Carnal Innocence (45 page)

“I think you’re right about that.” She passed her hand over her eyes. “I’d hoped, with Dwayne so miserable—but I guess I knew all along. It’s blood,” she murmured, lifting her head to stare at her own face in the mirror. “Like a wild dog, once you’ve tasted it, there’s no going back. There’s just no going back, Caro.”

Caroline moved over to her so that their eyes met in the glass. “We’ll find good doctors for him. I know one who’ll help.”

“Doctors.” Josie tugged the chiffon scarf out of her hair and gave a short laugh. “What bullshit. Did you hate your mother? Love your father?”

“It’s never that simple.”

“Sometimes it is. Listen to that.” Smiling a little, she closed her eyes. “That’s Toby March singing. They must’ve hooked him up to a mike down at the carnival. That’s a sound that carries nice on a hot summer night.”

“Josie, we have to go tell Tucker. And we have to see that Dwayne turns himself in. I’m sorry. It’s the only way.”

“I know you’re sorry.” With a sigh, Josie reached into her bag. “I’m sorry, too. Sorrier than I can say.” Turning, she aimed her derringer at Caroline. “It’s you or the family, Caroline. You or the Longstreets. So there’s really only one way after all.”

“Josie—”

“Do you see this gun?” she interrupted. “My daddy gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday. Sweet Sixteen, he called me. He was a great believer in taking care of your own. I did love him. I hated my father, but I did love my daddy.”

Caroline moistened her lips. She wasn’t afraid yet. Her brain was too scrambled with shock for fear to take hold. “Josie, put it down. You can’t help Dwayne this way.”

“It’s not just Dwayne, it’s all of us. All the fine, upstanding Longstreets.”

“Miss Caroline?” Cy’s voice echoed up the stairs
and had both women jolting. “Miss Caroline, you in here?”

Caroline saw the panic shoot into Josie’s eyes. “You tell him to go on. Tell him, Caro. See that he goes outside again. I don’t want to hurt that boy.”

“I’m up here, Cy,” Caroline called out, her gaze fastened to the short, shiny gun barrel. “You go on out. I’ll be along in a minute.”

“Mr. Tucker said I should stay with you.”

She could almost see him, hesitating at the foot of the steps, torn between manners and loyalties. “I said I’d be along,” she repeated, the first true licks of fear sharpening her voice. “Now go on out.”

“Yes, ma’am. The fireworks are going to start any minute.”

“That’s fine. You go watch.”

She waited, hardly breathing until she heard the door shut.

“I wouldn’t want to hurt that boy,” Josie said again. “I’ve got a real fondness for him.” Her lips twisted in a mockery of a smile. “A real family feeling.”

“Josie …” Caroline struggled to keep her voice calm. “You know this isn’t the way to solve things. And you know I don’t want to hurt Dwayne.”

“No, but you’ll do what you have to do. Just like me.” She slipped a hand into her purse again, and pulled out the knife. “This was my daddy’s. He dearly loved to hunt. Dressed the kill himself. Daddy wasn’t afraid to get a little blood and guts on his hands. No, sir. I used to go with him when he’d let me. I got quite a taste for hunting myself.”

“Josie, please put the knife away.”

“Now, Tucker,” Josie went on, lips pursed as she turned the blade in the light. “He never cared much for killing things, so he mostly missed—on purpose.” As if baffled by the waste, she shook her head. “Lordy, did Daddy wail into him for it. Dwayne, he didn’t have any problem bringing down a deer or a rabbit, but when it came time to dress ’em, he’d go green. Squeamish. That’s what Daddy used to say. ‘Josie, you come on over here and show this boy how it’s done.’” She laughed a
little. “So I would. Blood never turned my stomach. It’s got a smell to it. Kind of wild, kind of sweet.”

With her skin going clammy, Caroline inched back. “Josie.” The word came out in a cracked whisper as their eyes met again.

“When Daddy died, the knife came to me.” She held it up so it glinted in the lamplight again. “The knife came to me.”

Caroline stared at the glint of silver. Behind her the first fiery lights exploded in a black sky.

T
he pretty little gun seemed like a joke now. Beside the long-bladed knife, it was more of an annoyance, something to be swatted away like a fly. But Caroline made no move toward it. All of her attention, and all of her fear, was focused on the slick gleam of silver.

“Josie, you can’t protect Dwayne this way.”

“You don’t believe me.” Josie nearly laughed. There was a part of her, the part she had no longer been able to control, that capered with glee. “Who would? No one even considered a woman—least of all our fine special agent. Look for someone who hates women, I told him. But he didn’t understand. You and I know that no one can hate the way a woman can hate.”

A jolt shook Caroline as the fireworks rocketed and boomed. “Why would you?”

“I have reasons. I have plenty of reasons.” She moved closer until she was framed in the terrace doorway. Her eyes were as brilliant as the lights that studded the sky behind her. “I had to protect the family. I had to protect myself. Just as I will now. But it’s different with you, Caroline. I won’t enjoy it with you because I like you, I respect you. And I know how much it’s going to
hurt Tucker. Don’t,” she said as Caroline edged away. “I don’t want to have to shoot you, but I will. No one will hear.”

No, no one would hear. She could scream—just as Edda Lou had screamed—and no one would notice. The derringer was pointed at her throat. A tiny bullet, she thought. A small death.

“I don’t want you to suffer,” Josie told her. “Not like the others. You’re not like the others.”

Think, Caroline ordered herself. She had to think. The key to this was family, if she could only find a way to use it. “Tucker and Dwayne will suffer, Josie.”

“I know. I’ll make it up to them.” Her eyes shifted for a moment as gold lights flashed, bloomed, and faded in the sky. “Isn’t that a pretty sight? The Longstreets have had fireworks here at Sweetwater for more than a hundred years. That means something. I remember Daddy carrying me on his shoulders so I could get closer to the sky. I was his firecracker, he’d say. And Mama would just watch, and say nothing. She didn’t want me, you know.”

“Talk to me, Josie.” How much longer could the fireworks go on? How much longer before Tucker or someone came to look for them? “Tell me, Josie, so I can understand why you had to do it.”

“I can talk to you. There’s time. It’ll be easier if you see. Maybe easier for both of us.” She took a long, deep breath. “Austin Hatinger was my father.” Her lips twisted at the shock on Caroline’s face. “That’s right, that Bible-thumping, snake-mean bastard was my blood father. He raped my mother, and while he was raping her, he planted me inside her. She didn’t want me, but when she found she was pregnant she had to go through with it.”

“How can you be sure?”

“She was sure. I heard her talking to Della in the kitchen. Della knew. Only Della.” Satisfied with the knife, Josie slipped the derringer into her pocket. “She hadn’t told Daddy. I guess she was afraid to. And she would have wanted to protect him, and the family, and Sweetwater. So she had me, and she tolerated me,
and she watched me to see how much like him I’d be.”

“Josie.”

“I was a grown woman when I found out. She lied to me all my life. My beautiful mother, that great lady, the woman I wanted to be like more than anything, was just a liar.”

“She was only trying to keep you from being hurt.”

“She hated me.” The words ripped out of her as she slashed the air with the knife. “Every time she looked at me she’d see the way I was conceived. In the dirt, planted in the dirt while she cried for help. And wouldn’t she have to ask herself how much was her own doing? Why did she go there? Did she really care so much about Austin and his pitiful wife?”

“You can’t blame your mother, Josie.”

“I can blame her for giving me a lie to live with. For looking at me out of the corner of her eye and thinking I was less than her, or any other woman. She said to Della, that day, that maybe I wasn’t meant to be happy, to have a home of my own and a family because of my blood. My tainted blood.”

She spat out the words while outside the sky rocked with color.

“I’d come back here after my second divorce, and she had that look in her eye. That look that blamed me for it. And she said to Della that maybe I wasn’t meant to have a home and children. Maybe it was the Lord’s way of punishing her for keeping the secret, for holding the lie inside her. She was feeling poorly, had been feeling poorly for some time. When she went out to her roses, I went, too. I wanted her to tell me face-to-face. We had a terrible argument, and I left her there, standing in the roses and crying. A little later Tucker went out and found her dead. So I guess I killed her.”

“No. No, of course you didn’t. It wasn’t your fault or hers, Josie.”

“That doesn’t change anything. I had something growing inside me. It wasn’t a child—the doctors had already told me I’d never have a child. But what was growing was real, and it was hot. It started with Arnette. She wanted to get her hooks into Dwayne, just like Sissy
had. She thought she could use me, and I played along. I thought about it and thought about it. I’d spend whole nights lying in bed and thinking, wondering. Mama had kept a secret by giving life. I was going to keep one by taking it.”

There was a roar from outside as rocket after rocket shot up in the grand finale.

“There had to be a reason, though. I wasn’t an animal. It had to make sense. So I figured it would be those women who teased and strutted and lied to get men. I’ve had myself plenty of men,” Josie said with a smile. “But I never lied to get them.”

“Arnette—I thought she was your friend?”

“She was a slut.” Josie shrugged her shoulders carelessly. “Not that she was my first choice. I thought about Susie. I’d always figured if Burke and I could get together … Well, anyway, Susie didn’t fit. She never in her life looked at another man but Burke, so killing her wouldn’t have been right. It had to be right,” Josie murmured while iciness spread in Caroline’s stomach. “So there was Arnette. It was so easy to get her a little drunk, drive out to Gooseneck Creek. I hit her with a rock, then I took off her clothes and tied her up. It was cold. Jesus, it was cold, but I waited until she came around. Then I pretended I was my father and she was my mother. And I did things to her until it wasn’t cold anymore.

“It was better for a while,” she said dreamily. “I felt so much better. Then it started growing in me again. So there was Francie. She was dangling for Tucker, I knew it. Then it was supposed to be Sissy, but I made a mistake there. But each time it was better. When they called in the FBI, I wanted to laugh and laugh. No one was going to look at me. Teddy even took me to the morgue so I could see Edda Lou. At first it was awful, but then I realized that I had done that. I had done it and nobody was ever going to know. It was my secret, just like Mama. And I wanted to do it again, again, while everybody was looking around. Darleen was so perfect, it was like it was meant.”

“You were right there with Happy when they were looking for her.”

“I was sorry Happy had to suffer. It seemed right that I comfort her some. Darleen isn’t worth her crying over. Not one of them was worth a tear. But you are. Caro. If only you’d let it be. I was going to try to keep my promise to Dwayne and stop, since it seemed so important to him. But now I have to break that promise, at least this one last time.”

“This time they’ll know.”

“Maybe. If they do, I’ll take care of it. Always figured I’d have to end it one day, my own way.” The last of the rockets went off like machine-gun fire. “I won’t go to jail or to one of those places they put people who do things other people don’t understand.” She gestured with the gun. “Turn around now. I’ll have to tie you up first. I promise I’ll make it quick.”

Tucker moved restlessly through the crowd as the colorful bombs burst overhead. He hadn’t seen Caroline for the past half hour. Women. As if he didn’t have enough on his mind with Dwayne and the FBI, she’d pick this time to wander off.

He shook his head at the offer of a beer, and continued to wend his way through the clutches of people.

“It’s a right good display,” Cousin Lulu said from her director’s chair.

“Umm-hmm.”

“How would you know? You’ve hardly looked at it.”

To please her, he looked skyward and admired an umbrella of red, white, and blue lights. “Have you seen Caroline?”

“Lost your Yankee?” Lulu cackled and lit a sparkler.

“Looks that way.” He raised his voice to be heard over the cheers of the crowd. “I haven’t seen her since she finished playing a while back.”

“Plays right well.” Lulu wrote her name in the air with the sparkler. “Guess she’ll be going along soon to play for the crowned heads of Europe.”

“Something like that.” With his hands in his pockets, he scanned faces. “I don’t see how you can find anybody out here in the dark.”

“Ain’t going to find her here anyway.” Lulu pouted a moment when her sparkler fizzled out. She wanted to wait until things quieted down before she set off her pocketful of firecrackers. “I saw her heading for the house around twilight.”

“Why would she—oh, probably wanted to put her violin away. But she should have been back.” He turned to study the white ghost of the house in the distance. He’d always thought the best way to figure a woman was not to figure at all. “I’ll go take a look.”

“You’ll miss the finale.”

“I’ll be back.”

He started off at a lope, annoyed at having to hurry. For the life of him he couldn’t figure out why she’d be holed up in the house. It nagged at him that maybe he’d pressured her into playing. She could be upset, or the whole business might have brought on one of those headaches. On an oath he quickened his pace and nearly ran over Dwayne.

“Jesus Christ, what’re you doing sitting back here in the dark?”

“I don’t know what to do.” Dwayne kept his head pressed to his knees and rocked. “I have to clear my mind and figure out what to do.”

“I said I was going to take care of it. Burns is just blowing hot air.”

“I could say I did it,” Dwayne mumbled. “That might be the best way for everyone.”

“Goddammit.” Tucker reached down to shake Dwayne’s shoulder. “Don’t start that shit on me now. We’ll talk about it later when I’ve got time. I’ve got to go up and see if Caroline’s in the house. Come on with me. It’ll be better if you don’t talk to anybody tonight.”

“I told her I wouldn’t.” Dwayne dragged himself to his feet. “But something’s got to be done, Tuck. Something’s got to be done.”

“Sure it does.” Resigned, Tucker put his arm
around Dwayne and took his weight. “We’ll do it, too. I know all about it.”

“You know?” Dwayne staggered to a halt that had Tucker cursing and pulling. “She said you didn’t. When I said that we had to tell you, she said not to.”

“Tell me what?”

“About the knife. Daddy’s old buck. I saw it under the seat of her car. Christ, Tuck, how could she do it? How could she do all those things? What’s going to happen to her now?”

Tucker felt his blood slow. He felt it slow and stop until it seemed to hum in his veins. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Josie. Oh, Jesus, Josie.” Dwayne began to weep as the weight of it pounded at him. “She killed them, Tuck. She killed them all. I don’t know how I can live with turning my own sister over to the law.”

Slowly, Tucker backed up, leaving Dwayne swaying. “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

“We have to do it. I know we have to. Chrissakes, she meant it to be Sissy.”

“Shut up.” With rage and fear blinding him, Tucker plowed his fist into Dwayne’s face. “You’re drunk, and stupid. If I hear you say another word, I’ll—”

“Mr. Tucker.” Eyes wide, Cy stood on the verge of the driveway. He’d heard, heard all that they said, but he didn’t know what to believe.

“What the hell are you doing there?” Tucker demanded. “Why aren’t you down watching the fireworks?”

“I—you said as I should keep close to her.” Cy’s insides were shaking with the kind of fear he hadn’t known he could feel again. “She went on in, but she told me to stay outside. She said I shouldn’t come upstairs.”

“Caroline?” Tucker said blankly.

The blow had shocked Dwayne back to reality. As Cy’s words sunk in, he grabbed Tucker by the shirt. “Josie. She took the knife with her. She took the knife and went into the house.”

Tucker’s breath came in pants. He wanted to fight, wanted to fight out the horror that was settling inside
him. But even as he balled his fists, he saw the truth, in Dwayne’s eyes. “Let go of me.” With a strength born of fear he shoved Dwayne back to his knees. “Caroline’s in the house.”

He began to run, hurtling toward Sweetwater, chased by the roar of the crowd and the cold breath of terror.

“I won’t make it easy for you, Josie.” She wasn’t afraid of the gun, wouldn’t let herself be afraid. But she had a deep primal fear of that sharp length of steel. “You know it has to stop. No matter what you feel, no matter what your mother did, you can’t fix it by killing.”

“I wanted to be like her, but people always said I was like my father. They were right.” Her voice took on a curious, almost musical calm. “They didn’t know how right—and they won’t. It’s my secret, Caroline. I’ll kill you to protect it.”

“I know. And after you do, Dwayne and Tucker will suffer for it. Dwayne because he’ll know, and it’ll eat him alive. Tucker because he has feelings for me. And because you love them, you’ll suffer, too.”

“There’s no choice here. Now, turn around, Caroline. Turn around or it’ll be so much worse.”

With the last echoes of celebration ringing in her ears, she started to turn. She didn’t dare close her eyes, didn’t dare, but she offered one quick and fervent prayer. When her body was three-quarters turned from Josie, Caroline threw out a hand to smash the lamp to the floor. Blessing the dark, she tucked up her legs and rolled across the bed.

“It won’t matter.” Excitement sharpened Josie’s voice. Now there was a hunt, and with a hunt there was hunger. “It’ll only be easier for me now. I won’t have to look at you, and I can think of you like the others.”