Had Britt made it safely to Candy? Was she, even now, pouring out the bizarre story of the crime George had helped orchestrate?

“Our first date,” George said, “Miranda went down on me. In my car, no less. I was driving. Nearly killed us both when I came, but it was one hell of a rush.”

“I can imagine.”

“First time we fucked, guess what I discovered.”

“She wasn’t a virgin.”

George laughed for real then. “That’s a good one, Gannon. You have a sense of humor after all. Yeah, that was a good one. But seriously…” He took another slurp from his glass. “No, what I found was this itsy-bitsy gold stud in her clit. Man, you talk about a turn-on. Thought I’d died and gone to pussy heaven.”

He paused to offer Raley a drink.

“No thank you.”

“You sure? Kentucky’s finest.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself. Where was I?”

“Heaven.”

George belched. “Right. We hadn’t dated a month before Miranda started talking marriage. Course I was all over that idea. She’s hot and her old man’s loaded. What’s not to like, right?”

“Right.”

“So down the aisle we went. Honeymooned in Tahiti. Swam naked in the surf. In fact, Miranda stayed naked most of the time. Practically wore blisters on my dick. I thought, George, you lucky bastard, you have hit the jackpot for sure. She had beauty, money, and a button that stayed excited twenty-four/seven on account of that little gold stud.”

His eyes went vacant for several moments, then he squinted Raley back into focus. “She killed my kid, you know.” Seeing Raley’s shock, he said, “Yeah, you heard right. She came back from the honeymoon pregnant. I was thrilled, and for weeks strutted around here like a goddamn peacock. But I noticed she wasn’t getting a tummy on her, and when I remarked on it, she started laughing and said, ‘And I never will, darlin’.’ She’d got rid of the baby and hadn’t even bothered to tell me.”

Raley felt a twinge of pity for the man, and had to remind himself of the lives George was responsible for taking.

“But my consolation prize was all the sex,” George continued. “She’s all about fun and games. Knows every trick in the book. Guess how she knows.”

“I don’t want to guess, George.”

“She’s been doing them for a long time, that’s how. Technically, she was a virgin until she was twelve, but long before that, she and Les-”

Involuntarily Raley recoiled.

“Surprise!” George exclaimed. Then it seemed his entire face collapsed and was held on to his skull only by the loose skin. “I was sorta surprised myself, finding out that Miranda was daddy’s girl in every sense of the word. That little gold charm I liked so well? He’s the one who suggested it.”

Raley swallowed his revulsion. “She was a child, a victim. Why didn’t she tell someone?”

“Victim?” George said, scoffing. “No, Gannon, no. She liked it. She loved it.”

“What about Mrs. Conway?”

“Probably suspected,” George said with a negligent shrug. “How could she not? But one day when Miranda was about fourteen, her mother caught them in flagrante delicto. And not the missionary position. That night Mrs. Conway washed down a bottle of pills with a bottle of vodka and half of another. It was ruled an accidental overdose.”

He finished the whiskey in his glass and poured more. “I’ll bet you’re wondering why I haven’t left Miranda.” Raley had been wondering that. He’d also been wondering if Britt had played the video for Candy yet and if police officers were being dispatched to arrest George. As disgusting as the conversation was, if he could keep him talking long enough…

“I’ve threatened to pack up and leave dozens of times, but she knew I never would. For one thing, I liked the money and the sex and the whole package that came with marrying Miranda Conway. But the big, major, number one reason I couldn’t leave her was that she knew I was no hero. She knew about Cleveland Jones and how he died and how the fire started.”

Raley’s heart gave a little bump. “How did she know?”

“This…” George started laughing again. “You’re going to like this, Gannon. I told her. I admitted it in what you might call a moment of weakness. Well, my brain was weak. My dick was a Louisville Slugger. See, we were playing a sex game. Leather restraints. Massage oil. Blindfold. It became kind of a truth-or-dare thing. We’d swap our deepest, darkest secrets, she said.”

He leaned forward and whispered. “You ever had a candle pushed up your ass while your dick is being sucked?” He sat back and grinned drunkenly. “She wouldn’t let me come until she had the whole story. Kept teasing and teasing, and, well, the truth spilled out along with my seed. To borrow an Old Testament phrase.

“Anyway, after, when she removed my blindfold, I reminded her that it was her turn, truth or dare. Then she smiled this gloating smile I’ll never forget and told me who’d taught her this naughty little trick with the candle. She said, ‘It’s one of Daddy’s favorite things we do.’”

Suddenly tears filled his eyes and ran down his bloated cheeks. “I wish she would have just castrated me then and there. Because she and Les have been sawing away at my balls every day since, stripping me of my manhood a little bit at a time. They know their secret is safe with me so long as mine is safe with them.”

He considered the bourbon in his glass but pushed it away without drinking any more. Instead, he hefted the pistol in his hand as though trying to guess its weight. “I’ve been waiting on you, but you’re earlier than I expected. I figured I would beat you to the punch, save you the trouble.”

“Save me the trouble?” Raley asked.

“You know about Pat Junior, right? Being a homo?”

Raley nodded.

“Now you talk about a sorry excuse for a man,” George said. “Cruel irony that all this started with that sniveling little faggot. And Cleveland Jones?” He made a sound of disgust. “He needed killing if anybody ever did. Lawless, cocky son of a bitch. Thought he was above the law. Had a real contempt for authority. Smart guy. Tough customer. You know the type.

“Pat was mortified about his son being gay and all, but this Jones character had almost killed him. Pat insisted on getting a confession out of Jones and putting him away for years, someplace he’d do hard time, where he’d be raped a coupla times a day. Punishment fitting the crime, see?

“In hindsight, we should’ve just popped him where we found him, let it be blamed on gangbangers. But no, we stayed within the law. To that point anyway. We hauled him to the station, then took him to a room where nobody could see in and started working him over. The four of us told him he wasn’t getting out of there until he’d signed a confession, and we didn’t care how long it took. In fact, we hoped it would take a nice, long time.”

Raley said, “He didn’t have skull fractures when you arrested him, did he?”

George wiped his wet cheeks and gave Raley a look that said the question wasn’t even worth answering, but Raley had asked it mostly for the benefit of the camera.

“Who actually dealt the deathblow, George?”

More tears streamed from his bloodshot eyes. “Hard to say. Pat maybe. Jay got in a few good belts, but he wasn’t that strong. Might have been me. We were taking turns. Jones was on the floor, and I think it was Jay who first noticed that he was no longer moving. Jay called the rest of us off. He felt for a pulse.” George ran his arm under his nose, mopping up the mucus dripping from it with his sleeve. “Jones was dead.”

He lapsed into silence, so Raley prompted him. “Then what happened?”

“What the fuck you think? We freaked, especially Pat, because we’d just killed a man, all on account of his queer son.”

Raley nodded down at the lighter on the desk. “You started the fire with his lighter.”

“I was the one who’d emptied his pockets when we checked him in. I kept the lighter. Don’t know why. Maybe to bring home and show Miranda, thinking she’d get a kick out of it. I don’t remember. Anyway I had it, and it came in handy.”