Chapter Twenty-Seven

"There's coffee on the stove, Tuck." Burke yawned over his bowl of raisin bran. "I don't believe I've seen you up and around this early in twenty years."

"I wanted to catch you before you went into your office."

"My office." Burke's lips twisted into a grimace as he held out his morning mug so that Tucker could top it up with hot coffee. "Don't you mean Burns's office? My butt hasn't felt the seat of my own chair in three days."

"Is he getting anywhere, or is he just blowing smoke?"

"He's generated more paperwork than the Bank of England. Faxes, Federal Express packages, conference calls to Washington, D.C. We got us a bulletin board with pictures of all the victims tacked to it. Vital statistics, time and place of death. He's got stuff referenced and cross-referenced till your head spins."

Tucker sat down. "You're not telling me anything, Burke."

Burke met Tucker's gaze. "There's not much I'm free to tell you. We've got a list of suspects."

Nodding, Tucker took a sip of coffee. "Am I still on it?"

"You've got an alibi for Edda Lou." Burke took a spoonful of cereal, hesitated, then set it down again. "I guess you know Burns has taken a real dislike to you. He doesn't think much of your sister saying you were up playing cards with her half the night."

"I'm not too worried about that."

"You should be." Burke broke off when he heard someone moving around in the living room. A moment later the Looney Tunes theme warbled from the television. "Eight o'clock," he said with a smile. "That kid's got it down to a science." He picked up his coffee. "I'll tell you this, Tuck. Burns would like nothing better than to hang this whole thing around your neck. He won't do anything that's not straight and legal, but if he can find a way to reel you in, it would give him a lot of pleasure."

"What we got here's a personality clash," Tucker said with a thin smile. "They got a time of death on Darleen yet?"

"Teddy's putting it at between nine p.m. and midnight."

"Since I was with Caroline from about nine on, the night Darleen was killed, that ought to ease me out of the running."

"With a series of murders like this, it's not just a matter of motive and opportunity. He's got a head doctor who worked up a psychiatric profile. We're looking for someone with a grudge against women-especially women who might be a bit free with their favors. Someone who knew each victim well enough to get them alone."

Burke's flakes were getting soggy. He scooped them up more for fuel than enjoyment. "Darleen's a puzzle," he went on. "Maybe it was just chance that he came across her on the road that way. Could have been impulse. But chance and impulse don't follow the pattern."

Tucker let that settle for a minute. There was a pattern, he mused, but he didn't think anybody had put all the lines and checks together just yet. "I want to get back to that psychiatric stuff. You've got somebody with a grudge against women-maybe because they hated their mama, or some woman let them down along the way."

"That's the idea."

"Before Darleen, you'd pretty well settled on Austin."

"He fit the profile," Burke agreed. "And after he went after Caroline with a buck knife, it looked rock solid."

"But unless Austin came back from the dead, he couldn't have killed Darleen." Tucker shifted in his chair. "What do you think about heredity, Burke? About blood and genes and bad seeds?"

"Anybody with kids thinks about it some. Anybody with parents, I should say," he added, and shoved his bowl aside. "I spent a lot of years wondering if I'd make all the wrong moves the way my father did, push myself into corners or let myself get pushed there, like him."

"I'm sorry. I should have thought before I asked."

"No, it was a long time ago. Almost twenty years now. It's better to look to your own kids. That one out there." He pointed a spoon toward the living room, where his youngest watched Bugs outwit Elmer Fudd. "He looks like me. I got pictures of myself at his age, and it's almost spooky how much he looks like me."

"Vernon favors his daddy," Tucker said. He waited while Burke set his spoon aside. "It can go deeper than coloring and the shape of a nose, Burke. It can go to personality and tendencies, gestures, habits. I've had reason to think on this because of my own family." It was something he didn't like to talk about, not even with Burke. "Dwayne's got the same sickness that killed our father. Maybe he's got a better disposition, but it's there, rooted inside. All I have to do is look in the mirror, or at Dwayne and Josie, and I see our mother. She's stamped right on our faces. And she had a love of books, poetry especially. I got that, too. I didn't ask for it, it's just there."

"I won't argue that. Marvella's got a way of tilting her head the same way, the same angle as Susie does.

And she's got Susie's stubborn streak-'I want it and I'll find a way to get it.' We pass things on, good and bad, whether we aim to or not."

"Vernon's not gentle with his wife, any more than Austin was gentle with his."

"What brought this on, Tucker?"

"You heard about the ruckus at the carnival last night?"

"That young Cy bloodied his brother's nose? Marvella and Bobby Lee were there. Nobody thought it was a shame."

"Vernon's not a popular man. His daddy wasn't either. They've got the same look about them, in the eyes, Burke." Tucker kicked back in the chair to stretch his legs. "My mama bought me this picture book once. A Bible stories book. I remember this one picture. It was of Isaiah or Ezekiel or somebody. One of those prophets who strolled off into the wasteland for forty days to fast and meet the Lord? This was supposed to be a picture of him after he came back spouting prophesies and speaking in tongues. Whatever the hell they did when they'd cooked their brains in the desert. He had this look in his eyes, this wild, rolling look like a weasel gets when he smells chicken feathers. I always wondered why the Lord chose to speak through crazy people. I expect it was because they wouldn't question whatever voice they heard inside their head. Seems to me they might hear something else inside there, too. Something not so full of light and good will."

Saying nothing, Burke rose to pour more coffee. Burns had said something about voices. About how some serial killers claim to have been told what to do and how to do it. The Son of Sam had claimed his neighbor's dog had ordered him to kill.

For himself, Burke didn't go in for the mystical. He figured David Berkowitz had juggled psychiatry against the law to cop an insanity plea. But Tucker's theory made him uneasy.

"Are you trying to tell me you think Vernon hears voices?"

"I don't know what's inside his head, but I know what I saw in his eyes last night. The same thing I saw in Austin's when he was choking me and calling me by my father's name. That prophet look. If he could have broken Cy in two, he would've done it. And I'd stake Sweetwater against the fact that he'd have considered it holy work."

"I don't know that he had more than a passing acquaintance with any of the victims other than Edda Lou."

"This is Innocence. Nobody gets through their life without knowing what there is to know about everybody else. What's that saying about the apple not falling far from the tree? If Austin had it in him to kill, his son might have the same."

"I'll talk to him."

Satisfied, Tucker nodded. When the phone rang, they both ignored it. From upstairs, Susie answered it on the second ring. "You're going to be at Sweetwater tonight, for the fireworks?"

"Unless I want my wife and kids to leave me."

"Carl, too?"

"No reason for him to stay in town when everybody'll be out at your place. Why?"