Nick watched the strange, sad little ritual with a heavy heart. He wondered for the first time where Renard's mother was, why she hadn't come running at the sound of trouble. Then the roar of a big car engine cut into his thoughts, and he started for the front of the house, breaking into a run at the sound of metal hitting metal.

At the side of the house a Cadillac had broadsided Renard's Volvo. As Nick stepped out onto the veranda, the car's door opened and the driver fell out onto the lawn. Nick jumped down to the ground and jogged closer, that old hand of dread grabbing hold of him hard as he saw the uniform and the mop of dark hair.

"'Toinette!" he shouted, sprinting the last few yards.

He dropped to the ground beside her, his trembling hands framing her face. He slid two fingers down the side of her throat to search for a pulse, praying, pleading.

Annie opened her eyes and looked up at him. Nick. It was nice to see him one last time, whether his image was real or not.

"Doll," she murmured dreamily, a shudder quaking through her body. "Doll killed Pam. And she killed me too."

49

The edge of death was a place of darkness and light, sound and silence. She hovered there, slipping from one world into the next and back again.

The ambulance, the urgency of the EMTs, the lights, the sirens.

Utter stillness, a sense of calm and resignation.

The noise and motion of the ER.

The eerie peace of nonexistence.

Annie saw the landscape as bleak and still, a battlefield in the aftermath, bodies scattered across the ground, the sky hanging heavy and leaden, everything cast in the twilight colors of nightmares. Pam was there. And Doll Renard. And Marcus. Their souls rose from them like smoke from a dying fire and drifted just above the bloody ground. She stood on the sidelines and watched.

"It's cold here, no?" Fourcade whispered.

"Where?"

He raised his left hand, fingers spread, and reached out, not quite touching her. Slowly he passed his hand before her eyes, skimmed it around the side of her head, just brushing his fingertips against her hair.

"In Shadowland."

He spoke as if he lived in this place. And yet, Annie felt herself being pulled away from him, deeper into the blackness.

"Don't leave me here, 'Toinette," he murmured, his dark eyes filled with sadness. "Me, I've been alone too long."

She stretched out her hand toward his, but couldn't quite reach. Then panic seized her as she felt herself being drawn backward, across the line between life and death. She didn't think she had the strength to break free. She was so tired, so weak. But she didn't want to die. She wasn't ready to die.

The darkness, as thick and liquid as oil, began to suck her under. Tapping into a reserve of strength she didn't know she possessed, Annie focused on the surface and tried to kick free.

The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was Fourcade. He sat beside the bed, staring at her as if looking away would break her tenuous tie to the living world. She was aware of monitors beside her bed and the night beyond her window.

"Hi," she whispered.

He leaned closer, still staring. "I thought I lost you there, chère," he said softly.

"Where?"

"In Shadowland."

His eyes never leaving hers, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. "You scared me, 'Toinette. Me, I don't like to be scared. It pisses me off." The corners of his mouth turned up a fraction of an inch.

Annie smiled dreamily. "Well, we've got that in common."

He leaned closer and touched his lips to hers, and Annie drifted off to sleep with a sigh of deep relief. When she woke again he was gone.

"You're tuned to KJUN. All talk all the time. Our top story at the top of the hour: Local planter Hunter Davidson, father of murder victim Pamela Bichon will be arraigned this afternoon in the Partout Parish Courthouse for the murder of Bayou Breaux architect Marcus Renard.

"Davidson's new attorney, Revon Tallant, has suggested an insanity defense will be employed, and expects that an alleged confession made by Davidson early Sunday morning will be ruled inadmissible by the court.

"Davidson had recently been released from Partout Parish Jail following a plea agreement on charges of attempted assault against Marcus Renard. District Attorney Smith Pritchett has been unavailable for comment. A formal statement is expected later this morning."

Annie turned the radio off. During the two days she lay in the hospital bed, her senses had been bombarded with the story. On television, on the radio, in the newspapers. Accurate, inaccurate, twisted, and sensationalized-she'd heard every version of Hunter Davidson's drama and her own. She had been besieged with requests for interviews, all of which she had declined. It was over. Time for everyone to try to repair the damage that had been done and move on.

Dr. Van Allen had reluctantly agreed to let her go home. The drug Doll Renard had dosed her with had been effectively counteracted. The blood she had lost had been replaced. The pain in her thigh was constant, but tolerable. The bullet had passed through and through, missing both the bone and the vital femoral artery. She would limp for a while, but all things considered, she was damn lucky.

Lucky to be alive. Whether or not she would be lucky enough to have a job to go back to remained to be seen.

Gus had come to her bedside on Sunday to personally take her statement regarding Doll Renard. He listened without comment while Annie related the events of the last ten days, his face lined with a tense emotion she was afraid to name.

She thought about it now as she sat down on the edge of the bed to rest a moment from the effort of getting dressed. What had been gained and what had been lost in all of this? A murderer had been unmasked and stopped. Annie had gained insights into her own strengths and abilities. But the losses seemed disproportionately heavy. She'd seen an ugly side to men she had to work with and rely upon. Lives had been altered, some damaged beyond repair.

She limped out of the hospital into a day that was cool and gray with the promise of rain, and eased herself awkwardly into the shotgun seat of the cruiser Noblier had sent for her. The deputy was Phil Prejean. He squirmed in the driver's seat like a five-year-old with a full bladder.

"I-ah-I'm sorry for what all that happened, Annie," he said. "I hope you can accept my apology."

"Yeah, sure," she said without conviction, and fixed her gaze out the window.

They drove out of the lot with an itchy silence thick in the air between them.

News vans from television stations all over Louisiana crowded the curbs out in front of the courthouse, even though the arraignment was still more than an hour away. The parking lot was clogged with cars. Annie wondered what those same reporters who had called Hunter Davidson a folk hero ten days ago would call him now that he'd killed an innocent man.

The story of a crime went so much deeper than what people read in the papers or saw on the nightly news. No reporter could cram into a column inch or a sixty-second sound bite how the repercussions rolled outward from a single violent epicenter to shake the lives of so many people- the victim's family and the perpetrator's, the cops and the community.

Josie Bichon had been left without a mother. Her grandfather would go to trial for murder. Belle Davidson had lost a daughter and stood to lose a husband. Victor Renard had lost the only people who could understand any part of the workings of his damaged mind. The people of Bayou Breaux had suffered irreparable damage to their sense of trust and safety.