Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel

by Amanda Kyle Williams

  “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.

  I quickly replied to the group: Has to be a mattress. An old one. She’s not in some hole. The space is large enough for a mattress.

  I thought about the second note and remembered the shaky hand, the tiny puncture from the pen. Skylar had composed the note he’d made her write sitting on a dirt floor using a filthy old mattress as a table.

  And then I saw it, a lone extension cord running from the house. I followed it thirty feet and saw it dive down into the earth. The door to the storm cellar was painted
a greenish tan that blended nicely into the landscape. I lifted it and saw thick padding on the underside. Light flooded concrete steps, five of them going straight down. I felt the cold fingertips of a shiver caressing up my spine.

  I ran down the steps and called out for Skylar. I found a string attached to a bare bulb and clicked it on, taking in every corner of the small, cool room—crates of bottled water, canned goods, boxes neatly stacked, batteries and pens and pencils, a soccer ball, a few books. There were pillows and blankets protected in plastic and folding director’s chairs. No mattress. No Skylar. This was a tornado shelter, not a prison. My heart was hammering.

  My phone went off. “Robin Mae Hutchins,” Neil said. His voice was garbled. I moved closer to the open hatch door. “Licensed private adoption agency in Atlanta. It was a legal adoption. And I couldn’t find any connection to Silas or any connection to the victims via social media sites. I think your preacher’s clean.”

  “Yeah,” I said, swallowing disappointment. “I’m starting to get that. Thanks, Neil.”

  I clicked off and stood there for a minute, my heart still fluttering like a spooked bird. A moment of hope. Gone. I had wanted her waiting down here for me. I wanted to get her up those steps and into my car and to a hospital. I wanted the world to give her back.

  Frustration and tears felt hot on my face. Another dead end, I kept thinking.

  “Shit.” I slammed my foot into the soccer ball, watched it careen against the concrete block wall. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  I climbed the steps and called Sam for clarification on one point. I looked again at the extension cord running inside the shelter, and sent one more message to the group.

  The kerosene. It’s residual. A lantern. That means no elec & confirms vacant or abandoned property. He has to leave home or work to get to her. And he probably smells like kerosene. Someone knows him.

  Brolin answered a moment later. Adding patrols to the search teams with more concentration in outlying areas. They’re on until dark. Back at first light.

  Meltzer: Will announce new evidence tonight.

  Me: He’s going to feel the pressure when you make that announcement. He’s going to realize the world is shrinking. He’ll try to move her.

  40

  The sheriff’s department is urgently seeking information on the missing girl, Skylar Barbour, who is in a very dangerous situation. Her kidnapper has been tied to two other murders in the area.

  An Atlanta news station led with “a developing story in Georgia’s Lake Oconee region” as I towel-dried my hair in my hotel room and prepared for the service.

  The anchor desk directed us to Brenda Roberts live at Whisper Park, where residents prepared for a candlelight vigil. As she recapped the story, the screen switched to the footage from earlier today. I saw myself standing on Main Street with the sheriff. Meltzer’s sunny hair was sun-streaked in the midday light. He was taut and narrow-hipped and looked good with a badge at his belt and his S&W 40 under his arm.

  Atlanta resident and former FBI profiler Keye Street, seen here with the Hitchiti County sheriff, consulted with Atlanta police on the Wishbone Killer cases and the cases known as the Birthday Murders. She is working closely on this tragic situation.

  I lowered myself onto the bed with the towel still in my hand. We were standing too near, Meltzer and I. It was innocent. We’d seen the cameraman and pulled in close. We weren’t thinking about anything at that moment beyond the case and Skylar. But there was something about our body language, about our interaction, about his bare arm brushing against me, the comfort and familiarity in our eyes. We had neither comfort nor familiarity, of course. What we had was chemistry and the kind of case that keeps you jacked up. It’s like being in a hurricane sometimes. Rauser knew it. We’d had all those crazy, charged-up emotions. And if he saw this footage, he’d see exactly what I was seeing now.

  I watched the screen as the sheriff came out of the florist with his scene kit, handed it to me. We got in his truck.

  The suspect is reportedly attempting to communicate with the sheriff’s department, and Dr. Street, who was trained in the analysis of serial crimes, is attempting to piece together the clues.

  I opened a tube of drugstore mascara I’d picked up to replace the one I was missing, and stood in front of the bathroom mirror trying to erase the drain of the day from my face. My phone rang and I saw my brother’s number. “Hey, Jimmy.”

  “I can’t believe you answered. You never answer when you’re working.” My brother had picked up my mother’s swampy Carolina accent just as if he’d been raised on the banks of Albemarle Sound. He’d lost some of it while living out west, but a southern gentlemen still lurked in his voice.

  “I’m on a forced break,” I told him, and dabbed a little foundation under puffy eyes. “I’m getting ready for a thing.”

  “While it’s always a thrill to see my sister on the news, I do have to make an observation,” he said. I braced myself. “That sheriff is smokin’.”

  “He is that.” I smiled, leaned in near the mirror, and brushed my lashes with cheap mascara. “It’s a problem.”

  “I thought so,” Jimmy said. He had seen what I’d seen, what I hoped Rauser wouldn’t. I was already making my excuses, building my defense. Not because I’d done anything. I hadn’t. And no matter how many times I told myself that, I knew this was different. Because I wanted it, because I wanted him, because I knew how easy it would be to bring those fantasies to life.

  “I want them both. Okay? There, I said it. I’m a terrible person.”

  “Despicable,” Jimmy agreed, but I heard his smile. “So what are you going to do? About this hot sheriff, I mean.”

  “I’m going to get dressed and go to work, Jimmy. And keep showing up for work until we find that little girl. That’s my only plan right now.”

  “How’s the case going?”

  “Well, we have no viable suspects,” I admitted. Everything I thought I knew about this case had turned to a spinning dust cloud. I didn’t tell him I’d searched a minister’s home or cried and kicked things like a petulant child. “But we have new evidence. And it’s going to get us closer to him.”

  “The news says he’s communicating.”

  “He is, which is why we have new evidence. So much for the serial mastermind.”

  “Do you think he’ll kill her?” Jimmy asked quietly.

  “I know he will,” I said.

  I dressed and packed a light bag, threw it in my car. Old habits. I’d learned it at the Bureau when analysts had to jump a plane at all hours. You had to have decent clothes for law enforcement briefings. And you had to have clothes for all the dirty, inconvenient places killers hide their victims.

  I found dinner a couple of doors down. I ate without interest. I ate because my body needed fuel. I ordered coffee, scrolled through my notes. What was I missing? What wasn’t I seeing? He was standing right in front of all of us. He was casually walking streets and parks a free man while Skylar was locked up in some filthy shack, some ratty cellar. He was looking into the eyes of his friends and neighbors and coworkers and feigning concern. That he’d go to her later, take what he wanted from her, hurt her because he liked to hurt, was not a moral dilemma.

  I pulled into Whisper at dusk. Candles glowed in the park. The edges had been lined with luminaries that reminded me of the way runways look at night from airplane windows. Police cars surrounded the park. The parking spaces were full. Whisper was bursting at the seams. I parked in a loading zone behind the school cafeteria, and headed for the candles and the crowd. A television news van was parked on the fringes with the logo of the local Atlanta ABC affiliate. Music mixed with the hum of voices; a Kimberly Perry song was playing on some kind of loop. The song must have meant something to Skylar. And so I walked into the park with a lump in my throat, which was not the way I’d wanted the evening to begin.

  I wandered through the crowd—people arm-in-arm, weeping, embracing. I saw Hayley and Brooks Barbour nea
r the lectern. A cameraman was hoisting a camera to his shoulder. Reverend Hutchins patted Hayley’s hand as he bent his head to hers. The platform I’d seen the schoolgirls working on earlier had been tilted up on one end. Candles flickered in the shape of Skylar’s name. I glimpsed Bryant and Molly Cochran, each with an arm around the other, both holding candles. I moved through the crowd, searching shocked faces. One of you isn’t grieving, I kept thinking. One of you knows where she is.

  The music faded and Ethan Hutchins stepped to the lectern. The minister began with a prayer, and then he talked to the hushed crowd. “We lift our voices tonight and our candles, their flames as fragile as life itself, in support of community.” His voice was serene. It carried smoothly over the jagged edges of terror and grief that crowded the park. “There is fear here tonight. There is rage and sorrow. We hold one another close …”

  I eased through the throng of candlelit faces as the minister quoted scripture and talked about the power of many voices in prayer. I saw Daniel Tray standing near a cluster of kids. I saw Tina Brolin standing next to Ken Meltzer. Both were in full uniform. Robert Raymond stood in the background, also in uniform, solemn-faced, staring down at the ground. Teenagers sat cross-legged on the grass. A banner stretched across the lawn in front of them read: WHISPER MIDDLE SCHOOL. WE MISS YOU, SKYLAR! Skylar’s brown-haired girlfriend from the picture in the photo booth held her candle, cupping the flame with her free hand, wet-eyed and shell-shocked, struggling to make sense of the incomprehensible.

  I saw Melinda’s friends, the girls I’d walked with as they tried to remember the day Melinda disappeared, the girls who’d told me about their music teacher, the girls who’d told me Melinda was awkward, the girls who had tried to mislead me.

  I moved to the front row and listened to the minister. Bernadette Hutchins reached for my arm. She squeezed a little when I looked at her and didn’t let go. We stood there side by side as her husband spoke, the town behind us, shaken numb and holding their flames. Bernadette had no idea I’d been through her house, looked in her drawers, searched the storm cellar, violated her trust and privacy. And I was okay with it. I was.