Mallory, unaware of the impending massacre, was saying, “I don’t care if he threw rocks or flowers. He was there, and I’m gonna break him.”

“Maybe not,” said Augusta. “You don’t know the first thing about these people. You could pummel this one all day, and he’d just take it.”

Charles was raising his hand to point to the cat’s paw dipping in between the wires, when cage and cat tumbled to the floor, the door banged open and the doves flew upward in tight formation, all of one mind in their desire to live.

“Damn cat!” Mallory was on her feet. “It took me hours – ”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Augusta.

The cat was in pursuit of its lunch, and Mallory was reaching for her revolver. Augusta grabbed the wrist of the gun hand and stared the younger woman down, eyes hard and unwavering. “Don’t even think about it, little girl.” Each word had the same weight, the same amount of menace.

The cat was leaping joyfully from countertop to refrigerator and down to the floor again in pursuit of each new roost of a dove. But the birds were quicker. White feathers were flying, and some were drifting to the floor as the manic chase went on.

Augusta still held Mallory’s wrist in a tight grip, and her expression was conveying that the younger woman would be dead meat if she dared to shoot that animal. And that was a promise.

The cat was closing on a bird, stealing up from behind and hyperventilating in happy anticipation. A squeak of excitement escaped from the cat and warned the dove into flight.

Mallory’s expression was somewhere between anger and incredulity. This old woman had no weapon, no -

Augusta assured her with a slow nod that she could and would make good on a threat. If Mallory wanted to go round and round, the older woman was up for it.

Charles was only a little shocked to note that Mallory was clearly weighing this proposition. Then she sat down.

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.”