Дэвид Балдаччи - The Guilty

“Thanks,” said Robie.

“And don’t forget about your arm, I was serious. You don’t want permanent damage.”

Holloway drove off while Robie flipped to Leviticus chapter eighteen. He read down the passages.

“Anything strike you?” asked Reel.

“It deals with homosexuality, like he said. But it also talks about something else.”

“What?”

“Incest.”

“Incest? What kind?”

Robie read a bit more, then looked up at her. “Between brother and sister for one.”

Reel gazed at him. “So do you think...?”

“Emmitt and Laura?” Robie grimaced.

Reel said, “He was older, she was younger. Her own brother having sex with her might make her depressed and confused and want to get the hell out of town.”

“But I never would have thought that Emmitt—”

“Robie, you said people can justify anything they do, whether it’s incest” — she paused for a moment — “or killing people.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Are you talking about us with that last part?” he said quietly.

“Maybe I am.”

He looked back at Billy Faulconer’s grave and all the air seemed to go out of Robie. He turned back to Reel. “Then let’s go get a drink and get out of this damn heat before we wade too deeply into the crap inside our heads. We might never get back out.”

They drove to a local bar, ordered beers, and sat at the back table where a wall AC unit was blasting away.

People were staring at them from all corners of the place.

“I love being in a place where I’m so popular,” Reel said dourly.

“Cantrell is just that kind of place.”

“What kind of place?”

“One you don’t visit. But if you do people will stare at you until you get the hell out.”

They each had another beer and the afternoon slowly gave way to evening.

Reel pulled out her phone and started tapping keys.

“What are you doing?” asked Robie.

She held up a finger and then finished typing.

“I just Googled incest and ROH , the term from the back of the photo we found.”

“Did you get a hit?”

She stared at the screen. “This one looks promising.” She read over the article. “Okay, ROH stands for ‘runs of homozygosity.’”

“That explains a lot,” said Robie sarcastically. “What the hell is homozygosity?”

Reel read some more. “It’s related to genetics. Inbreeding results in big upswings in homozygosity. The article says that means that identical chromosomal segments by descents are basically paired off together. That’s a bad thing, obviously. It leads to lots of undesirable things happening to any offspring of an incestuous relationship.”

“That’s what happened with the royals, right? Bluebloods and ‘mad kings’ syndrome? They kept marrying close relatives to keep their bloodlines pure, but they were really screwing them up. It’s why doing that’s now outlawed.”

“Yes. And that ties in with Leviticus eighteen, which deals with those sorts of incestuous situations.”

“And Jane Smith?”

“Could be the result of that,” answered Reel. “Not that she was the product of an incestuous relationship, of course, which is what ROH refers to. But if Jane is Laura, twenty-plus years of shame and loathing and emotional scarring could change anyone, Robie. Anyone. Even damage their minds. I’m surprised she’s not even more screwed up.”

Robie looked confused. “Okay, But ROH comes from the product of an incestuous relationship, like you just said. The offspring. So why would someone have written ROH on the back of a family photo if it didn’t have some relevance?”

Reel said, “You’re right. But Jane Smith is forty. She can’t be Laura and her brother’s child. She has to be Laura.”

Robie nodded. “That’s right. And someone killed Emmitt.”

“Well, we know it wasn’t Jane Smith — slash — Laura Barksdale. She was locked up.”

“So that brings us back to Henry Barksdale.”

“Unless you have a better guess, I’d put my money there,” said Reel.

“Why kill his son all these years later?”

“Maybe he just located him. Emmitt was living under a different name. Blue Man did it relatively quickly, but he has a lot of horsepower behind him.”

“We have to find out for sure if Jane Smith is Laura,” said Robie.

“Can’t they take DNA samples from Emmitt and Jane and compare them? That will show if they’re related or not.”

Robie pulled out his phone.

“Who are you calling?” asked Reel.

“Our friendly neighborhood FBI special agent Wurtzburger.”

“You think he’ll help us on this?”

“If there’s even a chance his serial killer is mixed up in this, then yes, I think he will.”

Wurtzburger agreed to arrange for the DNA testing after Robie filled him in on the latest developments, and their theory that Henry Barksdale very well might be their killer.

After that Reel and Robie drove back to the Willows as the dusk gave way to darkness.

Halfway there the car’s AC simply quit and they had to roll down their windows.

“My God, is it always this humid down here?” asked Reel.

“Well, I remember it not being so bad in January and February.”

“Is that why you left? You thought you were in Hell and wanted to get out?”

“That wasn’t the only reason.”

She glanced at him, her brow furrowed. “You never really told me what you and your dad talked about.”

“We didn’t talk about anything. I said stuff that he ignored. Like always.”

“So no progress?”

“No, I did learn something I didn’t know before.”

“What?”

“Laura came by the house after I’d left and wanted to know where I was. And my father told her, basically, that I’d gotten the hell out and left her and him behind to start a new life for myself. Can you believe that?”

“If he were angry at you for leaving, then, yeah, I can believe it.”

He shot her a glance. “Don’t take his side on this.”

“I’m not taking anyone’s side, Robie. I’m just trying to understand a really complicated situation.”

“But it’s not complicated. My dad is an asshole and does whatever he can to screw up my life.”

“Well, if that’s your attitude, I don’t see you ever working this out and getting back in the field. And that’s what you want, right? To get back in the field?”

They sat in silence for some minutes.

“I don’t know,” Robie finally said.

“Well, you may have to answer that question before you can answer any of the others.”

“But what makes no sense to me is that I wrote and called Laura after I left. And got no reply. Ever. But she shows up at my house a couple days after I left and wonders where I am?”

“Well, maybe your letters and phone messages never reached her.”

“Shit. All these years and...”

The silence lasted another several minutes.

Finally Reel said, “Let’s move on to something a little more tangible. Henry Barksdale?”

“Yes. But how do we find him?” asked Robie.

“Well, if he’s killing people in Cantrell, he has to be somewhere close by.”

“I wonder how he lured Janet and Sara Chisum? He wouldn’t have even known them. They came here only recently.”

“Was he a good-looking guy?”

“Over two decades ago, yeah he was. Tall, very handsome, distinguished. He’s probably still all of those things. Different rules for guys versus girls as they age.”

“Well maybe it’s as simple as that. Older guy tells them he has money. We know they have sex for money.”

“But Emma Chisum seemed to think that Janet knew something about someone important. And that was going to be the source of the money.”