Free Deep South by Nevada Barr Page A

father's going to kill her." The Barneses were from Clinton, a small town that butted up against the western edge of the state capitol of Jackson, a city of about 400,000. "We'll be there in half an hour," Mrs. Barnes told her.
    She stopped for a moment while someone hollered at her-presumably the killer dad-then amended her statement. "We'll be there in about an hour.
    I know the speed limit on the Trace is way low," she said virtuously.
    Anna made coffee, then, remembering her first hangover, a pot of weak tea for Heather. Ten minutes later the girl emerged from the shower looking revived. And much younger. To Anna's jaundiced eye, Heather appeared to be all of twelve years old. "Do you have any makeup?" the girl asked pitifully. "Nope."
    "A blow dryer?"
    "Nope."
    "You won't tell Daddy I was drunk, will you?"
    "YUP."
    "God, please don't." Anna ignored the wailed request and sipped her coffee. "Sit down.
    I made you tea. After last night you'll be dehydrated. You need to drink something."
    "Do you have a Coke?"
    "Nope." Heaving an exaggerated sigh, the girl slumped into a chair. She was on the way to full recovery. "Tell me what brought you to my graveyard," Anna said. Heather's gaze wandered around the room. Taco came over to sit beside her, lay his chin on her thigh and look dreamily into her face.
    What a ham, Anna thought, but she said nothing. "God," Heather said after a moment. "I can't remember a bunch. I mean, like, it's gone!"
    "Alcohol will do that if you drink enough of it," Anna said. "Tell me what you do remember."
    "The dance. I remember most of that. It was a real bore. The band was awful. Some of the boys had a bottle they were passing around. Then we all piled in some cars and left.
    That's about it." She looked at Anna in wide-eyed innocence. "That's all I can remember." Anna didn't doubt much of the evening had been lost in a drug-induced blackout. She also knew the girl was hiding something.
    Not being her mother, Anna didn't much care what. Adolescent peccadilloes were not even mildly amusing at eigbt-thirty A.M. after a short night. "Ab, well," she said. "Maybe it'll come to you."
    "I don't think so," Heather said with finality.
    Mr. Barnes was not pleased but didn't look homicidal. Mrs. Barnes seemed a little more likely to commit murder. Without fear to temper her mood, anger had taken over. If her mother could be believed, Heather would not be dating, talking on the phone, watching television or any of a dozen other things until she was twenty-one.
    A lone at last, Anna decided to take the day off-comp time for having been on duty the day before and half the night when she was not yet officially on the payroll. A second pot of coffee, and she was inspired to attack the boxes the maintenance men had helped her unload.
    It took an effort of will not to dwell on the charm of the stone tower house she'd left behind in Mesa Verde, and the paucity of her belongings caused her to suffer a few twinges of rootlessness, but her Navajo rugs looked good on the gleaming hardwood floors and her grandmother's antiques lent interest to the boxy rooms. She'd just reached that most satisfying of chores, the hanging of pictures, when a car pulled into her drive and parked in front of the carport. A Claiborne County sheriff's vehicle. Rocky Springs, she remembered, was in Claiborne County, one of the poorer counties in Mississippi and one having a high percentage of African-American households.
    Automatically stepping away from the windows into the shadow of the front door, she watched her visitor approach: in his forties, a bit soft around the middle but well suited to the uniform. Thick shoulders were crisped up by ironed khaki, and his gun belt rode on narrow hips over muscled thighs that stretched the crease out of his trousers when he walked. As be neared the front door he took off his hat, a wide brimmed Stetson in warm-colored felt, and exposed a shock of sandy hair in need of cutting. His eyebrows were so blond