by Lee Goldberg, Scott Nicholson, J A Konrath, J Carson Black,
The Chevy slowed and pulled alongside her, and again she heard the country-tinged beat and the sweet whiskey smoke of the vocals. The lyrics soared into a chorus about a ring of fire, and then Renee identified the singer. Johnny Cash. She hadn’t known much about him, but had seen a television special on his career shortly after his death. “The Man in Black,” the narrator had called him.
Renee didn’t wait for the Chevy’s engine to die. She got out and rounded the front of the car, knowing she was vulnerable, almost daring the car to leap forward. She glared straight at where the driver would be sitting. She would get her answers now, with no more secrets or games. She was about to pound on the tinted driver’s-side window when the door opened.
A plume of gray smoke issued from the vehicle’s interior, accompanied by Johnny Cash’s repetitive ring of fire fade-out. Then the Chevy’s engine gave a couple of thunderous, dying coughs and fell silent. Renee heard the wind in the trees and a metallic squeak from the driver’s seat. Her muscles tensed, half of her coiling to pounce while the other half wanted to flee across the field.
Come on, Joshua. You can’t be any worse than I’ve imagined.
A woman stepped out of the car, tall and dark-skinned, pretty, but hard around the eyes. She looked Hispanic, with thick, black eyelashes and flat raven hair. Her yellow cotton blouse was tied in a knot beneath her breasts, her brown stomach flat with a tiny dark cave at her navel. She wore cut-off blue jean shorts and a cheap pair of pink flip-flops. She tapped her cigarette and smirked.
“You’re not him,” Renee said.
“Neither are you,” the woman said, her accent a blend of tobacco-road Southern and back-alley Spanish, a little rolling of the r with the vowels drawn out.
“Why were you chasing me?”
“We need to talk.” The woman leaned against the Chevy.
“Why couldn’t you use the phone like anybody else?”
“Because I had to be sure,” she said. “And I didn’t want Jacob to know.”
“Who are you?”
“Carlita. A friend of your husband.”
“Jacob never mentioned you.”
Carlita laughed then coughed. She tossed her cigarette into the ditch. “No wonder.”
“What about my husband?” Renee wished she had her cell phone. A car whizzed down the road and past before she could make up her mind to flag it down.
“Jacob’s been a very bad boy. He gets a little loco.” Carlita cocked her hip and tilted her head, letting her black hair spill across her shoulders. Her mouth twisted into a wry curve. “It’s not my fault. But you know how he is, si?”
“Hold on,” Renee said. “First you’re trying to run me off the road, and now you’re talking like we’re old friends.”
“We’re nearly sisters,” Carlita said. “And Joshua’s told me so much about you.”
“But I’ve never met Joshua. Jacob won’t talk about him. They had a falling out years ago, before I even met Jacob.”
“Jacob’s got his—how you say?—his delusion. He thinks Joshua tricked their father to get the house and land. He thinks Joshua’s after his money now. But Joshua just wants to make up, to bring the family together.”
Renee shook her head. “Jacob hates that house. He said it’s full of bad memories.”
“Do you trust your husband?”
“Of course I do. I mean, we’ve had some tough times lately—”
“The children. A terrible thing.”
Renee’s heart stuttered then lurched inside her chest. She could scarcely recognize her own voice when she spoke. “How did you know?”
“Like sisters, remember? Sisters keep secrets from the rest of the world, not each other.”
“I’m not your sister, and if you don’t start making sense, I’ll—” She looked at the ground for something to throw. A pile of oak stakes, used for curing tobacco, lay beside the gate. The tips were sharp enough to skewer a vampire. Her hands trembled and her vision blurred from anger and tears.
“Don’t go like that,” Carlita said, her voice flat, as if she had been threatened so often it now aroused only weariness. “I’m trying to help.”
“By chasing me down and then dumping all this on my head?”
“I’m doing it for Joshua, because I love him, and I want him to be happy.”
“So you make him happy by making me miserable?”
“I’m worried what Jacob might do to him.”
“Jacob wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s the kindest man I’ve ever known.”
“But you see what he’s like when someone stands in his way. Big trouble.”
“Not my Jacob.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I know him plenty.”
“Then you know he’s in love with me.”
The woman’s accent made the word even more foreign. “Love?”
“We’ve been lovers for many years.”
Renee had always wondered about the expression “seeing red.” She thought it was figurative, based on an emotional connotation. Now she knew it was real, because the red madness squeezed from the backs of her eyelids and the hidden crevices inside her skull. A sick and strange energy flowed through her, cruel electricity sparked by demonic lightning.
“Bitch.” Renee launched herself at the woman, knowing she was out of shape and undersized, no match for her sinewy opponent.
But the red tidal wave of rage flooded her, used her body like a puppet, flung her flesh against Carlita. Her hands curled into fists and raised to smash that dark, somber face, to punch out those bottomless brown eyes, to tear away the lips that had uttered such an obscene claim.
The momentum of Renee’s assault carried them both across the Chevy’s warm hood. The sheet metal dented as Renee rolled atop Carlita, one hand gripping the woman’s hair. Carlita grunted, breath tinged with tobacco and beer. Renee slapped her and scrambled astride her waist as Carlita twisted and tried to kick off her attacker. One foot bounced off Renee’s shin but she barely felt it. Carlita’s forearm shoved into Renee’s stomach, taking her breath as the pain rippled out from the point of contact.
Renee bent her head forward and realized with horror that she was about to sink her teeth into the woman’s cheek. She froze, then went limp and slid down Carlita’s body, aware of the woman’s unrestrained breasts beneath the thin shirt. Aware of the woman’s heat, her soft but powerful thighs, her robust Hispanic lips, everything that was feminine and dangerous and attractive to men.
Any man. Even a man like a Jacob.
She pushed away and slid down the bumper to the ground, her legs weak. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea. Jacob didn’t even glance at sun-bathing college girls and he didn’t ogle stars on television shows.
She trusted him.
Didn’t she?
Despite his fugues and his forgetful lapses and his occasional, inexplicable anger.
Carlita sat on the hood, her legs crossed under her as if she were folding into a yoga position. She fished a cellophane-wrapped pack from her pocket, tapped it, and offered the brown tip of a cigarette to Renee. “Give it time,” she said.
Renee shook her head, refusing both the cigarette and the advice.
Carlita lit one and rubbed her cheek. “You fight like you mean it.”
“What about you and Jacob?”
“I didn’t want to tell it this way. A man should be honest about his heart. But men, they never are.”
A pickup drove down the road toward them, slowing, the driver waving before speeding up again. A country boy checking to make sure everything was all right. As if anything would ever be all right again. Renee thought about flagging him down and sending for the police, but she didn’t want any more attention drawn to the Wells family.
Now that the anger had faded, Renee felt deflated. She could barely muster a whisper. “Tell me. Please.”
“I lived on the Wells farm when I was young. My father and brother worked the Christmas trees, and I helped in the v
egetable garden, picking tomatoes and green beans. Migrant workers, up on temporary permits. Mi padre said it was the only way out of Mexico. That’s when I met Joshua.”
“You mean Warren Wells let his son date a Mexican? From what Jacob’s told me, your people—I mean, the workers—were not people he respected.”
Carlita smoked around a smile. “We didn’t date. He came by the camp when the men were out in the fields. I was in the shed, shelling beans. He walked in like he owned the place and sat down beside me. I was just a scared girl, but I knew enough to keep my mouth shut. My English was okay even back then. I’d been coming to North Carolina with my family for years, mostly when padre worked soybeans and tobacco down by the coast, sometimes peaches. One thing led to another, and Joshua took the basket of beans from me and set it to the side, then laid me down on the hay.”
“God. He raped you?”
Carlita gave a coarse laugh. “Oh, no. I wanted to see what a gringo was like. I only had a few of the camp boys before then, and mi padre would have killed me if he caught me. It was a danger and that makes it fun when you’re a teenage girl. Comprende?”
“Not really. I kept my virginity until I met Jacob,” she lied. “And I only gave it up then because I knew we were going to be married.”
“Maybe I was thinking some of that. We were to stay nine months on our visas, go back to Guadalajara in December after all the trees were cut. I thought if Joshua got me pregnant, I’d get my ring and a green card.”
Renee was shocked at the confession. “What does this have to do with Jacob?”
“After that first time, Joshua and me were doing it every minute we could sneak away. He liked it and I thought the more we did it, the faster I get a gringo baby in my belly.” She slapped her bare abdomen and added with bitterness, “Turned out I’m no good in there. Seed won’t take root.”
Renee wondered if never having a baby was worse than losing two children. She decided nothing could be worse than that. “So you had to go back to Mexico?”
“No. His father fixed it up so we didn’t have to go back right away. Joshua said it was because we were cheap. Said, ‘Daddy don’t have to pay no white-man wages.’ Jacob used to follow Joshua sometimes when he came to the camp. I think he was jealous.”
“I’m sorry. You don’t know Jacob.”
“Maybe you don’t, hey, senora? He used to watch us while we did it. One day, under the bridge, I saw him hiding in the bushes. He came out and said he was going to tell their father if I didn’t let him do it, too.”
Renee’s intestines clenched as if they harbored a nest of snakes. “Did you let him?”
“Joshua went loco, beat him up. Said he was the oldest so he always got to go first. Said to come back when he had something to offer in return.”
“And?”
“Jacob finally did come back. Eight years ago. Right after he married you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The house stood like a watchtower on the hill overlooking the river. Jacob gunned the pickup across the bridge and up the driveway then slewed to a stop, knocking over a handrail that led up the steps. He ran into the shade of the porch and beat on the door with both fists. “Josh. Open this damned door.”
The knob turned and the door parted. Joshua held a Mason jar full of iced tea, a ragged wedge of lemon sticking to the rim. “Howdy, brother. Nice of you to drop by. We’re getting to be just like family again.”
“You set the fire at the construction site.”
“Jake, don’t be like that. Come on in and have a drink.”
Jacob didn’t move, his fists still clenched. “They’re watching me. They’ll be suspicious.”
“Look, don’t tell me the thing wasn’t insured. I know you. You’re a chip off the old block. Even when you lose, you make money, just like Warren Wells.” Joshua looked up at the family cemetery, a twisted grin on his stubbly face.
“Arson is a serious crime.”
“The fire chief showed up, didn’t she?”
“They investigate every structure fire. You know that.”
“But she didn’t find nothing. Had to be an accident. A worker dropped a cigarette by the kerosene can, right?”
Jacob frowned, loathing himself for letting his twin dominate his life for so long, even in absence. “She said they’d do more tests, but that was her preliminary ruling.”
“They’ll sniff around and try to scare you, but in the end they’ll pay. And then you can pay me.”
“I’ll pay. Just leave my wife out of it.”
“Oh, Jakie Boy. The game don’t play that way. She’s in way too deep to be left out. She’s family.”
“Damn it, we’re trying to make it work. I don’t want to lose her.”
“You mean you can’t afford to lose her yet.”
Jacob looked off the porch to the rise of hills, the meadow sloping away to the river, the long sandy drive, the distant bridge. “I’ve kept my part of the bargain,” Jacob said. “Now get your ass back to Tennessee.”
“I kinda like it here now.”
“I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“Seeing Carlita got you fired up.”
“You told her, didn’t you? About Mom?”
“Family secrets stay in the family,” Joshua said. “Ain’t that what you always said?”
“Does she know you poisoned your own dad?”
“Why don’t you come on in, have a cold one? I’m drinking Corona today. A little taste of Mexico while Carlita’s away.”
“Is she back in Tennessee?”
“Hell if I know. She took the keys and left before I got up. You know how women are. You know how she is.”
“You should keep her out of it.”
“Oh, but she’s right smack between us, ain’t she?” Joshua jerked his head toward the inside of the house. “She ought to be in them family portraits, arms around you and me, Mom and Dad in the back row grinning like a couple of skulls.”
“Shut up.”
“Like a couple of skulls.”
“I didn’t kill them.”
“No. Dad was all me.”
“You didn’t have to. The cancer had already reached his liver. He wouldn’t have lived more than six months.”
“I wasn’t going to let the bastard cheat me out of the fun.”
“I didn’t know he’d changed the will.”
“Sure.” Joshua pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket, stabbed it between his chapped lips, and mopped the sweat from his greasy forehead with the back of his hand. “We thought it was fifty-fifty. But he played us to the end, just like he did our whole lives.”
“Once in a while I’d catch him looking at that broken cane, at the splinters in the wood. Like he knew.”
“No damned wonder,” Joshua said around the cigarette. “The only reason he didn’t kill her is you beat him to it.”
“I didn’t—”
“Cut the shit, Jake. It’s in your blood. It’s what we do.” He fired the cigarette, holding the Bic aloft, the flame’s reflection bobbing in each of his dark pupils. He rattled the shrinking ice cubes in his jar of tea, the noise like bones shaken in a glass coffin. The lighter disappeared into his pocket, easy to retrieve in case arson was required.
And it often was, Jacob knew. “Nobody would believe you if you told them.”
“Does it matter? A small town like this, the newspaper would be on it like green flies on sugar shit. They’d drag you through the mud until you were so dirty it wouldn’t matter what the truth was. It’s not every day that a boy kills his Momma. Then they’d start connecting the dots on the other stuff.”
“You’d go to jail, too.”
Joshua inhaled the tobacco as if it were his last gasp of oxygen, then pushed it out of his lungs. “I got nothing to lose. Ain’t no prison worse than waking up pissed off and poor every day. Besides, I didn’t leave no evidence. Dad was eating those pills anyway. A little digitalis and cyanide wasn’t nothing.”
>
Warren Wells’ friends had heaped sympathy on the twins. People like Rayburn Jones and the family attorney, Herbert Isaacs, talked about how the sons had been so noble, coming back to the farm to help their ailing father get out a final tree crop. The funeral was held at Three Springs Baptist Church, where Warren Wells had served as a deacon in his middle age, before his fervor shifted toward hoarding treasures of the Earth rather than of the spirit. During the memorial service, Joshua had disguised his giggles as sobs. Jacob felt no emotion at all.
The day after the burial in the family cemetery, Herbert Isaacs gathered the family in the study of the Wells house and read them the will. That’s when Joshua learned he’d received the property instead of the running money he’d yearned for. Jacob received a lion’s share of the eight million dollars in other assets, some real estate holdings, and various stocks and bonds, while five more distant relatives had each received title to business properties in downtown Kingsboro. Warren Wells’ final laugh had been to place a covenant on Joshua’s bequest that prevented him from selling it, and the taxes on the hundred-and-forty-acre estate all but assured that Joshua would have to keep a job to pay them. Otherwise, the county could put a lien on the property and leave Joshua with nothing but an unprofitable patricide.
In that one desperate act, Joshua had failed to live up to a family legacy that required all dark deeds to pay dividends.
“Can’t sell it, and you can’t make a nickel on farming. Even the Christmas trees have gone to hell, nobody set out seedlings and the rest got too big and scruffy for market.”
“A million can last a long time in Tennessee, though.”
Joshua grinned, showing his uneven, opossum’s teeth. “Like I said, Kingsboro ain’t so bad if you got money.”
“Get out of my town.”
“Now, now, Jacob. We’re just now getting used to each other. Kind of brings back the early days, when we were two of a kind.”
“We were opposites.”
Transverse twins, their doctor had called them. Developing in the womb face-to-face, mirror images of each other. Joshua born left-handed, with his heart shifted to the right side of his chest, and in the mysterious properties of the brain’s hemispheres, more prone to mechanical and mathematical skills yet lacking a deep emotional pool. Jacob had been the left-brained one, the sensitive and reclusive child, easily dominated. Desperate for his parents’ love but always failing to win it, while Joshua had extracted it from them like a butcher taking hearts in a slaughterhouse.