Two minutes later she received the summons to Noblier's office.
Valerie Comb was not at her post when Annie arrived at the sheriff's office. The room was empty, the file cabinets with the personnel records unguarded. The door to Gus's inner office was closed. Annie went to it and pressed her ear against the blond wood. No conversation sounds. No chair creaks. Nothing.
She glanced longingly at the file cabinets again. It wouldn't take more than a minute-open the S drawer, find Stokes, one glance and she'd be done. There might not be another chance.
Swallowing at the hard lump of fear wedged in her throat like a chicken bone, she crossed the room to the cabinets, reached for the handle on the S drawer.
"May I help you?"
Annie swung around at the sound of the sharp voice, hastily crossing her arms over her chest. Valerie Comb stood with one hand on the doorknob, the other holding a steaming cup of coffee. Her overdone eyes were narrowed in suspicion, her mouth pressed into a thin painted line.
"I'm here to see the sheriff," Annie said, beaming innocence.
Without comment, Valerie went to her desk, set the coffee down, and settled her fanny in her chair. Eyes on Annie, she pulled a pencil from her rat's nest of bleached hair and punched the intercom button with the eraser end of the pencil so as not to chip her slut red nails. Rumor had it she'd done half the guys in the department. She'd probably done Stokes.
"Sheriff, Deputy Broussard is here to see you."
"Send her in!" Gus bellowed, his voice too big for the plastic box to contain.
Heart beating three steps too fast, Annie let herself into Noblier's inner sanctum. The shades were drawn. He sat back in his chair rubbing his eyes as if he might just have awakened from an afternoon nap.
"You must be out for some kind of record, Deputy," he said, shaking his head.
"Sir?"
He waved at the chair across the desk from him. "Sit down, Annie. Myron's been bending my ear. He says you're unreliable and you might be drinking on the job."
"That's not true, sir."
"That's the second time in a week I've heard your name and alcohol mentioned in the same breath."
"I haven't been drinking, sir. I'll gladly take any test you want me to."
"What I want is to know why two weeks ago I barely knew more than your name, now suddenly you're the burr up everybody's ass." He leaned against his forearms on the desktop. To his right, paperwork was stacked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. To his left lay a giant ceremonial ribbon-cutting scissors like something out of Gulliver's Travels.
"An unfortunate coincidence?" Annie suggested.
"Deputy, there are three things I do not believe in: UFOs, moderate Republicans, and coincidence. What the hell is going on with you? Every time I turn around you're in the middle of something you shouldn't be. You're working in records, for Christ's sake. How the hell can you get in trouble working in records?"
"Bad luck."
"You're tripping over bodies, fighting with other deputies. Stokes was in here this morning telling me you were at the hospital when that Faulkner woman died. Why is that?"
Annie explained her absences from records as best she could, painting a picture of innocence that had been misinterpreted by Myron. She managed to depict herself as an unfortunate bystander regarding Lindsay Faulkner's attack and demise-in the wrong place at the wrong time. Noblier listened, his skepticism plain on his face.
"And this business about you getting shot at last night? What was that about?"
"I don't know, sir."
"I sincerely doubt that," Gus said, rising from his chair. He rubbed at a kink in his lower back as he walked away from the desk. "Has Detective Fourcade made any effort to contact you since his release on bail?"
"Sir?"
"He's got a big ax to grind with you, Annie. As much as I respect Nick's abilities as a detective, you and I both know he's wrapped a little too tight."
"With all due respect, sir, the harassment I've experienced since Detective Fourcade's arrest has come from other sources."
"Yeah, you've managed to bring out the worst in a lot of people."
Annie refrained from pointing out that blaming the victim was politically incorrect these days. The less she drew the sheriff into this mess at this time, the better. She had no proof of anything against anybody. He had already decided she was probably more trouble than she was worth. If she started making accusations against Stokes, it might just push him beyond tolerance.
"Maybe you should take some personal time, Annie," he suggested, coming back to the desk. He pulled a file from the top of the stack and flipped it open. "According to your record, you carried over all your sick days from last year. You could take yourself a little vacation."
"I'd rather not, sir," Annie said, holding herself stiff in her chair. "I don't think that would send a very good message. It might look to the press like you're trying to force me out because of the Fourcade thing. Punishing your only female patrol officer for stopping a bad cop from killing a suspect-that's a pretty volatile story."
Gus's head came up and he regarded her with a piercing stare. "Are you threatening me, Deputy Broussard?"
She did her best to look doe-eyed. "No, sir. Never. I'm just saying how it might look to some people."
"People after my hide," he muttered, talking aloud to himself. He scratched at his afternoon beard stubble. "Smith Pritchett would love that, the ungrateful swine. He'll call me corrupt, a racist, and a sexist. Small-minded, that's what he is. Doesn't see the big picture. All he really wants is revenge on Fourcade for screwing that search at Renard's. He wanted to prosecute the big slam-dunk, media-circus case. Mr. Big Headlines."
He snatched a folded newspaper off his blotter and snapped a big finger against a photograph of Pritchett at the Tuesday press conference, looking stern and authoritative. The headline read: "Task Force Named in Mardi Gras Rapist Cases."
"Look at that," Gus complained. "Like it was Pritchett's task force. Like he had squat to do with trying to solve these cases. You think you know a man…"
Annie tuned out the lament. She took the paper from the sheriff's hands as he walked away. The task force was page two news in the Wednesday Daily Advertiser from Lafayette. The article gave a brief encapsulation of the news conference and details of the three attacks that had taken place in Partout Parish over the last week's time. But it was the small sidebar that drew Annie's attention. Just two paragraphs with the headline "Task Force Leader Experienced."
Heading the Partout Parish task force in the investigation of what has come to be called the "Mardi Gras Rapist" cases will be Detective Charles Stokes. Stokes, 32, has been with the Partout Parish Sheriff's Office since 1993 and is described by Sheriff August F. Noblier as "a diligent and thorough investigator."
Prior to joining the force in Partout Parish, Stokes served with the Hattiesburg (Mississippi) Police Department, where he also worked as a detective, and was part of the team credited with solving a series of sexual assaults against female students on the campus of William Carey College.
Chaz Stokes knew all about rape cases. He'd been there before. The question was: Had he solved the William Carey College rapes cases or had he committed them?
40
The old Andrew Carnegie Library was open until nine on Thursdays. Annie hovered behind the three makeshift computer bays from about five-fifteen until the junior high geeks who used the machines to surf the Net for things they were too young to see had to go home for supper. Then she settled in at the computer farthest from prying eyes and went to work.