Carnal Innocence (29 page)

That was something they’d had in common.

But surely there had been a woman, someone, between his first adolescent tussle and this final, soulless bout with Caroline, who had cared. Who had wanted more and settled for less. Someone who had lain in hurt silence after the storm.

His just deserts, he supposed. The first time he had wanted more, he had run up against a woman who refused to give it, or take it.

Well, he still had pride. However cold that comfort was, it was better than crawling.

He did shift then, hitching up his pants as he sat back.

“You caught me off guard, sugar.” The smile curved his lips, but left his eyes flat. “Didn’t give me a chance to, well, dress for the party.”

It took her a moment to understand that he was talking about the lack of a condom. She made herself shrug. “I suppose this was more of a surprise party.” Avoiding his eyes, she sat up and drew her robe around her. “I take the pill.”

“Well then.” He wanted to reach out, to smooth her touseled hair, but rose instead. “Looks like we bored that pup of yours right to sleep.” He gestured to where Useless was curled under a chair, snoring. Tucker thrust his hands in his pockets. “Caroline.”

“I think I’ll go make some coffee.” She popped off the couch as though Tucker’s voice had flicked a lever. “And breakfast. I owe you breakfast.”

He studied her, the way she gnawed on her bottom lip, the way her eyes, shadowed with strain, kept slipping over his shoulder. “If that’s the way you want it. Mind if I grab a shower?”

“No, go ahead.” She wasn’t sure if her sigh was one of relief or disappointment, and covered it over with a flow of words. “Upstairs, second door on the right.
There are fresh towels on the shelf. The water takes a while to heat up.”

“I’m not in a hurry,” he told her, and strolled out of the room.

Washing with her soap put him in a better frame of mind. Using her toothbrush—he couldn’t find a spare— left a lingering taste of her in his mouth.

Physical things. It was much more comfortable to concentrate on physical things. He’d had no business brooding over the deeper meaning of a nice, no-strings session of morning sex.

He’d shrugged his shirt over his shoulders by the time he reached the bottom landing. He caught the scents of coffee and bacon. Everyday aromas that shouldn’t have had him quivering for her. He was scowling down the hallway toward the kitchen when he heard the sound of a car in the lane.

Shirt open, thumbs tucked in his pockets, he walked to the screen and watched Special Agent Matthew Burns park. They studied each other, one black-suited and silk-tied, the other unshaven and barely dressed. Animosity leapt up like a large rabid dog.

Tucker shoved open the screen door and leaned on it. “Early for visiting, isn’t it?”

Burns locked his car door, pocketed the keys. “Official business.” He scanned Tucker’s bare chest and damp hair. The homey breakfast scents drifting outside had him thinning his lips. “The interruption is quite necessary.”

“You’re too later to interrupt,” Tucker said placidly. “What can we do for you?”

“You take a lot of pride in this, don’t you, Long-street?”

Tucker lifted a brow. “In what?”

“In your southern-fried womanizing.”

“Is that why you’re here? Looking for pointers?” His smile wasn’t charming this time, but wolfish. “If that’s the case, it’s going to take a while. You need a lot of work, Burns.”

Burns’s jaw clenched. The simple fact that a woman like Caroline preferred Tucker over him burned in his gut like an ulcer. “I find your … style. I suppose we’ll call it, pathetic.”

“If that was an insult, you’re off target. I’m not looking to impress you.”

“No, helpless females are more your style.”

“You know”—Tucker rubbed a hand over the stubble of his chin—“I’ve never once in my life met a female I’d consider helpless. Caroline’s not, that’s for damn sure. Right now she might be a little shaky. She might need somebody to lean on until she gets her feet back under her again. She’s got me as long as she wants. You’d better understand that.”

“What I understand is that you have no compunction about using a woman’s vulnerabilities to your own end. You’re a user, Longstreet, and you’ve got the emotional maturity of a mushroom. Edda Lou Hatinger was just the last in a long line of your discards. As for Caroline—”

“Caroline can speak for herself.” She stepped forward, laying a hand on Tucker’s arm. Whether it was in support or restraint, none of them could tell. “Do you need to talk to me, Matthew?”

He struggled against a wave of black, unreasonable anger. She was wearing nothing but a robe, and the way she ranged herself beside Tucker spoke not only of preference, but of intimacy. It galled, destroying his elegant image of her. However brilliant her talent, however delicate her beauty, she had lowered herself to trollop by her choice.

“I thought it would be more comfortable for you to give me your statement here, rather than coming into town.”

“Yes, it would. I appreciate it.” She would have offered him coffee in the parlor, but she had no intention of leaving him and Tucker alone again. “If we could go back in the kitchen … I’ve just finished fixing breakfast.”

“I’d intended to get Mr. Longstreet’s statement later,” Burns said stiffly.

“Now you can save some time.” Caroline kept a wary watch on both of them as they walked down the hall. “Would you like some eggs, Matthew?”

“Thank you, I’ve already eaten.” He took a seat at the table, as out of place in the country kitchen as a tuxedo at a hoedown. “Coffee would be nice, if you don’t mind.”

Caroline brought the pot to the table, setting it on an iron trivet in the shape of a rooster. Odd, she thought as she dished up bacon and eggs, until that moment she hadn’t imagined herself racing through that room, snatching a gun from the counter, screaming as fists beat against the door.

She looked over now. Only the screen remained. Either Burke or Tucker had taken the broken door away, but there were still a few splinters of wood on the floor.

“You want a statement about what happened yesterday.” Caroline busied herself adding cream to her coffee. “I’ve already given one to Burke.”

“Yes, I read it.”

Tucker noticed her hands were steady, but her gaze shifted back to the door several times. He lifted a hand to her shoulder for a gentle rub. “I don’t know much about the law,” he began, “but isn’t what happened here yesterday a local problem?”

“Ordinarily. If you’d indulge me, Caroline, I’d very much appreciate your going over everything that happened.” He switched on his recorder. “For my records.”

It wasn’t very difficult. Not when it all seemed so dreamlike and distant. She played it back, as if it were a tape in her head. He let her run it through without interruption, making only a few cursory notes on his pad.

“It’s odd, don’t you think, that Hatinger didn’t use either of the guns he carried?” His tone was conversational as he poured a second cup of coffee. “They were both loaded, and from my information he was considered an excellent shot. When you describe your flight, from the rear porch, through this room, and out the front, it would appear that he could have fired at you at any time. But he didn’t even draw a weapon.”

“He had the knife,” she said, and didn’t notice the catch in her voice. Tucker did.

“I don’t see the point in this, Burns. He’d snapped obviously. Maybe he didn’t even remember he had the guns.”

“Maybe.” He added a miserly dab of cream to his coffee. “Would you say, Caroline, that he was aware you had a gun?” He lifted the cup, sipped, then went on without waiting for her answer. “You say you grabbed it on the run while he was still outside.”

“Yes, I’d been target practicing. I always unloaded it when I’d finished. Sometimes I stuck the bullets in my pockets. I remember thinking it was a bad habit, and I should break it.” She set down her fork, clattering it against her plate. The scent of eggs and bacon grease were nauseating. “I guess I’m lucky I didn’t.”

“You were lucky you had the presence of mind to load the gun at all.”

She gave Burns a wan smile. “You could say I’m used to performing under pressure.”

He merely nodded. “If we recreate those last moments outside, when you turned and fired, can you hazard an opinion as to whether he realized you were armed? Did he make any move to reach for one of the guns he carried?”

“It happened very quickly.”

It hadn’t seemed so. It had seemed as though she’d been running through syrup. It didn’t take any effort to rerun the scene, that slow-motion film of nightmares and dark fantasies. The wall of heat that made you fight for every gasping breath. The terrifying feeling that the grass had gone boggy and was sucking you down. The silver glint of the knife under the merciless sun. And that grin, that wide, hungry grin.

“I …” She pressed her lips together and bore down on the last, nasty remnants of fear. “I tried to shoot, but nothing happened. He just kept coming, holding the knife and smiling at me. Just smiling. I think I was crying or screaming or praying, I don’t know, but he kept coming, and kept smiling. I had the gun out in front of me, and he was saying that I was the lamb of
God, a sacrifice. That it was going to be like Edda Lou. That it had to be like Edda Lou.”

“You’re sure of that.” Burns held his cup two inches above the saucer. “You’re sure he said it had to be like Edda Lou?”

“Yes.” She gave in to a shudder, then pushed her uneaten breakfast aside. “I’m not likely to forget anything he said.”

“Wait a minute.” Tucker put a hand on Caroline’s arm, his fingers taut as wire. He’d been doing more than listening, he’d been watching. Burns looked like a man who’d just drawn to an inside straight. “You’re not here getting a statement about the shooting of some escaped lunatic. That’s small shit, the kind of local dirt that wouldn’t interest a federal agent. You sonofabitch.”

“Tucker, please.”

“No.” His eyes were fierce as he turned to Caroline. “Don’t you see? It’s about Edda Lou, about Edda Lou and the others. It doesn’t have diddly to do with you, except you managed not to be the next victim.”

“The next?” she began, then stopped. The blood drained from her face. “Oh, God, the knife. He didn’t shoot me because—because it had to be like Edda Lou. It had to be the knife.”

“Yeah, the knife.” Tucker’s hand slid down her arm so that she could grip it. “There are users and users, aren’t there, Burns?” Tucker’s voice had lost its lazy drawl, sharpening to an icy point. “You’re using Caroline to help you gather evidence on Hatinger. Using her to solve your case, but you don’t bother to let her know.”

Burns set his cup meticulously back in the saucer. “I’m conducting a federal investigation on a series of murders. I’m not required to make my views known to the public.”

“Fuck that. You know what she’s been through. Easing her mind by telling her this might be over wouldn’t have cost you.”

“Regulations and procedure,” Burns said.

Caroline squeezed Tucker’s hand before he could speak again. “I can talk for myself.” She inhaled and exhaled twice, slowly. “I didn’t even know Edda Lou,
but I’ll see her floating in the pond for the rest of my life. I’ve never performed a violent act in my life. Oh, I threw a champagne glass at someone once, but I missed, so it hardly counts. Yesterday I killed a man.” Her hand fluttered to her stomach to press against the slow, familiar burn. “That may not seem so terrible to you, Matthew, considering your line of work and taking into account that I was saving my own life. But I killed a man. Now you come in here and ask me to bring it all back. And you don’t even grant me the courtesy of the truth.”

“It’s simply speculation, Caroline, and for your own good …” He fumbled to a stop when her head snapped up.

“Do you know,” she said slowly, “I once threatened to kill a man if he ever, ever used that particular phrase to me again. I didn’t mean it literally at the time. It was just one of those typical statements people make before they realize what it’s like to kill. But I should warn you not to use that phrase. It tends to set me off.”

Delighted, Tucker kicked back in his chair and grinned. “She’s got a hot streak. It’s a pure pleasure seeing it aimed at somebody else for a change.”

“I apologize if I’ve upset you,” Burns said stiffly. “But I’m doing my job as I think best. It is not a foregone conclusion that Austin Hatinger was responsible for the three deaths in this community or the one in Nashville. However, given yesterday’s incident, we are focusing our investigation on him.”

“Will you be able to tell if it was his knife?” Caroline asked.

“After certain tests are completed, we should be able to determine if it was that style of knife. Off the record,” Burns continued grudgingly, “I can say that Hatinger fit certain psychological points in this kind of killing. He had a deep-seated anger toward women, as evidenced by his frequent abuse of his wife. A religious mania which he may have figured absolved him of guilt, or accorded him a mission. We could speculate that his use of water to dispose of the bodies was more than an attempt to wash away evidence, but a kind of baptism.
Unfortunately, he can’t be questioned about his motives. As it stands, I’ll be backtracking, trying to place his whereabouts at the time of all three murders. And while he is my focus, I’ll continue along other avenues of investigation.”

His gaze lighted on Tucker, and Tucker merely smiled.

“Then you’ve got your work cut out for you, don’t you, son? We wouldn’t want to hold you up.”

“I’ll want to talk to the boy. Cy Hatinger.”

Tucker’s smile faded. “He’s at Sweetwater.”

“Well then.” He rose, but couldn’t resist a parting shot. “Odd how Hatinger went from gunning for you straight to Caroline, isn’t it? Some people have a knack for turning bad luck onto others.” He was an expert at recognizing guilt. It gave him pleasure to watch it shadow Tucker’s face. “If you think of anything else that might help, Caroline, you know where to reach me. Thanks for the coffee. I can see myself out.”

“Tucker,” Caroline began the moment they were alone, but he shook his head and rose.