"Injustice. Pam Bichon was my friend and business partner, and it infuriates me that the focus on her case has shifted to the rights of the man who terrorized and killed her. The court system did nothing to protect her rights when she was alive. I mean, wake up, South Lou'siana. This is the nineties. Women deserve better than to be patronized and pushed aside, and to have our rights be considered below the rights of murderers."

"Amen to that," Annie murmured.

A wedding party had come into the park for photographs. The bride stood in the center of the Rotary Club gazebo looking impatient while the photographer's assistant fussed with the train of her white satin gown. Half a dozen bridesmaids in pale yellow organdy dotted the lawn around the gazebo like overgrown daffodils. The groomsmen had begun a game of catch near the tomb of the unknown Confederate war hero. Down on the bank of the bayou, two little boys in black tuxes busied themselves throwing stones as far as they could into the water.

Annie stared at the ripples radiating out from each splash. Cause and effect, a chain of events, one action the catalyst for another and another. The mess she found herself in hadn't begun with her arrest of Fourcade, or Fourcade's attack on Renard. It hadn't begun with Judge Monahan's dismissal of the evidence or the search that had uncovered that evidence. It had all begun with Marcus Renard and his obsession with Pam Bichon. Therein lay the dark heart of the matter: Marcus Renard and what the court system had inadvertently allowed him to do. Injustice.

Not allowing herself to consider the consequences, Annie started the Jeep and drove away from the park. She needed to take positive action rather than allow herself to be caught up in the wake of the actions of others.

She needed to do something-for Pam, for Josie, for herself. She needed to see this case closed, and who was going to do that, who was going to find the truth? A department that had turned on her? Chaz Stokes, whom Fourcade accused of betrayal? Fourcade, who had betrayed the law he was sworn to serve?

Turning north, she headed toward the building that housed Bayou Realty and the architectural firm of Bowen amp; Briggs.

The Bayou Realty offices were homey, catering to the tastes of women, offering an atmosphere that stirred the feminine instinct to nest. A pair of flowered chintz couches, plump with ruffled pillows, created a cozy L off to one side of the front room. Framed sales sheets with color photographs of homes being offered stood in groupings on the glass-topped wicker coffee table like family portraits. Potted ferns basked in the deep brick window wells. The scent of cinnamon rolls hung in the air.

The receptionist's station was unoccupied. A woman's voice could be heard coming from one of the offices down the hall. Annie waited. The bell on the front door had announced her entrance. Nerves rattled inside her.

"Be bold," Fourcade had told her.

Fourcade was a lunatic.

The door to the second office on the right opened and Lindsay Faulkner stepped into the hall. Pam Bichon's partner looked like the kind of woman who was elected homecoming queen in high school and college and went on to marry money and raise beautiful, well-behaved children with perfect teeth. She came down the hall with the solid, sunny smile of a Junior League hospitality chairwoman.

"Good mornin'! How are you today?" She said this with enough familiarity and warmth that Annie nearly turned around to see if someone had come in behind her. "I'm Lindsay Faulkner. How may I help you?"

"Annie Broussard. I'm with the sheriff's department." A fact no longer readily apparent. She had changed out of her coffee-stained uniform into jeans and a polo shirt. She had tucked her badge into her hip pocket but couldn't bring herself to pull it out. She'd be in trouble enough as it was if Noblier caught wind of what she was up to.

Lindsay Faulkner's enthusiasm faded fast. Irritation flickered in the big green eyes. She stopped just behind the receptionist's desk and crossed her arms over the front of her emerald silk blouse.

"You know, you people just make me see red. This has been hell on us-Pam's friends, her family-and what have you done? Nothing. You know who the killer is and he walks around scotfree. The incompetence astounds me. My God, if you'd done your jobs in the first place, Pam might still be alive today."

"I know it's been frustrating, Ms. Faulkner. It's been frustrating for us as well."

"You don't know what frustration is."

"With all due respect, yes, I do," Annie said plainly. "I was the one who found Pam. I would like nothing better than to have this case closed."

"Then go on upstairs and arrest him, and leave the rest of us alone."

She marched back down the hall. Annie followed.

"Renard is upstairs right now?"

"Your powers of deduction are amazing, Detective."

Annie didn't correct her presumption of rank. "It must be like salt in the wound-having to work in the same building with him."

"I hate it," she said flatly, going into her office. "Bayou Realty owns the building. If I could terminate their lease tomorrow, the whole lot of them would be out in the street, but once again the law is on his side.

"The gall of that man!" Her expression was a mix of horror and hatred. "To come here and work as if he's done nothing wrong at all, while every day I have to walk past that empty office, Pam's office-"

She sat for a moment with a hand to her mouth, staring out the window at the parking lot.

"I know you and Pam were very close," Annie said quietly, slipping into a chair in front of the desk. She extracted a small notebook and pen from her hip pocket and positioned the notebook on her thigh.

Lindsay Faulkner produced a small linen handkerchief seemingly from thin air and blotted delicately at the corners of her eyes. "We were best friends from the day we met at college. I was Pam's maid of honor. I'm Josie's godmother. Pam and I were like sisters. Do you have a sister?"

"No."

"Then you can't understand. When that animal murdered Pam, he murdered a part of me, a part that can't be buried in a tomb. I will carry that part inside me for the rest of my life. Deadweight, black with rot; something that used to be so bright, so full of joy. He has to be made to pay for that."

"If we can convict him, he'll get the death penalty."

A little smile twisted at Faulkner's lips. "We opposed capital punishment, Pam and I. Cruel and unusual, barbaric, we said. How naive we were. Renard doesn't deserve compassion. No punishment could be cruel enough. I've tortured that man to death in my imagination more times than I can count. I've lain awake nights wishing I had the courage…"

She stared at Annie, the light of challenge in her eyes. "Will you arrest me? The way they arrested Pam's father?"

"He did a sight more than imagine Renard dead."

"Pam was Hunter's only daughter. He loved her so, and now he carries that dead piece inside him too."

"Did you suspect Renard was the one harassing Pam?"

Guilt passed over the woman's face, and she looked down at her hands lying on the desktop. "Pam said it was him."

"And you thought…?"

"I've been over this with the others," she said. "Don't you people talk to one another?"

"I'm trying to get a fresh perspective. Male detectives have a male point of view. I may pick up on something they didn't." A good argument, Annie thought. She'd have to remember it when Noblier called her on the carpet for overstepping her bounds.

"He seemed so harmless," Lindsay Faulkner whispered. "You watch the movies, you think maniacs are supposed to look a certain way, act a certain way. You think a stalker is some lowlife with no job and a double-digit IQ. You never think, 'Oh, I bet that architect upstairs is a psychopath.' He's been here for years. I never- He hadn't…"