Carnal Innocence

fiber traces in hermouth and on her tongue that indicate the use of a red cotton cloth.”
    “You can tell all that?” Josie found herself hanging on every word.
    “All that and more.”
    “Was she, you know, raped?”
    “I’m running tests on that. If we’re lucky enough to find a trace of sperm, we can run a DNA.”
    “Uh-huh.” She’d heard the term somewhere. “Whoever did it killed her and the baby.”
    “The lady died alone,” Teddy corrected her. “Hormone levels were flat low.”
    “Pardon?”
    “No buns in her oven.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Josie looked down at the gray, lifeless face, and her mouth pursed in thought. “I told him she was lying.”
    “Told who?”
    She shook off the thought. This was no time to bring up Tucker’s name. Instead, she looked away from Edda Lou and around the room.
    The thing was, once you got settled inside, it was fascinating. All those bottles and tubes and slim, shiny instruments. She strolled over to pick up a scalpel, and in testing the blade, sliced the pad of her thumb. “Shit.”
    “Baby, you shouldn’t touch those things.” All solicitude, Teddy whipped out a handkerchief and dabbed at the thin line of blood. Over his head, Josie stared at the face on the embalming table. Beer made her head woozy.
    “I didn’t know it was so sharp.”
    “Sharp enough to slice little pieces off you.” He clucked and dabbed until she smiled. He really was the cutest thing.
    “It’ll stop quicker if you suck on it.” She brought her wounded thumb to his mouth, eased it between his lips. While his tongue laved the wound, she let her eyes close. There was a powerful intimacy, knowing he was tasting her blood. When her eyes opened again, they were heavy with lust.
    “I’ve got something for you, Teddy.” As he drew her thumb deep into his mouth, she reached over the tray of keen-edged instruments, her hand wavering, then finding the purse she’d dropped there. While his hand slid up her thigh, hers dug into the bag. It convulsed into a fist as his fingers slid under the hem of her shorts, nipped under the elastic of her panties, and found her.
    “Here you go.” With a little sigh she pulled out a condom. Her eyes were gold and hot as she yanked down his zipper. “Why don’t I put this on for you?”
    Teddy shuddered as his pants fell to his ankles. “Be my guest.”
    When Josie shot down the drive to Sweetwater about two A.M ., feeling used up and sated from sex, Billy T. Bonny was crouching behind the front fender of the red Porsche. He swore as the headlights sliced the dark a few inches from his head. Ten more minutes and he’d have been finished and gone.
    His heartbeat roared as Josie hit the brakes. Gravel spat out and bounced on the toes of his work boots. His grease-smeared fingers tightened around the handle of his wrench.
    As she climbed out of her car, he held himself in a tight ball and watched her feet. They were bare, carmine-tipped, and she wore a thin gold chain around her ankle. He felt a quick rush of sexual interest. Her scent was on the air, darkly sweet, mixed with the deeper tones of recent sex.
    She was humming Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.” She dropped her purse, scattering lipsticks, loose change, a small department store’s worth of cosmetics, two mirrors, a handful of foil-wrapped condoms, a bottle of aspirin, a neat little pearl-handled derringer, and three boxes of Tic Tacs. Billy T. bit back an oath as she bent to retrieve her belongings.
    From the underbelly of the Porsche, Billy watched the long line of her legs fold up as she crouched, saw herhand scramble around, dumping the contents back into the bag along with a fair share of gravel.
    “Hell with it,” she muttered. Yawning hugely, she got to her feet and started toward the house.
    Billy T. waited a full thirty seconds after the door shut before he went back to work.

c·h·a·p·t·e·r 9
    O n Sunday mornings most of Innocence gathered in one of its three churches. The Church of Redemption was for the Methodists, and made up a large part of the religious pie. It was a small gray box smack in the center of town. It had been built in 1926 on the site of the original First Methodist Church which had washed away—along with Reverend Scottsdale and the church secretary he’d been breaking several commandments with—in flood waters in ’25.
    On the south end of town was Innocence Bible Church, where the blacks went to worship. There was no law of God or man that