Two units made the scene ahead of her. The cars sat at flamboyant angles in the front yard of the little brick house, beacons rolling. One officer sat on the concrete front steps, either watching out for the ambulance or being sick. The latter, Annie guessed as she crossed the lawn.

He grabbed hold of the wrought iron railing to steady himself as he rose to his feet. The front-porch light gleamed off his red hair like the sun on a new copper penny and Annie thanked heaven for small favors. This cop was a Doucet. Blood was thicker than the Brotherhood. Blood was thicker than anything in South Louisiana.

"Hey, Annie, that you?"

"Hey, Tee-Rouge, where y'at?"

"Tossing my cookies. What you doing here, chère?"

"Caught it on the scanner. I thought the victim might appreciate having another woman here," she lied.

Tee-Rouge gave a snort and waved a hand in dismissal. "That's some victim. Somebody oughta lift that li'l gal's nightie and see what kind of hairy balls she's hiding under there. She shot this son of a bitch point-blank in the face with a cut-down shotgun."

"Youch. Who is he?" Annie asked, trying for casual, feeling anything but. In her mind's eye she pictured Stokes creeping toward the woman's bed, the woman raising the shotgun, Stokes's face exploding.

Tee-Rouge shrugged. "Chère, his mama wouldn't know him if he sat up and called her name. He's got no ID, but he was wearing the mask. There's feathers all over the damn scene. This is our scumbag of the season right here."

"You call the detectives?"

"Yeah, but Stokes, he's who-knows-where. In bed with some chick, probably-no offense."

Annie's heartbeat quickened. "He's not answering his page?"

"Not so far. Quinlan's on his way, but he lives clear up in Devereaux. It'll take him some time to get down here."

"Who's inside?" she asked, starting for the door.

"Pitre."

Groaning to herself, Annie went on into the house as a third cruiser came screaming down the road. Every patrol in the parish was being abandoned in favor of the excitement of a "hot crime scene. Everybody wanted in on wrapping the Mardi Gras case.

The living room was empty. There was no immediate sign of the victim. The bedroom looked to be a straight shot down the hall to the left. Pitre stood just inside the doorway, at the feet of the fallen assailant. Annie took a deep breath and marched down the hall.

"I'm not gonna want pizza any time soon," Pitre muttered, then looked up at the source of the footfalls. "Broussard, what the hell are you doing here? You're not on tonight. Hell, you're barely on the force at all."

Annie ignored him, turning to look at the dead man. He wasn't her first. He wasn't even her first by shotgun. But he was the first hit at close range, and the sight was by no means pretty.

The rapist lay on the floor, arms outflung. He was dressed in black, covering every inch of his body, including his hands. He could have been black, white, Indian-there was no telling. There was virtually nothing left of his face. The flesh-and-bone mask that set one human being apart from the next had been obliterated. The raw meat, shattered bone, and exposed brain matter could have belonged to anyone. The hair was saturated with blood, its color indistinguishable. A fragment of the black feather mask was stuck to a jagged piece of cranium. The stench of violent death was thick in the air.

"Oh my Lord," Annie breathed, her knees wilting a bit. The Snickers bar threatened a return trip, and she had to steel herself against spewing it all over the crime scene.

Scraps and chunks of the assailant's face had been sprayed up onto the ceiling and on the pale yellow wall. The sawed-off shotgun lay abandoned on the bed.

"If you can't take it, leave, Broussard. Nobody asked you here," Pitre said, moving around the bed to check out the shotgun. "Stokes won't be amused to see you."

"Yeah? Well, maybe the joke's on him," Annie muttered, trying to think ahead. Should she pull Quinlan aside when he arrived and tell him about the possibility? Or should she just step back and let the thing unravel on its own? No one would thank her for having suspected Stokes.

"Hey," Pitre said with the delighted surprise of a child finding the hidden prize in Cracker Jack. "We know the guy had one blue eye."

"How's that?"

A nasty grin lit his face as he leaned over the bed and stared at his find. " 'Cause here it is. Would you look at that! That sucker musta popped clean out of his head when she shot him! It's just sitting here like a little egg!"

Stokes's turquoise blue orbs came clearly into focus in Annie's mind as she stepped around the body. But before she could get a look at Pitre's prize, a familiar voice sounded behind her.

"Man Without a Face. Anybody see that movie? This guy's uglier. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'."

Annie swung around, stunned. Stokes stood looking down at the body, chewing on a stick of boudin sausage, a Ragin' Cajuns ball cap backward on his head. He glanced over at her and made a face.

"Man, Broussard, you are like the goddamn clap-unwanted, unwelcome, and impossible to get rid of."

"I'm sure you're the voice of experience," Annie managed. She hadn't quite realized just how set she had been on Stokes's guilt until that moment. A mix of emotions swept over her as she watched him step around the body-disappointment, relief, guilt.

"Who asked you to the dance, anyway?" Stokes asked. "We don't need any secretaries here, don't need any crime dogs."

"I thought the victim might appreciate having another woman here."

"Yeah, he probably would have if he wasn't dead."

"I meant the woman."

"Then go find her and get the hell outta my crime scene." He looked right at her and said straight-faced, "Can't have you messing up any evidence."

As Annie went into the hall, Stokes leaned over the bed and looked at the shotgun. "Man, that's what I call birth control. You know what I mean?"

Pitre laughed.

The victim, Kim Young, was in her neat little yellow kitchen, leaning back against the counter, trembling as if she had just walked out of a freezer. The pale blue baby-doll nightgown she wore barely cleared the tops of her thighs and was liberally flecked with blood and tissue. The mess had sprayed across her face and into her dishwater blond curls.

"I'm Deputy Broussard," Annie said gently. "Would you like to sit down? Are you feeling all right?"

She looked up, glassy-eyed. "I-I shot that man."

"Yes, you did."

From where she stood, Annie could see the open patio door in the dining room, where the assailant had gained entry. A neat half-moon of glass had been cut out beside the handle.

"Did you get a look at him before you pulled the trigger?"

She shook her head, dislodging a bone fragment from her hair. It fell to the tile floor next to her bare foot. "It was too dark. Something woke me up and-and-I was so scared. And then he was right there by the bed and I-I-"

Tears choked her. Her face reddened. "What if it had been Mike? It could have been Mike! I just shot-"

Ignoring the blood and gore, Annie put an arm around Kim Young's shoulders as the realization dawned in the woman's mind-that she might have killed a loved one by mistake. Then, instead of being a hero, as she would certainly be touted when the press caught up with the story, she would have been portrayed as stupid and hysterical, a misguided vigilante forced to pay a terrible price. The difference was the outcome, not the action. Just another one of life's little object lessons.

The assailant's name was Willard Roache, known affectionately by his old pals in the penal system as "Cock" Roache. He had a long, ugly history of sexual assault charges and two convictions. He'd done his last jolt in Angola and had been released in June 1996. His last address listed with the state correctional system was in Shreveport, where he had dumped his parole officer and his identity.