Carnal Innocence (42 page)

Dwayne dragged deep on tobacco and wished desperately for whiskey. “I expect she was feeling harsh. I can’t say I did right by her, or the boys either.”

“You don’t have to do this, Dwayne.” When his control broke, Tucker stepped forward to take his brother’s arm. “You don’t have to answer this fucker’s questions about a marriage that’s over, or your feelings about it.”

Burns inclined his head. “Is there a reason your brother shouldn’t confirm what I already know?”

Tucker let go of Dwayne to slap his hands on the desk. “I can’t think of one. Just like I can’t think of a reason I shouldn’t kick your skinny butt all the way back to D.C.”

“We can discuss that on our own time, Longstreet. Right now you’re interfering with a federal investigation. If you persist, you’ll do your complaining from one of those cells.”

Tucker grabbed Burns’s pinstriped tie and yanked upward. “Why don’t I show you how we handle things down here in the delta?”

“Leave him alone.” Dwayne stirred himself to snag Tucker’s wrist.

“The hell I will.”

“I said leave him alone.” Dwayne stuck his face close to Tucker’s. “I’ve got nothing to hide. This Yankee sonofabitch can ask questions from now to doomsday and that won’t change. Leave him be so we can get it done.”

Reluctantly, Tucker loosened his grip. “We’re going to finish this, you and me.”

Stone-faced, Burns straightened his tie. “It’ll be a pleasure.” He remained standing, turning to the bulletin board at his back. “Mr. Longstreet, were you acquainted with Arnette Gantrey?” Burns tapped a finger against the space between a photo of a smiling blond woman and a black-and-white police photo taken at Gooseneck Creek.

“I knew Arnette. We went to school together, dated a few times.”

“And Francie Logan?” Burns slid his finger to the next set of photos.

“I knew Francie.” Dwayne averted his eyes. “Everybody knew Francie. She grew up here. Lived in Jackson for a while, then came back after getting divorced.”

“And you were acquainted with Edda Lou Hatinger?”

Dwayne forced himself to look back, but focused on the tip of Burns’s finger. “Yeah. I knew Darleen, too, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Did you know a woman named Barbara Kinsdale?”

“I don’t think so.” Dwayne’s brow creased as he tried out the name in his head. “Nobody around here named Kinsdale.”

“Are you quite sure?” Burns unpinned a photo from the board. “Take a look.”

Dwayne picked up the photo from the desk, grateful it was a shot of a live woman. She was a pretty brunette, perhaps thirty, with straight hair sweeping slight shoulders, “I’ve never seen her before.”

“Haven’t you?” Burns picked up his notes. “Barbara Kinsdale, five foot two, a hundred three pounds, brown hair, blue eyes. Age thirty-one. Does that description sound familiar?”

“I can’t say.”

“You should be able to say,” Burns continued. “It’s almost a perfect description of your ex-wife. Mrs. Kinsdale was a cocktail waitress at the Stars and Bars Club in Nashville. Residence 3043 Eastland Avenue. That’s about three blocks away from your ex-wife’s home. Emmett Cotrain, your ex-wife’s fiancé, performed at the Stars and bars on weekends. An interesting coincidence, isn’t it?”

A thin bead of sweat dripped down Dwayne’s back. “I guess it is.”

“It’s more interesting that Mrs. Kinsdale was found floating in the Percy Priest Lake, outside of Nashville, late this spring. She was naked, her throat had been slit, and her body mutilated.”

Burns tossed another photo across the desk, but in this one, Barbara Kinsdale was very dead. “Where were
you on the night of May 22 of this year. Mr. Longstreet?”

“Oh, Jesus.” Dwayne shut his eyes. The body hadn’t been covered in the police shot, but had been laid out, gray and tortured, for the cold camera lens.

“I should tell you that my information places you in Nashville from the twenty-first to the twenty-third.”

“I took my boys to the zoo.” Dwayne rubbed shaking hands over his eyes. It did look like Sissy. God almighty, especially dead it looked like Sissy. “I took them to the zoo and to a pizza parlor. They stayed with me at the hotel.”

“On the night of the twenty-second you were seen in the hotel bar at approximately ten-thirty. Your children weren’t with you.”

“They were asleep. I left them in the room and went down and had a drink. Couple drinks,” he said with a sigh. “Sissy’d been on me about doing more for them, and wanting a bigger house once she and the guy she was with got married. I didn’t have more than two drinks because I didn’t want to forget the boys were asleep upstairs.”

“And didn’t you call your wife from the bar just before midnight?” Burns continued. “You argued with her, threatened her.”

“I called her. I was sitting there in the room while the boys slept. My boys. It didn’t seem right that I was to help her buy a new house so she could live in it with another man my sons would think of as a father.” Pale, shaken, Dwayne looked over at Tucker. “It wasn’t the money.”

“It was the humiliation,” Burns suggested. “The humiliation at the hands of a woman. She’d already made you a laughingstock by locking you out of your own house, leaving you for another man. Now she was demanding more money so she could live a better life with that man.”

“I didn’t care who she lived with. It just didn’t seem right—”

“No, it didn’t seem right,” Burns agreed. “So you told her there’d be no more money, and that you’d take
her to court if she didn’t watch her step. That you’d pay her back.”

“I don’t know what I said exactly.”

“She does. Oh, despite your estrangement, she’s loyal enough to add that you were always full of bluster when you’d been drinking. She didn’t take anything you said seriously, and went back to listen to the next set at the bar. Even stayed on after it closed, since she didn’t have the boys to get home to. But Barbara Kinsdale left about two. She walked out into a deserted parking lot. A dark parking lot, where she was knocked unconscious and dragged to a waiting car. She was driven to the lake and slaughtered.”

Burns waited a beat. “Do you own a knife, Mr. Longstreet? A long-bladed hunting knife?”

“This is crazy.” Dwayne dropped his hands into his lap. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

“Where were you on the night of June thirtieth, between nine
P.M
. and midnight?”

“For chrissakes.” He stumbled to his feet. “Burke, for chrissakes.”

“I think he should have a lawyer.” Strain had etched lines around Burke’s mouth when he turned to Burns. “I don’t think he should answer any more questions without a lawyer.”

Well satisfied, Burns spread his hands. “That’s his right, of course.”

“I was just driving around,” Dwayne blurted out. “It was raining and I didn’t want to go home. I had a flask in the car and I just drove around.”

“And on the night of June twelfth?” Burns asked, working back to the night of Edda Lou’s murder.

“I don’t know. How the fuck is a man supposed to remember where he is every night of the year?”

“Don’t say anything else.” Tucker stepped forward to take both of Dwayne’s arms. “Don’t say anything. You hear me?”

“Tucker, I didn’t—you know I didn’t.”

“I know. Be quiet.” He turned to stand between Burns and his brother. “Are you bringing charges?”

The holiday weekend had bogged down his paperwork.
Not everyone was as dedicated to justice as Matthew Burns. “I’ll have a warrant within twenty-four hours.”

“Fine. In the meantime you can fuck yourself. Let’s get you home, Dwayne.”

“Mr. Longstreet,” Burns rose with a nod to each brother. “I’d advise that neither of you think of leaving the area. The federal government has a very long arm.”

“I need a drink.”

“You need to keep a clear head,” Tucker contradicted him, and punched Josie’s car up to seventy. “You stay clear of the bottle, Dwayne.” He took his eyes off the road long enough to shoot his brother a warning. “Until we get this mess straightened out, you stay clear. I mean it.”

“They think I did it.” Dwayne rubbed his hands over his face until he was afraid he’d scrub off a layer of skin. “They think I killed all those women, Tuck. Even the one I’d never seen before. She looked like Sissy. Christ, she did look like Sissy.”

“We’re going to call our lawyer,” Tucker said calmly even as his knuckles whitened on the wheel. “And you’re going to keep your head clear so you can think back. Think back real carefully until you find out what you were doing, who you were with when Arnette, Francie, and Edda Lou were killed. One’s all you need. One of those nights you had to be somewhere with somebody. They won’t have a case then. They know it was the same person killed them all. You just have to think.”

“Don’t you think I want to? Don’t you think I’m trying?” Teeth gritted, Dwayne pounded his fists on the dash. “Goddammit, you don’t know what it’s like once I start in drinking. I told you I forget things. I fucking blank out.” Moaning, he dropped his head between his knees. “I blank out, Tucker. Oh, God, I don’t know what I’m doing when that happens. I could’ve done it.” Terrified, he squeezed his eyes tight. “Jesus help me, I could’ve killed them all and not even know.”

“That’s bullshit.” Furious, Tucker swerved to the shoulder. Dwayne opened his runny eyes as the car jerked to a halt. He stared under the seat. Stared and stared until Tucker jerked him upright. “That’s fucking bullshit and I don’t want to hear any more of it.” He shoved Dwayne back, pushing his livid face into his brother’s pale one. “You didn’t kill anybody, and you get that plain in your head right now. I got an idea who did.”

Dwayne swallowed. His head was reeling along with his stomach, but he tried to grip on to that one sentence. “You know?”

“I said I have an idea. I’m going to check into it as soon as we call the lawyer and get him doing whatever the hell lawyers do.” He kept his grip tight on Dwayne’s shirt. “Now, you listen to me. You’re not going to go home and upset Della and Josie and everybody with talk about this. You’re going to hold on to yourself, you understand me? You’re going to tough this out until it’s fixed. If there was one thing the old man had right in his whole miserable ass-kicking life, it was that we’ve got a responsibility to the family. We’re going to stay whole, Dwayne.”

“To the family,” Dwayne repeated, and shuddered. “I won’t let you down.”

“All right.” He let Dwayne go, then sat back a minute to calm his jittery stomach. “We’ll show that Yankee bastard what Longstreets can do once they’re riled. I’ll call the governor. That ought to rattle Burns’s cage a bit. We’ll see how quick he gets his fucking warrant.”

“I want to go home.” Dwayne closed his eyes again when Tucker started the car. “I’ll be all right when I get home.”

A few minutes later they turned through the gates of Sweetwater. “You just tell them Burns asked you a bunch of stupid questions and that’s that,” Tucker advised. “Don’t say anything about Sissy or that business in Nashville.”

“I won’t.” Dwayne stared at the house, white and lovely and graceful as a woman in the morning sunlight.
“I’m going to figure it out, Tucker. And I’ll fix it, like I used to.”

“This time you let me do the fixing.”

As Tucker parked by the steps, Josie came out. She was still in her robe and her hair was tousled about the shoulders. It didn’t take Tucker longer than ten seconds to measure her mood as dangerous. She strutted down the steps to greet them, slapping a hairbrush against her palm.

“Looks like I’m going to have to start locking my car and taking my keys inside with me.”

With a shrug, Tucker pulled her keys out and tossed them to her. “I had business in town. You were asleep.”

“You’ll notice, Mr. Longstreet, it’s my name on the registration of this vehicle. I don’t appreciate you commandeering it whenever you have the whim.” She poked the brush into his chest. “It’s common courtesy to ask for the use of someone else’s property.”

“I said you were asleep.”

Fluttering her lashes, she scanned the driveway. “Mine is not the only car here.”

“It was the first one I came to.” He checked his temper and tried a smile. “You sure did wake up on the wrong side of the bed, darling.”

She met charm with a haughty look. “I might suggest you consider getting yourself alternate transportation until that toy of yours is repaired.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He kissed her cheek. “You sound just like Mama.”

Josie sniffed and stepped back. “What are you staring at, Dwayne?” Automatically, she fluffed at her hair, then her eyes changed. “Why, honey, you look just awful. What’ve you boys been up to so early?”

“Just some business in town,” Tucker repeated before Dwayne could answer. “You’d better get yourself prettied up if you’re going to the parade.”

“’Course I’m going. The Longstreets never miss a Fourth of July parade. Dwayne, you come inside and get yourself something to eat. You’re green around the gills.”

“He hasn’t recovered from the carnival.”

“Aw.” Instantly solicitous, Josie took her brother’s arm. “You go in and have Della fix you up something. Cousin Lulu shouldn’t have teased you into going on that Round-Up.”

“I’m all right.” He put his arms around her, holding her close. “Josie. It’s going to be all right.”

“Of course it is, honey.” She patted his back. “It’s a fine day for a parade, and it’ll be a finer night for fireworks. Go on now, so I can paint my face.” She waved him inside, but held up a hand to stop Tucker. She forgot all about being annoyed with him. “What’s wrong with Dwayne?”

“They had him in for questioning this morning.”

Her eyes lit. “Dwayne?”

“They’ll call us all in, I imagine. It’s just standard.”

She began to tap the brush against her palm again. “Why, I might have to give Matthew Burns a piece of my mind.”

“Let it go, Jose. It’s nothing to worry about. He’ll feel better once we get this holiday started.”

“All right, but I’m going to keep an eye on him.” She patted the keys in her pocket as she started into the house. “Next time you ask, you hear?” She passed Caroline in the doorway. “You watch out for that one, Caro. He’s a scoundrel.”

“I already know.” Caroline stepped out on the porch, then, to please herself, turned a showy circle. The skirt of her pale blue sundress swirled out, then settled softly around her legs.