A Thin Dark Line

She waited, sca

She wondered if the task force had gleaned anything from the old files, wondered if Stokes had heard back from the state pen, wondered if the NCIC or VICAP computers would come up with anything. She wished she was the person who would be finding out instead of the person waiting on sweaty insurance guys in the records department.

"Excuse me?" the woman's voice came back on the line. "You said a black feather, didn't you?"

"Yes. There was one with the Nolan case, and what might have been a fragment of a black feather with the Faulkner case."

"Not here, there isn't."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I'm looking right at the inventories and I don't see any feathers. They were never logged in here. Sorry."

A

"No feathers," she murmured as Myron marched back into the office.

"Deputy Broussard, what are you mumbling about?" he demanded.

Paying no attention to him, A

She pulled the card for Nolan and ran her finger down the lines. The feather had been listed. The evidence had been checked out to Stokes for the purpose of turning it over to the lab. But the lab had no record of any feathers being checked in.

"What are you doing?" Myron asked, snatching the card from her fingers and squinting at it.

A

"Where do you think you're going?" the clerk demanded.

"To see Detective Stokes. He's got some explaining to do."

34

The detectives had their own building across the alley from the main facility. Known affectionately as the Pizza Hut for the volume of pepperoni with extra cheese pies delivered there on a regular basis, it was a low, snot green cinder-block job that had once been office space for a road construction outfit. The sheriff's office had bought the property, converted the parking yard for the heavy equipment into an impound lot, and given the building to a detective division that had outgrown its allotted space in the aging law enforcement center.

A

"I need to see Stokes."

"You got a warrant?"

"Screw you, Perez."

As she walked past him, he cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted, "Hey, Chaz, you got the right to remain silent!"

The building was as cold as a walk-in freezer. Two window air conditioners groaned at the effort to maintain the temperature while electric fans blew the chilled air around the single front room. The room that had been given over to the rape task force was at the back. It had probably been the construction foreman's office at one time. A twelve-by-twelve cube paneled in cheap wood grain. Someone had started a soda can pyramid on the ledge of the barred window. The files A

Mullen was on the phone. Stokes pranced behind the table, playing air guitar and mouthing lyrics, his crumpled porkpie hat tipped back on his head.

A

He swung toward her. "Broussard, you are a boil on the butt of my day. You know what I'm saying?"

"Like I care." She held the faxes up. "Your preliminary lab results on Faulkner. Where's the feather?"

He snatched the papers away from her and sca

"Don't bother to pretend you're looking for it in there," A

Mullen still had the phone receiver pressed to his head, but his eyes were on them.

"Man, I need this like I need root canal," Stokes muttered, turning for the back door.

A

"What'd you do with them, Chaz?" she demanded.

"I told you to keep your nose out of my cases," he snapped, thrusting a finger at her.

"So you can feel free to fuck up with impunity?"

"Shut up!" he shouted, charging her. "Shut the fuck up!"

A

"I'm just about half past sick of your shit, Broussard," he snarled, his face inches from hers. His pale eyes were neon-bright with temper. The tendons in his neck stood out like iron rods. "I know what I'm doing. How do you think I got this job? You think I got this job 'cause I'm browner than you? You think I skated in on my color?"

A

She ducked under the arm he had braced against the building, and backed away from him. "You're a jerk. You'd be a jerk if you were snow white. You'd be a jerk if you looked like Mel Gibson. End of topic. I want to know what you did with the evidence I collected. You can tell me or we can take it to the sheriff."

Stokes paced, trying to school his temper or weigh his options or both. "Don't you threaten me, Broussard," he muttered. "You're nothing but a little prick-teaser troublemaker."

"Gus is still in his office," A

And run the risk of not only looking like a fool but renewing every hard feeling the men held toward her. Stokes would say the same thing to Gus he'd just said to her. He'd call her a troublemaker, and there wasn't a soul in the department who wouldn't believe him on some level.

"You dumped evidence," she prodded, not wanting to give him time to think. "What possible excuse do you have for that?"

"I didn't dump nothing," he growled. "The feathers went to the state lab."

"Where's the receipt?"

"Fuck you! I don't have to answer to you, Broussard! Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"Maybe I'm the only person paying attention," A

"Because I know a guy in the state lab and he owes me a favor. That's why. They got some brainiac fibers expert can look at a feather and tell if it came off a duck's ass in Outer Mongolia. So I sent him the goddamn feathers and the mask from the Bichon homicide. For all the good that'll do us.

"Those damn masks are a dime a dozen. What are we go