And yet she'd brought forward the evidence.

"I'm sorry," Annie murmured. "But we'll have to take this to the sheriff."

She pushed her chair back and stood, swaying unsteadily on her feet, the dizziness swarming around her head like a cloud of bees. She felt as if she might just float off the ground, and had no control over whether she would or would not. As she stepped away from the table the ground seemed to dip beneath her feet, and she staggered.

"Oh, my goodness!" Doll Renard's voice sounded far away. "Are you all right, Deputy Broussard?"

"Uh, I'm a little dizzy," Annie mumbled.

"Perhaps you should sit back down?"

"No, I'll be fine. Too much caffeine, that's all. We need to get to the sheriff."

She attempted another step and went down hard on one knee. The picture frame fell from her hand.

"Oh, dear!" Doll gasped. "Let me help you!"

"This is embarrassing," Annie said, steadying herself against the older woman as she rose. "I'm so sorry."

Doll sniffed and wrinkled her nose. "Have you been drinking, Deputy?"

"No, no, that was an assident." Alarm jumped through her at the sound of her own voice, the words slurred and indistinct. Her body felt heavy, as if she were moving through a vat of Jell-O. "I'm just not feeling well. We'll go to the station. I'll be fine."

They moved slowly toward the Cadillac, Doll Renard on Annie's right, supporting her. The woman was so much stronger than she looked, Annie thought. Or maybe it was just that she suddenly had no strength at all. An electric buzzing vibrated in her arms and legs. The fingertip she had pricked on the rose stem throbbed like a beating heart.

The rose thorn. The rose Marcus had given her.

Poisoned. God, she'd never expected that. But it was certainly poetic-that a token of love would become an instrument of death when the love was spurned. He would think that way, the twisted, sick son of a bitch.

"Mizzuz Renard?" she said as she collapsed into the passenger's seat of the car. "I think maybe we shhhould go to the hossspital. I think I might be dying."

He wanted to kill her. He wanted to put his hands around Annie Broussard's throat and watch her face as he choked her. She had played him for a fool. The last joke would be on her. The violent fantasy splashed in vivid color through Marcus's mind as he pushed his way through the crowd.

The noise of the party was a discordant cacophony in his ears. The lights and colors were too bright, too garish against the black of night and the black of his mood. Faces loomed in at him, laughing mouths and hideous masks. He stumbled into a Ronald Reagan pretender, spilling the man's beer in a geyser onto the sidewalk.

"Fucking drunk!" Reagan shouted. "Watch where you're going!"

In retaliation, the man shoved him hard, and Marcus careened into another reveler in a Zorro mask and a porkpie hat. Stokes.

Stokes stumbled backward, feet scrambling. Marcus fell with him, fell on him amid the forest of legs. He wished he had a knife. He imagined himself stabbing Stokes as they fell, then getting up and walking away before anyone realized.

"Stupid motherfucker!" Stokes yelled, getting up.

Before Marcus could right himself, Stokes booted him in the ribs. Holding himself, Marcus struggled to his feet and kept going, half doubled over, laughter ringing behind him. He pressed on through the crowd, then turned the corner and hurried down the side street toward Bowen amp; Briggs.

The thick, humid air burned in his lungs. His chest felt banded with steel, the pressure crushing against his cracked ribs. Small, sharp pains burst through him with every breath. His face was on fire. He tore off the painted mask and threw it in the gutter. It was no disguise compared to the mask Annie had worn. Betrayal with the lawyer was the least of her crimes. The slut. He had overlooked and rationalized and made excuses for her, sure that she would see in the end how right it could be between them. She deserved to be punished for what she'd put him through. He punished her in his mind as the emotions tore through him. Love, rage, hate. She would be sorry. In the end, she would be sorry.

He felt as if he'd been eviscerated. Why did this have to happen to him time and again? Why couldn't the women he loved love him in return? Why did his feelings grab hold so hard and refuse to let go? Love, passion, need, need, need. He was an otherwise normal man. He was intelligent. He had talents. He had a good job. Why did his need have to overwhelm him again and again?

As he let himself into the Volvo, tears rolled down his face, scalding with both pain and shame. His body was rigid and trembling with anger, the tension magnifying his various injuries, the physical pain further humiliating him. What kind of man was he? The kind other men kicked and scorned, the kind women sneered at, the kind women sought restraining orders against. He didn't think he could endure it any longer. The emotions were too much, too big, too painful. And in the back of his head he could hear his mother's mocking voice, telling him he was pathetic.

He was pathetic. That truth nearly crushed him with its weight.

He was sobbing as he passed the drive to the house where Pam had died. Her death would hang over him like a shadow for the rest of his life.

What kind of life was this to lead? A suspected murderer, a pathetic wretch living with his mother, spurned again and again by the women he loved. How many times had he wished himself away from here, envisioned a better life-with Elaine, with Pam, with Annie? But he would never go, and that better life would never happen. He would never live on the Gulf in a beach house and spend his evenings with Annie or any other woman. He would only become more pathetic, more isolated, be more loathed. What was the point?

He turned the Volvo down his driveway and gunned the engine. A sense of urgency had joined the other emotions writhing inside him like snakes. He slammed the car into park alongside the house and went inside.

Victor sat on the landing of the front stairs, wearing one of their mother's feather masks and rocking himself. He sprang to his feet and thundered down the steps, rushing to within inches of Marcus, shrieking, "Red! Red! Red! Red!"

"Stop it!" Marcus snapped, shoving him back. "You'll wake Mother."

"Not now. Enter out, Mother. Red! Very red!"

"What are you talking about?" Marcus demanded, cutting through the dining room. Against his will, he glanced at the wall. Of course the paint didn't match. "It's after midnight. Mother is in bed."

Victor shook his head vigorously. "Then and now. Enter out, Mother. Red!"

"I don't know what you mean," Marcus said impatiently. "Where would she have gone? You know Mother doesn't drive at night. You're being ridiculous."

Frustration grabbed hold of Victor as they reached the door to Marcus's rooms, and he stopped beside the wall and banged his head against it, keening in his throat.

Marcus grabbed hold of him by the shoulders. "Victor, stop it! Go to your room and calm down. Go look at one of your books."

"Then and now. Then and now. Then and now!" he chanted.

Marcus heaved a sigh, feeling a deep sadness for his brother. Poor Victor, locked inside his own mind. Then again, maybe Victor was the lucky one.

"Come along," he said, quietly.

Taking Victor by the hand, he led him upstairs to his room, shushing him the whole way.

"Red! Red!" Victor harped in a whisper, like a bird with laryngitis.

"Nothing is red, Victor," Marcus said, turning on the lamp.

Victor sat down on the edge of the bed and rocked himself from side to side. The peacock plumes that arched up from the corners of his mask bobbed like antennae. He looked absurd.