Carolina Moon

up in her, a hot gush of fear, and of knowledge.
    In the brush came a rustling, wet and sly.
    She whirled toward it. Password. She thought it, heard it sound in her head. But she wasn’t Hope. She wasn’t eight. And dear God, it wasn’t over after all.
    Cade was in the garden deciding where they should set up tables for the wedding reception when Chief Russ pulled in.
    “Glad you’re here. I just got news I thought you should know.”
    “Come on inside where it’s cool.”
    “No, I gotta get back, but I wanted to tell you in person. We got ballistic reports on Sarabeth Bodeen. The gun she was killed with wasn’t the same one Bodeen had with him. Not even the same caliber.”
    Cade felt one quick knock of dread. “I’m not sure I understand.”
    “Turns out the one Bodeen had when he broke in on Tory and your sister was stolen from a house about fifteen miles south of here, on the morning Tory’s mother was killed. House was broken into between nine and ten A.M. that same day.”
    “How can that be?”
    “Only way it could be is if Bodeen spouted wings and flew down here from Darlington County or if somebody else put those bullets in Miz Bodeen.”
    Carl D. cupped a hand over his chin, rubbed it hard. His eyes burned with fatigue. “I’ve been in touch with those federals, and I’m piecing it together. The phone records show Miz Bodeen got a call just after two that morning, from the pay phone outside the Winn-Dixie north of town here. Now, we were figuring that would’ve been Bodeen calling her from here, telling her he was coming for her. That’s fine as far as it goes. But it don’t fit when you add the rest.”
    “It had to be Bodeen calling her. Why else would she have packed up?”
    “I can’t say. But you’ve got him calling from here at ‘round about two in the morning, getting up there, doing the shooting between five and five-thirty, then heading back here and moving south another fifteen miles, breaking into a house and stealing a gun, a bottle, and some leftover supper. Now, why would the man be zigzagging back and forth thataway?”
    “He was crazy.”
    “I won’t argue with that, but being crazy doesn’t make him able to all but break land and speed records in one morning. ‘Specially since it doesn’t look like he had any kind of vehicle. Now, I’m not saying it couldn’t be done. I’m saying it don’t make sense.”
    “What kind of sense does it make otherwise? Who else would have killed Tory’s mother?”
    “I can’t answer that. I gotta work with facts here. He had the wrong gun, we got nothing to show the man had a car. Now, could be we’ll find one yet, and the gun that he used on his wife. That could be.”
    He took his handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped the back of his neck. “But it appears to me, if Bodeen didn’t do those murders up in Darlington County, maybe he didn’t kill anyone. That means whoever did is still walking free. I was hoping to have a talk with Tory.”
    “She’s not here. She’s—” White hot fear burned through his belly. “She’s gone to Hope.”
    Tory opened herself, tried to feel him, gauge him. But all she saw was dark. Cold, blank dark. The rustling moved in a circle, a taunting. She turned with it, even as the saliva dried up in her mouth, she turned to face it head-on.
    “Which of us did you want that night? Or did it matter?”
    “It was never you. Why would I want you? She was beautiful.”
    “She was a child.”
    “True.” Dwight stepped out in the clearing. “But so was I.”
    It broke her heart. One quick snap. “You were Cade’s friend.”
    “Sure. Cade and Wade, like twins themselves. Rich and privileged and handsome. And I was their chubby little token. Dwight the Dweeb. Well, I fooled them all, didn’t I?”
    He’d have been twelve, she thought, staring at the easy smile on his face. No more than twelve years old. “Why?”
    “Call it a rite of passage. They were always first. One or the other of them, always first in everything. I was going to be the first one to have a girl.”
    Amusement—it couldn’t be anything but amusement—danced in his eyes. “Not that I could brag on it. Kinda like being Batman.”
    “Oh God, Dwight.”
    “Hard for you to see that, you being a female. We’ll call it a guy thing. I had a bad itch. Why shouldn’t it have been my good friend Cade’s precious sister I used to scratch it?”
    He spoke so calmly, so casually, that the birds continued to sing,