“Collier? Bob? Y’all all right in there?”

  I recognized the voice, although it took me a second to put a name to it. Probably the shock.

  “We’re fine, Cletus.” It was Mother who answered, although Rafe gave my arm a final squeeze before he turned and headed back down the stairs.

  “Did you get him?”

  I followed, in time to see Mother pull the back door open, and Cletus nod. “Didn’t realize what he was planning until the bottle flew. By then it was too late.”

  “Not your fault,” Rafe said. “We all thought he was gonna try to make his way in.”

  “This made more sense.” Cletus looked at the mess in the hallway. I stayed where I was, on the third step, still clutching Carrie. She was sleeping in my arms.

  “Woulda made more sense,” Rafe agreed, “if nobody’d been awake.”

  I shivered. If Mother and Bob had been alone in the house, and upstairs instead of in the converted bedroom/parlor, and asleep instead of waiting for something to happen…

  “Bring him in,” Bob said. “I want to see him.”

  Mother turned to him. “Are you sure you’re feeling well enough for that?”

  “I want to face who shot me, Margaret. And hear what he has to say for himself.”

  Mother nodded. Cletus glanced at Rafe. When Rafe didn’t tell him not to, Cletus told Bob, “Yes, boss,” and went to the back door, where he raised his voice. “Bring him in here.”

  I set off up the stairs. If there was going to be a lot of talking, and maybe screaming and God knew what, Carrie would definitely be better off in bed. I didn’t want to miss any of the denouement, though, so after putting her down and making sure she was going to go back to sleep, I tiptoed back downstairs again, for the final confrontation.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They had gathered in the living room. I could hear their voices waft toward me as I reached the first floor hallway. The wood at the foot of the stairs was still hot when I stepped on it, and it was going to need a good restorer to cope with it. The walls were sooty, but that would probably—hopefully—come off with soap and water.

  Or maybe not. Pauline, Bob’s late wife, had papered the hallway in damask. If the flames had burned the wallpaper off, the whole hallway would have to be redone.

  But that wouldn’t my problem. I’d take a soapy rag to the wall tomorrow and see what I could do, but this was Bob’s house, and Mother’s now, and they’d have to deal with the repairs. Mother might quite enjoy the chance to put her own stamp on the place, as a matter of fact.

  I left the burned part of the hallway behind and headed for the living room.

  It was full of men, most of them oversized and grim, in uniforms of some sort of other, and with weapons on their belts. The only exception, of course, was Bob, who wasn’t officially on duty. Everyone else, including Rafe, was in either SWAT black or sheriff’s office tan.

  The man sitting opposite from Bob on the sofa, with his hands cuffed behind his back, was also dressed in black. The better to blend with the shadows, I guess.

  I’ll be honest. It wasn’t really that much of a surprise to recognize Harvey Tucker. I’d always thought he seemed a little too interested in the case for someone who wasn’t personally involved, and I knew that Rafe had spent a lot of time since he came here watching Tucker for signs that the other man had been involved with ex-Chief Carter’s shenanigans.

  “Well, Harvey,” Bob said, “this is a helluva thing, isn’t it?”

  Tucker lifted his lip and gave him a snarl.

  “You want to tell me what it’s all about?”

  There was a beat. Tucker didn’t say anything.

  “How about I recap?” Rafe was leaning against the wall with his arms folded. He looked relaxed, but wasn’t. I’m not sure Tucker knew it, but I could certainly tell. There was tension all over his body, from the set of his shoulders to the way he stood, ready to move at a moment’s notice. I don’t know whether he expected Tucker to try something or not—hard to imagine what he could do, with his hands cuffed behind his back—but Rafe was clearly ready for it, whatever it was.

  When nobody said anything in response to this, either, my husband continued. “You’re being charged with three counts of murder in the first, for Mark Ellison, Scott Green, and Glenn Forsyth.”

  “You can’t prove I did that,” Tucker said.

  Rafe ignored him. “You’re being charged with four counts of attempted murder. Three on Sheriff Satterfield—in the Bog, in the hospital, and here tonight—and one on Mrs. Martin.”

  There was a beat before he added, “I’d throw in attempted murder on my wife and my daughter, too, but I figure you didn’t know we were here and I might not get it to stick.”

  Tucker didn’t say anything, and Rafe continued, his voice going from businesslike to dangerous, “But if I find out different, and that you knew my wife and daughter were upstairs when you threw that bottle through the window, you won’t like what happens. You know, better than anyone here, just how far I’m willing to go when my family’s hurt.”

  Tucker didn’t respond to that either, but I saw his Adam’s apple move when he swallowed. A bit dry-mouthed, I figured.

  “Rafael…!” my mother murmured, and Bob did the same thing, if not in the same way. “Collier…!”

  Rafe ignored them both, to lean in closer to Tucker, his hands braced on the coffee table and the muscles in his arms showing to nice advantage. Nice for me to look at, but I bet they also had a salutary effect on Tucker. “Don’t fuck with me. I’d like nothing better than to take you apart with my bare hands. Don’t think I won’t, if you try anything at all after this.”

  “I think,” Tucker said, and he tried to make it sound confident and scathing, but the effect was a bit ruined by the slight tremor in his voice, “we’re all well aware of what you’re capable of.”

  “Just so you know.”

  Rafe straightened up again, and his voice went from threatening back to mostly unemotional. “We’re throwing in a charge of arson over the firebomb. Might as well. I’m guessing you were hoping Sheriff Satterfield was sleeping upstairs and wouldn’t be able to make it out if the fire blocked the staircase?”

  Tucker didn’t say anything to that, but his mouth compressed.

  “What I wanna know,” Cletus said, from where he was mirroring Rafe’s stance on the other side of the room, “is why the hell this happened at all.”

  Rafe glanced at him. So did Bob. So did Tucker, and he looked just a little bit smug, as if he didn’t believe what they thought they knew, especially about the murders of Mark, Scotty, and Glenn, would be enough.

  “Best as I can figure it,” Rafe said, “it goes back to the Skinners and Chief Carter.”

  “The old police chief in Columbia?”

  Rafe nodded. “Before the Skinners died, they were running a massive drug operation up there on the Devil’s Backbone. Most of the local sales were in Columbia, since that’s where most of the people live, hereabouts. But I’m sure you knew what was going on, too.”

  Cletus nodded. So did everyone else.

  “Carter knew about it, as well. He was prob’ly profiting from it, before he got the idea to take the Skinners out, with the help of Robbie. And then Carter was taken out, too, and Tammy came onboard in Carter’s job.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Scotty Green had a drug problem. He’d been clean a couple years, but the people close to him said that lately, he looked like he’d gone back to using. He woulda had to get those drugs from somewhere. He woulda, most likely, gone back to his old source, if that old source was still around.”

  “And Tucker was that old source?”

  “Not sure about source,” Rafe said, looking at Tucker like the other man was an interesting specimen under a microscope, “but he knew what’d been going on. A sergeant in narcotics, working directly under Carter? Carter woulda brought him in, if for no other reason than to make sure the Skinners and their operation didn’t get too much interference from local law enforcement. Or Tucker mighta been the contact. Or maybe Carl Enoch was, and Tucker stepped in when Enoch went down. There’s not a lot of money in law enforcement. A guy might think he’d be excused for taking a little on the side. After all, he’s out there every day, risking his life... he might think he deserves a little compensation.”

  Tucker didn’t say anything to that, but he pressed his lips together tightly, and I think I saw a flush stain his cheeks. It was hard to blame him, when Rafe’s tone had been so very scathing.

  “So Scotty went to find drugs on Friday night and found Tucker,” Bob said, and Rafe nodded.

  “That’s what I think happened. They went to Dusty’s Bar, and Scotty tugged some old threads, and ended up getting in touch with Tucker. But the situation’s different now than two years ago. The Skinners are gone, Carter’s gone, Tammy Grimaldi’s in charge, on Bob’s recommendation, and she’d brought me in. And Tucker knew what my job at the department was.”

  “So the sergeant’s cover was about to be blown,” Patrick Nolan said.

  Rafe glanced at him and nodded. “I think he was afraid of that. He’s been careful since Tammy and I got here. He hasn’t made any secret outta how much he don’t like me and wishes I’d leave, but he’s been careful not to get too much of my attention. Or Tammy’s attention.”

  “This is all conjecture!” Tucker blustered. “You can’t prove any of it!”

  Rafe arched a brow. “I can prove you were here tonight, trying to set a fire that would kill the sheriff and his fiancée. The only way that makes sense, is if you did the rest of it.”

  Tucker had no response to that, so Rafe continued. “We figure he shot Scotty, and Mark Ellison and Glenn Forsyth, after they contacted him on Friday night. They met Tucker somewhere, prob’ly up on the ridge, at one of the Skinner properties, and Tucker shot ‘em all. Dealing with ‘em last year was one thing. Dealing with ‘em now, with both me and Tammy looking around for corruption, was something else entirely.”

  He paused, but nobody said anything, so he continued. “He drove Scotty’s truck with the bodies to the Bog once it was dark, and then waited for morning. He called Bob to meet him there. Once Bob showed up, Tucker shot him, and took Bob’s truck back to the ridge, where he ran it off the road. Then he walked back to his own vehicle, still parked where he’d left it the previous night, and drove home. He hadn’t wanted to get too close to Bob, since he knew Bob would be able to identify him, so he hadn’t made sure Bob was dead, but he knew it’d been a chest wound, and he thought, pretty reliably, he could count on Bob dying before anyone found him.”

  Another pause, not interrupted by anybody. “He took Bob’s phone with him when he left the Bog,” Rafe said, “and left it in the truck when he sent it off the road. The other three phones are God knows where, but the records show he used Scotty’s phone to call Bob on Saturday morning. If we ever find out where his car was parked overnight, we might find ‘em around there somewhere. Or he tossed ‘em in the river or buried ‘em in the backyard or something like that.”

  “But why me?” Bob wanted to know. “I had nothing to do with any of it. Why pick on me?”

  We all turned to look at him. He was sitting in one of the easy-chairs across the table from Tucker, with Mother perched on the arm next to him. He was still wearing the flannel pants and T-shirt he’d worn to go into the parlor earlier, and his gray hair was standing up like a cock’s comb.

  Rafe grinned at him. “You talked Tammy into coming down here, and Tammy brought me. It was you who talked the city council into offering her the job. I don’t doubt you told ‘em she’d be able to root out any corruption that Carter left. I’m sure that was part of the pitch.”

  Bob nodded. “But surely that’s not enough…”

  “The murder—Mark, Scotty, and Glenn—happened in your jurisdiction. You’d be investigating it if it was discovered in the usual way, up there on Skinner land. You might put two and two together and start to suspect what had happened.”

  Bob nodded. “But surely…”

  “He just don’t like you,” Rafe said bluntly. “You grew up together, and boys compete. In everything. You said it yourself. You played football and baseball together, and you competed for homecoming king. Then you became sheriff, and he was still a sergeant. And he was answering to Tammy Grimaldi. A woman, and one half his age. One who was marrying the son of the woman you wanted to marry.”

  Everyone looked at Mother. She raised her chin, but didn’t say anything. Rafe did not glance at Cletus, but Cletus did look at Rafe, and I could tell from his expression that he recognized the scenario Rafe had laid out. The two of them had grown up together, too, competing with each other for various things. And I knew that Cletus had, at times, been jealous of Rafe. I still remembered, vividly, that black eye Rafe had sported to Brenda Puckett’s funeral two years ago in August, after an altercation with, as he put it at the time, ‘the law.’

  “So he had three dead bodies up there on the ridge,” Rafe said now, “with a connection to the Skinners. He had me and Tammy looking into all of Carter’s old connections, including the drugs. He had you,” this was Bob again, “that he had to keep off the scent, so you didn’t put two and two together and talk to Tammy about it… ”

  Bob nodded.

  “But if it’ll make you feel better, I don’t think he woulda stopped there. I spent two days going around with him wondering when he was gonna put a bullet in my back.”

  “You knew,” I blurted out, “back then?”

  He looked at me. “I suspected, back then. We talked about it, you and me. How he made sure he was involved so he could know exactly where I was going and what I was looking at.”

  I nodded.

  “You even dragged your mama over to his house to see if Bob was tied up in the basement. You can’t tell me you didn’t already know.”

  Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “That was you? The old bat across the yard said there’d been a woman walking around looking through my windows, but I didn’t think…”

  I cleared my throat. “I was looking for Bob. Once Bob was found, I pretty much forgot all about you.”

  Tucker muttered something, but he didn’t respond.

  “Anything else you wanna say for yourself?” Rafe wanted to know. “Anything I left out?”

  Tucker sneered. “I’m not saying a word to you. Or anybody. Not until I’ve consulted a lawyer.”

  “We’ll let you do that.” Rafe looked at Cletus. “You want him? Or you want me to take him?”

  “Not sure how comfortable he’s gonna feel with either of us,” Cletus said, “at this point, but I’ll take him. At least I didn’t threaten him with bodily harm earlier.”

  Rafe nodded, not visibly discomfited at all by this. “He’s all yours. Make sure you don’t lose him.”

  “He’s not going anywhere,” Cletus said, and stuck his hand under Tucker’s arm. “Up you go.”

  Tucker popped up like a cork in a bottle. He’s not a small man, but Cletus is built like a refrigerator.

  “We’ll deal with the paperwork in the morning,” Bob told him. “Make sure he gets his chance to call for representation.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Cletus hauled Tucker out through the front door and over to the sheriff’s vehicle that was (now) parked at the curb outside Bob’s house. Rafe turned to the rest of the SWAT team. “Thanks for the backup.”

  “We’re always happy for a chance to dress up and play,” Nolan told him, with a grin. I surmised that the whole SWAT experience was as much fun for him as it was for Rafe. “Let’s go, boys.”

  He nodded toward the doorway. They all filed out. Leaving me and Rafe, Mother and Bob, in possession.

  There was a moment of silence. Then—

  “Helluva night,” Bob said.

  We nodded.

  “Want me to help you upstairs?”

  Bob shook his head. “If it’s OK with Margaret, I think we’ll just stay down here for the rest of the night. You kids go on up.”

  I glanced at Rafe. He looked back at me for a second before he told Bob, “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’m just gonna take my wife and my kid and my dog and my car and go home for what’s left of the night.”

  Yes, please.

  “Whatever you want,” Bob said. He shook his head. “Who’d’ve suspected Harvey Tucker, of all people…?”

  Rafe, clearly. And me. And probably Grimaldi, too.

  “He always was a bit crude in his manner,” Mother mused. “Not quite our sort, if you know what I mean.”

  I slanted a look over at Rafe, and saw his lips quirk. He didn’t comment, though, on being ‘our sort’ now, when the man who had arrested him at eighteen wasn’t. Instead, he just pushed to his feet. “I’ll go put a piece of cardboard over that hole in the back door.”

  “I’ll go get Carrie,” I said, following suit. “Five minutes and we’ll be out of your hair.”

  Neither of them answered, and when I turned to look over my shoulder, I saw that Mother had leaned in and was kissing Bob, right on the mouth.

  It wasn’t something I wanted to get mixed up in, so I followed my husband out of the living room and down the hall toward the back door, where Pearl was waiting, wagging her tail expectantly.

  Epilogue

  We were gathered outside the mansion, in the driveway where the cars stopped when there was a party. The whole family was there, including the extended parts: David, with Sam and Ginny Flannery, and Audrey with Mrs. Jenkins. There was also Wendell Craig, Rafe’s old handler from the TBI, who stood with Rafe and Mrs. Jenkins, since Audrey was at the top of the steps with Mother. They were both clutching bouquets of white roses and baby’s breath: Mother’s rather larger than Audrey’s. As for the rest of us, we were dressed in navy blue (so the pictures would come out looking nice) and holding single, long-stemmed, white roses.