Not One of Us(80)

I felt disassociated from my body, like this was all happening to someone else, not me. Perhaps that was partly the result of physical shock. The sun shone brightly like any ordinary day, yet I wondered if by nightfall I’d be joining Deacon in some vast, mysterious beyond.

I could delay it no longer. With the two men pressed close against my sides, I stepped over the threshold. Musky darkness enveloped me, and it took several moments for my eyes to adjust.

The one-room log cabin was sparsely furnished with only a couch and two chairs. One of the men pushed me from behind.

“Get in the chair,” Uncle Buddy commanded.

I dropped into it and faced them, biting the inside of my mouth to keep my lips from trembling. It’s showtime. Act stupid. Act compliant. Buy as much time as you can.

Uncle Buddy pulled out my cell phone. “Password again?”

I recited the code, and he pulled up a screen, then handed Cash my cell phone. “Jori’s been texting a cop. Can you believe this shit? They have a recording from the Cormier incident, and Jori identified my voice for the cop.”

“I’ll say I was mistaken,” I promised. “I won’t ever tell.”

Cash turned on the recording. Deacon’s and Clotille’s voices came alive in the tiny cabin, their familiar colors and shapes playing in my mind. The gunshots fired, and the whirring began.

Cash frowned. “I didn’t hear us on there. She’s lying.”

Uncle Buddy raised a brow at me.

I considered lying, telling them that they weren’t on the tape, that I’d been mistaken. But Uncle Buddy wasn’t stupid. At some point, he’d replay the recording in its entirety and hear it for himself.

“Fast forward to near the end,” I said.

The voices returned, speaking only a few seconds, and then the recording stopped.

“You can’t tell nothing from that,” Cash said. “If you could, the cops would have done taken us in years ago.”

“Ah, but now they have my niece.”

Cash glared at me. “So what?”

“She has a . . . special talent for identifying voices.”

“Bullshit. She can’t prove nothing. It’s her word against ours.”

Uncle Buddy regarded me thoughtfully.

“He’s right. I can’t prove anything,” I said quickly. “Who are they going to believe? A respected county commissioner and prominent businessman—or me? My ID using synesthesia would never hold up in court.”

“Syna-what?” Cash asked, his forehead drawn in lines of confusion.

“I’ll handle this, Cash. You go wait outside and keep an eye out.”

“No. I’m in this too. Ain’t no way—”

“I said, get out!” Uncle Buddy drew up his fists, then dropped them to his sides, regaining his composure with effort. “I’ll take care of everything,” he insisted.

With a final glare, Cash stomped out of the cabin, slamming the door behind him.

“Thank you,” I gushed. With Cash gone, I figured my odds for getting out of this alive had just improved.

Uncle Buddy paced the room, not even glancing my way. His silence began to unnerve me.

“Like I said, I’ll keep quiet.” I scrambled for more reasons to sound believable. “I-I know how much Mimi and Zach depend on you. And they need me too. We’re family. For their sakes, let’s forget this whole thing happened.”

“I never wanted to kill Deacon and his mother,” Uncle Buddy began.

His tone was casual. We could have been discussing accounting, for all the emotion he showed in that brutal admission of guilt.

“I went there that day to talk some sense into Louis. Make him agree to stop investigating Ray Strickland’s claims against me.”

“You mean Raymond guessed about the illegal adoption?” I asked, my mind racing. The scattered murders, occurring over nearly thirty years, were finally forming a terrifying pattern, one with Uncle Buddy right at the rotten center. Had Jackson discovered Uncle Buddy’s secret depravity in stealing him from his biological mother? Had he at least guessed at the truth? If so, it would have been natural for him to confide in his friend Ray. I kept my eye on Cash as he leaned against his truck, glowering and puffing a cigarette.

“Ray started blackmailing me in prison.” Uncle Buddy’s face darkened to a murderous purple. “At first, it was chicken shit amounts. I mean, how much money do you really need in prison? You can only buy so many cigarettes and candy bars in the prison canteen.”

The pieces of the puzzle still did not perfectly fit the puzzle. “But he must have realized if you killed Jackson over the adoption, then you were the one that also framed him for his friend’s murder. That should have been worth lots of money.”

Uncle Buddy shook his head. “That’s not what he had on me.”

“What else did you do?” My mind went to a dark place. Was Uncle Buddy a serial killer with dozens of victims strewn across South Alabama and beyond?

He shrugged as though what he was about to admit was of little consequence. “It was all about drugs, of course. Ray was a dealer, right? He and Jackson got a whiff of what was really going on in town.” Uncle Buddy waved a hand over the room. “I have over a dozen remote cabins here in the bayou. What better place to smuggle in drugs and divide up the merchandise?”