“That’s a nice sentiment. Did you have any interaction with Mr. Walden?”

  “No.”

  Blowing a breath, Peyton shook him by the arm. “Now don’t go lying and gumming things up. You damn well did talk to him, and it was a hell of a show.”

  “It was just an argument,” Kolosik said, his worried gaze darting from Peyton to Somers. “He saw me talking to Peyton. He didn’t like that. He said something about sheep or a shepherd or something, but—”

  “Go on, tell them.”

  “He was only saying that for the rest of the craz—the rest of them at the house. When he got close to me, he started talking real low so nobody else could hear him. He started saying he’d cut my dick off, saying there was plenty of pussy in town, pardon my language, plenty in town but I better keep clear of his pussy, pardon, keep clear if I wanted to keep my dick.” Kolosik seemed to consider his own speech for a moment and added, “Pardon my language.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s this all about anyway?” Peyton insisted, squaring up to Somers like she meant to take a swing. “You’ve been bullying us, and—”

  Hazard moved fast because he didn’t trust the boy and because he trusted the girl even less. It took him a second, maybe less, to close with Kolosik, and then he grabbed the boy’s arm, twisted, and laid him out flat on the bed.

  “What the hell—” Kolosik began.

  “You didn’t tell us about these,” Hazard said, pinning the boy and rotating his arm to the light. As he’d expected, Kolosik’s hands were taped, and fresh blood showed through the bandages. He checked the other hand and found similar wounds. “Anything you want to add?”

  “Lemme up. Come on, you’re going to break my wrist, lemme up.”

  “You’re hurting him.” Peyton slapped Hazard’s shoulder. “Get off him, you big bully.”

  Hazard eased away from Kolosik, watching for sudden movement, but Kolosik just flopped onto his back and massaged his wrist. “I—I got in a fight with him.”

  “It ain’t nobody’s business,” Peyton said, her voice slipping into the country dialect that she had been immersed in for so long. “You don’t have to talk about that.”

  “When?” Somers said. “Those look pretty fresh.”

  “Yesterday.” Kolosik hung his head.

  “What time?”

  “I don’t know. The mail had just come, so it was after ten. But I remember after it was over, I went back inside and the eleven-thirty Jeopardy re-run was on.”

  “Sometime between ten and eleven-thirty.”

  “I guess so.”

  “And you got in a fight.”

  “He came right up to me. I was at home, and he came right up to the door like he knew the whole thing.”

  “Stop talking,” Peyton said. “Just stop talking right now.”

  “I knew that dirty old man was going to find a way to make them stay, keep them all for himself.” Kolosik breathed heavily, his bandaged hands flat on the bedspread. “Peyton’s tough, but nobody should have go through that. Having that old pervert touching them all the time, his hand up their skirts, making them go to bed with him. That’s not right. Where the hell were the police, that’s what I want to know. Where the hell was anybody who should have given a damn.”

  “He showed up at your house,” Somers said. “And what happened?”

  “He was shouting.” Kolosik’s breaths weighed a ton, his chest struggling to rise. “His pussy. That’s all I really heard. They were his pussy, and then he grabbed one of those barbeque things, a big spatula I’d left on the porch, and he came at me. Sliced this hand pretty good.” Kolosik’s fingers twitched, but he barely seemed aware of it; he was trying to breathe, but it looked like he had a mountain on his chest. “He just kept shouting, and my hand was bleeding, and I thought about Peyton and what he’d done to her, the way he’d gotten her into bed, his old fat face pressed up against her, and I—I lost it. I hit him. I don’t even know how many times I hit him. It must not have been a lot; nobody heard us. Can you believe that? Right out on the porch, and nobody heard. Walden was crawling away, and he had one hand over his eye like I’d popped him real good there, and he was scraping that damn spatula along the driveway like he couldn’t remember how to let it go. And about twenty yards like that he went, and then he got to his feet and ran.”

  With one last, convulsive breath, Kolosik slumped against Peyton, who frowned and brushed at the corner of her eye and ran fingers across Kolosik’s forehead. “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right. We’re getting out of here; it’ll be all right.”

  “Sarah told him,” Peyton said. “That’s what I bet. She told him everything that morning before we even left the house. Couldn’t keep her damn mouth shut. That’s why she went along with me, you know. She thought Rex would be scared and gone. She didn’t like it at all when she realized he was still going to take me away.”

  Somers glanced at Hazard, and Hazard nodded.

  “We’re going to need both of you to come into the station,” Somers said.

  “Just hold on,” Peyton said. “You’ve been going at us hammer and tongs, and you damn near broke Rex’s arm, and he’s nothing but a jelly bean but you’re looking at him serious.”

  “John Oscar Walden was found dead this morning,” Somers said.

  Peyton whitened, and she took double fistfuls of her long hair, and when she spoke, her voice had gone cobwebby. “Sarah done it. She always said she would, and she finally done it.”

  THE WAHREDUA POLICE STATION had two interview rooms, and Lazarus was still in one of them—sleeping, now, from what Hazard saw when he glanced through the door. In the other room, Peyton Laflamme sat sipping tap water and making a face like they’d asked her to drink sewage runoff. Kolosik they left in the bullpen, and Miranda Carmichael was keeping an eye on him as she finished her paperwork for the day.

  Hazard didn’t like Peyton Laflamme, so he made himself watch her through the mirrored partition and tried to unravel the reasons. She was too full of herself, for one. She was too self-satisfied. Some of that, he knew, came from her age. And some of it came from money. But some of it, he figured, was just the fact that Peyton Laflamme was a bitch and probably wouldn’t ever stop being one. If living with the Waldens hadn’t changed that, nothing would.

  The truth at the bottom of all those reasons, though, was that Hazard didn’t like her eyes. He didn’t like the way she looked at Somers. And that sounded so irrational, so sensational, so—

  —jealous—

  —fantastic, that he quashed it under a heap of other reasons and tried not to look too closely.

  The door to the observation room opened, and Somers poked in his head. “Ready?”

  Hazard nodded and followed him to the interview room. Peyton’s head came up, and her eyes—like she was running a shell game, like she was hustling three-card monte—scanned over Hazard and settled on Somers. She was almost purring.

  “I don’t know why you’ve got to drag us down here. Rex didn’t do anything. The old pervert would have just kept hounding us if Rex hadn’t sent him packing.”

  “He might not have,” Hazard said. “He’s dead, right?”

  “Well, yeah. But Rex didn’t know somebody was going to kill him. And neither did I.” Her eyes widened. “That’s what you think this was all about, but I didn’t. Honest to God, I didn’t know.”

  “You said Sarah killed him,” Somers said.

  “Well, yeah, but that’s only because of the fighting. And because she was crazier than a fry cook.”

  “Why don’t you tell us about her?”

  “Sarah? That wasn’t her real name, you know.”

  “Do you know her real name?”

  “I do. It was Britney Cowper. You ever heard a name like that? Real country, just like she was. Britney Cowpie. I bet some mean kids called her that, don’t you think?”

  “What was she like?”

  “Oh, she put on a good face all right. She was always praying and reading and working at whatever Brother Jeshua set her to. She could knit, believe it or not. She made some of these real nice lace things, they sold for about fifty dollars each at the flea market out of town. Brother Jeshua sure liked that.”

  “But that was only a face?”

  “Oh, sure. She was wild. Wild all the way down. You ever know somebody like that? Somebody that’s just all wildcat and screech owl, like they never been civilized? Girl like Sarah—excuse me, Britney. It’s just we always called ourselves by our new names—but a girl like Britney, she just didn’t know things like a real lady would.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a tampon. She only ever used those pads after I met her and showed her. And she had hair on her legs when I first saw her. Horsehair, I called it. That was pretty mean, I guess, but that’s what it looked like. She grew up rough. That’s what she told me anyway. Her mom died when she was real little, and she never knew her dad. I think she had folk out West, but she only said that once. The rest of the time, she made out like she didn’t have nobody but Brother Jeshua. And me, I guess. We were like sisters.”

  “Did she mention any names? Anyone important to her?”

  “I don’t think she had anyone like that, not really. I think she’d been on the streets a long time. I think she’d—well, I think she’d done things. You know what I mean? Sometimes girls get out there and they do things. Do you know?”

  “Yes,” Somers said.

  “Jesus didn’t care any about that. Neither did Brother Jeshua. That’s one of the things I liked about him, I guess. You ever know anybody like that? One of those girls like that, I mean.”

  “A few.”

  “We weren’t supposed to talk about stuff like that. About anything before we found Brother Jeshua. For the most part, that was good. I didn’t want those crazies knowing I was Marianne Laflamme’s daughter. If they knowed about that million dollars, they would have dragged me home by the hair.”

  “But you knew Sister Sarah’s real name?”

  “Oh yeah. She told me everything. I told her some stuff too, but she was simple, and she liked having a friend. We’d sleep in the attic most nights unless one of us was called to be with Brother Jeshua, and we’d talk there. Quiet. Just whispering girls, you know?” Peyton dashed the back of her hand across her eyes. “We were the first ones with him, and I figured Britney would be with him right up to the end. I knew I’d have to leave her one day, but she couldn’t live without him. Couldn’t even breathe without him. So I knew I’d be the one who left, and I didn’t even think I’d miss her, and now I’m crying. She was real simple. I said that, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” Somers said. “Why was she fighting with Mr. Walden?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve known everything else,” Hazard said.

  Those card-sharp eyes didn’t waver from Somers’s face. “Honest to God, I don’t. A few weeks ago, Brother Jeshua made her come to his room. I thought he was just putting it to her the way he always did, and Sarah always came back glowing like she’d just touched God, but that night she was angry. Not talking about nothing, but angry like a kettle on the stove, hot and ready to hiss. And the next night he called her in, and this time—” Peyton had the decency to blush. “Well, I listened. And sure enough, they were arguing.”

  “About?”

  “I told you. I don’t know.”

  “But you listened to them.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I heard a damn word.” Her eyes were liquid and fixed on Somers. “You going to let him talk to me like that?”

  “He talks the same to just about everyone,” Somers said. “Did you catch any of their conversation? Anything that might give us a clue?”

  Peyton shook her head.

  “What makes you so sure that she’s the one who killed him?”

  “Well, she was angry.”

  “Sure. Lots of people get angry, though, and they don’t cut people up.”

  “But you don’t know how angry she was. I told you, she was boiling. Keeping it all tamped down, yeah, but boiling. I never seen anyone angry like that.”

  “Is that all?” Hazard said. “She had a few arguments and was quietly angry?”

  For the first time, Peyton’s eyes cut towards Hazard, and something flickered in their depths. “You ain’t got the sense of an ass in a churchyard.”

  A laugh broke from Somers, and he clapped a hand over his mouth as he flushed. “Sorry.”

  “You’ve got nothing,” Hazard said with a sour look at his partner. “She was angry, that’s it. Nothing you can prove.”

  “She said she was Judas. That’s what she said. What do you think about that, you dirty little faggot?”

  The air in the tiny interview room had turned to ice. Hazard, for the first time since sitting down, was interested in this girl and what she had to say.

  “Peyton,” Somers said. “You’ve got two friends here who are trying to figure out what happened. If you keep talking like that, you’re going to lose those friends. Do you understand?”

  Her eyes slid back to Somers, her gaze like butter in a smoking skillet. “Yes, sir. I’m real sorry, sir. It’s just that he gets under my skin, talking to me like that. I don’t like anyone talking to me like that.”

  “Say that again,” Hazard said. “About Judas.”

  “I don’t like him in here. Can’t he leave? Can’t I just talk to you?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Can’t you ask me?”

  Somers looked at Hazard, and Hazard kicked back from the table. “Have fun.”

  From the observation room, he watched as Somers leaned towards Peyton and asked, “Why don’t we start over now? Tell me what Britney said about being Judas.”

  Peyton thought for a moment, her hands absently gathering her long, dark hair, drawing it across her shoulder so that it laid bare her pale neck and spilled over her breasts. “You ever read the Bible?”

  “Pretend I don’t.”

  Hazard repressed a snort.

  “Judas was one of the disciples of Jesus Christ. The first time he was Jesus, I guess. And Judas is the one that betrayed him. Got him killed.”

  “And Britney was planning on killing Walden?”

  “I don’t know about that. I don’t rightly know. She wanted him dead, but it was a holy kind of wanting. It filled her up. You could see it in her like sunshine, like she’d got it all bottled up inside. Towards the end, she talked about it a lot.”

  “About killing him?”

  “About how Jesus Christ needed a Judas in the Bible. She’d say things like how Brother Jeshua would need a Judas, too, and about what a heavy burden that would be. She talked about it like it was somebody’s duty. She even said that once: said it was a responsibility.”

  “Her responsibility?”

  Peyton shrugged.

  “And you think because of that, she killed him?”

  From beyond the interview room came the sounds of the station: the copier humming, voices burbling, a phone ringing itself off the hook. When Peyton spoke, her voice sounded like she was talking from a mile away. “She was fighting with him, and those fights were getting bad. You said he was dead, and the first thing I thought was Sarah. I mean, Britney. And I thought maybe her faith had started to waver. Maybe she killed him to see if what he promised was true.”

  “And what did he promise?”

  “That he’d rise on the third day.”

  Somers leaned forward to ask something else, but the door to the observation room creaked open, and Hazard turned to face Swinney. She beckoned him out into the hall.

  “We’re in the middle of something.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Are you?”

  Hazard gritted his teeth.

  “Are you really? What—oh, sweet Christ? Are you doing an interview?”

  “All right. Forget it.”

  “Forget it? Detective Hazard, I can’t believe I’m so un-fucking-believably stupid that I didn’t notice you were in an interview room.”

  “I said forget it.”

  “I hope I don’t forget it. I’m going to write myself a note: when Detective Hazard and Detective Somerset are in the interview room with a murder suspect, they are probably doing an interview. Is that how I should write it?”

  “For fuck’s sake.”

  Swinney grinned. “Your life is about to go straight to hell, Detective Hazard.”

  “So you’re busting my balls?”

  “Sometimes I like to help the universe along.”

  “What’s happening?”

  Swinney nodded across the bullpen to a tall woman. She was solidly built, and combined with her height that made her a formidable presence in her leather jacket and black denim jeans. But it was her hair that drew Hazard’s eye. A shock of blue hair, buzzed down to nothing on the sides, was combed straight back like a greaser. Her description matched the one that Kelley Jane had given them: the lesbian—according to Kelley Jane—who had been lurking around the Waldens’ property. Kelley Jane had also suggested this woman might have killed Walden. And here she was, hands on her hips like she might break a pool cue over somebody’s head if she didn’t get what she wanted.

  “Did you get a name?”

  “Yeah, we got one. She marched right in and gave it to us. Insisted we stop all of this right now.”

  “All of what?”

  “The interview. That’s Peyton’s mother.”

  HAZARD'S MIND FLICKED THROUGH POSSIBILITIES like slides in a carousel: the woman was lying; the woman was telling the truth; the woman had killed Walden; the woman was here to eliminate a potential witness; the woman had decided to turn herself in; the woman was a lawyer; the woman was a reporter; the woman was working for the mob.

  Letting out a breath, Hazard forced himself to abandon the chaotic thoughts. Working for the mob. Jesus Christ, he’d been watching too many of those damn thrillers with Somers. Well, not watching. Not entirely. That had been their weekend routine: they’d start the movie, and then they’d turn out the lights, and then, under the blanket, one of them, usually Hazard, would forget all about the movie and—