“We used to go there a lot when I was a kid, and yeah, I swam in it,” Nikki had admitted.
“It must’ve been fun.” She’d seemed sad for a second, as if reflecting on her own home life and making comparisons. For the first time, Nikki had actually been embarrassed about her bedroom, with its designer quilt and coordinating curtains.
“It was.”
“With your cousins. Hollis and Elton?”
“Sometimes. Mom and Hollis’s mom don’t really get along.”
“Why not?”
Nikki had shrugged. “They just don’t like each other. Hollis seems to think it has to do with some big secret, but then Hollis is always thinking there’s a major scandal somewhere.”
“Is there?” Amity had asked quietly, as she stared into the mirror, her gaze finding Nikki’s in its reflection. “A scandal.”
“I don’t know, but Hollis sure thinks so. She thinks her mother is a big fake or something.”
“Maybe she is.”
“I guess.” Hollis had always been making up stories, creating drama, believing the worst about anyone, including Amity, though Nikki hadn’t mentioned that. Instead, she’d picked up her old stuffed elephant, which at the time had been fifteen years old and missing an eye.
“Can we go there sometime?” Amity had asked, her eyes shining with anticipation. “To the cabin?”
Nikki had shrugged. “It’s pretty rustic. I never really liked it, and most of the time we went, my sister and brothers and me, it was with Hollis and Elton and their parents. But that was a long time ago. No one goes up there much anymore.”
“We should go!” Amity had said. She pulled her hair away from her face in both hands and turned her head, looking this way and that, eyeing her reflection in the mirrors. “I mean it. Let’s go there.”
“Sure, I guess.”
Letting her hair down, Amity had twisted on the bench. “It could be fun,” she said, never mentioning the two bottles of nail polish she’d hidden in her hand and, when she’d thought Nikki wouldn’t notice, had tucked into the pocket of her jeans, folding her T-shirt over the bulge.
Nikki had never mentioned the theft to anyone.
Now, as the miles rolled under her rental’s wheels, she thought about Amity and her desire for things she couldn’t have. It had been hard for her to be Nikki’s friend, hard to want so many things that were out of reach. Was Flint Beauregard Amity’s father? If so, what difference would that have made in Amity’s life if it were known?
With an effort, Nikki dragged her thoughts back to the case itself. She’d already decided that she was going to attend the next service of the Pentecostal sect run by Ezekiel Byrd, June Hatchett’s brother. She didn’t really see why anyone who was religious enough to handle snakes would use one as a weapon or a threat, but it was the only lead she had. Earlier this morning, she’d called all the legitimate reptile dealers in the area and, as it was early, left messages asking about recent sales of copperheads. She’d looked online, at craigslist and other Web sites, even searched through the previous week’s free advertisements in the Sentinel, but so far she’d found no copperheads for sale, nor any that had gone missing from a lab that collected snake venom; she’d even called the local zoos.
Nothing.
Not that she couldn’t have missed something, and there were dealers who worked under the radar, as well as hunters who trapped their own. So far, the whole snake lead was a bust. But it was still early. She could get lucky with one of the dealers. Well, maybe.
Reed was still working on the DNA of the old cigarette butt found at the scene. Nikki hadn’t spoken with Roland Camp, but any conversations she’d tried to have with Calvin O’Henry had been useless.
She felt as if she were getting nowhere, trudging in quicksand, and the more she struggled, the less footing she found.
But someone who had a fondness for snakes apparently thought differently.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Morrisette said when Reed arrived at the office and caught up with her at the coffeepot in the break room.
“I’m not in the mood for jokes,” he warned her as she filled her cup from a fresh pot that had the room smelling of some kind of fresh roast.
“There’s a surprise,” she said with more than a smidgeon of mockery as she returned the glass carafe to its warming plate.
A couple of uniformed officers sat at a table near the windows, perusing the headlines of the paper and sipping from their cups before starting their shift. A huge bowl of popcorn, half eaten and left by someone from the night shift, sat on the table, and one of the officers was picking at it as he read the news.
“So what is it?” He poured himself a cup as they left the room, passing Agnes, one of the clerical workers, as she headed in the opposite direction. Phones were jangling; a printer somewhere spewed out pages, as laughter and conversation eased through the hallways.
Morrisette and Reed made their way through the rabbit warren of offices to the room where they’d been working on the O’Henry case. Boxes were stacked on the ends of tables that also held labeled evidence, and two standing corkboards displayed pinned-up photographs of the crime scene, suspects, and notes about everything. Front and center was a glossy eight-by-ten of Blondell O’Henry, the photo Morrisette bitingly called her “professional head shot,” though it wasn’t all that flattering.
“So, okay,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Actually, I have good news and bad news and worse news,” Morrisette said.
Irritated, he said, “Whatever.”
“The lab ran down the serial number of that camera you gave them and tracked it to a store right here in Savannah. They’ve called the owner of the shop and we can swing by there today. It’s a place called Max’s Spy World, on the south side, not far from the mall. If they keep decent records, you should know by the end of the day who bought the equipment and who’s been surreptitiously observing Ms. Gillette.”
“Good.” He couldn’t wait to come face-to-face with the bastard who was playing Peeping Tom. “So what’s the bad news?”
“DNA came back on the cigarette found at the cabin twenty years ago. It was pretty degraded, but it looks like it doesn’t match up with any of the known players back then. All they can determine is that it is a Winston and was smoked by a male.”
“The Winston part we knew,” Reed said; the name of the brand had been visible on the butt. “And the rest of the information eliminates half the population but won’t exactly break the case wide open.”
She nodded. “You ready for the worst?”
“Hit me.”
“Blondell O’Henry’s going to be released,” Morrisette said.
“It’s decided?” Reed asked, surprised.
“Jada Hill pled her case, and the powers that be decided not to pursue keeping her locked up. Twenty years is enough if she did it, and way too much if she didn’t. The statement’s going to be announced later today, and she actually gets out tomorrow, after all the red tape is cut. So all of this,” Morrisette said, motioning to the boxes of evidence stacked onto the tables, “is moot.”
Reed stared at the piles of evidence sorted and stacked on tables. “So it’s over. Just like that.”
“It’s over as far as prosecuting Blondell O’Henry is concerned, but now the case is open because we can’t prove that she did it. Looks like she’ll be suing the state for her pain and suffering or whatever, and let me tell you, Deacon Beauregard is fit to be tied, claiming his father is ‘rolling over in his grave’ and that a ‘grievous injustice’ has been done to Amity O’Henry, her siblings, the constituents of the great state of Georgia, and all people everywhere, or some such shit.” She drained her cup and set it onto the table with a bang.
“But you agree with him?”
Her lips pursed and she looked away. “I thought I’d never say this, but unfortunately this time, yeah, I do.”
Leaning a hip against the table, he said, “You know, Morrisett
e, it’s barely eight. How do you know all this?”
“Got here early this morning. Bart had the kids, and I thought I could get something done here when it was a little quieter, y’know, just before the shift change, but that didn’t work out. The department’s gearing up for a press conference sometime tomorrow. Abbey Marlow’s already all over it, talking with everyone, getting her ducks in a row. I talked to her already, but she might want to double-check with you.”
“Fine.”
“She won’t be the only one talking to the press. I’m pretty sure Jada Hill will hold her own chat with the media, with or without Blondell. That woman loves the cameras.”
“Comes with the territory,” he said, glancing around the room. Most of the musty, twenty-year-old evidence had been sorted through and organized, important pieces clipped together or added to the corkboards outlining the crime. Though Reed wasn’t a hundred percent convinced that Blondell O’Henry was the shooter, he’d been working on that assumption.
“Someone tried to warn Nikki off yesterday with snakes up at the cabin,” he said.
“I heard.” Morrisette glanced at the suspect board and stared at the woman in its center. “But not Blondell. She’s still locked up for another day.” Running a hand through her short, choppy locks, she walked toward the board. “Who the hell left the snake in the car? If she hadn’t just seen a copperhead in the cabin itself, I’d have maybe thought it was a coincidence.”
“No coincidence,” Reed said grimly. And if there was a chance Blondell was innocent, the perpetrator could very well be Amity O’Henry’s killer.
“She’s getting out?” Nikki said, dumbfounded. Her wireless connection was weak for some reason, and she was having trouble hearing Reed over the road noise.
“That’s what it looks like. Probably . . . tomor . . .” Reed’s voice was cutting out. “There will be . . . pr . . . ference . . . I’ll know more . . . afternoon.”
“Look, if you can hear me, I’m on the road,” she yelled in frustration into her Bluetooth as she passed a gasoline truck. “I’ll call you when I’ve stopped and you can fill me in.” Hanging up, she mentally kicked herself from one end of the state to the other. If she’d had any idea that Blondell was going to be released, she would have postponed this trip. As it was, though, she had plenty of time to talk to Thompson and return to Savannah to both meet with Holt Beauregard and attend the press conference tomorrow.
If she stepped on it.
Which she did.
With the aid of the GPS on her phone and a heavy foot on the accelerator, she made it to the garage outside of Charleston in record time. Located in an industrial area far from the heart of the city, Ace Auto Repair had seen better days. The garage of six bays was built of metal and concrete, all six doors wide open, four mechanics working on vehicles, two hoisted off the floor, rolling boards with mechanics lying on them protruding from their sides, three more with their hoods up. Some kind of rock music played over the din of the noise of the shop.
Larry Thompson was standing at a tall metal cabinet near a side wall where tools and parts were kept. She probably wouldn’t have recognized him except that she knew he worked this shift and the badge on his gray jumpsuit read: THOMPSON.
“Lawrence Thompson,” she said, and he visibly stiffened before warily turning to face her.
“I’m Nikki—”
“I know who you are.” He sounded angry and his features were set. Hard. Almost defiant. “I knew someone would show up with all that’s going on with Blondell. I guess I should have expected you.”
“I just want to ask you some questions.”
He glanced around to the other stations where the mechanics, after watching Nikki approach him, had turned back to their work. “I could use a break.” With a hitch of his chin toward an exterior side door, he said, “This way,” and led her through the door as if to avoid questions from any of the others who’d looked up as she’d zeroed in on him. She had walked straight into an open bay without bothering to stop at the front counter and deal with whatever roadblocks might have been set in her path.
“I can’t tell you anything that hasn’t already been printed a dozen times over,” he said, wiping his hands on a faded red rag as they walked out of the garage.
“Just humor me.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Because Blondell O’Henry is news again, Larry, and come on, you were in the biz, you know how these things go. Talk to me, and then you can tell the next reporter to take a hike, that you’ve already talked to me. Or answer their questions too, but you may as well get it over with.”
He made a disparaging sound but nodded, seeming to accept the inevitable.
He’d aged since the last photograph Nikki had seen of him, taken more than fifteen years earlier. His face had grown jowly, his eyes guarded by lightly shaded glasses, a short, graying beard covering his once-strong jaw. His sandy hair had been thick and long, brushing his collar, but now it was only a silvery stubble, at least what she could see of it from beneath a Braves baseball cap.
They walked down a worn path to a concrete slab that had been fitted with two folding chairs that looked to be at least fifty years old and a picnic table from the same era. The sky was blue, with only a few clouds skimming across the vast expanse. On the chain-link fence that separated the back of the shop from a parking lot filled with shells of cars, a couple of crows flapped noisily away, their black wings shining, their cries piercing.
This industrial area outside of Charleston was in stark contrast to the beautiful city of elegant Southern mansions—clapboard siding, tall windows, and white pillars, bordered by palm trees—on the harbor.
“I just want to forget all that,” Thompson said in a low tone, as if anyone inside the shop could hear over the hiss of air hoses, the whir of electric lug nut removal, and the general clang of metal parts being refitted.
“Is that why you changed professions?”
“Partially. And the fact that no one would hire me.” He lifted a shoulder. “Times were changing anyway, newspapers and magazines folding. This was steadier.” He thought for a second, his gaze, from behind his tinted lenses, taking in the Dumpster and broken-down cars beyond the fence. “And yeah, I miss it, but not that much.”
“She’s going to be released soon. Probably tomorrow.”
He visibly started, his eyes refocusing on Nikki. “Good,” he said, obviously digesting this new turn of events. Nodding, he added, “Yeah, that’s . . . good. I don’t believe she did what she was accused of, so justice will finally be served.”
“She never told you differently?”
“No. Not in the correspondence before . . . you know . . .”
“Before you helped her escape.”
“Yeah, and not after, either.” He adjusted the bill of his hat, and Nikki noted there was a line of sweat on what was left of his hair. The cuff of his sleeve pulled upward, and she saw the slightest discoloration on his wrist, evidence of the tattoo he’d had removed, the picture of a chameleon that had been the identifying mark that had led to his arrest.
“Look, I don’t want to be quoted in the articles you’re doing nor in the book. I’ve carved myself out a new life and it’s working, so I don’t want to mess it up.”
“I understand, but your name is a matter of record.”
He said bitterly, “I should never have gotten involved with her. Now that I look back on it a lot more clearly, I think she wanted me so she could get pregnant again. It was her thing, y’know. She had Amity in high school, then two more with her ex, then was pregnant with that fourth one. I mean there is such a thing as birth control. I figured I was just the latest sperm donor who got close enough to her to stick his neck out and help her find a way out of prison.” He closed his eyes for a second as if he couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid.
“She wanted to have another baby?”
“Oh, yeah. She was all about it. No, I never saw her cry a tear for the daughter who
was killed or the ones who were hurt in the attack, but she was hot to trot to have another one. The damnedest thing. So, no, I don’t believe she tried to wipe out all her kids.”
“You were in love with her.” It wasn’t a question.
He lifted a shoulder, then the fingers of his right hand scrabbled in the breast pocket of his jumpsuit as if searching for a pack of cigarettes that didn’t exist. “At least lust. Whatever you want to call it. I was nuts about her.” He looked at the concrete, where an ant was crawling toward a crack. “But the trouble was, my feelings weren’t reciprocated.”
“No?”
Shoving his hands into his front pockets, he shook his head. “Nope. I think she was still in love with the last guy she’d hooked up with on the outside, before she was locked up.”
“Roland Camp?” Nikki said automatically, but Larry’s head continued to wag.
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. She had nothing but bad things to say about him, put him in the same category with her ex-husband. She never mentioned his name, but I got the idea he might be an older dude. She’d use words like ‘mature’ and ‘sophisticated’ and ‘smart,’ or was it ‘well-educated’? Yeah. That sounds more like it. Didn’t exactly remind me of Roland Camp.”
“No,” Nikki agreed. “She didn’t mention his name?”
“No.”
Another man appeared in the doorway. “Hey!” he called, giving Nikki the eye. He too was wearing a gray jumpsuit. “I could use a little help, Tom!”
“In a sec, Chet,” Larry responded.
“You don’t go by your first name?”
“Nope. Just easier. Most people don’t know about my past, and that’s the way I’d like to keep it, but now that she’s going to be released, I think it’s probably going to be a problem. You found me. You won’t be the last.”
“Probably not,” Nikki said, and then, though she was starting to dread the answer, she asked, “What about her attorney? What did she think about him?”