A Grant County Collection: Indelible, Faithless and Skin Privilege

'Mrs Bennett?'

  She gave up, tossing her hands into the air, crying, 'I don't know!'

  Jeffrey let Esther stand there, cold wind whipping up her collar. Her nose was red from crying, tears running down her cheeks. 'She wouldn't do this,' she sobbed. 'She wouldn't do this unless she had to.'

  After a few more seconds, Jeffrey reached past her and opened the car door. He helped Esther inside, kneeling beside her so they could talk. He knew without looking that May-Lynn was standing at the window watching the show, and he wanted to do everything he could to protect Esther Bennett.

  He hoped she heard his compassion when he asked her, 'Tell me what she was running away from.'

  Esther dabbed at her eyes, then concentrated on the tissue in her hand, folding and unfolding it as if she could find the answer somewhere on the crumpled paper. 'She's so different from Abby,' she finally said. 'So rebellious. Nothing like me at that age. Nothing like any of us.' Despite her words, she insisted, 'She's so precious. Such a powerful soul. My fierce little angel.'

  Jeffrey asked, 'What was she rebelling against?'

  'Rules,' Esther said. 'Everything she could find.'

  'When she ran away before,' Jeffrey began. 'Where did she go?'

  'She said she camped in the woods.'

  Jeffrey felt his heart stop. 'Which woods?'

  'The Catoogah forest. When they were children, they camped there all the time.'

  'Not the state park in Grant?'

  She shook her head. 'How would she get there?' she asked. 'It's miles from home.'

  Jeffrey didn't like the idea of Rebecca being in any forest, especially considering what had happened to her sister. 'Was she seeing any boys?'

  'I don't know,' she confessed. 'I don't know anything about her life. I thought I knew about Abby, but now . . .' She put her hand to her mouth. 'I don't know anything.'

  Jeffrey's knee started to ache and he sat back on his heels to take off the pressure. 'Rebecca didn't want to be in the church?' he guessed.

  'We let them choose. We don't force them into the life. Mary's children chose . . .' She took a deep breath, letting it go slowly. 'We let them choose when they're old enough to know their own minds. Lev went off to college. Paul strayed for a while. He came back, but I never stopped loving him. He never stopped being my brother.' She threw her hands into the air. 'I just don't understand. Why would she leave? Why would she do this now?'

  Jeffrey had dealt with many missing-children cases over the years. Thankfully, most of them had resolved themselves fairly easily. The kid got cold or hungry and came back, realizing there were worse things than having to clean up your room or eat your peas. Something told him Rebecca Bennett wasn't running away from chores, but he felt the need to calm some of Esther's fears.

  He spoke as gently as he could. 'Becca's run away before.'

  'Yes.'

  'She always comes back in a day or two.'

  'She's always come back to her family – all of her family.' She seemed almost defeated, as if Jeffrey wasn't understanding her. 'We're not what you think.'

  He wasn't sure what he thought. He hated to admit it, but he was seeing why her brothers hadn't been as alarmed as Esther. If Rebecca made a habit of running away for a few days, scaring the crap out of everybody and then coming back, this could be just another cry for attention. The question was, why did she feel she needed attention? Was it some sort of teenage urge for attention? Or something more sinister?

  'Ask your questions,' Esther said, visibly bracing herself. 'Go ahead.'

  'Mrs Bennett,' he began.

  Some of her composure had returned. 'I think if you're going to ask me if my daughters were being molested by my brothers, you should at least call me Esther.'

  'Is that what you're afraid of?'

  'No,' she said, her answer requiring no thought. 'Monday, I was afraid of you telling me that my daughter was dead. Now, I am afraid of you telling me that there's no hope for Rebecca. The truth scares me, Chief Tolliver. I'm not afraid of conjecture.'

  'I need you to answer my question, Esther.'

  She took her time, as if it made her sick to even consider. 'My brothers have never been inappropriate with my children. My husband has never been inappropriate with my children.'

  'What about Cole Connolly?'

  She shook her head once. 'Believe me when I tell you this,' she assured him. 'If anyone did harm to my children – not just my children, but any child – I would kill them with my bare hands and let God be my judge.'

  He stared at her for a beat. Her clear green eyes were sharp with conviction. He believed her, or at least he believed that she believed herself.

  She asked him, 'What are you going to do?'

  'I can put out an APB and make some phone calls. I'll call the sheriff in Catoogah, but honestly, she has a history of running away and she left a note.' He let that settle in, considering it himself. If Jeffrey had wanted to abduct Rebecca Bennett, he'd probably do it just like that: leave a note, let her history protect him for a few days.

  'Do you think you'll find her?'

  Jeffrey did not let himself dwell on the possibility of a fourteen-year-old somewhere in a shallow grave. 'If I find her,' he began. 'I want to talk to her.'

  'You talked to her before.'

  'I want to talk to her alone,' Jeffrey said, knowing he had no right to ask this, just as he knew Esther could always renounce her promise. 'She's underage. Legally, I can't talk to her without the permission of at least one of her parents.'

  She took her time, obviously weighing the consequences. Finally, she nodded, 'You have my permission.'

  'You know she's probably camping out somewhere,' he told her, feeling guilty for taking advantage of her desperation, hoping to God he was right about the girl. 'She'll probably come back on her own in a day or so.'

  She took the note back out of her pocket. 'Find her,' she said, pressing the page into his hand. 'Please. Find her.'

  When Jeffrey got back to the station, there was a large bus parked in the back of the lot, the words 'Holy Grown Farms' stenciled on the side. Workers milled around outside despite the cold, and he could see the front lobby was packed with bodies. He suppressed a curse as he got out of his car, wondering if this was Lev Ward's idea of a joke.

  Inside, he pushed his way through the smelliest bunch of derelicts he'd seen since the last time he'd driven through downtown Atlanta. He held his breath, waiting for Maria to buzz him in, thinking he might be sick if he stayed in the hot room for much longer.

  'Hey there, Chief,' Marla said, taking his coat. 'I guess you know what this is all about.'

  Frank walked up, a sour look on his face. 'They've been here for two hours. It's gonna take all day just getting their names.'

  Jeffrey asked, 'Where's Lev Ward?'

  'Connolly said he had to stay home with one of his sisters.'

  'Which one?'

  'Hell if I know,' Frank said, obviously over the experience of interviewing the great unwashed. 'Said she had diabetes or something like that.'

  'Shit,' Jeffrey cursed, thinking Ward really was jerking his chain. Not only was his absence wasting time, but it meant Mark McCallum, the polygraph expert the GBI had sent, would be spending another night in town courtesy of the Grant County Police Department.

  Jeffrey took out his notepad and wrote down Rebecca Bennett's name and description. He slid a photograph out of his pocket, handing it to Frank. 'Abby's sister,' he said. 'Put her details on the wire. She's been missing since ten o'clock last night.'

  'Shit.'

  'She's run away before,' Jeffrey qualified, 'but I don't like this coming so close to her sister's death.'

  'You think she knows something?'

  'I think she's running away for a reason.'

  'Did you call Two-Bit?'

  Jeffrey scowled. He had called Ed Pelham on his way back to the station. As predicted, the neighboring sheriff had pretty much laughed in his face. Jeffrey couldn't blame the man – the girl had a h
istory of running away – but he had thought that Ed would take it more seriously, considering what had happened to Abigail Bennett.

  He asked Frank, 'Is Brad still searching the area around the lake?' Frank nodded. 'Tell him to go home and get his backpack or camping gear or whatever. Get him and Hemming to go into the Catoogah state forest and start looking around. If anyone stops them, for God's sake, tell him to say they're out camping.'

  'All right.'

  Frank turned to leave but Jeffrey stopped him. 'Update the APB on Donner to include the possibility he might be with a girl.' Anticipating Frank's next question, he shrugged, saying, 'Throw it at the wall and see what sticks.'

  'Will do,' he said. 'I put Connolly in interrogation one. You gonna get to him next?'

  'I want him to stew,' Jeffrey answered. 'How long do you think it'll take to get through the rest of these interviews?'

  'Five, maybe six hours.'

  'Anything interesting so far?'

  'Not unless you count Lena threatening to backhand one of them if he didn't shut up about Jesus being Lord.' He added, 'I think this is wasting our fucking time.'

  'Have to agree with you,' Jeffrey said. 'I want you to go ahead and talk to the people on your list who bought cyanide salts from the dealer in Atlanta.'

  'I'll leave right after I talk to Brad and update the APB.'

  Jeffrey went to his office and picked up the phone before he even sat down. He called Lev Ward's number at Holy Grown and navigated his way through the switchboard. As he was on hold, Maria walked in and put a stack of messages on his desk. He thanked her just as Lev Ward's voice mail picked up.

  'This is Chief Tolliver,' he said. 'I need you to call me as soon as possible.' Jeffrey left his cell phone number, not wanting to give Lev the easy out of leaving a message. He rang off and picked up his notes from last night, unable to make any sense of the long lists he had made. There were questions for each family member, but in the cold light of day he realized that asking any one of them would get Paul Ward in the room so fast that his head would spin.

  Legally, none of them had to talk to the police. He had no cause to force them to come in and he doubted very seriously if Lev Ward would deliver on his promise to take the lie detector test. Running their names through the computer hadn't brought up much information. Jeffrey had tried Cole Connolly's name, but without a middle initial or something more specific like a birth date or previous address, the search had returned about six hundred Cole Connollys in the southern United States. Opening it up to Coleman Connolly had added another three hundred.

  Jeffrey looked at his hand, where the bandage had started to come off. Esther had gripped his hand before she left this morning, begging him again to find her daughter. He was convinced that if she knew anything, she'd be spilling her guts right now, doing whatever she could to get her only living child back in her home. She had defied her brothers and her husband by even talking to him, and when he had asked her if she was going to tell them whether or not they had spoken, she had cryptically answered, 'If they ask me, I will tell them the truth.' Jeffrey wondered if the men would even consider the possibility that Esther had done something on her own without their permission. The risk she had taken was indication enough that she was desperate for the truth. The problem was, Jeffrey didn't know where to begin to find it. The case was like a huge circle, and all he could do was keep going round and round until somebody made a mistake.

  He skimmed through his messages, trying to focus his eyes long enough to read. He was exhausted and his hand was throbbing. Two calls from the mayor and a note that the Dew Drop Inn had called to discuss the bill for Mark McCallum, the polygraph expert he had ordered for Lev Ward, didn't help matters. Apparently, the young man liked room service.

  Jeffrey rubbed his eyes, focusing on Buddy Conford's name. The lawyer had been called into court but would come to the station as soon as he could for the talk with his stepdaughter. Jeffrey had forgotten for a moment about Patty O'Ryan. He set the note aside and continued sorting through the stack.

  His heart stopped in his chest when he recognized the name at the top of the next-to-last message. Sara's cousin Dr Hareton Earnshaw, had called. In the note section, Maria had written, 'He says everything is fine,' then added her own question, 'you okay?'

  He picked up the phone, dialing Sara's number at the clinic. After listening to several minutes of the Chipmunks singing classic rock while on hold, she came onto the line.

  'Hare called,' he told her. 'Everything's fine.'

  She let out a soft sigh. 'That's good news.'

  'Yeah.' He thought about the other night, the risk she took putting her mouth on him. A cold sweat came, followed by more relief than he had felt when he had first read Hare's message. He had sort of reconciled himself to dealing with bad news, but thinking about the possibility of taking Sara down with him was too painful to even fathom. He had caused enough hurt in her life already.

  She asked, 'What did Esther say?'

  He caught her up on the missing child and Esther's fears. Sara was obviously skeptical. She asked, 'She's always come back?'

  'Yeah,' he said. 'I don't know that I would've even taken a report if not for the fact of Abby. I keep going back and forth between thinking she's just hiding somewhere for the attention and thinking she's hiding for a reason.'

  'The reason being Rebecca knows what happened to Abby?' Sara asked.

  'Or something else,' he said, still not sure what he believed. He voiced the thought he'd been trying to suppress since Esther's call this morning. 'She could be somewhere, Sara. Somewhere like Abby.'

  Sara was quiet.

  'I've got a team searching the forest. I've got Frank checking out jewelry stores. We've got a station full of ex-addicts and alcoholics from the farm, most of them smelling pretty ripe.' He stopped, thinking he'd be talking for another hour or two if he kept listing dead leads.

  Out of the blue, she said, 'I told Tess I'd go to church with her tonight.'

  Jeffrey felt something in his gut squeeze. 'I really wish you wouldn't.'

  'But you can't tell me why.'

  'No,' he admitted. 'It's a gut instinct, but I've got a pretty smart gut.'

  'I need to do this for Tess,' she said. 'And myself.'

  'You turning religious on me?'

  'There's something I need to see for myself,' she told him. 'I can't talk about it now, but I'll tell you later.'

  He wondered if she was still mad at him for sleeping on the couch. 'What's wrong?'

  'Nothing's wrong – really. I just need to think some more before I can talk about it, she said. 'Listen, I've got a patient waiting.'

  'All right.'

  'I love you.'

  Jeffrey felt his smile come back. 'I'll see you later.'

  He slid the phone back on the hook, staring at the blinking lights. Somehow, he felt like he had gotten his second wind, and he thought now was as good a time as any to talk to Cole Connolly.

  He found Lena in the hallway outside the bathroom. She was leaning against the wall, drinking a Coke, and she startled when he walked up, spilling soda down the front of her shirt.

  'Shit,' she muttered, brushing the liquid from her blouse.

  'Sorry,' he told her. 'What's going on?'

  'I needed to get some air,' she said, and Jeffrey nodded. The Holy Grown workers had obviously spent the early hours of the morning toiling in the fields and had the body odor to prove it.

  'Any progress?'

  'Basically, all we've got is more of the same. She was a nice girl, praise the Lord. She did her best, Jesus loves you.'

  Jeffrey didn't acknowledge her sarcasm, though he wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment. He was beginning to see that Lena's calling them a cult hadn't been that far off. They certainly acted as if they were brainwashed.

  Lena sighed. 'You know, actually, looking past all their bullshit, she seemed like a really nice girl.' She pressed her lips together, and he was surprised to see this side of her. As
quickly as it had appeared, it passed, though, and Lena said, 'Oh, well. She must have had something to hide. Everybody does.'

  He caught a glint of guilt in her eye, but instead of asking about Terri Stanley and the police picnic, he told her, 'Rebecca Bennett's missing.'

  Shock registered on her face. 'Since when?'

  'Last night,' Jeffrey handed her the note Esther had pressed into his hand outside the diner. 'She left this.'

  Lena read it, saying, 'Something's not right,' and he was glad that someone was taking this seriously. She asked, 'Why would she run away this close to her sister dying? Even I wasn't that selfish when I was fourteen. Her mother must be going nuts.'

  'Her mother's the one who told me,' Jeffrey said. 'She called me at Sara's this morning. Her brothers didn't want her to report it.'

  'Why?' Lena asked, handing back the note. 'What harm could it do?'

  'They don't like the police involved.'

  'Yeah,' Lena said. 'Well, we'll see how they don't like the police involved when she doesn't come back.' She asked, 'Do you think she's been taken?'

  'Abby didn't leave a note.'

  'No,' she said, then, 'I don't like this. I don't feel good about it.'

  'I don't either,' he agreed, tucking the note back into his pocket. 'I want you to take the lead with Connolly. I don't think he'll like his questions coming from a woman.'

  The smile on her face was brief, like a cat spotting a mouse. 'You want me to piss him off?'

  'Not on purpose.'

  'What are we looking for?'

  'I just want a sense of him,' he said. 'Find out about his dealings with Abby. Float out Rebecca's name. See if he bites.'

  'All right.'

  'I want to talk to Patty O'Ryan again, too. We need to find out if Chip was seeing anybody.'

  'Anybody like Rebecca Bennett?'

  Sometimes the way Lena's mind worked scared him. He just shrugged. 'Buddy said he'd be here in a couple of hours.'

  She tossed her Coke into the garbage as she headed toward the interrogation room. 'Looking forward to that.'

  Jeffrey opened the door for her and watched Lena transform into the cop he knew she could be. Her gait was heavy, like she had brass balls hanging between her legs. She pulled out a chair and sat across from Cole Connolly without a word, legs parted, her chair a few feet back from the table. She rested her arm along the back of the empty chair beside her.