Carnal Innocence

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 Della. 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 youof 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