A muscle in Carson’s jaw jerked. He fought the reflex, but it continued. Tick. Tick. Tick. “No. I don’t remember much before the police arrived.” He’d drunk himself into oblivion with a bottle of Bacardi after the argument with his mother. A total alcohol blackout had never happened before ... but that day it had.
Stokes chuckled. “Poor bastard. That’s a hell of a thing to live with.”
One. Two. Three. Four. Five ... ten. Don’t lose it. Stay cool. “It is.”
More of the obscene chuckling. “I tell you what. You get me two hours a week with the others and I’ll tell you what you’ve waited fifteen long years to hear.”
Carson’s tension rocketed to a higher level. “Done.”
Stokes hesitated a moment as if he was skeptical. But then he spoke. “You’ll make sure there’s no backlash from that bastard Wainwright?”
“You have my word.”
Stokes bent his head down to rub his nose. “First off,” he began, “you weren’t nowhere in the house when your people was butchered.”
Carson flinched.
“I don’t know where you was, mind you. ’Cept what the papers said about you being passed out drunk in your car at some teenage hangout.”
A moment of silence ... then two.
“Go on,” Carson urged.
“But I know you didn’t kill nobody.”
“You confessed,” Carson countered, a tight lid on half a dozen emotions whirling inside him. “I believe any question about who committed the murders has already been answered.”
Stokes’s expression literally beamed with anticipation. “I said what I was told to say.”
Adrenaline fired in Carson’s veins. “Who told you what to say?”
Stokes harrumphed. “Don’t take no rocket scientist to figure that out.”
Relax. Don’t let him see any reaction. “Just answer the question.”
“Your boss told me what to say. Who else?”
“Don’t make statements you can’t back up,” Carson warned. He knew all too well how this guy liked manipulating, playing head games. He wasn’t going to blindly believe anything Stokes related without indisputable evidence.
“Three days before the law picked me up on that anonymous tip, Wainwright came to see me.”
The statement stunned Carson for about two seconds. The idea that Annette Baxter had told him to say this crossed Carson’s mind. But he’d checked the visitors’ log. Stokes had not received any visitors or telephone calls since his arrival. That, of course, didn’t mean that Baxter hadn’t figured out a way to work around the usual means of communication.
“How did Wainwright know where you were?” Not possible. Had to be bullshit. Carson didn’t know why he even bothered to listen. He was a fool for even coming here.
“Let’s just say he issued me an invitation.”
Carson shook his head. “You’re going to have to give me more than that.”
“You know exactly what I mean. He held a bunch of press conferences and mentioned that I was the primary suspect. He offered that reward. Iknew he was talking directly to me. I knew what he wanted. My mama didn’t raise no fool.”
“Your mother is the one who gave the police that anonymous tip.” As difficult as it was to believe, even scum like Stokes had a mother, was once a child.
“She got the reward, too,” Stokes reminded. “Wainwright promised she would.”
“So you just called up Wainwright and said here I am, come see me?” This grew more ludicrous with each passing moment.
“That’s about the size of it.”
