Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (11 page)

He followed me. “Nice wheels.” He slapped the palms of his big hands against the hood
of my Impala. “Where you headed?”

I felt a string of expletives lining up for their debut. I didn’t like being picked
on and threatened, and I didn’t fucking like him touching my car. And I was hungry.
Bad blood sugar goes straight to my mouth. I got in my car, looked up at him. “Offer’s
still open if you’d like to join me for coffee.”

“Nah. But I’ll be close by.”

9

I drove back into town, past the sheriff’s office and the bridge I’d come in on, and
followed the blacktop to Highway 441. I went south toward Milledgeville, and fifteen
miles of flat road later I found Muskogee Trail thanks to Google Maps—a narrow, cracked
paved road with cornfields on one side and single-level brick houses with acreage
between them and long, straight driveways on the other. I pulled in just past a chipped
green mailbox with shiny, stick-on hardware store numbers that said 826. The 6 had
heated up against the metal box in the baking sun and tipped sideways. I saw a woman
inside an open freestanding carport. She was leaning over a plywood table with stacked-up
cement blocks for legs. I stopped a few feet away and got out. She came out to greet
me with a pair of needle-nose pliers in her hand.

“Help you?” She had a sharp twang; long, frizzy bleached-blond hair; and a pair of
black stretch pants that told me more than I wanted to know about her body.

“Are you Josey Davidson?”

“Yup. Come on in.” She turned back to the carport. We stepped over power cords. A
small fan whirred on the workstation. “You buying?” She picked up the pliers and positioned
herself on a stool.

I really wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be buying. “My name
is Keye Street. I’m a consultant to the Hitchiti County Sheriff’s Department.”

“I guess that’s a no, then,” she said.

“You’re a glassblower?” I saw a torch, mandrels, splitters, hoses. On her table, a
plastic bin with thin leather bands and a roll of gold wire, pliers in different sizes.

“Flameworker,” she corrected. “And jewelry maker.” She reached into a small wicker
basket and pulled out a bracelet with a leather strap, a glass triangle on top in
a gold wire setting. She handed it to me. A beetle had been preserved inside the glass.

“Wow,” I said, handling the bracelet. It was all I could do not to fling it across
the carport. I’m not really a bug person.

She picked up a pair of pliers and unwound some gold wire. “What exactly does the
sheriff’s department have to say for itself?” She was quick with the wire, twisting
it into a setting for a glass triangle that held another unfortunate specimen.

I put the bracelet on the plywood tabletop. “I’d like to speak to you about your daughter
Tracy.”

“My daughter’s been dead for eleven years.” Her hands kept working, nimble hands that
moved from memory. Her daughter had been dead for ten years, not eleven. Tracy had
lived for a year after her disappearance. With a sick feeling, I realized Mrs. Davidson
hadn’t been told about the terrible discoveries made by forensic scientists in Atlanta.
“Y’all gonna send me flowers now? I mean that woman on the phone was so warm and comforting
when she told me they’d found her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

She glanced up at me with suspicious eyes, tried to read me. “What’d you say your
name was?”

“Keye Street.”

“What do you want, Keye Street?”

“Was Tracy active? Had she ever had any injuries, broken bones?”

“Goin’ down that path again, are we? Y’all still trying to pin it on my husband? My
ex was not worth anything and he got rough sometimes. But he didn’t have the sense
God gave a mule. He couldn’t have gotten away with it. And no. He never broke anything
on Tracy. But he did hurt all of us at one time or another.”

“Where’s Mr. Davidson now?”

“He’s in jail. Thank the Lord. And so is my son.”

I didn’t know what to say to this woman. I wondered if she had other family, friends.
From where I stood it looked like she’d lost nearly everything. “Tracy have a good
relationship with her brother?”

“They were close. My boy wouldn’t have hurt her if that’s what you’re getting at.
He wasn’t a violent boy. But he did turn out to have an attraction for nice cars.”
She put down wire and pliers and reached behind her for a thermos. “Unfortunately,
they weren’t his. Want some coffee?”

“Please,” I said to be polite. That’s what you’re taught in the South. Somebody offers,
you accept and you choke it down if you have to.

She poured coffee into a mug that said
SIX FLAGS OVER GEORGIA
, then filled the plastic top on the thermos and slid it toward me. “Might as well
grab that other stool.”

I walked past an aquarium full of bugs. Most of them were dead. Some were still moving,
trying in vain to scrabble up the walls of their glass coffin. There was a plywood
board covering the top, preventing escape. She was trapping them and letting them
die, then entombing them in glass. I pulled the stool up to the other side of her
plywood table, away from the creepy aquarium. The murky liquid in the thermos cap
was a grocery store brand, lukewarm. Snobby Neil would have spit it out.

“It tore Jeffrey up when Tracy disappeared. He and Tracy were two years apart. He
was the youngest. They went to and from school together every day on the bus. He was
home sick the day she disappeared. He never got over that. Girl just disappeared into
thin air. Then that sheriff we had back then comes around with his deputies, and after
he finished investigating us, they tried to tell me Tracy ran away. I don’t think
a one of them ever thought about her again after that.”

“I take it you don’t think it’s possible she ran away with someone she trusted.”

“Not Tracy. And that’s not just a mother talking. Tracy was real responsible. Her
mama and her daddy were drinkin’ and fightin’ but
she cooked the dinner and cleaned house. And took care of me and her brother. Some
might say she had good reason to leave. But Tracy wouldn’t go running off. I’m sorry
to have to say it, but she was the grown-up around here back then.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?” I asked.

She looked away from wire and pliers. “I don’t even think she’d been kissed.” She
finished setting the glass triangle with the dead bug inside and began attaching a
leather band.

I took another sip of coffee, watched her steady, agile hands work. “How long have
you been sober?”

Her fingers stopped for just a second. She looked at me. “Almost eleven years.”

Her daughter’s disappearance must have made her take a long look at her life, I thought.
“Four years for me,” I said. I wanted to connect with her. She wasn’t going to open
up as long as I was just someone else from the sheriff’s department who didn’t give
a shit. “Some days are better than others,” I added.

“I know that’s right.”

“Mrs. Davidson—”

“Call me Josey.”

“Was Tracy close to anyone outside the family? Was there an adult she confided in,
a counselor, an older friend, maybe? Did anyone give her rides home from school? Anything
like that?”

Josey shook her bleached-blond head. “Like I said, Jeffrey and Tracy rode the bus
together every day. Tracy was tight-lipped about our business. I think she worried
she and Jeff would be taken away if people knew what was going on here. She always
had faith in me.” Her voice sank, wavered. “She always used to tell me I could quit
drinking. She’d hide the booze sometimes or pour it all out, but her father didn’t
like that much.”

“I’m sorry to ask, but do you feel certain Tracy wasn’t sexually active?” Something
I’d seen in the lab reports was bugging me.

“I’m certain,” she said. “Tracy was just a little girl in a lot of ways. Plus, her
father didn’t give the children a lot of freedom. And my husband never bothered our
children that way. For sex, I mean. Thank the Lord for small favors.”

We were quiet, Josey remembering and me imagining what their household must have been
like back then. “I’d like to know the other little girl’s name,” Josey said. “They
told me Tracy wasn’t alone when they found her. I’m sorry for the parents of that
child, and I hope God forgives me for sayin’ this, but somehow it made me feel better
to know my Tracy wasn’t alone.”

“Her name was Melinda,” I said. “She was thirteen too.” I didn’t tell her Melinda’s
body had landed there a decade later or that what Tracy had endured she’d probably
endured alone at the hands of a violent predator.

I stood up, laid a business card on the table. “My mobile number if you think of anything.”
I paused on my way to the car, turned. “Thank you for talking to me, Josey. I’m sorry
this happened to you. I really am.”

The sun was sinking on a long, long summer day. I’d grown up like this in Georgia,
long rides with my dad and brother, short ones with cute guys I couldn’t wait to kiss—top
down on back roads, soft air on my skin. I felt completely exhausted after the visit
with Josey Davidson. How badly that woman must want a do-over. The weight from those
regrets must be staggering. Sometimes you only get one chance to do right by someone.
I thought about Rauser, reached for my phone, then changed my mind.

I could see the lights from downtown Whisper just ahead, and the glowing sign on the
diner. I parked in front, saw cobalt-blue booths inside under the long glass wall.
A couple of customers sat on metal stools with the same bright blue vinyl seats. A
ladle-shaped neon sign lit up the roof, high enough to be seen from the highway.
THE SILVER SPOON
, it read.
HOME COOKING 24 HOURS A DAY
. I couldn’t remember when I had eaten. God, I absolutely hate it when I hear someone
say that. Even worse when someone says they forgot to eat. How the hell do you forget
to eat? I hadn’t forgotten. The clock had simply outrun me.

I went in and took a stool at the counter. There was a cook behind an oblong opening
and one server behind the counter. “What can I do you for, little lady?” He wiped
the counter and handed me a laminated
menu. He was weathered, twenty years past middle age. A lock of silver hair fell onto
his forehead.

“What’s good?” I asked.

“Well, it all depends,” he said. “If you’re in the mood for dinner, the stuffed bass
is excellent. Just came out of the lake today. Breakfast, we got some fresh peaches,
and Harry back there has been folding them up in some mean pancake thing.” He looked
side to side like he was about to give up a state secret, said, “Total food porn.”

“Ah. Is it legal?” I whispered.

“Barely.” He put a glass of water in front of me and a mug and saucer. I thought about
the bug woman and her little thermos of coffee. “Harry, the little lady wants to try
some of those pancakes you been making.”

The cook gave me a nod from the kitchen. The server filled my coffee mug. “Name’s
Gene,” he informed me. “You just passing through?”

“Visiting,” I said, and took a sip of rank diner coffee that had been sitting too
long.

Gene persisted. Probably had this conversation with everyone new to his counter. “You’re
a little ways out of the touristy areas, aren’t you?”

“Business,” I said.

“What kind of business you in?”

“Consulting,” I told him, vaguely but politely. I think he took the hint. He polished
the counter, then wiped down the booths before the cook called “Order up” from the
back. Gene picked up a plate and set it in front of me—a huge pancake folded over
like an omelet, peaches and whipped cream oozing from the center. Gene put out individually
wrapped pats of butter and a small metal pitcher with maple syrup on the counter.
I drizzled syrup over the pancake and cut a piece with my fork. It was dense and cakey
and made to absorb the flavors around it—the syrup, the peaches that had been sautéed
for just long enough to tease out the natural sugars, the stiff whipped cream with
a hint of vanilla. My face must have registered the party in my palate.

Gene grinned. “What’d I tell you? Harry wants to go to some fancy cooking school so
he works a lot of shifts to save up. We got people
from all over the county coming to eat here now. There’s a line for Sunday brunch
and fried chicken night.”

“Pretty quiet in here now,” I observed.

“People around here eat supper early. It’s after nine o’clock.” Gene put down a small
plate. “Applewood-smoked bacon. Local. On the house.”

I heard the door open behind me, heard a puff of air escape the seat cover on the
stool next to me. A manila folder appeared on the counter.

I glanced over at Detective Robert Raymond. “Oh joy. You going to try to run me out
of the diner too? A person has to eat, Detective.”

I thought he might smile. “
Try
being the operative word. Medical records.” He nodded at the file. “Hey, Gene, how
about a cup?”

“How’d you find me?” I took a bite of the thick-sliced bacon.