammered. Turning her face away from Kudrow, she closed her eyes and mouthed a silent thank-you to God. She clutched the mess of papers and folders and clipboard to her chest, rose awkwardly, and backed around the open door of the squad car.

Kudrow watched her with interest. "Something I shouldn't see, Miss Broussard?"

A

"You were the officer on the scene last night. My client claims you saved his life. It took courage for you to stop Fourcade," he said, bracing the car door open as A

"How would you know?" A

The gibe bounced off his jaundiced hide. She could feel the heat of his gaze on her face, though she refused to look at him. A faint, fetid scent of decay touched her nose, and she wondered if it was the bayou or Kudrow.

"The abuse of power, the abuse of office, the abuse of public trust-those are terrible things, Miss Broussard."

"So are stalking and murder. It's Deputy Broussard." She turned the key in the ignition and slammed the door shut.

Kudrow stepped back as the car rolled forward. He pulled his coat closed around him as the spring breeze swept across the parking lot. Disease had skewed his internal thermometer to where he was always either freezing or on fire. Today he was cold to the marrow, but his soul was burning up with purpose. If he could have been half a step quicker, he would have been holding an arrest report in his hand. An arrest report on Nick Fourcade, the thug who was not sitting in a jail cell this morning, thanks to August F. Noblier.

"I'll ruin you both," he murmured as he watched the squad car turn onto the street. "And there's the lady who's going to help me do it."

8

As A

A

They wanted someone to be guilty-in their minds if not in the courts, A

At Po ' Richard's, the woman at the drive-up window handed A

The radio crackled to life, reminding her that she was hardly the only person in the parish with trouble.

"All units in the vicinity: Y'all got a possible 261 out to the Country Estates trailer park. Over."

A

When no response came back, she tried the mike again. The radio crackled back at her.

"10-1, One Able Charlie. You're breaking up. Must be something wrong with your radio. You're where? Out."

"I'm responding to that 261 in Country Estates. Out."

Nothing came back. A

The Country Estates mobile-home park sat in exactly the middle of nowhere between Bayou Breaux and Luck, which qualified it as country. The place bore no resemblance to an estate. The name suggested a certain tidy gentility. Reality was a dozen rusting relic trailer houses that had been plunked down on a two-acre weed patch back in the early seventies.

Je

If the face that stared out at her had ever been pretty, A

"Thank God, you're a woman," Je

"Ms. Nolan, have you called an ambulance?" A