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“Black-powder firearms. Somebody put three lead balls in a man who worked for Love Younger. The cops want to put it on me. Except I don’t own no cap-and-ball guns.”
“The man who was killed is one of the men who attacked us, isn’t he?”
“No doubt about it.”
“He was kidnapped and tortured in a motel. That’s what the paper said.”
“I wouldn’t call it torture.”
“You were there?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I don’t want you doing things like that, Wyatt.”
“He was a son of a bitch and deserved a whole lot worse than what he got.”
“You can’t do those kinds of things in my name.”
“I done it in my own name.”
She placed her hand on his forehead and smoothed back his hair. His eyes never changed expression. “I have to confess something to you,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I think you’ll be very disappointed in me.”
“No, I won’t.”
“You don’t know what I’m about to say.”
“I got my suspicions.”
“Like what?”
“Those trashy ballpoint pens you was using, you didn’t get them from Walmart, did you?”
He saw her swallow. “No, I didn’t.”
“You knew that no-good detective Bill Pepper.”
“I did. I knew him very well.”
“Out in Los Angeles, when he was with the LAPD?”
“Before that,” she said.
“You’re saying you were sexually involved with him?”
“He was my brother.”
Wyatt’s colorless eyes showed no reaction, but the blood in his head seemed to go somewhere else and leave helium in its place.
“So you thought it was me who done him in, carved him up with a knife and such? Thought you’d get next to me and maybe do some payback? Is that what you thought, Bertha?”
“I didn’t know you. Then I learned you’re incapable of doing something like that.”
“You don’t know what I’m capable of doing. You didn’t get to know me before the state turned my head into a pinball machine and made me drink all them chemical cocktails. Maybe the man I used to be is hiding in the weeds. Ever give that some thought?”
