"Telling me what?" Nick challenged. "To back off? Or you want me off the case altogether, Gus?"

He waited impatiently for Noblier's reply. It frightened him a little, how much it mattered. The first murder he'd handled since leaving New Orleans and it had sucked him in, consumed his life, consumed him. The Bichon murder had taken precedence over everything else on his desk and in his head. Some would have called it an obsession. He didn't think he had crossed that line, but then again maybe he was in the middle of the deep woods seeing nothing but trees. It wouldn't have been the first time.

His hands had curled into fists at his sides. Holding on to the case. He couldn't make himself let go.

"Keep a low profile, for crying out loud," Gus said with resignation as he lowered himself into his chair. "Let Stokes take a bigger part of the case. Don't get in Renard's face."

"He killed her, Gus. He wanted her and she didn't want him. So he stalked her. He terrorized her. He kidnapped her. He tortured her. He killed her."

Gus cupped his hands together and held them up. "This is our evidence, Nick. Everybody in the state of Lou'siana can know Marcus Renard did it, but if we don't get more than what we've got now, he's a free man."

"Merde," Nick muttered. "Maybe I shoulda let Hunter Davidson shoot him."

"Then it'd be Hunter Davidson going on trial for murder."

"Pritchett's filing charges?"

"He doesn't have a choice." Gus picked up an arrest report from his desk, glanced at it, and set it aside. "Davidson tried to kill Renard in front of fifty witnesses. Let that be a lesson to you if you're fixing to kill someone."