Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (41 page)

“Good afternoon, Dr. Street. Wanted to let you know we now have access to the Internet
storage with Skylar Barbour’s saved photos.”

“Can you email me something?”

“There are hundreds of photographs,” she told me.

“How about a link?”

“Not my area. I’ll see what tech can do,” Ferrell answered.

“Tell me what you see,” I said. “Any photographs of adults?”

She was quiet for a minute. I envisioned her scrolling through Skylar’s photo stream
on the war room monitor, row after row of Skylar’s friends, Luke, places the girl
had been. “Mostly kids. Mostly girls
being goofy, her dog, a couple boys. Band trips. Adults in those pictures we’re attempting
to identify. Probably chaperones. Couple pictures of her parents,” she told me. “And
there are a few with the minister and his family standing in front of the community
garden.”

Skylar had snapped the picture of the family she wished she had.

I hung up just feet from where Skylar had been abducted. Yellow spray paint marked
the areas where evidence was found on the road last night—Skylar’s blood, the smashed
phone, the case and compact and nail file.

I looked up at the Barbours’ ranch house on the hill, shadowed by black walnut trees,
the afternoon sun turning the filigreed, breeze-ruffled leaves bright.

I got back in my hot car. Heat and irritation prickled my skin. Nothing had panned
out. I felt like pounding my fists on the dashboard. Meanwhile, that little girl was
perched on some demented tightrope. Not one lead had taken us anywhere, not Skylar’s
diary or call log or photos, not one witness, the sex offenders—Lewis Freeman and
Logan Peele, or the old offender who’d whispered to him in an empty corridor on video—not
Lamar Bailey who hadn’t shown for his mandatory group therapy because he was in the
hospital. Not Daniel Tray who’d alibied out because he fucked a married woman twice
a month.

It’s not like television. Not everything works out in the end. That possibility rocked
up at me now, muscular and choking and rolling black like the sea at night. I looked
at the house and thought again about that caramel-eyed kid in the photo booth.

39

This case was growing cold. I felt the chill coming off it as I waited to hear from
a hunter who may or may not have trail cameras in the area. I knew that unless one
of us—me, Raymond, Brolin, Meltzer, Sam—dug some new lead out of the frustrating rubble
we’d unearthed so far, Skylar’s next hours or days or weeks would be cruel and long.
How long? That was the question. How long would it take him to grow tired of her?
To feel the need to escalate the situation because he’d constructed a chess game with
law enforcement. How long until she went from a prize that had obsessed him to everything
that was wrong and inconvenient in his life? Because once she fulfilled her purpose,
or couldn’t fulfill her purpose, as he’d alluded to in the letter, the psychological
disconnect would be immediate and complete. He would be sick to death of the burden
of her. He’d blame her for the hassle and the pressure, and he’d want her ripped out
of his life. His world, his normal life would call him, as it always does with this
kind of offender after they offend, and he would crave the emotional cooling-down,
the process by which he reintegrated himself back into life and separated himself
from Skylar and the other murders. And when he was done with her, it wouldn’t be a
regretful, bittersweet good-bye like it had been with Tracy, but a quick, blunt good-bye.
He’d broadcasted his intentions when he turned the sharp
side of that axe on Melinda. I knew exactly what he planned for Skylar, and every
tick of the clock felt like an axe blow. Investigations have one thing in common.
They each hand you a basket brimming with half-truths and partial facts. Extrapolating
some meaning from a thousand tiny strands of yarn is the challenge.

I had to find that calm, flat space and shut out the muddled, dark distractions, the
time, the wrong turns. Everything depended on clarity now. Driving always helps me
get there.

I lowered the top on my Impala and hit the two-lane. The lake was rippled and muddy
blue in the late-afternoon sun as I turned my car loose to do what it does best. I
curved around the point, smelling all the mossy, breeding, algae-tangled things that
feed off its waters.

A couple of miles in, I saw the first signs for the national forest. Dirt roads wound
into the acreage on my left and led to hiking trails. On the right just past a bridge
railing, I turned into the campground entrance.

I got out and looked up at the trail a killer had used to walk his victims to their
own murder scene.

My phone went off. It was the hunter’s number. “Mr. Watson, thank you for calling
me back.”

“What’s this about?” Tom Watson wanted to know.

“There’s an area off the point of the lake near the national forest. Catawba Creek
runs through it. About a thousand acres. You know it?”

“Sure,” Watson said. “I grew up around here.”

“I understand you use trail cameras.”

“Nothing illegal about trail cams,” he said.

“Mr. Watson, I’m sure you are aware the bodies of two murdered girls were found on
that land. If you or anyone has cameras in that area, they may contain valuable evidence.”

“I only used a trail cam out there last season. This year, some asshole vandalized
it. I hadn’t even activated it yet,” Watson said, and my hopes sputtered, then pinwheeled
down.

“When was your camera vandalized?”

“June, thereabouts.”

Melinda Cochran had been murdered late in June, perhaps early July. “Where was the
camera mounted?”

“Hmm. Be hard to explain if you don’t know the area—”

“I’ve been there several times,” I interrupted. “I’m here now. At the campground.”

“Okay, if you walk straight up that path a couple hundred yards and veer away from
the lake, there’s a big poplar tree with brown vines all over it just before it gets
hilly. That’s my landmark. That’s where I had my camera.”

It was someone else’s landmark too, that tree with those thick vines that had sucked
at it, lived off it, until they were deliberately severed. “How about video from last
season?” I asked.

“Nah. Sorry. Didn’t see a reason to keep it.”

Somehow, the killer had known about Watson’s cameras. Had he heard Watson bragging
about them at the diner, the bar? Or had he seen something in the woods, something
out of place? He wanted to put Melinda’s body with Tracy’s in that hole. He wanted
to kill her where he’d murdered Tracy. And so he destroyed the camera so he could
complete his fantasy undetected. “You remember anything about the video? Did you see
anyone?” I asked.

“Nothin’ human. Nobody’s gonna go out there at night unless they’re up to no good,”
he said as I peered up at the dark woods and felt tension crawling up my neck, the
headache creeping back around the base of my skull. What would happen to Skylar when
the killer was done with her? His dump site had been discovered. Would he risk trying
to put her where he’d put the others? Was that important to him now? He’d taken full
advantage of all the creeping, natural things of the earth to cover his crimes, the
parasites and bacteria, the scavenging animals, all the enemies of DNA. And he hid
his victims well in a natural crater choked with leaves and branches and debris. I
didn’t think he’d come back here. He’d have no way of knowing if the area was being
watched, electronically surveilled, if he was safe. He’d find a new place for Skylar.
And if we didn’t find her alive soon, we might never find her.

“I sure hope y’all get that guy,” Watson said.

“Me too,” I agreed and disconnected. I could smell the Impala’s hot engine. I thought
about a killer with a shop rag, a fake breakdown, what his dirty hands must have smelled
like, felt like. I had to regroup. I had to consider every possibility and at the
moment only one came to mind. I called Neil. “Do me a favor, would you?”

“It’s like you only call when you need something,” Neil said with the usual amount
of snark in his voice.

“That’s our deal. Remember? Listen, I need some birth records.” I gave him the information
and got back in my car. “And I need them fast. Lot of people in the park right now
and out of their houses. I want to take advantage of it.”

“Which means you want to go snooping in someone’s stuff?”

“Exactly.”

“You seriously suspect the
minister
?” I thought he was going to laugh. Neil has a delightful, inappropriate appreciation
for real-life drama. I heard his fingers hitting the keys.

“Our killer’s melting into the community. Those girls trusted him. So, yes, at this
point even Pastor Hutchins is fair game.” I remembered the voice recording I’d made
of the interview with Tracy Davidson’s brother, Jeff, before he’d killed himself.
We went to school and we came right home. And once a week if we were good my father
would let us leave on Sunday and go to church …
 “And find out where Hutchins was before he took over this church,” I told Neil. Look
for connections to the town of Silas where the first victim lived.”

“Be a great cover,” Neil said. “A preacher. Hears all your secrets.”

“A guy you’d stop to help on the road,” I said, and spun out of the dirt lot onto
the highway. “Ethan Hutchins knew both girls. One of them hung out at his house with
his daughter over the summer. His daughter happens to be the age Tracy’s child would
have been if that child had lived. And I’d just seen Hutchins and his wife in the
park with a blond girl who looked nothing like her dark-eyed, dark-haired parents.
And the minister’s wife was in town when I received a message from the offender.”

“Oh my God,” Neil said. “You suspect the wife too?”

“Call me back.”

I pulled into the empty church parking lot, followed it around to
the back, where the hulking new addition came out on each side of the original granite
chapel. I remembered watching the minister’s wife walking up the church steps, her
smile, their kiss, them walking away with their arms around each other. I’d liked
Ethan Hutchins. I’d liked them through Skylar’s diary, and through Ken’s eyes. But
Hutchins had opportunity. There was a connection between him and two of the victims.
I had to know. Before I went to that prayer vigil tonight and looked into the minister’s
eyes I had to make sure that his family was what it appeared.

I took the driveway that dipped down out of the church parking lot. I could see tomatoes
on vines in the garden when I got out of my car, red and fat and ready to be picked.
Wire baskets were filled with compost, and an old Ford truck sat in the grass at the
back corner of the garden, the bed full of mulch and bags of garden soil. I thought
about Skylar’s diary entries, the time she’d spent here, the tomatoes she carried
home on lonely summer days after she’d come here to play with Robin Hutchins.

The house was granite like the church, with the look of an English cottage. Lavender
had been planted in front and the fragrant shoots fanned out against the nearly ash-white
stone. English ivy twisted up the stone walls. I parked behind the house. The lawn
there was mowed and green and shaded. A tree house had been built around the trunk
of an old white oak, a hanging ladder swayed in a hot breeze. The perfect home for
the perfect family.

I moved around shrubs and garden hoses, peered in windows with my hands cupped against
glass and saw an open, unfinished basement with a couple of picnic tables. Potted
Christmas cactuses set in the dim basement light inside waiting to come out and bloom
for the holidays, a washer and dryer and a fiberglass folding table.

I picked the lock on the basement door, inspected every corner of the basement, found
boxes of clothes labeled
CHARITY
and all the normal things humans can’t part with—children’s books Robin had outgrown,
a high chair, a tricycle. I searched around a push mower and a gas can, looked inside
a tool kit for red shop rags.

I found the stairs leading up to the kitchen, took them quietly. The kitchen held
the vague smell of cooked food and coffee. It was clean.
The house was narrow and long, low-ceilinged, neat, lived-in. I moved through their
rooms like a prowler, quietly sliding open drawers and peering into closets. I wasn’t
thinking about their privacy. I was thinking about Skylar. And that made me righteous.
It blurred moral borders, and I was very aware it was exactly the kind of compartmentalization
I’d described to Ken earlier.

I found a sleeping cat. No locked cupboard doors. No big secrets. I went down the
basement steps and out the back door, aware of the ticking clock, the dimming light,
thinking people may want to come home and shower and change after being in the sun
all day before the big event tonight.

My phone vibrated in the back pocket of my jeans. It was a group text from Deputy
Ferrell to Meltzer, me, Brolin, and Raymond.
Fibers—cotton, rayon, steel, polyurethane, kerosene & urine present. Soil samples
and mold indicate moist environment. Possibly an underground structure or one dilapidated
enough to be exposed to earth. Search team criteria have been refined
.