Verwandte Artikel zu A Thin Dark Line

A Thin Dark Line - Hardcover

Buch 1 von 3: Doucet

Hoag, Tami

 
9780553099607: A Thin Dark Line
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0553099604 ISBN 13: 9780553099607
Verlag: Bantam Dell Pub Group, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

The author of the best-selling Guilty As Sin follows the struggle of Louisiana investigator Annie Broussard to bring to justice the killer of a young woman, a quest that allies her with a shady, volatile fellow detective. 150,000 first printing.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Aus dem Klappentext

tic act of violence leaves a woman dead...

When a tainted piece of evidence lets her killer walk...

How far would you go to see justice done?

From New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag comes a taut, terrifying thriller as chilling as Night Sins, as nerve-shattering as
Guilty as Sin. When murder erupts in a small Southern town, Tami Hoag leads readers on a frightening journey to the shadowy boundary between attraction and obsession, law and justice--and exposes the rage that lures people over...

Pamela Bichon's killer is free, the case against him dismissed on a technicality. In the eyes of the law it doesn't matter that the prosecutor's key piece of evidence proves Marcus Renard's guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. All that matters is that the evidence was never listed on a search warrant and it was seized by a detective with a questionable past and a nasty reputation.

But the

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Her body lay on the floor.  Her slender arms outflung, palms up.  Death. Cold and brutal, strangely intimate.

The people rose in unison as the judge emerged from his chambers.  The Honorable Franklin Monahan.  The figurehead of justice.  The decision would be his.

Black pools of blood in the silver moonlight.  Her life drained from her to puddle on the hard cypress floor.

Richard Kudrow, the defense attorney.  Thin, gray, and stoop-shouldered, as if the fervor for justice had burned away all excess within him and had begun to consume muscle mass.  Sharp eyes and the strength of his voice belied the image of frailty.

Her naked body inscribed with the point of a knife.  A work of violent art.

Smith Pritchett, the district attorney.  Sturdy and aristocratic.  The gold of his cuff links catching the light as he raised his hands in supplication.

Cries for mercy smothered by the cold shadow of death.

Chaos and outrage rolled through the crowd in a wave of sound as Monahan pronounced his ruling.  The small amethyst ring had not been listed on the search warrant of the defendant's home and was, therefore, beyond the scope of the warrant and not legally subject to seizure.

Pamela Bichon, thirty-seven, separated, mother of a nine-year-old girl. Brutally murdered.  Eviscerated.  Her naked body found in a vacant house on Pony Bayou, spikes driven through the palms of her hands into the wood floor; her sightless eyes staring up at nothing through the slits of a feather Mardi Gras mask.

Case dismissed.

The crowd spilled from the Partout Parish Courthouse, past the thick Doric columns and down the broad steps, a buzzing swarm of humanity centering on the key figures of the drama that had played out in Judge Monahan's courtroom.

Smith Pritchett focused his narrow gaze on the navy blue Lincoln that awaited him at the curb and snapped off a staccato line of "no comments" to the frenzied press.  Richard Kudrow, however, stopped his descent dead center on the steps.

Trouble was the word that came immediately to Annie Broussard as the press began to circle the defense attorney and his client.  Like every other deputy in the sheriff's office, she had hoped against hope that Kudrow would fail in his attempt to get the ring thrown out as evidence.  They had all hoped Smith Pritchett would be the one crowing on the courthouse steps.

Sergeant Hooker's voice crackled over the portable radio.  "Savoy, Mullen, Prejean, Broussard, move in front of those goddamn reporters.  Establish some distance between the crowd and Kudrow and Renard before this turns into a goddamn cluster fuck."

Annie edged her way between bodies, her hand resting on the butt of her baton, her eyes on Marcus Renard as Kudrow began to speak.  He stood beside his attorney, looking uncomfortable with the attention being focused on him.  He wasn't a man to draw notice.  Quiet, unassuming, an architect in the firm of Bowen & Briggs.  Not ugly, not handsome.  Thinning brown hair neatly combed and hazel eyes that seemed a little too big for their sockets.  He stood with his shoulders stooped and his chest sunken, a younger shadow of his attorney.  His mother stood on the step above him, a thin woman with a startled expression and a mouth as tight and straight as a hyphen.

"Some people will call this ruling a travesty of justice," Kudrow said loudly. "The only travesty of justice here has been perpetrated by the Partout Parish Sheriff's Department.  Their investigation of my client has been nothing short of harassment.  Two prior searches of Mr.  Renard's home produced nothing that might tie him to the murder of Pamela Bichon."

"Are you suggesting the sheriff's department manipulated evidence?" a reporter called out.

"Mr. Renard has been the victim of a narrow and fanatical investigation led by Detective Nick Fourcade.  Y'all are aware of Fourcade's record with the New Orleans Police Department, of the reputation he brought with him to this parish.  Detective Fourcade allegedly found that ring in my client's home.  Draw your own conclusions."

As she elbowed past a television cameraman, Annie could see Fourcade turning around, half a dozen steps down from Kudrow.  The cameras focused on him hastily.  His expression was a stone mask, his eyes hidden by a pair of mirrored sunglasses.  A cigarette smoldered between his lips.  His temper was a thing of legend.  Rumors abounded throughout the department that he was not quite sane.

He said nothing in answer to Kudrow's insinuation, and yet the air between them seemed to thicken.  Anticipation held the crowd's breath.  Fourcade pulled the cigarette from his mouth and flung it down, exhaling smoke through his nostrils.  Annie took a half step toward Kudrow, her fingers curling around the grip of her baton.  In the next heartbeat Fourcade was bounding up the steps straight at Renard, shouting, "NO!"

"He'll kill him!" someone shrieked.

"Fourcade!" Hooker's voice boomed as the fat sergeant lunged after him, grabbing at and missing the back of his shirt.

"You killed her! You killed my baby girl!"

The anguished shouts tore from the throat of Hunter Davidson, Pamela Bichon's father, as he hurled himself down the steps at Renard, his eyes rolling, one arm swinging wildly, the other hand clutching a .45.

Fourcade knocked Renard aside with a beefy shoulder, grabbed Davidson's wrist, and shoved it skyward as the .45 barked out a shot and screams went up all around.  Annie hit Davidson from the right side, her much smaller body colliding with his just as Fourcade threw his weight against the man from the left.  Davidson's knees buckled and they all went down in a tangle of arms and legs, grunting and shouting, bouncing hard down the steps, Annie at the bottom of the heap.  Her breath was pounded out of her as she hit the concrete steps with four hundred pounds of men on top of her.

"He killed her!" Hunter Davidson sobbed, his big body going limp.  "He butchered my girl!"

Annie wriggled out from under him and sat up, grimacing.  All she could think was that no physical pain could compare with what this man must have been enduring.

Swiping back the strands of dark hair that had pulled loose from her ponytail, she gingerly brushed over the throbbing knot on the back of her head.  Her fingertips came away sticky with blood.

"Take this," Fourcade ordered in a low voice, thrusting Davidson's gun at Annie butt-first.  Frowning, he leaned down over Davidson and put a hand on the man's shoulder even as Prejean snapped the cuffs on him.  "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I wish I coulda let you kill him."

Annie pushed to her feet and tried to straighten the bulletproof vest she wore beneath her shirt.  Hunter Davidson was a good man.  An honest, hardworking planter who had put his daughter through college and walked her down the aisle the day she married Donnie Bichon.  Her murder had shattered him, and the subsequent lack of justice had driven him to this desperate edge.  And tonight Hunter Davidson would be the man sitting in jail while Marcus Renard slept in his own...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Bantam Dell Pub Group
Erscheinungsdatum
1997
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553099604
ISBN 13 
9780553099607
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
496
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar