that you may incriminate yourself, please feel free to call your attorney. We'll be happy to wait.'
'I'd just as soon get it done.' Dwayne looked miserably at Tucker. 'Sure could use some coffee, though, and a bottle of aspirin.'
'We'll fix you up.' Burke patted his shoulder as he walked into the bathroom.
'This is official business, Longstreet.' Burns inclined his head in dismissal. 'You have no place here.'
'Burke deputized me.' Tucker's lips spread in a slow smile. Though Burke paused, lifting his brows as he came back in with the aspirin, he said nothing to contradict the statement. 'He can always use some extra help on the Fourth.'
'That's the truth,' Burke commented as he shook tablets from the plastic bottle. 'And seeing as my youngest has a birthday today on top of it, I'd be obliged if we could get things moving.'
'Very well.' Burns punched in his recorder. 'Mr. Longstreet, you reside at the property known as Sweetwater, in the county of Bolivar, Mississippi?'
'That's right.' Dwayne accepted the mug of coffee and the aspirin. 'The Longstreets have been at Sweetwater nearly two hundred years.'
'Yes.' History and family legacies didn't interest Burns. 'You live there with your brother and your sister.'
'And Delia. She's been housekeeper at Sweetwater for more than thirty years. And right now Cousin Lulu's visiting.' Dwayne singed his tongue with the hot coffee, but the aspirin went down. 'She's a cousin on my mama's side. No telling how long she'll stay. Cousin Lulu's been coming and going as she pleases as long as anyone can remember. I recollect once-'
'If you'll save the home-boy routine,' Burns said, 'I'd like to finish before the brass bands and batons.'
Dwayne caught Tucker's grin and shrugged. 'Just answering your question. Oh, and we've got Cy and Caroline with us now, too. That what you want to know?'
'Your marital status?'
'I'm divorced. Two years come October. That's when the papers came through, wasn't it, Tucker?'
'That's right.'
'And your ex-wife now lives where?'
'Up in Nashville. Rosebank Avenue. She'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't see that it's any of your business, but it's no secret, I guess.'
'You married her to give the child a name.'
'We got married 'cause we figured it was best.'
With a murmur of agreement, 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's no secret either.'
'You'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 argument-I believe you'd been drinking heavily-and threw your belongings out of an upstairs window. She then took your children to Nashville, where she took up residence with a shoe salesman who moonlighted as a musician.'
Dwayne examined the cigarette Tucker had tossed him. 'I guess that's about right.'
'How did it make you feel, Mr. Longstreet, when the woman you had married under duress left you, taking your children, and turned to a second-rate guitar player?'
Dwayne took his time lighting the cigarette. 'I guess she had to do what suited her best.'
'So you were amenable to the situation?'
'I didn't try to stop her, if that's what you mean. Didn't seem like I was much good at being married anyway.'
'The divorce suit she filed against 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 seem harsh?'
Dwayne dragged deep on tobacco and wished desperately for whiskey. 'I expect she was feeling harsh. I can't say I did right by her, or the boys either.'
'You don't have to do this, Dwayne.' When his control broke, Tucker stepped forward to take his brother's arm. 'You don't have to answer this fucker's questions about a marriage that's over, or your feelings about it.'
Burns inclined his head. 'Is there a reason your brother shouldn't confirm what I already know?'
Tucker let go of Dwayne to slap his hands on the desk. 'I can't think of one. Just like I can't think of a reason I shouldn't kick your skinny butt all the way back to D.C.'
'We can discuss that on our own time, Longstreet. Right now you're interfering with a federal investigation. If you persist, you'll do your complaining from one of those cells.'
Tucker grabbed Burns's pinstriped tie and yanked upward. 'Why don't I show you how we handle things down here in the delta?'
'Leave him alone.' Dwayne stirred himself to snag Tucker's wrist.
'The hell I will.'
'I said leave him alone.' Dwayne stuck his face close to Tucker's. 'I've got nothing to hide. This Yankee sonofabitch can ask questions from now to doomsday and that won't change. Leave him be so we can get it done.'
Reluctantly, Tucker loosened his grip. 'We're going to finish this, you and me.'
Stone-faced, Burns straightened his tie. 'It'll be a pleasure.' He remained standing, turning 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 smiling blond woman and a black-and-white police photo taken at Gooseneck Creek.
'I knew Arnette. We went to school together, dated a few times.'
'And Francie Logan?' Burns slid his finger 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 came back after getting divorced.'
'And you were acquainted with Edda Lou Hatinger?'
Dwayne forced himself to look back, but focused on the tip of Burns's finger. 'Yeah. I knew Darleen, too, if that's what you're getting at.'
'Did you know a woman named Barbara Kinsdale?'
'I don't think so.' Dwayne's brow creased as he tried out the name in his head. 'Nobody around here named Kinsdale.'
'Are you quite sure?' Burns unpinned a photo from the board. 'Take a look.'
Dwayne picked up the photo from the desk, grateful it was a shot of a live woman. She was a pretty brunette, perhaps thirty, with straight hair sweeping slight shoulders. 'I've never seen her before.'
'Haven't you?' Burns picked up his notes. 'Barbara Kinsdale, five foot two, a hundred three pounds, brown hair, blue eyes. Age thirty-one. Does that description sound familiar?'
'I can't say.'
'You should be able to say,' Burns continued. 'It's almost a perfect description of your ex-wife. Mrs. Kinsdale was a cocktail waitress at the Stars and Bars Club in Nashville. Residence 3043 Eastland Avenue. That's about three blocks away from your ex-wife's home. Emmett Cotrain, your ex-wife's fiance, performed at the Stars and bars on weekends. An interesting coincidence, isn't it?'
A thin bead of sweat dripped down Dwayne's back. 'I guess it is.'
'It's more interesting that Mrs. Kinsdale was found floating in the Percy Priest Lake, outside of Nashville, late this spring. She was naked, her throat had been slit, and her body mutilated.'
Burns tossed another photo across the desk, but in this one, Barbara Kinsdale was very dead. 'Where were you on the night of May 22 of this year, Mr. Longstreet?'
'Oh, Jesus.' Dwayne shut his eyes. The body hadn't been covered in the police shot, but had been laid out, gray and tortured, for the cold camera lens.
