Strange, he thought as he washed the plaster residue from his hands, after Elaine had died, he hadn't wanted anyone to take her place for a long time. He hadn't expected to think of another woman after Pam's death. He still grieved for her. He still missed her. But the sharpness of that pain had faded and was being replaced by something else-hunger, need. Pam had ultimately rejected him. She had believed the lies of her husband and Stokes, and failed to see the truth of his devotion to her. He thought less and less of Pam, more and more of Annie, his angel.
He went through his bedroom to his sanctuary and turned on the lights and radio. A Haydn string quartet played softly as he took the portrait from its special place in the small secret storage cupboard hidden behind a panel of wainscoting. The cubbyhole had been there for more than a century. No telling what the original owners of the house had protected in it. Marcus lined the shelves with keepsakes he would share with no one. Treasured mementos of past loves. Things he wanted no one in his family to taint with so much as their mere knowledge of them. He touched several pieces now.
Closing the panel, he moved to his drawing table and arranged things to his satisfaction. The sketch was taking shape nicely. He stared at it for a long time, thinking, imagining. He concentrated first on her eyes with their slightly exotic shape. Then the slim, pert nose. Then the mouth- her incredibly sexy mouth with its full lower lip and quirking corners. He imagined touching her mouth with his, imagined her mouth moving over his naked body. He imagined her hands touching him. The arousal built until he finally went back to the secret cupboard and returned with a pair of women's black silk underpants. He opened his trousers and masturbated with the panties, his eyes on the portrait. He thought of what it would be like to be inside her, to press her body down beneath his and impale his shaft between her legs again and again and again, until she screamed with the ecstasy of it.
When it was over, he washed himself at the utility sink in the corner, rinsed out the panties, and put them away with his other treasures. He watched the clock and waited, too restless to work on the drawing. When the house was quiet and he knew his mother and Victor were likely both asleep, he let his restlessness drive him from the house into the night.
Nick paced his study as Annie recounted the events of the evening to him, culminating with Marcotte's call to Donnie. Things were starting to happen. The screws were turning.
Marcotte was in it now, and Nick couldn't help but wonder if that was his own doing. That Marcotte might never have taken an interest in Bayou Breaux if he hadn't drawn the man's attention to it didn't sit well. The possibility that Marcotte had been involved from the start pleased him even less.
The focus of the investigation was broadening rather than narrowing, suggesting he hadn't done the job right the first time around, and he didn't want to believe that. He had worked too hard to come back from the debacle of New Orleans and the Parmantel case.
"I feel like I'm balancing on the head of a pin, juggling bowling balls," Annie muttered, starting to pace as Nick slowed, as if it were essential for one of them to keep in motion.
"If Marcotte was in contact with Donnie before Pam's murder, then that only adds to Donnie's motive," she said. "He was angry with Pam for leaving him. I think she was probably holding his property hostage in order to get him to drop the custody threat-which Lindsay Faulkner hinted might have been about Pam seeing male clients. I know Donnie was angry over the relationship he imagined between her and Stokes. If it was imagined.
"What do you know about that?" she asked. "Was he talking about her around the office? Did he say anything to you?"
Nick shook his head. "Not that I recall, but I don't listen to that crap, anyway. I don't care who's screwing who unless there's a felony involved. I sure as hell didn't listen to Stokes. He's got a new one every week, at least. I know he was friendly with her. He was quieter after her murder. He might have wanted to be the primary on the case, but he was tied up with the DA the morning you found her. I caught it instead, and Noblier left it that way, even though Stokes had worked the stalking angle. It was a matter of experience. I've worked more murders than the rest of them put together."
"But Stokes never said anything personal about Pam, about the two of them?"
"Not in a sexual way, no. He admitted he wished he had done more for her during the harassment. He didn't take it seriously enough."
"No kidding," Annie said sarcastically. "I've gone over those reports. He gave her pamphlets on domestic violence and told her to call the phone company to see if she couldn't get them to put a tap on her line. Lazy son of a bitch."
She marched back toward him, her eyes bright with anger and adrenaline. She looked ready to wrestle tigers. Her anger pleased him.
"And what if Stokes is something worse than lazy?" Annie asked quietly, giving voice to the thought for the first time. She felt as if she had just let a poisonous snake loose in the room.
Fourcade looked at her with suspicion. "What exactly are you saying, 'Toinette?"
"I had a little run-in with Stokes today over some of the evidence in those rapes. He claims he sent it in to the lab in Shreveport for analysis, but he threatened me not to check up on it. He says he'll go to Noblier and make a formal complaint about me digging around in his cases. But what's the big deal if I call-if the stuff is really there?"
"You think he didn't send it?" Nick said. "Why wouldn't he?"
"This rapist knows everything we'll look for-hairs, fibers, fingerprints, body fluids. He goes so far as to make the victims clean under their fingernails after he's through with them. Who would know to be that careful? A pro… or a cop."
"You think Stokes is the rapist? Mais sa c'est fou! That's crazy!" He actually laughed. Annie didn't see the humor.
"Why is that crazy?" she demanded. "Because he's got all the women he wants? You know as well as I do it doesn't always work that way."
"Come on, 'Toinette. Stokes is suddenly a rapist? Overnight he's a rapist? No way."
"You think he's not capable of violence against a woman?" Annie said. "Good ol' Chaz. Everybody's buddy. I can tell you from experience he doesn't like the word no."
The import of her words struck Nick hard, awakening feelings of jealousy and protectiveness he would have said he didn't possess. "He laid a hand on you?"
"He never got the chance," Annie said. "But that doesn't mean he didn't want to or that he hasn't thought about it a hundred times since. He's got an ugly temper with a touchy trigger."
True enough, Nick thought. He'd seen Stokes's temper in action just yesterday.
"You thought he turned on you," Annie reminded him.
And he wasn't entirely sure it wasn't true. But Nick couldn't decide if he suspected Stokes because Stokes was deserving of it or because Nick didn't want to accept 100 percent of the culpability for beating up Renard.
"There's a big jump from selling me out to being a rapist," he said.
"But look at the connections to Stokes in all of this," Annie said. "Every time I turn around, there he is. He's got control of the rape task force, has access to all the evidence. Now he's checked out the feathers from the mask in two of the rapes and the mask from Pam Bichon's homicide, and he doesn't want me calling the lab to check on the stuff."
Nick lifted his hands. "Oh, hold on, 'Toinette. You're not gonna try to tie him to Bichon."
"Why not?" Annie said. "Stokes investigated Pam's stalking complaints. Donnie was jealous of the time Pam spent with him-so said Lindsay Faulkner, who met Stokes over lunch on Monday and had her head bashed in that same night."
"You're way off the beam here," Nick said, shaking his head. "I was there, remember. Bichon was my case. You think I wouldn't have seen that?"