Tucker gestured with his open hands and sat back.

Burns switched on the recorder, entered the appropriate data, then turned to Cy with a solemn smile. "I know this is a difficult time for you, Cy, and I'm sorry for your recent loss."

Cy started to thank him, then realized he wasn't talking about Edda Lou, but his father. He took refuge in staring at the table again.

"I realize you spoke with Sheriff Truesdale last night, and your information was very helpful. We'll have to talk about that again, but I think we'll start with a few other things. Did your father ever mention Miss Caroline Waverly to you?"

"He didn't hardly know her."

"So he never spoke of her to you, or in your hearing?"

Cy darted a look at Tucker. "He mighta said something on one of the days I brought him breakfast. Some days he said lots of things, like when his mood came on him."

"Mood?" Burns prompted.

"Those hard moods he had, when he said God was talking to him."

"And did he have these moods regularly?"

"Pretty much." Cy chugged down Coke to ease his dry throat. "A.J. used to say that he just liked to beat up on people and used God as an excuse."

"He was often violent with you and other members of your family?"

"He…" Cy remembered Tucker's phrase. "He had a heavy hand." That didn't sound so bad somehow. It was almost like saying he had a head cold. "He didn't tolerate no sass. The Bible says how you're to honor your father."

Tucker said nothing, but he noted that Cy hadn't said father and mother. He didn't imagine Austin had drilled that part of the scripture into his son's brain.

"And he used this heavy hand when he had his moods."

Cy shrugged his thin shoulders. "He used his hands most all the time. It was just worse during the moods."

"I see." Even Burns wasn't unaffected by the casual way the boy described brutality. "And when you were bringing him food and supplies in the culvert, he had these moods."

"I had to do it." Cy's knuckles whitened on the glass bottle. "He'd've killed me if I'd gone against him. I had to do it."

"Agent Burns isn't blaming you, Cy." Again Tucker laid a hand, that soothing, comforting hand on his shoulder. "Nobody is. You didn't do anything wrong."

"No, I'm not blaming you." Burns's voice roughened, and he coughed to clear it. The stark fear on the boy's face appalled him. "No one would. I only want you to tell me if your father spoke of Miss Waverly."

"He said some things." Cy blinked his eyes fast to close off tears. "He said how she was full of sin. How all women were. Like Lot's wife. She got turned into a pillar of salt."

"Yes." Burns folded his hands. "I know. Did he tell you why Miss Waverly was full of sin?"

"He said how…" He shot Tucker a miserable look. "Do I have to say?"

"It'd be best," Tucker told him. "You take your time."

Cy took it by gulping down Coke, wiping his hand across his mouth, squirming in his chair. "He said how she was spreading her legs for Mr. Tucker." His face went beet-red. "And how she was no better'n a whore for it. It was time to cast the first stone. I'm sorry, Mr. Tucker."

"It's not your fault, Cy."

"I didn't know he meant he was going to hurt her. I swear I didn't. He said stuff all the time. It got so you didn't pay much mind to it, as long as he wasn't hitting you. I didn't know he was going after her, Mr. Burns. I swear I didn't."

"No, I'm sure you didn't. Your father hit your mother, didn't he?"

The frantic color in Cy's cheeks ebbed away. "We couldn't do nothing about it. She wouldn't do nothing. She wouldn't let the sheriff help, 'cause a woman's supposed to cleave to her husband. The sheriff'd come by sometimes and she'd just tell him how she'd fallen off the porch or something." His head dropped. Shame weighed almost as heavy as fear. "Ruthanne says how she likes it. She likes getting beat on. But that don't seem right."

Burns decided there was no use trying to explain the psychology and the cycle of abuse. That was a job for social workers and shrinks. "No, it doesn't. Did he hit Ruthanne, too?"

He smirked, the way brothers do over their sisters. "She's pretty good at getting out of the way."

"How about Vernon?"

"They'd whip up on each other sometimes." Cy made a quick, dismissive move of the shoulders. "Mostly they hung together. Vernon was Daddy's favorite. He took the most after Daddy. Inside and out, my ma said. They were alike inside and out."

"How about Edda Lou? Did your father hit her?"

"She was always butting him, daring him, like. She hit back at him. Once she split his head with a bottle when he used the belt on her. That's when she moved out. She moved into town and never came around the house anymore."

"Did he say things about Edda Lou, too? The way he did about Miss Waverly?"

A wasp circled down to investigate Cy's Coke and was batted away. "We weren't supposed to say her name. Sometimes he got worked up and said how she was a whore of Babylon. Vernon would try to get Daddy riled up about her. He wanted to go fetch her from town and bring her home so they could punish her. Vernon would say how it was their duty as her family and as Christians, but I don't think he believed in that like Daddy did. Vernon just likes to hit people." He said it simply, as if he'd just commented that Vernon liked ice cream sundaes. "Then Daddy found out she was seeing Mr. Tucker and he said how she'd be better off dead. And he beat Ma."

Tucker pressed his fingers against his eyes and wondered if the guilt would ever pass.

"Cy, do you remember when your father and Mr. Longstreet argued?"

Tucker dropped his hands. He nearly laughed. The euphemistic "argument" still showed in fading bruises on his ribs.

"I guess I do. Daddy came home with his face all busted up."

"And what about two nights before that." The night Edda Lou was murdered. "Do you recall if he had one of his moods?"

It was the first question Cy had to think about. His eyes lost some of their glassy fear as he considered.

Absently, he took another swipe at the persistent wasp.

"I can't recollect for sure. When he got wind that Edda Lou was supposed to be pregnant, he was real fired up.

But I don't know which night that was."

Burns prodded for a few minutes, trying to jog the boy's memory without tipping him off to the reason. In the end, he backed off. He still had Ruthanne and Mavis Hatinger. Their memories might be keener.

"All right, Cy, just a few more questions. The knife you took to your father. Did he often carry it?"

"Only when he was going hunting and such. A buck's too big to carry as a rule."

"Could you estimate how many times he might have carried it in, say, the last six or seven months?"

"Four or five times. Maybe more. He was partial to squirrel meat."

"Did he ever threaten you or any member of your family with the knife? Did he ever boast about punishing someone with it?"

"He was going to gut Mr. Tucker." Cy covered his face with his hands, muffling his voice. "He said how I had to bring Mr. Tucker back down to the culvert, and he told me he was going to gut him like a rabbit. He was going to carve off his privates. 'Cause it was divine justice. He was going to cut him up like Edda Lou. And if I went against him, if I didn't honor my father, then he'd cut out my eyes because the eye offended him. And the Lord says you're supposed to. Please, Mr. Tucker." He didn't weep, but kept his hands over his face like a kid in a horror movie trying to block out the monster. "Please, I don't want to think about it no more."

"It's all right, Cy." Tucker rose to stand behind him. "Leave him be, Burns."

Burns turned off the recorder, put that and his pad in his pocket. "I'm not heartless, Longstreet." As he pushed back from the table he looked from the trembling boy to the man who stood as his protector. "And I'm very aware that there are more victims here than are buried in your cemetery." He wished fleetingly that he was capable of offering compassion as easily as Tucker, with the touch of a hand. Instead, he nodded at the boy, and though his voice was stiff, the words were sincere. "You did everything that was right, Cy. There's nothing more any man can do. You remember that."