Or it might have looked like they were ignoring the victim of a brutal beating, turning their heads the other way because the perpetrator was a cop. It might have looked like they were stalling for time until they could come up with a story.

Annie turned toward the wall that held a pictorial essay on the illustrious career of August F. Noblier. The sheriff in his younger, trimmer days grinning and shaking hands with Governor Edwards. An array of photographs through the years with lesser politicians and celebrities who had passed through Partout Parish during the years of Gus's reign. She had always respected him.

"You did what you did, and we'll deal with it, Deputy," he said, as if she was the one who had broken the law. Annie wondered if he had given Fourcade a reprimand or a pat on the back. "The point is, we could have dealt with the situation more cleanly if you'd stayed on the page with me. You know what I'm saying?"

Annie said nothing. It wouldn't have done any good to point out that she hadn't been given the opportunity to stay on the page, that the book had been slammed shut on her last night, that she had been cut loose and excluded from the proceedings like an outsider. She wasn't sure which was worse-being shut out or being included in a conspiracy.

"I don't want you talking to the press," Noblier said, going around behind his desk to settle himself into his big leather executive's chair. "And I don't want you talking to Richard Kudrow under any circumstances. You understand me?"

"Yes, sir."

" 'No comment.' Can you manage that?"

"Yes, sir."

"And, most of all, I don't want you talking to Marcus Renard. You got that?"

"Yes, sir."

"You were off duty, which is why you didn't hear that 10-70 call that went out. You stumbled into a situation and contained it. Is that what happened?"

"Yes, sir," she whispered, the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach swelling like bread dough.

Noblier stared at her in silence for a moment. "How did Kudrow know you tried to arrest Fourcade? Has he already talked to you?"

"He left a message on my answering machine this morning while I was out running."

"But you didn't talk to him?"

"No."

"Did you tell Renard you arrested Fourcade?"

"No."

"Did you Mirandize Fourcade in front of him?"

"Renard was unconscious."

"Then Kudrow was bluffing, that ugly son of a bitch," Gus muttered to himself. "I hate that man. I don't care that he's dying. I wish he'd hurry up and get it over with. Have you filed an arrest report?"

"Not yet."

"Nor will you. If you've started that paperwork, I want it shredded. Not thrown away. Shredded."

"But Renard is going to press charges-"

"That doesn't mean we have to make it easy for him. Go ahead and write up his complaint, write up your preliminary report, but you did not arrest Fourcade. Get your sergeant's initials on the paperwork, then bring the file straight to me.

"I'm personally taking charge of the case," he said, as if he were trying out the phrase for a future official statement. "It's an unusual situation-allegations being made against one of my men. Requires my undivided attention to see to it justice is served.

"And don't look at me like that, Deputy," he said, pointing an accusatory finger. "We're not doing anything Richard Kudrow hasn't done time and again for the scum he represents."

"Then we're no better than they are," Annie murmured.

"The hell we're not," Noblier growled, reaching for the telephone. "We're the good guys, Annie. We work for Lady Justice. It's just that she can't always see what's what with that damned blindfold on. You're dismissed, Deputy."

The women's locker room in the Partout Parish Sheriff's Department had originally been a janitor's closet. There had been no women on the job when the building was designed in the late sixties, and the blissful chauvinists on the planning committee hadn't foreseen the possibility. Their shortsightedness meant male officers had a locker room with showers and their own rest room, while female personnel got a broom closet that had been converted during the 1993 remodeling.

The only light was a bare bulb in the ceiling. Four battered metal lockers had been salvaged out of the old junior high school and transplanted along one wall. A cheap frame-less mirror hung on the opposite wall above a tiny porcelain sink. When Annie had first come on the job, someone had drilled a peephole half a foot to the left of the mirror from the men's room on the other side. She now checked the wall periodically for new breaches of privacy, filling the holes with spackling compound she kept in her locker alongside her stash of candy bars.

She was the only female deputy who used the room with any regularity, and currently the only female patrol officer. There were two women who worked in the jail, and one female plainclothes juvenile officer, all of whom had come on before the broom closet had been converted and had adjusted to life without it. Annie thought of the room as her own and had tried to spruce it up a little by bringing in a plastic potted palm and a carpet remnant for the concrete floor. A poster from the International Association of Women Police brightened one wall.

Annie sat on her folding chair and faced the door. She couldn't bring herself to face the women in the poster. She was late for patrol, had missed the morning briefing. There was no doubt in her mind that every uniform in the place knew Noblier had called her into his office, and why. Sergeant Hooker had announced the first the minute she stepped into the building. The looks she had drawn from the rest of the men had hinted strongly at the second.

She looked at the file folder on her lap. She had gone so far as to type out the arrest report on Fourcade last night. It had given her a small sense of control to sit at her typewriter at home and put down in black and white what she had seen, what she had done. She had felt a sense of validation for just a little while there in the dead of night. Sheriff Noblier had smashed it flat beneath the weight of his authority this morning.

He wanted her to file a false report. She was supposed to lie, justify brutality, violate God knew how many laws.

"And no one sees anything wrong with that picture but me," she muttered.

Anxiety simmered like acid in her stomach as she left the locker room and headed down the hall.

Hooker rolled an eye at her as she passed the sergeant's desk. "See if you can't contain yourself to arresting criminals today, Broussard."

Annie reserved comment as she signed herself out. "I have to be in court at three o'clock."

"Oh really? You testifying for us or against us?"

"Hypolite Grangnon-burglary," she said flatly.

Hooker narrowed his little pig eyes at her. "Sheriff wants those reports on his desk by noon."

"Yes, sir."

She should have gone straight to the report room and gotten it over with, but she needed air and space, some time on the road to clear her head, and a cup of coffee that didn't taste like boiled sweat socks. She let herself out of the building and sucked in air that smelled of damp earth and green grass.

The rain had subsided around five A.M. Annie had lain awake all night listening to it assault the roof over her head. Finally giving up on the idea of rest, she had forced herself to get out of bed and work out with the free weights and pull-up bar that gave her second bedroom such a decorative flair.

As she worked her aching muscles, she watched for dawn to break over the Atchafalaya basin. There were mornings when the sunrise boiled up over the swamp like a ball of flame and the sky turned shades of orange and pink so intense they seemed liquid. This morning had come in with rolling, angry slate-colored clouds that carried the threat of a storm with a bully's arrogance.