Southern Discomfort

what she was doing. Fighting him off and all, what if she just grabbed the hammer and flailed away?'

'And then carried the hammer out to the living room for me to trip over and came back in here to pass out close to his body?'

'People with concussions do crazy things,' he said stubbornly.

'True. But then wouldn't her hand be even bloodier than mine was?' I asked.

'Did she wash or—'

I was shaking my head. 'No, no, and no. That's why I took her straight to the hospital instead of home. I wanted every scrap of physical evidence to remain on her body until it was documented. You and I both know that the first thing rape victims want to do is take a long hot shower, get clean again.'

He nodded.

'I didn't want her near a bathroom till a nurse with a rape kit had gone over her body with a fine tooth comb.' I winced at the cliche, suddenly remembering that it wasn't a trite figure of speech: Annie Sue's pubic area would indeed have been combed for foreign hairs.

'Bambi probably took fingernail scrapings, too,' I said. 'Even if Annie Sue'd rinsed her hands in the rain, his blood would still be there.'

'I'll check,' said Dwight. 'But if Annie Sue didn't do it...' His voice trailed off and his face got even gloomier.

I was incredulous.

'You think I killed him?'

'Your fingerprints will be on the hammer. That's probably his blood on your skirt,' Dwight said. 'Say you came back and found Bannerman in the act of raping your niece. Say you had a hammer in your hand. Wouldn't you have smacked him over the head with it?'

'Damn straight!' I agreed. 'But it didn't happen that way.'

'You're sure.'

'Dwight!'

'Okay, okay. If you say you didn't, you didn't. One more thing though.' He seemed to be picking his words carefully. 'You hear where they found Herman?'

My heart started to sink. 'No.'

'On Troop Road.'

That was less than a mile from here and not on any beeline between his office and his house. 'Going which direction?'

'Toward his house,' said Dwight. 'Away from here. It was like he wasn't going too fast when he passed out. The truck sort of coasted to a stop on the sidewalk, but he did bang his head. His face was bloody. And the time's about right.'

Dwight thrust a big hand into his off-duty jeans and rattled his pocket change as he gazed at me speculatively. 'So if you're sure that hammer was already sticky when you picked it up, guess I'd better have my techs take samples of the bloodstains in Herman's truck.'

'I'm sure.' I hated this scenario just as much as Dwight's first two, but if it were true...

'No jury in Colleton County ever convicted a man who killed his daughter's rapist.'

'Even if he ran away and left his daughter behind, half-naked?'

'If he did that, it's because he was sick,' I argued. 'Not thinking clearly.'

'Well, we'll worry about that down the road,' Dwight said. 'Right now, I want you to let Richards drive you first to Annie Sue's and then take you home.'

'I'm perfectly capable of driving myself and—

He huffed at me in exasperation, just like one of my brothers. 'You always got to argue, don't you? I swear I don't know why you gave up being a lawyer and took up the one job where you're supposed to listen to what people say and not fly off the handle before they finish talking.'

'So finish,' I snapped.

'I want Richards to collect the clothes Annie Sue was wearing tonight and I want that skirt and blouse you have on, too.'

Before I could bristle, he gave me a sardonic look. 'Preacher's wife, okay?'

He was right. And if I hadn't been so tired, he wouldn't have had to spell it out for me. As a judge, I not only had to appear above suspicion, I had to be able to prove it, too. Better to let them run my clothes through the system and verify that the bloodstains were wipes, not splatters, than to have awkward questions raised after the garments were cleaned. *      *      *

Deputy Mayleen Richards and I got to Annie Sue's clothes just seconds before Seth's Jessica tossed them in the washer. The whole house seemed to swarm with energetic young women and every single one of them had grown up watching their mothers so they knew how southern women were supposed to behave in a crisis.

Some were in the kitchen to load the dishwasher and put away the food Nadine had cooked before she'd rushed off to the hospital. Others had tidied the house, including cleaning up the bathroom behind Annie Sue. In fact, Jessica was only waiting for the last damp towel before starting the washer. Had I stayed to argue with Dwight, we'd have been too late.