Friday. Payday. Everyone was in a hurry to get to the bank, get to the bars, get home to start the weekend. Friday was a big speeding-ticket day. Friday nights were good for brawls and DUIs.

Annie preferred the tickets. With more people packing guns every day, brawls had become a little too unpredictable to be fun. Then there was the whole AIDS scare and the threats of lawsuits. The only cops she knew who still liked brawls were the boneheaded type who sweated testosterone, and short guys with big chips on their shoulders. Little guys always wanted to fight to prove their manhood. The Napoleon complex.

Just one more reason to be glad she didn't have a penis. The few skirmishes she had jumped into had been enough to win her a chipped tooth, two cracked ribs, and the respect of her fellow deputies. Men were that way. Being able to take a punch somehow made you a better person.

She wondered if any of them remembered those past brawls. It seemed not. When she had reported to the briefing room this morning, she had taken a seat at one of the long tables, and every deputy at the table got up and moved. Not a word was spoken, but the message was clear: They no longer considered her one of them. Because of Fourcade, a man who had befriended none of them and yet was lionized by them all for the mere fact that he had external genitalia. Men.

She had wanted to hear about the follow-up on the Jennifer Nolan rape, but the closest she was going to come to the case was rewriting her initial report, which Hooker had "misplaced." She had interviewed half a dozen of Nolan's neighbors yesterday, getting only one potentially useful piece of information: Nolan's former roommate had run off with a biker. Two of the doors she had knocked on had gone unanswered. She had passed all the information on to Stokes and doubted she would ever hear another word about it unless she read it in the paper.

She thought about the rape in fragments: the mask, the violence, the absence of seminal fluid, the ligatures, the fact that he made her bathe afterward. The fact that he hadn't spoken a single word during the ordeal. Verbal intimidation and degradation were standard fare in most rapes. She wondered which would be more terrifying: an attacker who threatened death or the ominous uncertainty of silence.

Careful. The word kept coming back to her. The rapist had been careful to leave no trace. He seemed to be perfectly aware of what the cops would need to nail him. That pointed to someone with experience and maybe a record. Someone should have been checking personnel records at the True Light lamp factory to see if any of Nolan's coworkers was an ex-con. But it wasn't her job, and it never would be if Chaz Stokes had anything to say about it.

Annie checked her watch again. Another half hour and she could head back to Bayou Breaux. She had pulled the cruiser off the road into the turnaround lot of a ramshackle vegetable stand that had blown down in the last big storm. The position was shaded by a sprawling live oak and gave her a view of two blacktop roads that converged a quarter mile south of the small town of Luck-a hot spot on Friday nights. Every rough character in the parish headed down to Skeeter Mouton's roadhouse on Friday night. Bikers, roughnecks, rednecks, and criminal types, all gathered for the popular low-society pursuits of beer, betting, and breaking heads.

A red Chevy pickup was coming fast out of town. Annie clocked it with the radar as it cruised past, the driver hanging a beer can out the window. Sixty-five in a forty zone and a DUI to boot. Jackpot. She hit the lights and siren and pulled him over half a mile down the road. The truck had a rebel-flag sunscreen in the back window and a bumper sticker that read USA Kicks Ass.

Nothing like a drunken redneck to make a day truly suck the big one.

"One Able Charlie," she radioed in. "I got a speeder on twelve, two miles south of Luck. Looks like he's drinking. Lou'siana tags Tango Whiskey Echo seven-three-three. Tango Whiskey Echo seven-three-three. Over."

She waited a beat for the acknowledgment that didn't come, then tried again. Still no response. The silence was more than annoying; it was disturbing. The radio was her link to help. If a routine stop turned into trouble, Dispatch had her location and the tag number on the vehicle she had pulled over. If she didn't call them back in a timely fashion, they would send other units.

"10-1, One Able Charlie. We didn't catch that. You're breaking up again. Say again. Over."

It was a simple thing to interrupt a radio transmission. All it took was one other deputy keying his mike when he heard her calling in and she was cut off. Cut off from communication, cut off from help.

Disgusted at the possibility, Annie grabbed her clipboard and ticket book and got out of the car.

"Step out of the vehicle, please," she called as she approached the truck from the rear.

"I wadn' speedin'," the driver yelled, sticking his head out the open window. He had small mean eyes and a mouth that drew into a tight knot. The dirty red ball cap he wore was stitched with a yellow TriStar Chemical logo. "You cops ain't got nothin' better to do than stop me?"

"Not at the moment. I'll need to see your license and registration."

"This is bullshit, man."

He swung open the door of the truck, and an empty Miller Genuine Draft can tumbled out onto the verge and rolled under the cab. He pretended not to notice as he stepped down with the extreme caution of a man who knows he has lost his equilibrium to booze. He wasn't any taller than Annie, a little pit bull of a man in jeans and a Bass Master T-shirt stretching tight over a hard beer belly. A short, drunken redneck.

"I don't pay taxes in this parish so y'all can harass me," he grumbled. "Goddamn gov'ment's tryin' to run my life. This here's supposed to be a free fuckin' country."

"So it is as long as you're not drunk and driving sixty-five in a forty. I need your license."

"I ain't drunk." He pulled a big trucker's wallet on a chain out of his hip pocket and fumbled around to extract his license, which he held out in Annie's general direction. His fingers were stained dark with grease. A tattoo of a naked blue woman with bright red nipples reclined on his forearm. Classy.

Vernell Poncelet. Annie stuck the license under the clip on her board.

"I wadn' speedin'," he insisted. "Them radar guns is always wrong. You can clock a goddamn tree doing sixty."

Suddenly his squinty eyes widened in surprise. "Hey! You're a woman!"

"Yep. I've been aware of that for some time now."

Poncelet put his head on one side, studying her, until he started to tip over. He swung an arm to point at her and righted himself in the process.

"You're the one was on the news! I seen you! You turned in that cop what beat up that killer rapist!"

"Stay right here," Annie said coolly, backing toward the squad. "I need to run your name and tags." And call for a backup. She had the feeling Vernell wasn't going down without a fight. Short guys.

"What kinda cop are you?" Poncelet shouted, staggering after her. "You want killer rapists runnin' 'round loose? An' you're giving me a ticket? That's bullshit!"

Annie gave him the evil eye. "Stand where you are!"

He kept coming, thrusting a finger at her as if he meant to run her through with it. "I ain't takin' no fuckin' ticket from you!"

"The hell you're not."

"You let a rapist run around loose. Maybe you wanna get lucky, huh? You fuckin' bitch-"

"That's it!" Annie tossed the clipboard on the hood of the cruiser and reached for the cuffs on her belt. "Up against the truck! Now!"

"Fuck you!" Poncelet made a wobbly 180-degree turn and started back for his truck. "Let a real cop stop me. I ain't takin' no shit from a broad."