A Thin Dark Line by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online Page B

euphoric dreams of someone who had gotten away with murder.
    He wasn’t the first.
    “Protect and serve, pard. . . .”
    The rage built. . . .
    “Case dismissed.”
    . . . and burned hotter . . .
    “I still think about what he did to her. . . .”
    “I saw what he did to her. . . . I still see it. . . .”
    “Don’t you?”
    Blood and moonlight, the flash of the knife, the smell of fear, the cries of agony, the ominous silence of death. The cold darkness as the phantom passed over.
    The chill collided violently with the fire. The explosion pushed him to his feet.
    “He’s gonna walk, Nicky. He’s gonna get away with murder. . . .”
    Nick crossed the street, hugged the wall of the Bowen & Briggs building, out of sight from the elevated first-floor windows. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he hopped silently onto the side stoop, doused the bug light with a twist of his wrist, and dropped down on the far side of the steps.
    He heard the door open, heard Renard mutter something under his breath, heard the
click, click, click
of the light switch being tried. Footsteps on the concrete stoop. A heavy sigh. The door closed.
    He waited, still, invisible, until Renard’s loafers hit the blacktop and he had stepped past Nick on his way to the Volvo.
    “It’s not over, Renard,” he said.
    The architect shied sideways. His face was waxy white, his eyes bulged like a pair of boiled eggs.
    “You can’t harass me this way, Fourcade,” he said, the tremor in his voice mocking his attempt at bravado. “I have rights.”
    “Is that a fact?” Nick stepped forward, his gloved hands hanging loose at his sides. “What about Pam? She didn’t have rights? You take her rights away,
tcheue poule
, and still you think you got rights?”
    “I didn’t do anything,” Renard said, glancing nervously toward the street, looking for salvation that was nowhere in sight. “You don’t have anything on me.”
    Nick advanced another step. “I got all I need on you,
pou
. I got the stink of you up my nose, you piece of shit.”
    Renard lifted a fist in front of him, shaking so badly his car keys rattled. “Leave me alone, Fourcade.”
    “Or what?”
    “You’re drunk.”
    “Yeah.” A grin cut across his face like a scimitar. “I’m mean too. What you gonna do, call a cop?”
    “Touch me and your career is over, Fourcade,” Renard threatened, backing toward the Volvo. “Everybody knows about you. You got no business carrying a badge. You ought to be in jail.”
    “And you oughta be in hell.”
    “Based on what? Evidence you planted? That’s nothing you haven’t done before. You’ll be the one in prison over this, not me.”
    “That’s what you think?” Nick murmured, advancing. “You think you can stalk a woman, torture her, kill her, and just walk away?”
    The nightmare images of murder. The false memories of screams.
    “You got nothing on me, Fourcade, and you never will have.”
    “Case dismissed.”
    “You’re nothing but a drunk and a bully, and if you touch me, Fourcade, I swear, I’ll ruin you.”
    “He’s gonna walk, Nicky. He’s gonna get away with murder. . . .”
    A face from his past loomed up, an apparition floating beside Marcus Renard. A mocking face, a superior sneer.
    “You’ll never pin this on me, Detective. That’s not the way the world works. She was just another whore. . . .”
    “You killed her, you son of a bitch,” he muttered, not sure which demon he was talking to, the real or the imagined.
    “You’ll never prove it.”
    “You can’t touch me.”
    “He’s gonna get away with murder. . . .”
    “The hell you say.”
    The rage burned through the fine thread of control. Emotion and action became one, and restraint was nowhere to be found as his fist smashed into Marcus Renard’s face.
     
    A nnie walked out of Quik Pik with a pint of chocolate chip ice cream in a bag and a little mouse chewing at her conscience. She could have picked up the treat at the Corners, but