by Nora Roberts
It wasn’t very difficult. Not when it all seemed so dreamlike and distant. She played it back, as if it were a tape in her head. He let her run it through without interruption, making only a few cursory notes on his pad.
“It’s odd, don’t you think, that Hatinger didn’t use either of the guns he carried?” His tone was conversational as he poured a second cup of coffee. “They were both loaded, and from my information he was considered an excellent shot. When you describe your flight, from the rear porch, through this room, and out the front, it would appear that he could have fired at you at any time. But he didn’t even draw a weapon.”
“He had the knife,” she said, and didn’t notice the catch in her voice. Tucker did.
“I don’t see the point in this, Burns. He’d snapped obviously. Maybe he didn’t even remember he had the guns.”
“Maybe.” He added a miserly dab of cream to his coffee. “Would you say, Caroline, that he was aware you had a gun?” He lifted the cup, sipped, then went on without waiting for her answer. “You say you grabbed it on the run while he was still outside.”
“Yes, I’d been target practicing. I always unloaded it when I’d finished. Sometimes I stuck the bullets in my pockets. I remember thinking it was a bad habit, and I should break it.” She set down her fork, clattering it against her plate. The scent of eggs and bacon grease were nauseating. “I guess I’m lucky I didn’t.”
“You were lucky you had the presence of mind to load the gun at all.”
She gave Burns a wan smile. “You could say I’m used to performing under pressure.”
He merely nodded. “If we recreate those last moments outside, when you turned and fired, can you hazard an opinion as to whether he realized you were armed? Did he make any move to reach for one of the guns he carried?”
“It happened very quickly.”
It hadn’t seemed so. It had seemed as though she’d been running through syrup. It didn’t take any effort to rerun the scene, that slow-motion film of nightmares and dark fantasies. The wall of heat that made you fight for every gasping breath. The terrifying feeling that the grass had gone boggy and was sucking you down. The silver glint of the knife under the merciless sun. And that grin, that wide, hungry grin.
“I …” She pressed her lips together and bore down on the last, nasty remnants of fear. “I tried to shoot, but nothing happened. He just kept coming, holding the knife and smiling at me. Just smiling. I think I was crying or screaming or praying, I don’t know, but he kept coming, and kept smiling. I had the gun out in front of me, and he was saying that I was the lamb of God, a sacrifice. That it was going to be like Edda Lou. That it had to be like Edda Lou.”
“You’re sure of that.” Burns held his cup two inches above the saucer. “You’re sure he said it had to be like Edda Lou?”
“Yes.” She gave in to a shudder, then pushed her uneaten breakfast aside. “I’m not likely to forget anything he said.”
“Wait a minute.” Tucker put a hand on Caroline’s arm, his fingers taut as wire. He’d been doing more than listening, he’d been watching. Burns looked like a man who’d just drawn to an inside straight. “You’re not here getting a statement about the shooting of some escaped lunatic. That’s small shit, the kind of local dirt that wouldn’t interest a federal agent. You sonofabitch.”
“Tucker, please.”
“No.” His eyes were fierce as he turned to Caroline. “Don’t you see? It’s about Edda Lou, about Edda Lou and the others. It doesn’t have diddly to do with you, except you managed not to be the next victim.”
“The next?” she began, then stopped. The blood drained from her face. “Oh, God, the knife. He didn’t shoot me because—because it had to be like Edda Lou. It had to be the knife.”
“Yeah, the knife.” Tucker’s hand slid down her arm so that she could grip it. “There are users and users, aren’t there, Burns?” Tucker’s voice had lost its lazy drawl, sharpening to an icy point. “You’re using Caroline to help you gather evidence on Hatinger. Using her to solve your case, but you don’t bother to let her know.”
Burns set his cup meticulously back in the saucer. “I’m conducting a federal investigation on a series of murders. I’m not required to make my views known to the public.”
“Fuck that. You know what she’s been through. Easing her mind by telling her this might be over wouldn’t have cost you.”
“Regulations and procedure,” Burns said.
Caroline squeezed Tucker’s hand before he could speak again. “I can talk for myself.” She inhaled and exhaled twice, slowly. “I didn’t even know Edda Lou, but I’ll see her floating in the pond for the rest of my life. I’ve never performed a violent act in my life. Oh, I threw a champagne glass at someone once, but I missed, so it hardly counts. Yesterday I killed a man.” Her hand fluttered to her stomach to press against the slow, familiar burn. “That may not seem so terrible to you, Matthew, considering your line of work and taking into account that I was saving my own life. But I killed a man. Now you come in here and ask me to bring it all back. And you don’t even grant me the courtesy of the truth.”
“It’s simply speculation, Caroline, and for your own good …” He fumbled to a stop when her head snapped up.
“Do you know,” she said slowly, “I once threatened to kill a man if he ever, ever used that particular phrase to me again. I didn’t mean it literally at the time. It was just one of those typical statements people make before they realize what it’s like to kill. But I should warn you not to use that phrase. It tends to set me off.”
Delighted, Tucker kicked back in his chair and grinned. “She’s got a hot streak. It’s a pure pleasure seeing it aimed at somebody else for a change.”
“I apologize if I’ve upset you,” Burns said stiffly. “But I’m doing my job as I think best. It is not a foregone conclusion that Austin Hatinger was responsible for the three deaths in this community or the one in Nashville. However, given yesterday’s incident, we are focusing our investigation on him.”
“Will you be able to tell if it was his knife?” Caroline asked.
“After certain tests are completed, we should be able to determine if it was that style of knife. Off the record,” Burns continued grudgingly, “I can say that Hatinger fit certain psychological points in this kind of killing. He had a deep-seated anger toward women, as evidenced by his frequent abuse of his wife. A religious mania which he may have figured absolved him of guilt, or accorded him a mission. We could speculate that his use of water to dispose of the bodies was more than an attempt to wash away evidence, but a kind of baptism. Unfortunately, he can’t be questioned about his motives. As it stands, I’ll be backtracking, trying to place his whereabouts at the time of all three murders. And while he is my focus, I’ll continue along other avenues of investigation.”
His gaze lighted on Tucker, and Tucker merely smiled.
“Then you’ve got your work cut out for you, don’t you, son? We wouldn’t want to hold you up.”
“I’ll want to talk to the boy. Cy Hatinger.”
Tucker’s smile faded. “He’s at Sweetwater.”
“Well then.” He rose, but couldn’t resist a parting shot. “Odd how Hatinger went from gunning for you straight to Caroline, isn’t it? Some people have a knack for turning bad luck onto others.” He was an expert at recognizing guilt. It gave him pleasure to watch it shadow Tucker’s face. “If you think of anything else that might help, Caroline, you know where to reach me. Thanks for the coffee. I can see myself out.”
“Tucker,” Caroline began the moment they were alone, but he shook his head and rose.
“I’ve got some thinking to do.” He ran a hand through his hair. It was dry now, but he caught a whiff of her shampoo. Even so small a thing had his gut tightening. “Will you be all right? Want me to call Josie, or Susie, or someone?”
“No, no, I’ll be fine.” But she wondered if he would. “Matthew’s a rigid sort of man, Tucker. That kind always sees the
logic of placing blame.”
“There’s blame enough. Listen, I need to get back. I don’t want Cy having to talk to him on his own.” His hands dug into his pockets again. “He’s just a kid.”
“Go ahead.” It would be better, she thought, to be alone. To put off talking about what had happened between them that morning. “I’ll be fine, really.” She lifted their plates, thinking Useless was going to breakfast like a king.
He put a hand on her shoulder as she turned to the sink. “I’m coming back.”
“I know.” She waited until he was at the doorway before speaking again. “Tucker. Thanks for telling Matthew I wasn’t helpless. When you’re used to people seeing you that way, it means a lot.”
Her back was to him, her shoulders straight. He knew she was looking out to where the blood had dried on the grass.
“We’re going to have to talk, you and me. About a lot of things.”
When she didn’t answer, he left her alone.
chapter 20
His daddy was dead. Miss Della had told him. His daddy was dead. There would be no more snapping belts or merciless fists. No more shouts to a fever-eyed God to punish the sinners for their transgressions, their laziness, their filthy thoughts.
Miss Della had sat him down in the bright kitchen and told him, and there had been kindness in her eyes.
He was afraid, so afraid that there would be no end for him but hell. The fiery, screaming black pool of hell his father had often gleefully described. How could he expect forgiveness or a place at the Lord’s table when he harbored such an evil secret in his soul? The secret whispered through his brain with the devil’s rusty chuckle.
His daddy was dead. And he was glad.
When his tears had come, the tears Miss Della patiently waited out then wiped away, they weren’t tears of sorrow or grief. They were tears of relief. A river of joy and gratitude and hope.
And it was that, Cy thought as he watered the kitchen garden, that which would consign him to hell for all eternity.
He had been responsible for the death of his father. And he wasn’t sorry.
Miss Della had told him he could stay at Sweetwater just as long as he wanted—Mr. Tucker had said so. He didn’t have to go home, he didn’t have to go back to that house of fear and hopelessness. He didn’t have to face Vernon, see his father in his brother’s eyes, feel his father’s wrath in his brother’s fists.
By a single act of cowardice he had wiped out four years of waiting.
His father was dead, and he was free.
Cy hunkered down, the hose soaking grass until it gurgled in a puddle. Rubbing his knuckles in to his eyes, he wept in joy for his life, and in terror for his soul.
“Cy.”
The sound of his name had the boy jerking to his feet. It was only quick reflexes that had Burns nipping out of range of the garden hose. They stood facing each other a moment, the water squirting between them, a young boy with a puffy face and frightened eyes and a man who wanted to prove that Cy’s father had carved up women in his spare time.
Burns tried his most ingratiating smile, which put Cy immediately on edge.
“I’d like to talk with you for a few minutes.”
“I’ve got to water these plants.”
Burns glanced at the soaked greens. “You seem to have done that already.”
“I’ve got other work.”
Burns reached down to turn off the water himself. Authority was something he wore as habitually as his tie. “This won’t take long. Perhaps we could go inside.” Out of the blistering heat.
“No, sir, I can’t track all over Miss Della’s clean floor.”
Burns glanced down. Any trace of white on Cy’s sneakers had been obliterated with grass and dirt stains. “No, I suppose not. The terrace then, around the side.” Before Cy could protest, Burns took him by the arm and led him around the flower beds. “You enjoy working at Sweetwater?”
“Yes sir. I wouldn’t want to lose my job ’cause I got caught sitting around talking.”
Burns stepped onto the slate terrace and gestured toward one of the padded chairs under a striped umbrella. “Is Mr. Longstreet that hard a taskmaster?”
“Oh, no, sir.” Reluctantly, Cy sat. “He never has enough for me to do, to my way of thinking. And he’s always telling me to slow it down and take it easy, real considerate like. Sometimes if he’s around late in the afternoon at quitting time, he brings me out a Coca Cola himself.”
“A liberal employer.” Burns took out his pad and recorder. “Then I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you taking a short break to answer some questions.”
“You can ask him yourself,” Tucker suggested. He strolled out of the kitchen door with a chilled bottle of Coke. “Here you go, Cy.” He set the bottle down in front of the boy. “Wet your whistle.”
“Mr. Burns—he said how I had to come on out here and talk,” Cy began. His eyes were as panicked as a rabbit’s caught in the white stream of headlights.
“That’s all right.” Tucker touched a hand to his shoulder briefly before scraping back a chair for himself. “Nobody expected you to work today, Cy.”
With his lips pressed tight together, Cy stared down at the white table. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Well, for the next few days you do what suits you.” Tucker pulled out his cigarettes. He figured he was down to a half pack a day by his current method and ruthlessly tore off half the tobacco. “Now, Agent Burns here’s having himself a busy morning.” His eyes stayed on Burns’s over the flare of his match. There was a warning there, as clear as the message Hatinger had written in blood. “So, why don’t you tell him what you can. Then maybe you’d like to drop a line with me for an hour or two.”
Burns curled his lip at the idea of taking the boy fishing the day after his father had been killed. “I’ll let you know when we’re finished, if you’d like to go tie some flies.”
Tucker helped himself to a swig of Cy’s Coke. “No. As I figure it, since the boy’s working here and staying here for the time being, I’m a kind of guardian. I’ll stay, unless Cy wants me to go.”
Cy lifted those panic-dazed eyes to Tucker’s. “I’d be obliged if you’d stay, Mr. Tucker. I might get something wrong.”
“All you have to do is tell the truth. Isn’t that right, Agent Burns?”
“That’s exactly right. Now—” he broke off as Josie walked out wearing a paper-thin pink robe.
“Well now, it’s not often a woman strolls out of her kitchen and finds three men waiting for her.” She moved closer to ruffle Cy’s hair, but her eyes were all for Burns. “Special Agent, I was beginning to think you’d taken a dislike to me. Why, you haven’t been around to talk but one time.” She eased a hip onto the arm of Tucker’s chair. When she reached over to pluck up one of Tucker’s cigarettes, she afforded Burns the best view in the house. “I was about to make something up just so you could investigate me.”
He was stuffy, but he wasn’t dead. Burns found his throat clogged and his tie too tight. “I’m afraid I have little time for socializing while on a case, Miss Long-street.”
“Now, that surely is a shame.” Her voice was as rich and heady as the scent of magnolias. With a flutter of her lashes, she handed Burns the pack of matches, then steadied his hand with her own when he touched the flame to the tip. “And here I’ve been pining away, hoping you’d find time to tell me all about your adventures. I bet you’ve had scads of them.”
“Actually, I’ve had a few interesting moments.”
“I’m going to have to hear all about them or I’ll just explode from curiosity.” She trailed a finger down her throat to where her robe met loosely over her breasts. If his eyes had been tied by a string to her hand, Burns couldn’t have followed the movement more closely. “Teddy told me you were the very best.”
He managed to swallow. “Teddy?”
“Dr. Rubenstein.” She sent him a sultry look under heavy lashes. “He was telling me you were the absolute
expert on serial killings. I just love talking to brainy men with dangerous jobs.”
“Josie.” Tucker sent her an arch look. “Weren’t you going to get your nails done or something this morning?”
“Why, yes, honey, I was.” She shifted to hold out her hands. Her robe crept up another inch. “I don’t think a woman can be really attractive if she lets her hands go.” She rose then, satisfied that she’d broken Burns’s concentration. “Maybe I’ll see you in town later, Special Agent. I’m fond of stopping for a cold drink at the Chat ’N Chew after my manicure.”
She left him with the distracting image of her hips swaying beneath that thin pink robe.
Tucker tossed his cigarette into a brass bucket filled with sand. “You going to turn that recorder on?”
Burns gave him a blank look, then shot to attention. “I’ll be asking Cy questions,” he began, but his gaze drifted to the kitchen door. “I have no objection to you being present, but I’ll tolerate no prompting.”
Tucker gestured with his open hands and sat back.
Burns switched on the recorder, entered the appropriate data, then turned to Cy with a solemn smile. “I know this is a difficult time for you, Cy, and I’m sorry for your recent loss.”
Cy started to thank him, then realized he wasn’t talking about Edda Lou, but his father. He took refuge in staring at the table again.
“I realize you spoke with Sheriff Truesdale last night, and your information was very helpful. We’ll have to talk about that again, but I think we’ll start with a few other things. Did your father ever mention Miss Caroline Waverly to you?”
“He didn’t hardly know her.”
“So he never spoke of her to you, or in your hearing?”
Cy darted a look at Tucker. “He mighta said something on one of the days I brought him breakfast. Some days he said lots of things, like when his mood came on him.”
“Mood?” Burns prompted.
“Those hard moods he had, when he said God was talking to him.”
“And did he have these moods regularly?”