Chapter Twenty

His daddy was dead. Miss Delia had told him.

His daddy was dead. There would be no more snapping belts or merciless fists. No more shouts to a fever-eyed God to punish the sinners for their transgressions, their laziness, their filthy thoughts.

Miss Delia had sat him down in the bright kitchen and told him, and there had been kindness in her eyes.

He was afraid, so afraid that there would be no end for him but hell. The fiery, screaming black pool of hell his father had often gleefully described. How could he expect forgiveness or a place at the Lord's table when he harbored such an evil secret in his soul? The secret whispered through his brain with the devil's rusty chuckle.

His daddy was dead. And he was glad.

When his tears had come, the tears Miss Delia patiently waited out then wiped away, they weren't tears of sorrow or grief. They were tears of relief. A river of joy and gratitude and hope.

And it was that, Cy thought as he watered the kitchen garden, that which would consign him to hell for all eternity.

He had been responsible for the death of his father. And he wasn't sorry.

Miss Delia had told him he could stay at Sweetwater just as long as he wanted-Mr. Tucker had said so. He didn't have to go home, he didn't have to go back to that house of fear and hopelessness. He didn't have to face Vernon, see his father in his brother's eyes, feel his father's wrath in his brother's fists.

By a single act of cowardice he had wiped out four years of waiting.

His father was dead, and he was free.

Cy hunkered down, the hose soaking grass until it gurgled in a puddle. Rubbing his knuckles in to his eyes, he wept in joy for his life, and in terror for his soul.

"Cy."

The sound of his name had the boy jerking to his feet. It was only quick reflexes that had Burns nipping out of range of the garden hose. They stood facing each other a moment, the water squirting between them, a young boy with a puffy face and frightened eyes and a man who wanted to prove that Cy's father had carved up women in his spare time.

Burns tried his most ingratiating smile, which put Cy immediately on edge.

"I'd like to talk with you for a few minutes."

"I've got to water these plants."

Burns glanced at the soaked greens. "You seem to have done that already."

"I've got other work."

Burns reached down to turn off the water himself. Authority was something he wore as habitually as his tie. "This won't take long. Perhaps we could go inside." Out of the blistering heat.

"No, sir, I can't track all over Miss Delia's clean floor."

Burns glanced down. Any trace of white on Cy's sneakers had been obliterated with grass and dirt stains. "No, I suppose not. The terrace then, around the side." Before Cy could protest, Burns took him by the arm and led him around the flower beds. "You enjoy working at Sweetwater?"

"Yes sir. I wouldn't want to lose my job 'cause I got caught sitting around talking."

Burns stepped onto the slate terrace and gestured toward one of the padded chairs under a striped umbrella. "Is Mr. Longstreet that hard a taskmaster?"

"Oh, no, sir." Reluctantly, Cy sat. "He never has enough for me to do, to my way of thinking. And he's always telling me to slow it down and take it easy, real considerate like. Sometimes if he's around late in the afternoon at quitting time, he brings me out a Coca Cola himself."

"A liberal employer." Burns took out his pad and recorder. "Then I'm sure he wouldn't mind you taking a short break to answer some questions."

"You can ask him yourself," Tucker suggested. He strolled out of the kitchen door with a chilled bottle of Coke. "Here you go, Cy." He set the bottle down in front of the boy. "Wet your whistle."

"Mr. Burns-he said how I had to come on out here and talk," Cy began. His eyes were as panicked as a rabbit's caught in the white stream of headlights.

"That's all right." Tucker touched a hand to his shoulder briefly before scraping back a chair for himself. "Nobody expected you to work today, Cy."

With his lips pressed tight together, Cy stared down at the white table. "I didn't know what else to do."

"Well, for the next few days you do what suits you." Tucker pulled out his cigarettes. He figured he was down to a half pack a day by his current method and ruthlessly tore off half the tobacco. "Now, Agent Burns here's having himself a busy morning." His eyes stayed on Burns's over the flare of his match. There was a warning there, as clear as the message Hatinger had written in blood. "So, why don't you tell him what you can. Then maybe you'd like to drop a line with me for an hour or two."

Burns curled his lip at the idea of taking the boy fishing the day after his father had been killed. "I'll let you know when we're finished, if you'd like to go tie some flies."

Tucker helped himself to a swig of Cy's Coke. "No.

As I figure it, since the boy's working here and staying here for the time being, I'm a kind of guardian. I'll stay, unless Cy wants me to go."

Cy lifted those panic-dazed eyes to Tucker's. "I'd be obliged if you'd stay, Mr. Tucker. I might get something wrong."

"All you have to do is tell the truth. Isn't that right, Agent Burns?"

"That's exactly right. Now-" he broke off as Josie walked out wearing a paper-thin pink robe.

"Well now, it's not often a woman strolls out of her kitchen and finds three men waiting for her." She moved closer to ruffle Cy's hair, but her eyes were all for Burns. "Special Agent, I was beginning to think you'd taken a dislike to me. Why, you haven't been around to talk but one time." She eased a hip onto the arm of Tucker's chair. When she reached over to pluck up one of Tucker's cigarettes, she afforded Burns the best view in the house. "I was about to make something up just so you could investigate me."

He was stuffy, but he wasn't dead. Burns found his throat clogged and his tie too tight. "I'm afraid I have little time for socializing while on a case, Miss Longstreet."

"Now, that surely is a shame." Her voice was as rich and heady as the scent of magnolias. With a flutter of her lashes, she handed Burns the pack of matches, then steadied his hand with her own when he touched the flame to the tip. "And here I've been pining away, hoping you'd find time to tell me all about your adventures. I bet you've had scads of them."

"Actually, I've had a few interesting moments."

"I'm going to have to hear all about them or I'll just explode from curiosity." She trailed a finger down her throat to where her robe met loosely over her breasts. If his eyes had been tied by a string to her hand, Burns couldn't have followed the movement more closely. "Teddy told me you were the very best."

He managed to swallow. "Teddy?"

"Dr. Rubenstein." She sent him a sultry look under heavy lashes. "He was telling me you were the absolute expert on serial killings. I just love talking to brainy men with dangerous jobs."

"Josie." Tucker sent her an arch look. "Weren't you going to get your nails done or something this morning?"

"Why, yes, honey, I was." She shifted to hold out her hands. Her robe crept up another inch. "I don't think a woman can be really attractive if she lets her hands go." She rose then, satisfied that she'd broken Burns's concentration. "Maybe I'll see you in town later, Special Agent. I'm fond of stopping for a cold drink at the Chat 'N Chew after my manicure."

She left him with the distracting image of her hips swaying beneath that thin pink robe.

Tucker tossed his cigarette into a brass bucket filled with sand. "You going to turn that recorder on?"

Burns gave him a blank look, then shot to attention. "I'll be asking Cy questions," he began, but his gaze drifted to the kitchen door. "I have no objection to you being present, but I'll tolerate no prompting."