Niceville

something barely audible. Twyla cocked her head, her mouth tightening.
    “
Bluebell?
Have I told Bluebell? No, I have not told Bluebell. I am not going to tell Bluebell, now or ever. She’s the reason why I’m not going to tell
anyone
about this. I don’t want her to know. You’ll have to find some way to explain why you’re dead to me. I don’t care what it is.”
    She stopped, seemed to center herself.
    “But one thing
will
happen. Bluebell must never have to know what I know. That’s one thing you can do. One good thing.”
    Littlebasket’s mouth was working, trying to form some kind of an apology.
    Twyla brushed it aside.
    “You will find a way for her not to
ever
know. If you decide to shoot yourself, don’t leave a note explaining it all. If you decide to crash your plane, just go do it and let everybody go on thinking what a great guy you are. I don’t care about any of that. You’re dead to me from the moment I leave this house. Tell Bluebell anything you want. Just makesure that Bluebell never knows about those pictures. Say that you understand me … say it … Daddy.”
    The word rocked him and his tears suddenly became much more convincing.
    He nodded and covered his eyes again.
    She stepped back, looked over at Coker and Danziger, both of whom were really wishing they had had a lot more to drink than a couple of glasses of Jim Beam and a bucket of Valiums.
    Coker and Danziger exchanged looks, and Danziger came over to the old man, stood in front of him. “Listen up, old-timer. Listen up. Shit. Coker, he’s turning into a puddle of warm piss here. Pour the old man some more tequila.”
    Coker poured them all some tequila, handed a glass of it to Morgan Littlebasket, for whom he had no feelings of any kind at all. This
thing
here, this deer tick—squashing him wasn’t worth the stain on the sole of his boot.
    He walked away, stood beside Twyla, and she eased herself under his arm, spent and shaking now that it was done.
    Danziger took his glass, sipped at it, took a knee in front of the old man.
    “These shots are small-file jpegs taken from a digital hard drive, or a mainframe, right?”
    No word, just the head moving up and down.
Yes
.
    “But when you started doing this, years back, there were no digital recorders, so at some point you took the earlier images and had them scanned into digital shots, right?”
    Yes
.
    “And then you switched to a digital recorder so you didn’t have to use film, right?”
    Yes
.
    “How did you get the pictures scanned? Nobody at a camera shop would have done that. They’d have called the cops. So you did it all yourself?”
    Yes
.
    “Okay. Big question here. Lie and we find out, Twyla’s not the only one you’re going to have to worry about. Did you ever take any of theshots and sell them? Put them on the Internet to trade with other kiddy-porn freaks or sell them to a porn mag?”
    The man looked up, a spark there, and then gone again. “No. Never.”
    “Twyla got an e-mail today, with about fifty shots taken from that camera you got rigged in her bathroom. Looks like it’s been there for years. How many years?”
    Lips dry and working, eyes down.
    “Since Bluebell was fifteen.”
    Danziger glanced at Twyla.
    “Ten years ago,” she said, a harsh whisper.
    “Ten years? That right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is the camera still there?”
    “No. I took it all out when Twyla moved away.”
    “When was that?”
    “Two … two and a half years ago.”
    “Did you throw the recorder away?”
    “No. I wanted to, but then … I didn’t.”
    “Is the camera still in the house?”
    “Yes. In a trunk. In the attic.”
    Danziger looked at Coker, who looked at Twyla, and they both left the room.
    “These shots here, they look like they stopped a while back. Like when the girls were younger. The shot where Twyla is helping Bluebell shampoo her hair, in the shower together—did you see that?”
    “Yes. I … I remember it.”
    “It looks like the last shot in the series that Twyla got. I want you to place it in time.”
    “Why?”
    “Because if you never let those shots out, then somebody else did. If we can figure out who that was, then Coker and Twyla and I are going to go see him and make sure he stops doing shit like this. So can you place that shot in time?”
    Silence, but he was thinking.
    “I think … it was Bluebell’s birthday. She was going to have her hair done special. Twyla was helping her in the bathroom.”
    “Which