Gus nodded his head, pursing his lips. "You haven't talked to the press."
"No, sir."
"At the press conference this afternoon I'll be telling them how you were working undercover to help crack this case. Your next paycheck will reflect your overtime."
Annie's eyes widened at what sounded for all intents and purposes to be a bribe.
Noblier read her face like a clock and narrowed his small eyes. "I won't have my authority undermined, Annie. My deputies work for me, not around me. The OT is a bonus- consider it hazard pay. Understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"You got a hell of a lot to learn about how the world works, Broussard." He had already begun his dismissal of her, his attention going to the notes he had scribbled for the press conference. "Report back to me when you come in off sick leave. We'll do the paperwork on your reassignment… Detective."
Detective Broussard. Annie tried the sound of it in her mind as she hobbled back down the hall. It sounded good. She pulled the plastic alligator from her pocket and tossed it in the trash as she passed the sergeant's desk.
Fourcade was waiting for her outside the door. He stood leaning against the building, his ankles crossed, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, concern in his eyes.
"Noblier made me a detective," she announced, hearing the ring of disbelief in her own voice.
"I know. I recommended you."
"Oh."
"It's where you belong, 'Toinette," he said. "You do good work. You dig hard. You believe in the job. You seek the truth, fight for justice-that's what it oughta be about."
Annie made a little shrug and glanced away, uncomfortable with his praise. "Yeah, well, I lose the cool uniform and the hot car."
He didn't smile. Big surprise. He straightened away from the wall and touched her cheek with a gentle hand. "How you doing, 'Toinette? You okay?"
The weight of it all pressed a sigh from her. "Not exactly."
She wanted to say she wasn't the same person she had been ten days ago, but she had the distinct feeling Nick would disagree with her. He would tell her she simply hadn't looked that deep inside before. She wondered what he saw when he looked that deeply within himself.
"Walk with me," she said. "Down to the bayou?"
Frowning, he looked across the parking lot to the strip of green boulevard fifty yards away. "You sure?"
"I've been in bed for two days. I need to move. Slowly, but I need to move."
She started without him. He fell in step beside her. Neither of them spoke as they crossed the distance. When they reached the bank, a small group of mallards started, then settled back onto the chocolate brown water, bobbing at the edge of the reeds like corks. Across the bayou, an old man was walking a dachshund.
Annie sat down gingerly on one end of a park bench, stretching her left leg carefully in front of her. Fourcade took the other end of the bench. The space between them was occupied by Marcus Renard.
"He was innocent, Nick," she said softly.
He could have argued. Marcus Renard's obsession with Pam had acted as the catalyst for his mother's violence. But that wasn't the point here, and he knew it. He had followed the trail back to Marcus, stopped there, and meted out his own punishment.
"Would it have made a difference if he'd been guilty?"
Annie thought about it for a moment. "It would have made it easier to rationalize, at least."
"C'est vrai," he murmured. "True enough. But he wasn't guilty. I screwed up. I lost perspective. I lost control. Wrong is wrong, and a man is dead because of it. Because of me. I'll have to carry that the rest of my life."
"You didn't pull the trigger."
"But me, I loaded the gun, didn't I? Davidson believed so strongly that Marcus Renard killed his daughter in part because I believed so strongly that Marcus Renard killed his daughter. My focus became his focus. You should know how that works-I tried to force it on you too."
"Only because it made sense. No one can fault your logic, Nick."
He flashed the sudden smile, the edges of it hard with an inner bitterness. "Mais no. My faults lie deeper. I believe it's better to err on the side of passion rather than apathy."
He cared too much, tried too hard. The job was his life, his mission. Everything else was secondary. Submerged in that obsession, he found it too easy to lose his perspective and his humanity. He needed an anchor, an alter ego, a voice to question his motives, a counterbalance to his singlemindedness.
He needed Annie.
"I hear Pritchett will drop the charges against you," she said.
He leaned his forearms against his thighs and watched the dachshund man. "Oui. So, I not only indirectly caused Renard's death, I benefited from it."
"So did I. I'm off the hook for testifying. That's no small relief," she said, willing him to meet her eyes. He turned his head and looked at her. "I didn't want to, Nick, but I would have."
"I know. You're a woman of convictions, 'Toinette," he said, offering her a smile that was softer, fond, almost sad. "So where does that leave me?"
"I don't know."
"Sure you do."
Annie didn't bother to argue. He was right. He was a complex and difficult man. He would push her. He would test her. It would have been so much easier for her to turn to A.J., take what he wanted to give her, live a simple life. A nice simple life, just short of fulfillment. Maybe in time the restlessness would fade into contentment. Or maybe it was better to err on the side of passion.
"You're not an easy man, Nick."
"No, I'm not," he admitted, never taking his eyes off hers. "So, you gonna help me with that, chère, or what? You gonna take a chance? Be bold?"
He held his breath and waited, stared at her and willed her to take the challenge.
"I don't know what I have in me to offer you, 'Toinette," he confessed softly. "But I'd like the chance to find out."
Annie looked past his determination to his need. She looked at the hard face, the dark eyes burning on hers. He was too intense, too driven, too alone. But she had the distinct feeling he was what she had been waiting for. Her strongest instinct was to reach out to him.
"Me too," she murmured, reaching across the space between them to lay her hand on his. "If we're partners…"
He turned his hand over and twined his fingers with hers, the contact warm and right. "…we're partners."
EPILOGUE
Victor sat at the small table in his room, cutting paper with a blunt-nosed scissors. The house was not his family house. Riverview was a group home for autistic adults. It was a strange place full of people he did not know. Some were kind to him. Some were not.
There was a large lawn with a tall brick wall around it and many trees around the perimeter, and a very nice garden. A good place for watching birds, though not nearly as many species as there had been at Victor's own house. And here he couldn't take a boat out on the bayou to search for more. Nor was he allowed to go outside in the night to listen for the night birds or observe the other creatures that preferred darkness to light. There were many that did. Some were predators. Some were not.
For the most part, Victor's life in this new place was quiet and calm. Somewhere between red and white. Gray, he had decided. Most days he felt very gray. Like sleeping, but awake. He often thought of Marcus and wished that he had not ceased to exist. He often thought of Mother.
Setting the scissors aside, he took up the small bottle of glue and set about putting the finishing touches on his creation. Mother had ceased to exist, Richard Kudrow had told him, though Victor had not seen her and did not know for a fact that this was true. Sometimes he dreamed that she came to him in the night, as she often had, and sat beside him on his bed and stroked his hair while she talked in the Night Voice.