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Nick had long ago discounted Josie as a motive for murder. It was the money angle that bothered him, and the land Do
"She's with Belle and Hunter," Do
The fight had run out of him. His shoulders slumped and he suddenly seemed older.
"Why are you dredging all this up again? You still believe Renard did it. I mean, I know some people are saying things after that rape the other night-all that Bayou Strangler bullshit and whatnot. But that's got nothing to do with this. You're the one found Pam's ring in Renard's house. You're the one put him in the hospital. Why are you dogging my ass? I'm the best friend you had today."
"Habit," Nick replied. "Me, I tend to be suspicious by nature."
"No shit. Well, I'm not guilty."
"Ever'body's guilty of something."
Do
A sardonic smile curved Nick's mouth as he tossed his toothpick in the trash and turned for the door. "C'est vrai. That's true enough. Lucky for me, I'm one of the few people who can make a living off it."
Nick left Bichon Bayou Development through the back door, made his way down two alleys, and cut across the backyard of a house where a teenage girl in a yellow bikini was stretched out on a shiny metallic blanket trying to absorb ultraviolet rays. With headphones and sun goggles, she was oblivious to his passing.
He had parked in the weedy side lot of a closed welding shop, the truck blending in with an array of abandoned junk. He climbed into the cab, rolled the windows down, and sat there, smoking a cigarette and thinking as the radio mumbled to itself.
"You're on KJUN with Dean Monroe. Our topic this afternoon: the release on bail of Partout Parish detective, Nick Fourcade, who stands accused of brutalizing murder suspect Marcus Renard. Montel in Maurice, speak your mind."
"He done this kind of thing before and he got off. I thinks we all gots to be scared when cops can plant evidence and beat people up and just get off-"
Nick silenced the radio, thinking back to New Orleans. He had paid in ways worse than prison. He had lost his job, lost his credibility. He had crashed and burned and was still struggling to put the pieces back together. But he had more urgent things than the past to occupy his mind today.
Maybe Do
"Renard did it," Nick murmured. The trail, the logic led back to Renard. Renard had fixated on her, stalked her, killed her when she rejected him. Nick believed he'd done it in Baton Rouge shortly before moving here, but that woman's death had been ruled accidental and never investigated as a homicide.
Renard was their guy, he could feel it in the marrow of his bones. Still, there was something off about the whole damn deal.
Maybe it was the fact that no one had ever been able to prove Renard was the one stalking Pam. Hell, the word stalking never even appeared in the reports. That was how doubtful the cops and the courts had been. Renard had openly sent her flowers and small gifts. There was nothing menacing in that. Pam had thrown the gifts back at him in the Bowen amp; Briggs office one day, not long before her death.
No one had ever seen Renard going into Pam's office or her house out on Quail Drive when she wasn't there, and yet someone had stolen things from her desk and from her dresser. Someone had left a dead snake in her pencil drawer. Renard had access to the office building, but so did Do
Renard was meticulous, compulsively neat. Careful. Intelligent. He could have pulled it off. The flowers and candy could have been part of the game. Perhaps he had sensed all along she would never have him. Perhaps it was resentment that drove his fixation. Affection was the perfect cover for a deep-seated hatred.
Then again, perhaps Do
The harassment began the end of August.
Do
"You need a break, Fourcade," he muttered.
Like the snap of a hypnotist's fingers, the trance was shattered. He didn't need a break. He was off the case. He didn't want to let it go, and yet, he had thrown it away with both hands by going after Renard.
He had replayed that night in his head a hundred times. In his head, he made the right choices. He didn't accept Stokes's invitation to Laveau's. He didn't pour whiskey on his wounded pride. He didn't listen to Stokes's eye-for-an-eye nonsense. He didn't take that phone call, didn't go down that street.
And A
Where the hell had she come from? And why?
He didn't believe in coincidence, had never trusted Fate.
The possibilities rubbed back and forth in his mind and chafed his temper raw. He put the truck in gear, and rolled out of the parking lot.
The hell he was off this case.