Unspeakable by Sandra Brown Page B

that at this point they were wanted only for questioning. He drove straight from the tavern to the mobile-home park where they lived together in a ratty trailer. Their car was gone and they didn't answer his knock. He resisted the urge to search the trailer without a warrant. On this case, everything must be done by the book. If the brothers were charged with murder, he didn't want the case dismissed because of a technicality.
    When he questioned their neighbors, they looked scornfully at the trailer and told the sheriff they hoped he arrested Carl and Cecil and locked them up for good. They were nuisances, coming and going at all hours of the night, speeding through the park and endangering the youngsters playing outdoors, terrorizing young women with crude remarks and catcalls. Their trailer was an eyesore in an otherwise neat community. Unanimously their neighbors would like to be rid of them. He then drove to the oil-drilling rig where the Herbolds were employed. "They didn't show up for work this morning," the foreman told Ezzy. "I knew they'd done time, but everybody deserves a second chance. Now I'm two hands short. So much for being a nice guy. What'd they do, anyhow?"
    Ezzy had declined to answer. But even if he had, he wouldn't have known where to begin. The answer would have been long and complicated. The Herbolds had been getting into trouble since they were just kids still living with their stepfather.
    Delray Corbett had married their widowed mother when the boys were in primary school. She was a pretty woman, shy and quiet, who was obviously intimidated by her boisterous sons. She never had exerted parental control over them. This made them all the more resentful of and rebellious against their new stepfather's stern discipline. After their mother died, leaving Delray their guardian, their hostility toward him had intensified. When he remarried, they became fullfledged incorrigibles, making life hell for him and Mary. The boys' first malfeasance was a suspected shoplifting of a six-pack of beer. "They weren't caught with the goods, Delray, so we can't prove it."
    Ezzy remembered Delray Corbett's mortification when he delivered the two tipsy boys to his doorstep. "I'll tend to it, Sheriff Hardge. Thank you for bringing them home. You have my word that this will be the last time."
    Delray was unable to keep his promise. The boys grew more unruly with each passing year, especially after Dean Corbett was born. He was the apple of his daddy's eye. Cecil and Carl seemed determined to be just the opposite.
    Their misdeeds increased in seriousness until, in Cecil's sophomore year of high school—Carl was a grade younger—a girl accused them of exposing themselves to her on the school bus and forcing her to fondle them. The boys claimed that she was lying, that the incident had never happened, that it was wishful thinking on her part. Since it was her word against theirs, they went unpunished. The girl's parents were outraged and publicly blamed Delray for his stepsons'
    behavior.
    There followed a string of petty thefts, vandalism, and DUIs, but the boys were clever. None of the charges stuck. Then one night they were caught red-handed stealing auto parts from a salvage yard. They were sentenced to eighteen months in a juvenile detention facility. They were released after serving a year and returned to parental custody.
    Delray had laid down the law: One misstep and they were out. Two nights later they got drunk, stole a car off a used-car lot, and drove it to Dallas, where they ran head-on into a van, seriously injuring the driver. They were tried as adults and sent to Huntsville. Delray washed his hands of them.
    When they were released on parole, they didn't return to Blewer. Not until the spring of 1976. Earlier that year a drilling outfit had struck oil and in quick succession brought in three new wells. This incited a flurry of drilling, creating a demand for workers. Roughnecks looking for jobs flocked to the