Prejean looked at his shoes. Annie shook her head and walked away. She needed ten minutes alone, just to sit down and regroup. Ten minutes to marshal her disappointment and corral the fear that was beginning to skitter around inside her. She had fallen into a deep hole and no one was reaching in to help her out. Instead, the men she had thought were her comrades stood around the rim, ready to kick dirt on her.

She headed for her locker room. But she knew before she even set foot inside that her sanctuary had been breached.

The smell hit her as she turned the doorknob-sickening, rotten. She flipped the light switch and barely managed to clamp her hand over her mouth before the scream could escape.

Hanging from a length of brown twine tied to the single bulb in the ceiling, the cord knotted together with its long, skinny tail, was a dead muskrat.

The muskrat had been skinned from the base of its tail to the base of its skull, the pelt left dangling down past its head. Annie stared at it, nausea rising up her esophagus. Air currents and the weight of its body twisted the rodent to and fro like a grotesque mobile. One hind leg was missing, suggesting the muskrat had met its untimely end in the steel jaws of a trap, as thousands did every year in South Louisiana.

Aware that her tormentor could have been watching through a fresh hole in the wall, Annie moved toward the muskrat, then stepped around it. She took in every detail- the knotted tail, the naked muscle, the piece of paper that had been stabbed to the corpse with a nail.

The note read: Turncoat bitch.

"Broussard ratted you out," Stokes said, curling his fingers through the wire mesh of the holding cell. "Man, I can't believe she did this to you. I mean, it's one thing that she won't sleep with me. Some women are just masochists that way. But ratting out another cop… man, that's low."

Stokes shouldn't have been allowed into the city jail holding cells. At least not as a visitor. Prisoners in holding had the right to see their attorneys, and that was all. But, as always, Stokes had known somebody and talked his way in.

"Goddamn, you think maybe she's a lesbian?" he asked, as the idea struck him.

An image of Annie Broussard came to Nick as he prowled his cell-her eyes widening, a hint of a blush spreading across her cheeks as he reached out and passed his hand too close to her.

"I don't care," he said.

"Maybe you don't, but she's just taken on a whole new role in my fantasy life," Stokes admitted. "Damn, but I've always had a thing for lesbians. Pretty ones," he qualified. "Not the butch dykes. Don't you ever picture beautiful women naked together? Man, that gets my dick twitching."

"She arrested me," Nick stated flatly, impatient with Stokes. The man had no focus.

"Well, yeah, she'll be a bad lesbian in my fantasies. A black leather bitch with a whip. Man hater."

"How'd she happen to be there?" Nick asked.

"Damn bad luck, that's for sure."

Nick had mixed feelings about that. If Annie Broussard hadn't come along, he would have killed Renard. She had, in fact, saved him from himself, and for that he was thankful. But her motives troubled him.

"She thinks I should be held accountable."

Maybe it was as simple as that. Maybe she was that idealistic. Having never been an idealist himself, he had a hard time accepting the prospect. In his experience, people were usually motivated by one thing: self-gain. They could couch their intentions in a million different guises, give no end of excuses, but most everything came down to one thought: What's in it for me? What was in it for Annie Broussard? Why had she suddenly popped up in his life?

"She's a pain in the ass," Stokes said. "Little Miss By-the-Book. I caught a rape case this morning out in that white-trash trailer park going toward Luck. She's out there butting into every damn thing. 'You gonna send that nose hair to the lab?' " he mocked in a high falsetto. " 'Maybe it's rapist nose hair. Maybe this guy did Bichon. Maybe he's the Bayou Strangler.' "

"What made her think it was tied to Bichon?"

Chaz rolled his eyes. "The guy wore a mask. Like that's an original idea. Christ," he muttered. "Whoever thought they should let broads on the job?"

He glanced over his shoulder, checking the door. The city jail was about a thousand years old and had no surveillance cameras in its holding cell areas. City cops had to listen in on conversations the old-fashioned way.

"Well, she's damn near the only one who thinks you should pay for this, man," he muttered. "Not even God himself would call you on it. An eye for an eye, you know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean. I'm supposed to be an avenging angel."

"Hell, you should have been the Invisible Man. No one would have been the wiser if Broussard hadn't stuck her nose in it. Renard would be roasting in hell, case closed."

"That's what you thought?" Nick said softly, stepping toward the chain-link that caged him in. "When you called me at Laveau's-you thought I'd go over to Bowen and Briggs and kill him?"

"Jesus!" Stokes hissed. "Keep your voice down!"

Nick leaned close to the wire mesh, slipping his fingers through just above Stokes's. "Whatsa matter, pard?" he whispered. "You worried about a conspiracy beef?"

Stokes jerked back, looking shocked, offended, hurt even. "Conspiracy? Shit, man, we were drunk and talking trash. Even when I called you and told you he was over there, I never thought you'd really do it! I'm just saying I wouldn't blame you if you had. I mean, good riddance-am I right or am I right?"

"You're the one wanted to go to that particular bar."

" 'Cause no one else hangs there, man! You can't think I was setting you up! Jesus, Nicky! We're brothers of the badge, man. I'm the closest thing to a friend you got. I don't know how you can even think it. It wounds me, Nicky. Truly."

"I'll wound you, Chaz. I find out you fucked me over, you'll wish your mama and daddy never got past first base."

Stokes stepped away from the cell. "I don't believe what I'm hearing. Man oh man! Stop being so fuckin' paranoid. I'm not your enemy here." He tapped his breastbone with one long forefinger. "Hell, I called you a lawyer. The guys are gonna cover it. They all agreed-"

"I pay my own way."

"You didn't do anything the rest of us hadn't had wet dreams about for the last three months."

"What lawyer?"

"Wily Tallant from St. Martinville."

"That bastard-"

"-is slick as snot," Stokes finished. "Don't think of him as being on the other side of the fence. Think of him as the man who's gonna open the gate so you can get back on your own side. That ol' boy can make Lucifer look like the poor misunderstood neglected child of a dysfunctional family. By the time he's through, you'll probably end up with a commendation and the keys to the fucking city, which is what you deserve."

He leaned toward the mesh again, slipping a hand inside his jacket and pulling out a cigarette like a magician. "That's all I want, pard," he said, passing the cigarette through the wire. "I want everybody to get what they deserve."

Annie stayed in the locker room for twenty minutes fighting to compose herself. Twenty minutes of staring at that skinned muskrat.

There was no way of knowing where it had come from or who had hung it, not without questioning people, looking for witnesses, making a fuss. Mullen was a sound bet, but she knew a half dozen deputies who did some trapping for extra income. Still, skinning would have been Mullen's touch. Annie had always pegged him for the sort of kid who had pulled the wings off flies.

Turncoat bitch.

Holding her breath against the sweet-putrid scent of decaying rodent, she cut the thing down with her pocketknife and grimaced as it hit the floor with a soft thud. She tore up the note, then pilfered a cardboard box from the garbage in the office supply room and used it for a coffin. She had no intention of taking the thing to Noblier and making a bad situation worse. And there was no leaving it. After she rewrote her final report on the cemetery vandalism and filed it, she grabbed the box and her duffel bag and left. She could toss the corpse in the woods after she got home, and Mother Nature would give it a proper disposal.