Southern Discomfort

'That epidemiologist that's trying to find a common denominator,' I told the girls. 'He asked me if Carver Bannerman was at my swearing-in reception. Did y'all see him there?'

Furrowed brows and slow headshakes as they tried to recall a man they hadn't yet met themselves two weeks ago.

I had a sudden flash of brilliance. 'Stevie's video!'

'Huh?' said Annie Sue.

'Stevie,' I reminded her. 'He was everywhere with that camera of his. Remember? If Bannerman was at the reception, Stevie's bound to have caught him on the tape. It's sitting up there on top of my VCR and soon as I get back from the airport, I'll run through it and check it out.'

As Uncle Ash and Aunt Zell came through the veranda door, I called, 'Don't lock it. Dwight's coming over to watch a video with me tonight and I told him to go on in if I wasn't back yet.'

Annie Sue's truck was blocking my car, so the girls wished my aunt and uncle bon voyage and drove off into the sunset as I picked up one of the bags and said, 'Listen, Uncle Ash—'

CHAPTER 22

FINISH WORK

'Most of the finish work involves items of essential practical usefulness, such as the door and window frames, the doors and windows themselves, the roof covering, and the stairs.'

My car was out of sight, locked inside the garage.

Uncle Ash and Aunt Zell were so caught up in the romance of their Parisian adventure, that they didn't question my lie that I'd suddenly remembered an important meeting I simply had to attend if I expected the fall election to rubber-stamp my appointment. If anything, they seemed sort of pleased to start the first leg of their trip alone.

Now I sat alone in the dark parlor of their quiet house. Twilight shadowed the rooms, but except for dim night lights, all the lamps were off and they'd stay off till someone came.

Dwight? Or—?

I hoped it would be Dwight. I hoped it had been my imagination out on the drive an hour earlier, that involuntary startled widening of the eyes, the sudden withdrawn look of intense concentration as if she were trying to remember.

Me? Did the camera catch me?

Clever to have done it then. If she had. In such a crush of people, who would remember which girl served whom?

Now that they could drive, the three of them were always together this year; in and out of one another's houses, one another's lives, invited to all the ceremonies, caught up in their emotions and hurts—the intense, nonsexual but passionate and all-consuming love that exists between adolescent best friends.

Katie Tyson. I remember the night she cried herself sick up in my bedroom, unable to tell me about the disgusting thing that blighted her life; the anger and anguish I'd felt because I knew she would be shamed even further if she told me—even me!—why she cried. I loved her so much. Would I have killed for her if I'd known for sure that a father, brother, uncle, or preacher had violated her trust?

Once, and only once, I asked my father if he'd ever killed anyone.

'No,' he'd said. 'Wanted to a couple of times, meant to once, but never did.'

And there was Mother, who turned her back on all her chances, burned every bridge, and ran off with a fiddle- playing bootlegger.

And I'm enough their daughter that yes, I've had it in me to dance with the devil a time or two over the years.

Not that Katie gave me a chance to find out if I was ready to dance right then. She walked out of our house that dark November night and drove her mother's car straight into the headlights of an eighteen-wheeler and never touched her brakes.

Everybody else thought it was an accident.

So much ugliness, even back then. Stuff I only vaguely suspected in my safe protected world. How had I escaped? What kept things sane and normal in our household? I was the only girl child in a family of randy, roughneck boys, but never did one of them look on me with lust in his heart. Never did my own father touch me lasciviously.

Did hers?

Oh God, which her?

For a moment, adolescence blurred with the grown-up here and now and was overlaid with all the pathological nastiness I'd seen and heard in too many courtrooms.

Dusk deepened to darkness, and the streetlight down the block cast black shadows on the sidewalk.

Had she lost her nerve? Or were her nerves strong enough to do nothing, leave it alone, assume there was nothing incriminating on the tape, or that I'd miss it if there were because I'd be busy looking for Carver Bannerman? Surely she was too young for such self-control. Killers more mature than she were unable to leave it alone, to resist that final tidying up of loose ends.

If I ever do kill anyone, I'll just do it and walk away and never look back.

Looking back trips you up.

It was barely dark good. She'd have to get free of the other two first, then drive back alone, park her car on a