"I want you to count to five thousand by sixteenths," Marcus said. "And when you're done, you let me know. Can you do that?"

Victor stared past him, his eyes glassy. Chances were good that by the time he reached five thousand he would have forgotten the source of his distress.

Marcus left the room and paused, looking at the door to his mother's room farther down the hall. Of course she would be in there, the spider in her nest. She would always be there-physically, psychologically, metaphorically. There was only one escape for any of them.

Purposeful, he went down to his bedroom, locked the door behind him, and went to the drawer where he kept his Percodan. The doctor had written the prescription for seventy-five pills, probably hoping he would take them all at once. He'd taken a number of them in the days and nights since his beating, but there were plenty left. More than enough. If he could find the bottle. It was gone from the drawer.

Victor? No. If Victor had taken an overdose of Percodan, agitation would not be the result. He would be lethargic or dead-and better off, either way.

Marcus turned away from the bed and continued on into his workroom. He had cleaned up the mess his rage had created the night before. Everything was in its place once again, neat and tidy. The pencil portrait of Annie was on the drawing table. How fitting that it was torn, he thought, running his finger over the ragged edge of the paper. He imagined that the blood smeared across it was hers.

He turned to his worktable and the tools aligned with the precision of surgical instruments, contemplating the sharp razor's edge of the utility knife. Picking it up, he ran his thumb down the blade and watched his blood bloom along the cut, bright crimson. Tears came again, not at the physical pain, but at the enormous emotional burden of what he was about to do. He set the utility knife aside, disregarding it for his task. A butcher knife would serve the purpose, symbolically and literally. But first, he wanted the pills.

Going to the hidden panel in the wainscoting, he opened the cupboard, confronting his past and his perversion. That was what other people would call his love for women who didn't want him-perversion, obsession. They didn't know what obsession was.

The small tokens he had taken from Elaine and Pam and Annie sat in clusters on a shelf. Memories of things that might have been. A wave of bittersweet nostalgia washed over him as he chose a beautiful glass paperweight that had belonged to Pam. He held it in his hands and touched it to his face. It was cool against his tears.

"Drop it, you slimy, sick bastard." The voice was low and thick with hate. "That belonged to my daughter."

The paperweight rolled from Marcus's hands and fell to the floor as he looked up into the face of Hunter Davidson.

"I hope you're ready to go to hell," the old man said, cocking the hammer on the.45 he held. "Because I've come to send you off."

46

He'd been right from the start. The trail, the logic, led back to Renard. And if he had maintained his focus, if he hadn't allowed his past to leach into his present, Marcotte would have remained a bad distant memory.

Nick lit a cigarette and drew hard on it, trying to burn the bitter taste of the truth from his mouth. The damage was done. He would deal with the repercussions if and when they arose. His focus now had to be on the matter at hand: Renard.

Annie had apparently yanked his chain a little too hard. She needed backup, which was what Nick now felt he should have been doing all along instead of running off half-cocked at shadows. Focus. Control. He had let himself become distracted when he should have stayed true to his gut. The trail, the logic, led back to Renard.

He parked on a side street and entered the Carnival crowd, eyes scanning the mob for Broussard. If she had pushed Renard over the edge, then she could be in trouble, and he had no intention of waiting until morning or even waiting until she was off duty to find out. Whatever confrontation had taken place had been while she was working. That meant Renard was here, watching her.

The crowd was rowdy and drunk, the music loud. The street was filled with costumes and color and movement. Nick looked only for the slate blue uniforms of the SO deputies. He worked systematically down one side of La Rue France and up the other, barely pausing to accept the inane well wishes of his colleagues for the upcoming hearing. He saw no sign of Annie.

She could have been at the jail, booking in some drunk. He could have missed her in the crowd, she was so little. Or she could be in trouble. In the past ten days, she'd spent more time in trouble than out of it. And tonight she'd called to tell him she might have pushed a killer too far.

He could see Hooker loitering near a vendor selling fried shrimp, the fat sergeant scowling but tapping his toe to the music. Hooker would know where Annie was, but Nick doubted Hooker would give the information to him. He'd see too much potential for disaster.

"Nicky! My brother, my man. Where y'at?"

Stokes swayed toward him, his porkpie hat tipped rakishly over one masked eye. Each arm was occupied around a woman in a cut-to-the-ass miniskirt-a bottle blonde in leather and a brunette in denim. They appeared to be holding one another upright.

"This is my man, Nick," Stokes said to the women. "He don't no more know what to do with a party than he'd know what to do with a two-headed goat. You want one of these fine ladies to be your spirit guide into the party world, Nicky? We can go somewhere and have us a party of our own. You know what I mean?"

Nick scowled at him. "You seen Broussard?"

"Broussard? What the hell you want with her?"

"Have you seen her?"

"No, and thank God for it. That chick ain't nothin' but grief, man. You oughta know. She- Oooohhh!" he cooed, as the possibilities dawned in his booze bumbled mind. "Turnabout is fair play, huh? You wanna give her a little scare or somethin'?"

"Or something."

"That's cool. I'm cool with that. Yeah. The bitch has it coming to her."

"So go over there and ask Hooker where she's at. Make up a good excuse."

The Dudley Do-Right flashed bright across Stokes's face. "Mind my lady friends, Nicky. Girls, you be nice to Nicky. He's a monk."

The blonde looked up at Nick as Stokes walked away. "You're not really a monk, are you?"

Nick slipped his shades on, shutting the bimbo out, and said nothing, watching as Stokes approached the sergeant. The two exchanged words, then Stokes bought himself an order of shrimp and came back chewing.

"You're outta luck, friend. She done packed up her tight little ass and gone home."

"What?"

"Hooker says she called in sick a while ago. He thinks maybe she was drinking."

"Why would he think that?"

Stokes shrugged. "I don't know, man. These rumors get around. You know what I mean? Anyhow, she ain't here."

The anxiety in Nick's gut wound tighter. "What's her unit number?"

"What's the difference? She's not in it."

"I came past the station. Her Jeep's in the lot. What the hell is her unit number?" Nick demanded.

Stokes's confusion gave way to concern. He stopped chewing and swallowed. "What're you planning, man?"

Nick's patience snapped. He grabbed Stokes by both shoulders and shook him, sending fried shrimp scattering on the sidewalk. "What the hell is her unit number!"

"One Able Charlie!"

He wheeled and bolted through the crowd, Stokes's voice carrying after him.

"Hey! Don't do nothin' I wouldn't do!"

Nick barreled through the partyers, bouncing people out of his way with a lowered shoulder and a stiff forearm. Masks flashed by in his peripheral vision, giving the scene a surreal quality. When he finally reached his truck, his breath was sawing hot in and out of his lungs. The muscles in his ribs and back, still sore from DiMonti's beating, grabbed at him like talons.