his forehead.
In contrast, Thackery’s expression was one of unconcealed disdain. His desire to have space between him and me went beyond the possibility of being a murderer. He was actually repulsed by me personally. It wasn’t hard to see in his stony regard and the tight line of his lips. Contamination, a freak, right in his clean hall of science. Maybe you could back my freakdom up with theories, and as science progressed, maybe evidence and proof that could be measured by a machine would rain down from the sky, but I was still a person, not a process. An unpredictable person, and Dr. Thackery didn’t like unpredictable, I was sure. It didn’t fit into his narrow, tight world-his results-driven, money-driven world. If only I’d been a process, if only I’d fit into a computer program or a test tube, I was sure I’d have been all puppies and sunshine to him.
It was fine by me having him follow in a car behind us. That early in the morning, I didn’t want to see anything, and definitely not Thackery’s rigidly disapproving face. Hector had the sense not to talk to me until I’d put away two coffees. Cafeteria coffee, utter crap, but with enough caffeine to have my fingers tingling under the gloves and a few words spilling from my lips in a cranky mutter. “Where?”
Well, one word. I was a man who got to the point. It was one of my better qualities.
“A take on Lizzie Borden. A son beat his parents to death with a chunk of firewood in 1853. And to commemorate the occasion, they turned the place into a bed-and-breakfast. Have a few cold chills with your honeymoon. The proprietor says it’s a popular spot.”
“Ain’t that grand? Nice to know my faith in humanity is right where it should be-the basement.” Outside, it was drizzling. Sun hot enough to sear and a sticky rain the next day. That was Georgia for you. “Seems high-profile enough to have had the newspapers cover it. You shouldn’t need me. Reliving murders isn’t like cable, okay? It doesn’t make for a good morning. In fact, it makes for a pretty shitty one.”
“Have my coffee. I don’t think yours has kicked in yet.” Hector turned on the wipers. “The mother and father disappeared. When he was sober, Seth Miles stated that his parents ran off and left him with a worthless farm and a stack of unpaid bills. When he was drunk, he said he killed them. Their bodies were never found, and nothing was ever proven. Suspected, yes. But a drunken confession and no bodies didn’t make it to court back then. It is possible his parents left Miles. He was an alcoholic troublemaker most of his life and a drain on their resources.”
“And if wishes were horses, it wouldn’t be rain falling from the sky right now. It’d be a storm of horseshit.” I took his coffee and gave a tired, mulish stare out the windshield. Being used as a Geiger counter for terror and death managed to erase a fraction of the beer-buzz camaraderie of the night before.
“I’m sorry, Jackson.” He did sound sorry, but that helped me exactly zero. “But you’re the only one who can do this. Of all your colleagues, you were the only genuine article. You’re rare.” I thought I sensed a fleeting regret. “Which isn’t so great for you, I know, but the sooner this is over, the sooner you can get on with your life, you and your sister.”
Hector didn’t mention getting on with his life. It would be hard to think about if I were in his shoes. He’d spent so much time running around trying to free Charlie that he probably hadn’t had time to genuinely come to grips with his brother’s death. Near death. Whatever the hell it was. He had that ahead of him; he wasn’t a fool, he knew that. It wasn’t precisely something to look forward to.
Been there, repressed that.
The Miles farm was long gone. The neighborhoods that now covered it were older. Early nineteen hundreds, houses with character and so much gingerbread trim that I expected to see Hansel and Gretel any minute-I hoped not pursued by a man with a hunk of firewood and a crazed, wild light in his eye.
Although the farm was gone, the main house remained. With a quaintly old-fashioned sign surrounded by masses of daisies, the Miles Massacre House was still open to all. It was actually called the Peach Tree Inn, but where was the truth in advertising in that? We pulled into the circular drive of the rambling farmhouse, followed closely by the car carrying Thackery, Fujiwara, and the military driver requisitioned from the motor pool. The military might have Thackery by the short hairs, but I didn’t think the asshole knew it. Or if he did know it, he thought he could twist it to his advantage. The man had ego, you had to give him that.
“You think Thack and his pet, Fujiwara, booked the honeymoon suite here?” I drawled.
As expected, I was ignored. I climbed out of the car and squashed a daisy. Frowning, I stepped back and watched as the flower slowly wavered back upright. Tess had liked daisies. Didn’t all little girls? I carefully circumvented the billowing drifts of white and yellow and headed for the porch stairs. Another wraparound porch typical of the South, it was sprinkled with wicker furniture, mainly rockers, and pot after pot of blooming flowers. Poppies, roses, brown-eyed Susans, and more daisies.
It was remarkably cheerful for a supposed house of death. Didn’t mean a thing. I’d once touched the wedding ring of a perpetually smiling grandma. She had smothered two of her babies fifty-some years before, and she’d never felt one moment of regret. The sweet hid the poisonous all the time-in nature and in people. Why should buildings be any different?
“You said you don’t actually have to go into the buildings?” Thackery’s voice came from behind. “That’s what Allgood’s report stated. You can do your little tricks from right here, then.”
The man knew I was the genuine article-he had proof-but it didn’t stop the thick coating of disdain over his words. If he was capable of emotions other than arrogance and contempt, I’d yet to see that. It put my cocky sarcasm in the shade. I might have to try a little harder.
I bared my teeth in a humorless grin. “Care to shake? I’ll bet you have all sorts of skeletons rattling around. Got a little too friendly with the family goat when you were a kid? Let’s have a look.”
Most likely a murderer, and I was pushing him. Sometimes I just couldn’t help myself.
Cold eyes took me in and dismissed me. “Do your job, Eye.”
Yeah, do my job. Thanks to my third-strike baby sister, that’s what I was getting paid for.
“I’m Miz Susannah. This is my place. Can I help you gentlemen? You boys need some rooms?”
A curious voice came from behind the screen door. There was also a mop of tightly curled silver hair, amber- brown eyes magnified by thick glasses, skin as dark as aged mahogany, and a smile as cheerful as an entire field of those front-yard daisies.
“Ma’am.” Hector moved in to distract her while I stripped off my glove and put a casual hand against the wood of the house. It was painted a brilliant blue, the pure color of a summer sky. It was the color of a kid’s playhouse, not what you would put on a real house, but it worked. It was nice. It made me think of a childhood I’d never had-candy apples and fresh white sheets drying in a spring breeze, barking dogs and sleeping cats, lemonade and new clothes for school. The American dream. I hadn’t had it, but it was right there. Year after year, happy people came and went, and the house was always that candy apple, sweet on sweet with every bite.
Until I took a bite of 1853.
It hadn’t been a chunk of firewood. It had been an axe handle. But it had done the job. First, dear old Dad. Dear old tightfisted Dad who never gave a nickel when a penny would do. And Mother, who whined and whined until you thought you’d go deaf from her pathetic bleats. She was the one who’d gone deaf, though-deaf, dumb, and blind, and no whining bitch deserved it more. The satisfaction that had come from beating her gray head over and over and over-
With the taste of a savage contentment not my own still in my mouth, I pulled my hand back and put my glove back on with quick, methodical movements. “Bingo. Can we go now?”
Fujiwara’s soft, faintly accented voice asked politely, “You actually did see it? You know it was murder even though no bodies were recovered?”
“I saw it. And you people didn’t include what kind of farm it was in the file. It was a pig farm. He fed Mom and Pop to the pigs. Twenty minutes later, they were being digested. The perfect crime.” I amended, “For a drunken idiot.”
Miz Susannah remained behind her screen door, her mouth a perfect O, showing a good dental plan and sturdy dental adhesive. Then she croaked like an unsettled crow, “You… you boys want some lemonade… and cookies?” She started to close the main door. “For the road?”
Fujiwara brightened. “I would very much like some lemonade.”
Thackery gave him a withering glare, then turned to clatter down the porch stairs and back to the second car.
“No lemonade for you, Fuji,” I said sympathetically, because I wouldn’t have minded some lemonade and cookies, either. But when I turned back to see what my chances were, Miz Susannah seemed to have had enough of our weirdness and slammed the thick wooden door behind the screen. I heard a bolt slide into place.
