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"There&039;s coffee on the stove, Tuck" Burke yawned over his bowl of raisin bran "I don&039;t believe I&039;ve seen you up and around this early in twenty years"

"I wanted to catch you before you went into your office"

"My office" Burke&039;s lips twisted into a gri so that Tucker could top it up with hot coffee "Don&039;t you mean Burns&039;s office? My butt hasn&039;t felt the seat ofanywhere, or is he just blowing senerated land Faxes, Federal Express packages, conference calls to Washington, DC We got us a bulletin board with pictures of all the victims tacked to it Vital statistics, tiot stuff referenced and cross-referenced till your head spins"

Tucker sat down "You&039;re not telling aze "There&039;s not ot a list of suspects"

Nodding, Tucker took a sip of coffee "Aot an alibi for Edda Lou" Burke took a spoonful of cereal, hesitated, then set it down again "I guess you know Burns has taken a real dislike to you He doesn&039;t thinkcards with her half the night"

"I&039;m not too worried about that"

"You should be" Burke broke off when he heard so room A moment later the Looney Tunes theht o&039;clock," he said with a sot it down to a science" He picked up his coffee "I&039;ll tell you this, Tuck Burns would like nothing better than to hang this whole thing around your neck He won&039;t do anything that&039;s not straight and legal, but if he can find a way to reel you in, it would give hiot here&039;s a personality clash," Tucker said with a thin sot a ti it at between nine pht"

"Since I ith Caroline froht to ease "

"With a series of murders like this, it&039;s not just a ot a head doctor orked up a psychiatric profile We&039;re looking for soht be a bit free with their favors Soet they He scooped them up more for fuel than enjoyment "Darleen&039;s a puzzle," he went on "Maybe it was just chance that he came across her on the road that way Could have been impulse But chance and impulse don&039;t follow the pattern"

Tucker let that settle for a minute There was a pattern, he mused, but he didn&039;t think anybody had put all the lines and checks together just yet "I want to get back to that psychiatric stuff You&039;ve got soainst women-maybe because they hated theirthe way"

"That&039;s the idea"

"Before Darleen, you&039;d pretty well settled on Austin"

"He fit the profile," Burke agreed "And after he went after Caroline with a buck knife, it looked rock solid"

"But unless Austin came back from the dead, he couldn&039;t have killed Darleen" Tucker shifted in his chair "What do you think about heredity, Burke? About blood and genes and bad seeds?"

"Anybody with kids thinks about it some Anybody with parents, I should say," he added, and shoved his bowl aside "I spent a lot of years wondering if I&039;dmoves the way et pushed there, like hiht before I asked"

"No, it was a long tio Almost twenty years now It&039;s better to look to your own kids That one out there" He pointed a spoon toward the living roos outwit Elot pictures of e, and it&039;s almost spooky how much he looks like me"

"Vernon favors his daddy," Tucker said He waited while Burke set his spoon aside "It can go deeper than coloring and the shape of a nose, Burke It can go to personality and tendencies, gestures, habits I&039;ve had reason to think on this because ofhe didn&039;t like to talk about, not even with Burke "Dwayne&039;s got the saot a better disposition, but it&039;s there, rooted inside All I have to do is look in the mirror, or at Dwayne and Josie, and I see our ht on our faces And she had a love of books, poetry especially I got that, too I didn&039;t ask for it, it&039;s just there"

"I won&039;t argue that Marvella&039;s got a way of tilting her head the saot Susie&039;s stubborn streak-&039;I want it and I&039;ll find a way to get it&039; We pass things on, good and bad, whether we aientle with his wife, any ht this on, Tucker?"

"You heard about the ruckus at the carnival last night?"

"That young Cy bloodied his brother&039;s nose? Marvella and Bobby Lee were there Nobody thought it was a shame"

"Vernon&039;s not a popular ot the same look about them, in the eyes, Burke" Tucker kicked back in the chair to stretch his legs "My ht me this picture book once A Bible stories book I remember this one picture It was of Isaiah or Ezekiel or somebody One of those prophets who strolled off into the wasteland for forty days to fast and meet the Lord? This was supposed to be a picture of hiues Whatever the hell they did when they&039;d cooked their brains in the desert He had this look in his eyes, this wild, rolling look like a weasel gets when he smells chicken feathers I alondered why the Lord chose to speak through crazy people I expect it was because they wouldn&039;t question whatever voice they heard inside their head See else inside there, too So, Burke rose to pourabout voices About how some serial killers claim to have been told what to do and how to do it The Son of Sa had ordered hio in for the ainst the law to cop an insanity plea But Tucker&039;s theoryto tell me you think Vernon hears voices?"

"I don&039;t knohat&039;s inside his head, but I knohat I saw in his eyes last night The same by my father&039;s name That prophet look If he could have broken Cy in two, he would&039;ve done it And I&039;d stake Sater against the fact that he&039;d have considered it holy work"

"I don&039;t know that he hadacquaintance with any of the victiets through their life without knohat there is to know about everybody else What&039;s that saying about the apple not falling far froht have the same"

"I&039;ll talk to hi, they both ignored it Fro "You&039;re going to be at Sater tonight, for the fireworks?"

"Unless I want my wife and kids to leave me"

"Carl, too?"

"No reason for him to stay in tohen everybody&039;ll be out at your place Why?"

Tucker moved his shoulders restlessly "A lot of people, a lot of noise and confusion I&039;m worried, especially about Josie and Caroline I&039;d feel better knowing you and Carl are close"

"Burke" Susie ca of her shoith carnation-scented soap Studying her, Burke thought she looked no more than twenty

"Was that the office?" he asked her

"No, it was Delia" She laid her hand over Tucker&039;s "Matthew Burns had Dwayne brought in for questioning"

If he hadn&039;t been so infuriated, Tucker would have been amused The idea of Dwayne, soft-hearted, bleary-eyed Dwayne, as a hable The fact that his brother had been yanked out of bed and driven into town to be questioned by so with his temper, Tucker walked into the sheriff&039;s office with Burke He wouldn&039;t lose it, he promised himself It would suit Burns too well to kick hihted one for hi an early start today, Burns," Tucker said ot today&039;s a national holiday"

"I&039;s behind Burke&039;s desk and kept his hands folded on top "I&039;m also aware that you have a parade scheduled for noon My business won&039;t interfere with your town&039;s celebrations Sheriff, I&039; by ten"

"That&039;s right"

"I&039;d like et in and out of town as necessary" Taking out his keys, he set thee of the desk

Carl saw the flare in Burke&039;s eyes and stepped forward "I&039;llthe keys in his hand, he stopped by Tucker "I&039; hiht, Carl It shouldn&039;t take long to straighten this out Heard your girl&039;s going to be twirling today"

"She&039;s been practicing day and night Her grand-pappy bought one of those video recorders so he can shoot her whole routine as she , Deputy," Burns put in, "but we have business to conduct here" His gaze shifted to Tucker "Official business"

"I&039;ll be sure to watch for her myself, Carl," Tucker said He waited until the deputy went out before taking another drag "Dwayne, did they read you your rights?"

"Mr Longstreet isn&039;t under arrest Yet," Burns interrupted "He&039;s ht to a lawyer, doesn&039;t he?"

"Naturally" Burns spread his hands "If you&039;re concerned that your rights street, or that you may incriminate yourself, please feel free to call your attorney We&039;ll be happy to wait"

"I&039;d just as soon get it done" Dwayne looked h, and a bottle of aspirin"

"We&039;ll fix you up" Burke patted his shoulder as he walked into the bathroostreet" Burns inclined his head in dismissal "You have no place here"

"Burke deputized h Burke paused, lifting his brows as he ca to contradict the statement "He can always use some extra help on the Fourth"

"That&039;s the truth," Burke commented as he shook tablets froest has a birthday today on top of it, I&039;d be obliged if we could get things "

"Very well" Burns punched in his recorder "Mr Longstreet, you reside at the property known as Sater, in the county of Bolivar, Mississippi?"

"That&039;s right" Dwayne accepted the streets have been at Sater nearly two hundred years"

"Yes" History and faacies didn&039;t interest Burns "You live there with your brother and your sister"

"And Delia She&039;s been housekeeper at Sater for ht now Cousin Lulu&039;s visiting" Dwayne singed his tongue with the hot coffee, but the aspirin went down "She&039;s a cousin onshe&039;ll stay Cousin Lulu&039;s been co as anyone can remember I recollect once-"

"If you&039;ll save the home-boy routine," Burns said, "I&039;d like to finish before the brass bands and batons"

Dwayne caught Tucker&039;s grin and shrugged "Just answering your question Oh, and we&039;ve got Cy and Caroline with us now, too That what you want to know?"

"Your marital status?"

"I&039;m divorced Two years coh, wasn&039;t it, Tucker?"

"That&039;s right"

"And your ex-wife now lives where?"

"Up in Nashville Rosebank Avenue She&039;s got a nice little house there, close enough to school that the boys can walk"

"And she is the former Adalaide Koons?"

"Sissy," Dwayne corrected him "Her little brother never could say Adalaide, so she was Sissy"

"And Mrs Longstreet was pregnant with your first son when you married?"

Dwayne frowned into his coffee "I don&039;t see that it&039;s any of your business, but it&039;s no secret, I guess"

"You ot ured it was best"

With a reement, Burns steepled his hands "And shortly after the birth of your second child, you wife left you"

Dwayne drained his coffee Over the rim, his bloodshot eyes hardened "That&039;s no secret either"

"You&039;ll agree it was an unpleasant scene?" Burns shifted forward to read some notes "Your wife locked you out of the house after a violent argu heavily-and threw your belongings out of an upstairsShe then took your children to Nashville, where she took up residence with a shoe salesarette Tucker had tossed hiht"

"How did it street, when the wo your children, and turned to a second-rate guitar player?"

Dwayne took his tiuess she had to do what suited her best"

"So you were amenable to the situation?"

"I didn&039;t try to stop her, if that&039;s what youainst you accused you of emotional cruelty, violence, erratic and unstable behavior, and stated you were a physical risk to both her and your children Did that seeed deep on tobacco and wished desperately for whiskey "I expect she was feeling harsh I can&039;t say I did right by her, or the boys either"

"You don&039;t have to do this, Dwayne" When his control broke, Tucker stepped forward to take his brother&039;s arm "You don&039;t have to answer this fucker&039;s questions about a s about it"

Burns inclined his head "Is there a reason your brother shouldn&039;t confiro of Dwayne to slap his hands on the desk "I can&039;t think of one Just like I can&039;t think of a reason I shouldn&039;t kick your skinny butt all the way back to DC"

"We can discuss that on our own ti with a federal investigation If you persist, you&039;ll do your corabbed Burns&039;s pinstriped tie and yanked upward "Why don&039;t I show you hoe handle things down here in the delta?"

"Leave hi Tucker&039;s wrist

"The hell I will"

"I said leave him alone" Dwayne stuck his face close to Tucker&039;s "I&039;ve got nothing to hide This Yankee sonofabitch can ask questions froe Leave hiet it done"

Reluctantly, Tucker loosened his grip "We&039;re going to finish this, you and htened his tie "It&039;ll be a pleasure" He re to the bulletin board at his back "Mr Longstreet, were you acquainted with Arnette Gantrey?" Burns tapped a finger against the space between a photo of a s blond woman and a black-and-white police photo taken at Gooseneck Creek

"I knew Arnette We went to school together, dated a few tier to the next set of photos

"I knew Francie" Dwayne averted his eyes "Everybody knew Francie She grew up here Lived in Jackson for a while, then ca divorced"

"And you were acquainted with Edda Lou Hatinger?"

Dwayne forced himself to look back, but focused on the tip of Burns&039;s finger "Yeah I knew Darleen, too, if that&039;s what you&039;re getting at"