Annie looked at the work in progress: a cheap pine framework covered with chicken wire. It could have been anything. Two women in cutoffs and tight T-shirts were stuffing chicken-wire holes with squares of blue crepe paper, talking, laughing, oblivious to the larger problems of the world.

"It's a castle," Donnie explained. "My daughter's idea. She picked a scene from Much Ado About Nothing. Can you believe that? Nine years old and she's into Shakespeare."

"She's a very bright girl."

"She wanted to help build it, but her grandmother had other ideas. Another Davidson woman conspiring against me. "

"Will Belle and Hunter challenge you for custody?"

He hunched his shoulders, still staring at the float. "I don't know. Probably. I suppose it'll depend on whether Hunter goes to prison. I've got that in my favor: I haven't tried to kill anybody recently-or ever," he amended, glancing down at Annie. "That was a joke."

"You want Josie to live with you full-time?"

"She's my daughter. I love her."

As if it were as simple as that. As if he had managed to totally separate Donnie the Daddy from Donnie the Don Juan.

"Rumor had it, you would have fought Pam for her."

"Oh, Christ, that again?" Impatience pulled at his features, making him look petulant. "You've got your killer. Why don't you go hound him? I didn't do anything to Pam. I didn't kill her for the insurance or for the business or in a rage or anything else. I couldn't do anything to Pam. I was sure as hell in no condition that night to do anything to anybody. I drank too much, got a ride home from a friend, and passed out."

"I know all that," Annie said. "I'm not looking at you as a suspect, Mr. Bichon." Though it had occurred to her more than once that drunkenness was easily faked and Donnie had as much motive as anyone-more than most.

According to the news reports, he had shown up at the Voodoo Lounge that night between nine and ten, and had been dropped off at home by his friend around eleven-thirty. Pam had last been seen at eight-twenty and had died around midnight. There were windows of opportunity on both ends of Donnie's story.

"I was just wondering what grounds you had to challenge Pam for custody."

"Why? Pam is dead. What difference does it make now?"

"If Pam was involved with someone-"

"Renard killed her!" he roared suddenly. The cords in his neck stood out, as taut as guy wires. He spiked his bottle on the cement floor of the shed, shards of glass exploding outward, beer foaming like peroxide in a raw wound. "He killed her! Now do your fucking job and put him away for it!"

He shoved past Annie and strode for the door. The float crew stared, mouths agape. Mary Chapin Carpenter shouted from the radio-"I Take My Chances."

Annie hustled after him. The brilliance of the afternoon nearly blinded her as she emerged from the shed. Squinting, she shaded her eyes with her hand. Donnie stood at the chain-link fence that corralled the possessions of his company, staring at the train tracks that ran behind the property.

"Look, I'm just trying to get at the whole truth," she said, stepping up beside him. "I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask questions."

"It's just- It's dragged on and on." He swallowed and his Adam's apple bobbed like cork. His eyes stayed on the tracks. "Why can't it just be over? Pam's gone… I'm so tired of it…"

He wanted the wounds to heal and disappear with no scars, no reminders. It was a good detective's job to keep picking and picking at those wounds. The trick was knowing when to dig and when to stand back. Annie had thought she would be able to read Donnie Bichon, know him for a liar if he was one. But the emotions that had caught him up were a tangled skein; she couldn't tell grief from remorse, fear from arrogance.

"I could have been a better husband," he murmured. "She could have been a better wife. You can think what you want of me for saying it."

In the distance a train whistle blew. Donnie seemed not to have heard it. He was lost in memories.

"I just wanted what was mine," he whispered, blinking against the threat of tears. "I didn't want to lose her. I didn't want to lose Josie. I thought maybe if I scared her… threatened custody…"

If he scared her how? Was custody the only threat he'd made? Annie drew a breath to ask what he meant, but held it as he turned toward her.

"You look like her, you know," he said, his voice strangely dreamy. "The shape of your face… the hair… the mouth…"

He reached out as if to touch her cheek, but pulled back at the last instant. She wondered if it was sanity or the fear of breaking some inner spell that stopped him. Either way, it unnerved her. She didn't welcome comparison with a woman who had met such a brutal end.

"I miss her," Donnie admitted. "Always want what I can't have. I used to think that was ambition, but it's just… need."

"What about Pam? What did she need?"

The train whistle blew again, louder, nearer.

"To be free of me," he said simply, his expression bleak. "And now she is."

Annie watched him walk away, not back to the building but to a pearl white Lexus parked near the side gate. Behind her the Southern Pacific train whined past, wheels chattering over the connections in the track.

She had been working the case a matter of hours, and she felt as if she had stepped into a maze that appeared deceptively simple from the outside but was in reality a complex labyrinth, dark corridor full of mirrors. A small part of her wanted to turn back. A larger part of her wanted to go deeper, learn more. The mystery pulled at her, beckoned her. Temptation, The word came to her like a whispered secret from a hidden coconspirator.

Fourcade. He was the guardian at the gate, her selfappointed guide if she would accept his offer. He held the map of the maze and the knowledge of the players. The trick would be deciding if he was friend or foe, if his offer was genuine or a trap. There seemed only one way to find out.

18

Even on a bright day the house had a sinister look. The brilliant spring sun failed to remove the shawl of shadows that fell down from the newly leafed trees. Shrouded in murky light and gray with neglect, it squatted amid the sprouting growth like a toothless crone, ugly and abandoned.

Nick stared at the house from the pirogue, fascinated by the possibility that evil could linger in a place like a scent. The house hadn't been bad off at the time of the murder. Recently vacated by renters at the time, and scheduled for some renovation work, the electricity had still been turned on. Since the murder, the place had been let go. Kids had thrown rocks through the windows. The stigma of death clung to it like grime.

Nick would not go inside. Some people would have called him superstitious, but they would have been people who had never stepped close to the boundary between good and evil; they didn't know the power or the possibilities. Still, it was telling that on a day as fine as this one, when other parts of Pony Bayou were thick with weekend fishermen, there were none within a quarter mile of this place.

He had set out in the pirogue intending to distance himself from thoughts of the case. But this place had drawn him like a magnet.

Another battle lost, and so he would give himself over to the obsession until a conclusion could be reached.

Would it be over now, he wondered, had I killed Renard that night?

Pony Bayou here was narrow, even this time of year, when the brown water was high and spilling into the forest. The banks were crowded with hackberry saplings and tangles of dewberry and poison ivy. The limbs of the black willow and water locust reached out over the column of water from both sides, like bony fingers stretching to touch one another.