He sipped his coffee and watched a fish hawk dive for its dinner as the gulls screamed and circled over the river. Charles was viewing nature in a less than pastoral light these days. He smashed an insect on his wrist and left a red smear on his skin. Another bug made a clean getaway with his body fluids, and who knew what was going on among the flightless insects and the small animals in the long grass extending out to the levee. And what of Augusta, nature’s local custodian?
Mallory leaned against the veranda rail, and stared down at the pocket watch in her hand, oblivious to any violence not of her own making.
He had asked her a question ten minutes ago and was still waiting for a response. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”
She wouldn’t even look at him.
He felt his relationship with her had reached a new growth point, for she pissed him off so easily these days. “You don’t trust me. You think I’d give it all away.”
She slipped the watch into her jeans pocket. “Do you trust me, Charles?”
“You want blind faith? Like Malcolm’s little flock?” He hadn’t meant to say that aloud. It was only an echo of Riker from the back of his mind. “When were you going to tell me about the bullet wound in your shoulder?”
“Never.”
Well, so much for trust.
“I want you to find Riker,” she said. “Just go from bar to bar, you’ll turn him up. I want you to give him a story, send him off to the next parish to keep him out of my way.”
“Riker thinks you’ve come back to destroy all those people. Have you?”
“I came here to collect evidence in a homicide.”
“Not just any homicide.”
“It’s like any other case, same – ”
“Mallory, you’re not really going to play the blushing virgin, are you?” He noted the sudden widening of her eyes, and he nearly laughed. “You always said I didn’t have a face for poker. Well, you don’t have the face for righteous indignation.”
She was angry now. Good. Before she could speak, he put up one hand. “I should warn you, I can not only outvirgin you, but even though I’m not from the South, I can outsouthern you too. I’ve learned a lot from Henry and Augusta.”
“Yeah, and you were going to find out who killed Babe. How much did you learn about that?”
He didn’t care for her sarcasm either. “Well, according to the sheriff, to know Babe was to have a motive. What did you turn up at the hospital yesterday?”
“Nothing.”
Right.
“Charles, are you going to help me with this or not?”
“What you’re doing is just another variation on torture. That’s the sheriff’s method.”
“It was Markowitz’s method too.”
“No, your father was a good and decent man.”
“And a world-class cop. When Markowitz didn’t have any hard evidence to use in court, he worked the perps into a frenzy. He lied like the devil, and scared them shitless. If Markowitz had been here, he would have done it the same way, or maybe gone me one better.”
“Riker says this is – ”
“Riker will say whatever it takes to get you working against me. He came here to bring me back to New York, like I’m some runaway kid.”
“He worries about you. I think his biggest fear is that you’re only – ”
“I came here to do a job, and I will finish it. So don’t help me, all right? Just don’t get in my way.” She stalked to the staircase.
“Mallory, wait. I don’t think – ”
“No, you’re not thinking at all – you’ve got Riker for that.” She turned on him. “He’s got you blindsided.” She came walking back to him, not with her usual stealth, but with boot heels hitting the boards hard. “He’s a fine one to quote the rule book. You don’t think he’s ever gone over the edge to get a confession?”
She stood over him now, arms folded. “Once I watched Riker slap a child molester on the back and smile. Then he commiserated with the pervert – ‘What a tease that four-year-old kid was, huh, pal? Yeah, she had it coming to her.’ Oh, did I mention that the creep killed the kids when he was done with them?”
Charles lowered his head, and she shot out one hand to lift his face to hers. “No cop can stomach the rape of a child. It’s the lowest crime, and this insect also killed them. Not because he was sick – he just didn’t want any witnesses – it was that cold.”
Her hand fell away. “Riker was the child killer’s best friend. The perp was so smitten with his new buddy, the cop. He led us to every little corpse – all for the love of Riker. As we went from one child’s grave to another, Riker held the perp’s hand in the back of the car. It was a love affair. Are you disgusted, Charles? You think there was a righteous way to get that confession?”
His eyes stayed with her as she paced to the staircase and back again.
“Did Markowitz try to stop it? Did he say, ‘No, Riker, don’t get down in the dirt with that creep’? No! The old man watched Riker develop the suspect as a witness to his own crime. Riker went around with this pervert for days and days until we’d collected seven very small bodies. The techs would dig up a little kid, and Riker would hug the pervert and say, ‘Good job, pal.’ And then they’d pick up their shovels, and we’d all go on to the next shallow grave.”
She hunkered down beside his chair. So close. “By comparison, I don’t think Riker found you much of a challenge.” She stood up and turned her back on him.
Charles felt drained, as though he had run a mile. He looked down at a flower blooming through the rail near his chair. Its vine had twined up fifteen feet of brick foundation to get at the wood. The flower was flame-red, so beautiful, fragile. A dark, twitching beetle crawled from its center as Mallory came to light in the chair beside his own.
“Forget that the victim is my mother.” Her voice was so calm, so utterly detached. She went on, with no inflection to give a meaning beyond the dry words. “The crime is old. A cold trail is the hardest one No evidence, no witnesses, unless you count Ira, and I don’t. I’m keeping him out of this. And Alma’s crazy and useless.”
Now her voice was on the rise, but still no emotion, as though she had merely turned up the volume on a machine. “I have to develop a witness to testify against the rest of them. I plan to break the bastard any way I can – whatever it takes.”
Mallory’s face was inches from his own. Her hand wrapped around his arm, fingers digging in. All her emotions came out to play now. There was real pain in her face, her voice. “And then I’m going to tell the creep that my mother had it coming to her! That the bitch deserved to die!”
His head jerked back as though she had slapped him.
Her voice softened. “I’ll tell him any filthy lie he needs to hear.” She whispered, “That’s what cops do.”
And now she was rising, going away from him again. She stood by the rail and leaned back on her hands, all cold to him now, and mechanical when she said, “So Alma Furgueson slit her wrists. Alma’s still breathing. My mother is dead. Time to choose up sides, Charles.”
She hovered by the staircase, undecided whether to go or stay. “Has Riker won you over?” She set one boot on the steps. “Are you throwing in with him or me?”
“I would never – ”
“Are you in or out, Charles?”
“I’m in.” After all, Alma was still breathing.
CHAPTER 22
The sheriff sat back and evaluated his young deputy over the rim of his beer glass. Though Lilith Beaudare still had a lot to learn, she had been broken of arrogance – just as he had broken Eliot Dobbs before her. Deputy Travis had come to him prebroken, and was no damn fun at all.
“Very soon, things may get ugly, Lilith.” And how would she react? “Could you kill somebody if you had to? If you can’t do it, you might wind up dead, or someone else will. You’ll only get one second to find out what you’re made of.”