by Nora Roberts
With a sigh, Tucker rose. It wasn’t likely he’d be able to get in another nap. He wasn’t mad yet, only because it all seemed a little farfetched.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll go pass this along to Burke.”
Josie slapped her hands on her hips. “Daddy’d have gone and stuck a rifle barrel up Billy T.’s ass.”
Tucker turned, and though his face remained calm, his eyes weren’t. “I’m not Daddy, Josie.”
She was sorry immediately and rushed over to throw her arms around him. “Honey, that was awful of me. I didn’t mean it, either. It just makes me so mad, that’s all.”
“I know.” He gave her a squeeze. “Let me handle it my own way.” He drew back to kiss her. “Next time I’m in Jackson, I’ll buy you a new lipstick.”
“Ruthless Red.”
“You just go on in and relax now. I’m going to take your car.”
“Okay. Tuck?” When he turned back, she was smiling again. “Maybe Junior’ll shoot his nuts off.”
chapter 15
Tucker tried the sheriff’s office first, but found only Barb Hopkins, the part-time dispatcher, at her little desk in the corner and her six-year-old, Mark, who was playing jailbird in one of the two cells.
“Hey, Tuck.” Barb, who’d put on about fifty pounds since she’d graduated with Tucker from Jefferson Davis High, shifted her girth and put down the paperback novel she’d been reading. Her round, jolly face creased into smiles. “We got ourselves some excitement ’round here, don’t we?”
“Looks like.” Tucker had always had a fondness for Barb, who’d married Lou Hopkins at nineteen and had proceeded to give birth to a boy child every two years thereafter until Mark arrived, at which point she’d told Lou he could either get his dick clipped or take up residence on the sofabed. “Where’s the rest of your brood, Barb?”
“Oh, they’re running around town, raising hell.” He paused by the cell to look in on the grimy-faced, towheaded Mark. “So, whatcha in for, boy?”
“I kilt ’em.” Mark grinned evilly and shook the bars. “I kilt ’em all, but there ain’t no jail can hold me.”
“I’ll bet. We got ourselves a dangerous criminal here, Barb.”
“Don’t I know it. I come down this morning, and he’d done turned up the heater on the aquarium and fried every living guppy in there. I got a psychopathic fish-murderer on my hands.” She dug into the bag of cheese balls on the desk and munched. “So what can I do for you, Tuck?”
“Looking for Burke.”
“He deputized a few of the boys, then he and Carl took them out to look for Austin Hatinger. County sheriff come down, too, in his ’copter. We got ourselves a regular manhunt. Wasn’t so much him taking a few shots at you and blowing out that Caroline Waverly’s windows,” Barb said complacently. “But he dented that county deputy’s head pretty good, and embarrassed the shit out of the other one. Now Austin’s an escaped felon. He’s in big trouble.”
“The FBI?”
“Oh, Special Agent Suit-and-Tie? Well, he’s leaving this business pretty much up to the local boys. Went out with them for form’s sake, but he was more interested in his interviews.” She took another handful of cheese balls. “I happened to see one of them lists he makes. Looked like he wanted to talk to Vernon Hatinger, Toby March, Darleen Talbot, and Nancy Koons.” Barb licked salt off her fingers. “You, too, Tuck.”
“Yeah, I figured he’d get around to me again. Can you call Burke up on that thing?” He pointed to her radio. “Find out where he is and if he’s got a minute for me?”
“Sure can. They took walkie-talkies.” Obligingly, Barb wiped her orange-smeared fingers, fiddled with some dials, cleared her throat, then clicked on her mike. “This is base calling unit one. Base calling unit one. Over.” She put her hand over the mike and grinned at Tuck. “That Jed Larsson said how we should use code names like Silver Fox and Big Bear. Ain’t he a one?” With a shake of her head she leaned down to the mike again. “Base calling unit one. Burke honey, Y’all out there?”
“Unit one, base. Sorry, Barb, had my hands full. Over.”
“I got Tucker here in the office, Burke, says he needs to talk to you.”
“Well, put him on, then.”
Tucker bent down to the mike. “Burke, I got something I need to run by you. Can I come on out?”
There was a sharp whine of feedback, a protesting oath, and a scratching of static. “I’m pretty tied up right now, Tuck, but you can ride on down to where Dog Street Road runs off into Lone Tree. We got a roadblock set up there. Over.”
“I’ll be right along.” He looked doubtfully at the mike. “Ah, over and out.”
Barb grinned at him. “If I was you, I’d keep a shotgun across my lap. Austin got himself two Police Specials this morning.”
“Yeah, thanks, Barb.”
As Tucker walked out, Mark rattled his cage and shouted gleefully: “I kilt ’em. I kilt ’em all!”
Tucker shuddered. He wasn’t thinking about fish.
He spotted two ’copters circling on his way out of town. A trio of men spread out like a long V over old Stokey’s field. Another group was making a sweep of Charlie O’Hara’s catfish farm. Every one of them was armed.
It reminded Tucker miserably of the search for Francie. Before he could prevent it, her dead, white face floated into his mind. On an oath he fumbled for a cassette. It was with relief that he realized he hadn’t punched in Tammy Wynette or Loretta Lynn—two of Josie’s favorites—but Roy Orbison.
The plaintive, silvery notes of “Crying” calmed him. They weren’t out looking for a body, he assured himself. They were just hunting up an idiot. An idiot with a pair of .38s.
On the long straight road he could see the barricade five miles before he came to it. It occurred to him that if Austin came tooling down this way in Birdie’s Buick, he’d have the same advantage. The wooden blockades were painted bright orange and glowed in the quieting sunlight. Behind them, two county cruisers sat nose to nose like two big black-and-white dogs sniffing each other.
Ranged along the shoulder of the road were Jed Larsson’s shiny new Dodge pick-up—between the store and the catfish, Jed was doing real well—Sonny Talbot’s truck with its big round lights hooked to the roof like a pair of yellow eyes, Burke’s cruiser, and Lou Hopkins’s Chevy van.
Lou’s van was dusty as an old hound. Someone had scrawled WASH ME! through the grime on the rear window.
As Tucker slowed, he noted that two county boys stepped forward, rifles oiled and ready. Though he didn’t think they’d shoot first and ask questions later, he was grateful when Burke waved them off.
“You got yourself a real operation here, don’t you?” Tucker commented as he stepped out.
“County sheriff’s spitting fire,” Burke muttered. “He didn’t like it that the FBI was around to see this screw-up. He thinks Austin’s halfway to Mexico by now, but he doesn’t want to say so.”
Tucker took out his cigarettes, offered one to Burke, then lighted one of his own. “What do you think?”
Burke blew out a long, slow stream of smoke. It had been a hellishly long day, and he was glad to talk to Tucker.
“Seems to me if a man knew the swamps and rivers around here, he could lay low for a good long time. ’Specially if he had a reason to.” He eyed Tucker. “We’re going to post a couple of uniforms at Sweetwater.”
“Shit on that.”
“Gotta do it, Tuck. Come on now.” He dropped a hand on Tucker’s shoulder. “You got women out there.”
Tucker looked across to where the long flat gave way to trees, and trees to swamp. “What a fucking mess.”
“It is that.”
Something in Burke’s voice had Tucker looking back at him. “What else is on your mind?”
“Ain’t this enough?”
“I’ve known you too long, son.”
Burke glanced behind him, then edged a few more feet away from the county deputies. “Bobby Lee came
by the house last night.”
“Now, there’s news.”
Burke looked miserably at Tucker. “He wants to marry Marvella. Got his gumption up and asked to speak to me in private. We went on out on the back porch. Shit, Tuck, it scared me bloodless. I was afraid he was going to tell me he’d gotten her pregnant, then I’d’ve had to kill him or something.” He saw Tucker’s grin and answered it weakly. “Yeah, I know, I know. But it’s different when it’s your little girl. Anyway—” He blew in smoke, chuffed it out. “He didn’t get her pregnant. I guess kids’re smarter today about being protected and all. I remember driving clear into Greenville to buy rubbers when I was courting Susie.” His grin was a little stronger. “Then when we got into the backseat of my daddy’s Chevy, I left them in my pocket.” The grin faded. “Of course, if I’d have remembered them, we wouldn’t have had Marvella.”
“What did you tell him, Burke?”
“Shit, what could I tell him?” He rested a hand absently on the butt of his gun. “She’s grown up on me. She wants him, and that’s that. He’s got a decent job at Talbot’s, and he’s a good boy. He’s crazy in love with her, and I’ve gotta figure he’ll do right. But it damn near breaks my heart.”
“How’d Susie take it?”
“Cried buckets.” On a sigh, Burke tossed down the cigarette and stamped it out. “And when Marvella started in on how they were thinking of moving to Jackson, I thought she’d flood the house. Then she and Marvella cried together awhile. When they dried up, they started talking about bridesmaid’s dresses. I left them to it.”
“Getting old sucks, huh?”
“That’s the truth.” But he felt better having gotten it off his chest. “Keep it under your hat for a bit. They’re going to break it to the Fullers this evening.”
“You got room in your head for something else?”
“It’d be a pure pleasure to push this out for a while.”
Tucker leaned back against the hood of Josie’s car and told a tale of lipstick and adultery.
“Darleen and Billy T.?” Burke frowned as he thought it through. “I haven’t gotten wind of that.”
“Ask Susie.”
Burke sighed and nodded. “That woman can keep a secret, God knows. She was three months gone with Tommy before she told me. Worried I’d be upset because we were just scraping by. With Marvella being in love with Darleen’s brother, I can see how she’d keep it to herself.” Thinking, he jingled his keys. “The thing is, Tucker, I can’t go up to Billy T. about all this just because Darleen’s using the same kind of lipstick as Josie.”
“I know you’ve got a lot going on, Burke. Just figured I should pass it along.”
Burke gave a grunt of assent. They would lose the light soon, and God knew where Austin had gone to ground. “I’ll talk to Susie tonight. If it turns out Billy T.’s been seeing Darleen on the sly, I’ll make some time to feel him out.”
“Appreciate it.” But now that his duty was done, Tucker figured he would do some feeling out of his own.
The next morning, strung out after barely five hours’ sleep, Burke was spooning up corn flakes, worrying about having an armed escapee in his territory—they’d found the Buick ditched out on Cottonseed Road, and nobody was thinking Austin was in Mexico now. On top of that, there was the issue of whether he’d have to rent a tuxedo to give his daughter away.
Susie was already on the phone with Happy Fuller, and the two of them were mapping out wedding plans with the intensity and guile of generals mounting a major campaign.
He was wondering how long the county sheriff would be on his back, when the screams and crashes from next door had him jumping to his feet.
Holy Christ, he thought, how could he have forgotten about the Talbots? By the time Susie came rushing in, Burke was already clearing the fence that separated the yards.
“You’ve killed him! You’ve killed him!” Darleen screamed. She was backed into a corner of the small, jumbled kitchen, pulling her hair. The elastic bodice of her shortie nightgown was drawn down, cupped beneath one white, jiggling breast.
Burke looked politely away from that to the overturned table, the splattered remains of soggy cereal, and the prone figure of Billy T. Bonny, who lay facedown in a pool of grits.
Burke shook his head and looked at Junior Talbot standing over Billy T. with a cast-iron skillet in his hand.
“I sure hope you didn’t kill him, Junior.”
“Don’t figure I did.” Junior put the skillet down calmly enough. “Only whacked him once.”
“Well, let’s take a look.” Burke bent down while Darleen continued to scream and yank at her hair. In the playpen, Scooter was raising the roof. “Just knocked him cold,” Burke said, taking in the sizable lump coming up on the back of Billy T.’s head. “Should probably get him over to Doc’s, though.”
“I’ll help you haul him.”
Still crouched, Burke glanced up. “You want to tell me what went on here, Junior?”
“Well …” Junior righted a chair. “Seems I forgot to tell Darleen something. When I came on back, I saw that Billy T. there had snuck into the kitchen and was forcing himself on my wife.” He shot Darleen a look that shut off her wailing like a finger on a switch. “Ain’t that right, Darleen?”
“I …” She sniffled, and her eyes darted from Burke to Billy T. and back to Junior. “That’s right. I—he was on me so quick, I didn’t know what to do. Then Junior came back, and …”
“You go on and see to the baby,” Junior said quietly. He reached over with that same unruffled calm and pulled the pink rayon over her breast. “You don’t have to worry about Billy T. bothering you again.”
She swallowed and her head bobbed twice. “Yes, Junior.”
She rushed out and in a moment the baby’s wails turned to hiccoughing sobs. Junior looked back at Billy T. He was beginning to stir a little.
“A man has to protect what’s his, don’t he, Sheriff?”
Burke hooked his arms under Billy T.’s. “I expect he does, Junior. Let’s haul him out to my car.”
Cy was happy. It shamed him a little to be so happy when his sister had just been put in the ground and the whole town was whispering about his father. But he couldn’t help it.
It was almost enough just to be out of the house where his mother was sprawled, glassy-eyed with whatever pills Doc had given her, watching the Today show.
But it was better than just getting out of the house, better than walking away from the police car that sat in the yard waiting to see if his daddy would try to come home. Cy was going to work. And he was going in style.
His shoes kicked up dust and his lips whistled a tune. The prospect of walking and biking ten miles didn’t daunt him in the least. He was embarking on the Cy Hatinger Freedom Fund. The fund that was going to buy his way out of Innocence on his eighteenth birthday.
The four years stretched painfully long, but not as hopeless as they had been before he’d become a man of all work.
He like the title, and imagined himself with one of those business cards, like that Bible salesman from Vicksburg had given his mother last April. It would read:
CYRUS HATINGER
MAN OF ALL WORK
· · ·
No job too big
No job too small
Yes sir, he was on his way. By the time he was eighteen, he’d have saved enough to buy himself a ticket to Jackson. Maybe even New Orleans. Shitfire! He could go clean to California if he’d a mind to.
Humming “California, Here I Come,” he veered off the hardpack to cross the edge of Toby March’s east field. He wondered if Jim would be over at Miss Waverly’s painting, and if he’d have time to scoot by and say hey.
He crossed Little Hope stream, which was hardly more than a piss trickle at this time of year, and followed it down to the culvert.
He remembered how he and Jim had scrawled their names on the rounded concrete in Crayolas. And how, in more recent times, they’d pored over every page o
f a Playboy magazine Cy had swiped from under his brother A.J.’s mattress.
Those pictures had been something, he remembered. And for Cy, who had never seen a naked female, it had been an awe-inspiring experience. His pecker had gotten hard as a rock. And that night the old tool of Satan had cut loose in his first and fascinating wet dream.
And hadn’t his mama been surprised when he’d done the laundry for her?
Grinning a little over the memory—and wondering if he’d have the experience again anytime soon—he slid down the gentle bank of Little Hope and headed into the culvert.
A hand slapped over his mouth, cutting off his cheerful whistle. He didn’t try to scream or struggle. He knew that hand, the shape, the texture, even the smell of it. His fear was much too deep, much too hopeless for screams.
“I found your little hole,” Austin whispered. “Your den of sin with your filthy book and your nigger writing. You boys come down here to jerk each other off?”
Cy could only shake his head. He grunted when Austin shoved him against the hard, rounded wall of the culvert. He expected the belt to flash, but even as he braced, he saw his father wasn’t wearing one.
They take away your belt when they put you in jail, he remembered. Take it away so you can’t hang yourself.
He swallowed. His father was crouched over because the culvert was too low to allow him to rise to his full height. But the position didn’t diminish him. If anything, it made him seem larger, stronger. With his back rounded, his legs bent and spread, his face and hands blackened with dirt, he looked like something horrible waiting to pounce.
Cy swallowed again, his throat clicking. “They’re looking for you, Daddy.”
“I know they’re looking for me. They ain’t found me, have they?”
“No, sir.”
“You know why, boy? It’s because I got God on my side. Those Christless bastards’ll never find me. What we got here’s a holy war.” He smiled, and Cy felt ice flow into his belly. “They put me in jail, and they left that murdering son of a whore free. She was a whore. Whore of Babylon,” he said softly. “Selling herself when she was mine.”
