Carnal Innocence

mouth. Hot, frightened tears slid down her cheeks as the mouth closed hungrily over her defenseless breasts.
    Slick with sweat, the body rubbed against hers, doing things she didn’t want to believe could be done to her. Her weeping was mindless now, her body shuddering at every touch of the wet mouth, the intruding fingers, the smooth flat of the buck knife.
    For she had remembered what had happened to Arnette and Francie, and knew they had felt this same numb terror, felt the same sick revulsion in the last moments of their lives.
    “You want it. You want it.” The breathless chant rolled over the dull buzzing in Edda’s brain. “Whore.” The knife turned, slicing delicately, almost painlessly, down Edda Lou’s arm. As the mouth closed greedily over the wound, Edda Lou slumped into a half faint.
    “No, you don’t.” A hand slapped playfully across her face to revive her. “No sleeping on the job for whores.” There was a quick, almost giggly laugh. Blood smeared the smiling lips. Edda Lou’s glazed eyes opened and fixed. “Better, that’s better. I want you to watch. Ready?”
    “Please, please, please,” her mind screamed. “Don’t kill me. I won’t tell, I won’t tell, I won’t tell.”
    “No!” The voice was husky with arousal, and Edda Lou smelled her own fear, her own blood, when that face leaned close to hers, with madness shining out of eyes she’d known very well. “You’re not worth fucking.”
    One hand ripped aside the gag. Part of the pleasure, the need, was to hear that one high scream. It was cut off as the knife slashed Edda Lou’s throat.
    Caroline sat straight up in bed, heart thudding like a Maytag with an unbalanced load. She was clutching both hands to it, nearly ripping her thin sleep shirt in reaction.
    A scream, she thought wildly while her ragged breathing echoed in the room. Who was screaming?
    She was nearly out of bed and fumbling for the light when she remembered where she was and sagged back against the pillows. Not Philadelphia. Not Baltimore, or New York or Paris. She was in rural Mississippi, sleeping in the bed her grandparents had slept in.
    Night sounds seemed to fill the room. Peepers, crickets, cicadas. And owls. She heard another scream, eerily like a woman’s. Screech owls, they called them, she remembered now. Her grandmother had soothed her one night during that long-ago visit when the same rusty cry had awakened her.
    Just an old screech owl, pumpkin pie. Don’t you worry now. You’re safe as a bug in a rug.
    Closing her eyes, Caroline listened to the long whooo-whooo of another, better-mannered owl. Country sounds, she assured herself, and tried to ignore the creaking and settling of the old house. Soon they would seem as natural to her as the whoosh of traffic or the whine of distant sirens.
    It was just as her grandmother had told her. She was safe as a bug in a rug.

c·h·a·p·t·e·r 3
    T ucker sat on the side terrace where purple clematis wound up the white wicker trellis. A hummingbird streaked behind him, iridescent wings a flashing blur as it hovered to drink deeply from one of the wide, tender blooms. Inside, Della’s Electrolux hummed busily. The sound drifted through the screened windows to mix with the drone of bees.
    Underneath the glass table sprawled the aged family hound, Buster, a huddle of loose skin and old bones. Occasionally, he worked up the energy to thump his tail and look hopefully through the glass at Tucker’s breakfast.
    Tucker wasn’t paying conscious attention to any of the morning sounds and scents. He absorbed them in the same absent way he absorbed the chilled juice, black coffee, and toast.
    He was performing one of his favorite daily rituals: reading the mail.
    As always, there was a stack of fashion catalogues and magazines for Josie. He tossed them one at a time onto the padded seat beside him. Each time a catalogueplopped, Buster would shift his rheumy old eyes hopefully, then mutter in canine disgust.
    There was a letter for Dwayne from Nashville, addressed in Sissy’s childishly correct handwriting. Tucker frowned at it a minute, held it up to the sunlight, then set it aside. He knew it wasn’t a request for child support. As family bookkeeper, he made out the monthly checks himself and had sent one two weeks before.
    In keeping with his filing system, he tossed bills on another chair, personal correspondence was shoved over to the other side of the coffeepot, and those letters obviously from a