"Why'd you do it?"
"You're kidding, right? After what Renard did to Pam? And ol' Hunter and you are sitting in jail and he's out walking around? That's crazy. The courts are a goddamn circus nowadays. It's time somebody did the right thing."
"Like kill Renard?"
"In my dreams. Perverted little prick. He's the criminal, not you. That was my statement. That deputy that hauled you in should have just minded her own damn business, let nature take its own course and finish this thing. Besides, I'm told I'm not out anything, unless you decide to skip town."
"Why cash?" Nick asked. "You pay a bail bondsman only ten percent for the bond."
And get a fraction of the publicity, he thought. Donnie crossing the bar to write out a huge check had been a climactic moment. It hadn't been Donnie's first taste of the spotlight.
He had been right there soaking it up from the day Pam's body had been discovered. He had immediately offered a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest. He had cried like a baby at the funeral. Every newspaper in Louisiana had printed the close-up of Donnie with his face in his hands.
In the outer office, the telephone was ringing off the hook. Reporters looking for comments and interviews most likely. Every story that ran was free advertising for Bichon Bayou Development.
Donnie glanced away again. "I wouldn't know anything about that. I never bailed anybody out of jail before. Christ, will you sit down? You're making me nervous."
Nick ignored the request. He needed to move, and having Donnie nervous wasn't an altogether bad thing.
"Will you be able to go back to work on the case?"
"When hell freezes over. I'm on suspension. My involvement would taint the case because of my obvious bias against the chief suspect. At least, that's what a judge would say. I'm out, officially."
"Then I'd better hope you have something else to keep you in Partout Parish, hadn't I? I sure as hell can't afford to lose a hundred grand."
"Some folks would say you can afford to lose it now more than you could have when your wife was alive," Nick said.
Donnie's face went tight. "We've been down that road before, Detective, and I mightily resent you going down it again."
"You know it's been a two-pronged investigation all along, Donnie. That's standard op. You bailing me outta jail won't change that."
"You know where you can stick your two prongs, Fourcade."
Shrugging, Nick went on. "Me, I've had a lotta time on my hands in the last twenty-four hours. Time to let my mind wander, let it all turn over and over. It just seems… fortuitous… that Pam was killed before the divorce went through. Once the insurance company coughs up and you sell off Pam's half of the real estate company, you won't need that line of credit."
Donnie surged to his feet. "That's it, Fourcade! Get outta my office! I did you a good turn, and you come in here and abuse me! I should have left you to rot in jail! I didn't kill Pam. I couldn't possibly. I loved her."
Nick made no move to leave. He pulled the toothpick from his mouth and held it like a cigarette. "You had a funny way of showing it, Tulane: chasing anything in a skirt."
"I've made mistakes," Donnie admitted angrily. "Maturity was never my strong suit. But I did love Pam, and I do love my daughter. I could never do anything to hurt Josie."
The very thought seemed to distress him. He turned away from the school portrait of his daughter that sat on a corner of his desk.
"Is she living with you yet?" Nick asked quietly.
There had been rumors of a custody battle brewing within the divorce war. Something that seemed more like petty meanness on Donnie's part than genuine concern for his daughter's well-being. As in countless divorce cases, the child became a tool, a possession to be bickered over. Donnie liked his freedom too well for full-time fatherhood. Visitation would suit his lifestyle better than custody.
Nick had long ago discounted Josie as a motive for murder. It was the money angle that bothered him, and the land Donnie had hidden in Bayou Realty's assets. Even when he swore up and down Renard was their boy, the money issue kept tugging at him. It was a loose thread and he couldn't simply let a loose thread dangle. He would worry at it until it could be tied off one way or another. If it meant looking his gift horse in the mouth, then so be it. Donnie had decided on his own to bail him out. Nick felt no obligation.
"She's with Belle and Hunter," Donnie said. "Belle thought they could provide a more stable environment for the time being. Then Hunter goes off with a gun and tries to commit murder in broad daylight. Some stability. Of course, the press is making him out to be a celebrity. If he doesn't go to prison, they'll probably make a movie about him."
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."
Donnie shook his head. "You need help, Fourcade. You're clinically paranoid."
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 Donnie Bichon was filled with regret for the demise of his marriage and the death of the woman he had once loved. Or maybe his remorse was about something else altogether. Except for the hideous brutality of the murder, Donnie had been an automatic suspect. Husbands always were. But Donnie seemed more the sort who would have choked his ex in a moment of blind fury, not the sort who could have planned a death like Pam's and carried it out. It took cold hate to pull off a murder like that.
"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.