Wolfhunter River

by Caine, Rachel

  “Miss Crockett, I’m Hector Sparks, we spoke before?” Sparks says. Nothing. Like she’s gone deaf. “I should say, I spoke, and you pretended not to listen. I thought I’d bring in someone you already know to help us both through this process.”

  Suddenly she turns her stare to him. “Go away,” she says.

  “He can’t,” I tell her. “He’s your lawyer. If he leaves, we have to leave too.”

  She doesn’t like that; I see a flash of petulance in her face, and then once again it goes blank. “Fine,” she says, and sits back. Her chains drag noisily on the table. She looks up at some point above her head. I wait, but she doesn’t say anything else.

  “Is it okay if I ask you some questions, Vee? I want to understand what happened to you, and to your mom,” I say.

  “You heard,” she says. Still looking two feet over my head. “I know you heard what happened.”

  “Part of it. But only after you called me. I need to find out what happened before.”

  Vee adjusts her gaze to meet mine for a bare second, and then she skips away to focus on Lanny. “This your daughter?” The girl’s got a quiet, oddly normal voice.

  “Yes,” I say. “She’s helping me today.”

  “Doin’ what?”

  “Taking notes,” Lanny says. She reaches into her bag and takes out a pen and paper. Writes down the date. Her hand is shaking, but damn if she doesn’t sound calm. “Go ahead.”

  “Y’all ain’t neither one from around here,” Vee says, and it’s a velvety-smooth, uniquely Tennessee drawl that I don’t have, and neither does my daughter. “Where from?”

  “We don’t have long with you,” I say as Lanny opens her mouth; I don’t want this girl-prisoner to know any more about us than is strictly necessary. Just in case. “What happened the day your mother passed, Vee? Imagine yourself waking up in the morning, and just tell me about that day as you remember it.”

  I say it as kindly as I can, because I’m trying to be generous and believe the weird blankness in her is shock and trauma, and I don’t want to make it worse. I imagine the police weren’t nearly as considerate.

  Vee says nothing. Nothing. She just shakes her head and looks down toward her feet, with the mess of tangled hair tumbling forward to shade her face.

  “I promise you, I am trying to help,” I tell her, even more quietly. “Nothing you say to me is going to be admissible in court, it’s only for your attorney to use to try to help you. It’ll be okay. You can trust me.”

  If she even hears me, she gives no sign of it at all. She sways a little, like willow branches in a cold wind, and I feel a prickle of gooseflesh on the back of my neck.

  Then Lanny suddenly says, “It’s the wrong question, right?”

  I send her a look that I hope clearly says don’t lead the damn witness, but it’s worked. Vee is looking up at us again. No, at Lanny. She even pushes some hair back from her face.

  “You’re right. I didn’t wake up ’cause I never went to bed. I was out over at the cutoff near the river.”

  “Which river?” I ask.

  “Wolfhunter River, ain’t no other one around here.”

  “Were you with anyone?” I ask.

  “No,” she says, and I know that one is a lie, because I see her clear green eyes dart away and come back to fix on my daughter again. I don’t like that look. I don’t like it at all. “Well. Maybe some others, but we don’t pay no mind to each other. We do our thing, that’s all.”

  “So what’s your thing?” Lanny asks. I bite my tongue on an impulse to tell her to be quiet, because I have the strong guess that if she stays quiet, I get nowhere.

  But even Lanny just gets a dull shrug of Vee’s prison-uniformed shoulders to that question.

  Hector Sparks is avidly following all this. He’s staring over his glasses at Vee Crockett with an expression that seems intent and very interested. It honestly makes me a little uncomfortable.

  She ignores him totally. Like she’s had practice.

  “So,” I say, “tell me about the night before, and keep going up to when you found your mom.”

  I think she’s going to shut down completely, but instead she finally says, “I went out to score. Tyler had some Oxy he bought off some old lady as needed the money, so I got a few. Sharon had a nice bottle of whiskey and some vodka. So we built a fire and shared all round. Dicky came around with meth, but I didn’t have none of that shit.” She sounds briefly superior. “Then Tyler said I needed to blow him for the Oxy, the dickhead. I stretched out by the fire after. The Oxy and whiskey made me kinda sick, so I stayed. Tyler and Sharon was gone when I stopped flyin’. Fire was out.”

  I feel my daughter flinch at the too-casual mention of the sexual transaction, thrown out by a girl her own age.

  “So what did you do after that?” I ask. Another shrug, even more apathetic than the last.

  “Went to school for a hot minute,” she replies. “Then I got bored.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Nowheres.”

  “Wolfhunter’s not that big,” I say. “Not a lot of places to go. Try to remember.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Hung out at the abandoned glass factory a while. I got a sleeping bag there and some stuff for when I don’t want to go to class.” Stuff, I imagine, is some hoarded pills, or booze, or both.

  “Did you see anybody else there?”

  “No.”

  “So what were you doing?” Lanny says. Vee suddenly smiles. It’s a smile that shocks me, because it looks so . . . normal. Like the two of them are just having a friendly conversation, without bars all around. Without one of them being accused of matricide.

  “Good times, girl. Drank, took the last of my Oxy,” she said. “Just sort of drifted awhile.”

  I don’t like that answer. “And then what?”

  “Walked home. It ain’t far.” She turns her face away again. I can’t tell if the smile is still there, but I imagine it is, and fight off another wave of misgivings. “Momma was on the floor. Gun was right there next to her. Guess they got her, just like she thought they might. I picked it up ’cause I heard somebody outside. So I fired it to warn ’em off. Thought they might kill me like they did her.” She laughs. Laughs. “Anyway, it were just the postman, and I missed him.”

  “Detective Fairweather said you had blood on you. Can you tell me how it got there, Vee?” She doesn’t answer that. She freezes up. I let it go, because the clock is ticking. “You said they. Who are you talking about?” Vee shakes her head.

  “Momma never really said. Just that something weren’t right, and she needed to get help. I never paid her much mind. She was always on about something or other. She liked all them conspiracy-theory people.” Her voice sounds slow, almost sad. I wonder if she’s feeling some regret.

  I ask a few more questions, but Vee seems tired now. Almost sleepy. She doesn’t respond with more than one-word answers or shakes of her head. Not even Lanny can get a rise out of her.

  Finally, Hector Sparks says, “Ms. Proctor, I think we need to wrap this up. I really do need to be somewhere.” As if his client is keeping him from something more important. I feel a bright surge of resentment, and have to remind myself that he is, in fact, my boss at the moment. Company rules apply. He nods to the guard outside, who unlocks the door. Sparks gets up and walks out. Lanny hesitates, looking at me.

  We’re out of time. I lean across the table as far as I dare to. “Vee, look at me. You need to tell me the truth. Did you kill your mother?”

  She slowly turns her head and brushes her hair back. No smile now. “No, ma’am,” she says. “I wouldn’t do that. She weren’t a bad woman. She weren’t really there, mostly. Not for me.”

  I don’t know if I believe her. I don’t know who I’m looking at. Or what.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Lanny asks Vee.

  Vee gives her a sad little smile. “Nicest bedroom I ever had is here.”

  It’s more than a little sickening, because
I’m pretty sure she means that.

  “Time to go.” The guard’s impatient voice. He’s holding the door for us.

  Lanny and I get up to leave. We’ve gone a couple of steps toward the door when Vee says, “Wait. Your name’s Lanny, right?” I turn toward her. So does Lanny. Vee is leaning forward, picking at a torn fingernail. A bright scarlet drop of blood wells up, and she lifts her finger to let it slither down her skin.

  I instinctively put myself between her—even shackled as she is—and my daughter.

  “I know who you are, Lanny,” Vee says. She’s staring past me. “Your daddy was a raper and murderer. Everybody knows that. They likely think you’re bad too.”

  “And what’s your point?” Lanny, to her credit, doesn’t sound shaken.

  “Just that you know what it’s like. I didn’t do this. I’m not a good girl, but I ain’t a killer. Not my momma. Not like . . .” Her eyes suddenly fill with tears, but she doesn’t cry. She blinks, and they roll down. I wonder if she has a born actor’s ability to cry on command. “It was dark in the house. I tripped. I fell over her and got her blood all over me. I put my hand in her.” I feel that like a gut punch. She pulls in a breath that sounds painful, and she bows her head. “That’s what happened. You wanted to know. That’s the truth.”

  “Ms. Proctor.” The guard’s voice from the door is stern. “Let’s go. Now.”

  I nod to Vee, and usher Lanny out. I still keep myself behind her, a shield between my daughter and a girl I’m still not sure I can believe.

  “Mom?” Lanny turns to me while we’re in the air lock between the cells and the open hallway. “Do you think she’s lying?”

  “Lying about what?” Sparks asks. He’s checking his phone.

  He’d missed the last exchange. Too damn busy. I say, “If you want something to exploit for the defense, she says she tripped over her mother’s body in the dark and fell on her. That’s how she got the blood on her clothing,” I tell him. “Which you’d know if you weren’t in such a hurry to get to your next appointment.”

  He blinks. “Ms. Proctor, she’s hardly my only client.”

  “You got another one on trial for murder?”

  He pulls himself up indignantly. “That’s not quite fair—”

  “Unfair is being innocent and locked up in a place like this,” I tell him. “Look for high-impact spatter.”

  “What?”

  “Close shotgun blasts make high-impact spatter patterns, which might not even be visible to the naked eye. If she doesn’t have that pattern on her skin or clothes, it wouldn’t have been possible for her to have shot her mother at close range.” I pause. I lower my voice. “She says when she fell on the body, she—put her hand inside the wound. So it had to have been a pretty close-range shot to punch with that much force. Pellets spread over distance.”

  “Thanks.” He makes notes. “I’m afraid to ask how you know this.”

  “I make it a point to know a lot of things. Especially about forensics.”

  I ask him about the people she mentioned who saw her the night before, and he says he’ll follow up. I’m not so sure.

  “Mr. Sparks,” I say, “are you really going to fight for her? Or are you just checking a box here?”

  He stares at me, and behind the oh-so-inoffensive glasses perched on his nose, his eyes look . . . cold. I’ve often heard lawyers referred to as sharks, but I’ve rarely seen one who looks quite so open about it. Then he blinks, and it’s gone. “I’ll do my best. And what’s important is that we believe in her innocence, isn’t it?”

  Do I?

  I honestly have no idea.

  Sparks gets a phone call. His conversation is brisk and brief, and I look back toward the interview room where Vee Crockett is being unlocked from the table. She lifts her head and looks at me, and in that instant, I do know.

  I know that Vee Crockett didn’t kill her mom. It’s a gut-deep judgment. I don’t like the kid; she’s got a boatload of problems to deal with, and the weird crush she seems to have on my daughter makes me deeply nervous. But I’m looking at a girl in shock, reacting in strange and unpredictable ways. Underneath that is deep, traumatic pain. I can see it.

  “Ms. Proctor?”

  Sparks is suddenly beside me. I hadn’t heard him coming, and it makes me flinch in surprise. I see him note it, but he doesn’t apologize.

  “What are your plans now?”

  “Grab my kids and Sam, get out of town,” I tell him. “I did what I said I’d do. I helped get Vera to talk to you. You have her story now.”

  He seems relieved, which is somehow not what I expected; I’d thought he would have been desperate for more help. But he doesn’t ask. He just nods.

  “Well, drive safely,” he says. “I wish you the best of luck, Ms. Proctor.”

  “You too,” I say. “What do you think her chances are?”

  “Better than her mother’s were,” he says.

  I don’t like it. I don’t like how unengaged he seems. A fifteen-year-old deserves more than that. I can tell by the look on Lanny’s face that she feels the same.

  Sparks goes ahead of us. Watching him, Lanny says, “We don’t have to leave today, do we?”

  I don’t answer her, but inside, I’m thinking maybe there’s one more stop we could make to get a few things cleared up.

  Problem is, I think that nobody in this town’s going to welcome me, or my questions.

  There’s no sign of Fairweather when we emerge from the cell area and head back down the dull office hallway. Not in the reception area either. So once we’re in the car and have the AC going to mitigate the stifling heat, I take my new phone and dial his number.

  “Fairweather,” he answers.

  “Proctor,” I respond. “Sorry. New number. I apologize I didn’t have time to talk earlier—”

  “That’s kind of you, ma’am, but things have changed. I’ve been reassigned.”

  “Reassigned?” I go blank for a second. “But . . . you just got started.”

  “I’m sorry to tell you that sometimes that’s just how this goes. The evidence stacks up and stands on its own. We don’t have any other suspects than Vee Crockett. Given that, my lieutenant is pulling me off to work the Ellie White kidnapping, so I’ll be out of Wolfhunter in a couple of hours.”

  “But—”

  “Ms. Proctor, I know you kind of have a personal stake in this. But nothing you told me in your statement gives me any reason to believe Vee Crockett didn’t kill her mother. On the contrary, it leans toward the idea she did.”

  “She just told me she fell over her mother’s body in the dark,” I blurt out. I know I shouldn’t disclose that; it’s attorney-client information. But I know, for some gut-deep reason, that I do not want Fairweather to leave this case. Not yet. “It explains the blood on her clothes. Her trauma explains why she picked up the gun and fired it at the noise outside. She was terrified, Detective.”

  He’s silent a moment. “Does it occur to you that she might have tailored that explanation to fit the evidence we found on her?”

  “Yes. But when I was on the phone with her . . .”

  “You said she sounded disconnected. Like she didn’t care about her dead mother.”

  “I know I did. But detachment like that can be a side effect of severe shock. Remember the case of the girl in Texas whose whole family was killed by an intruder? She coped by going out and feeding the farm animals. People cope. I think Vera did it by shutting off any kind of emotions. It looks bad that she was probably high and drunk, but it also helps explain her off-center reactions.”

  “Maybe,” he says. “But you’re talking about theories. I deal in evidence.”

  I shift a little, not daring to look at my daughter. “If I find some, will you follow up on it?”

  “I can’t make you any promises. I’ve got a kidnapped child to find. Vera Crockett might be a lost cause, you know that.”

  “Maybe,” I agree. “But I’m not the kind who gives up.”
/>
  He sounds briefly amused. “Yeah, I certainly see that. I can’t promise anything.”

  “Did you ever talk to anyone at Marlene’s job?” I ask.

  “Marlene worked in the garage pretty much alone, answering phones and doing paperwork,” he answers. “Nothing there. She wasn’t popular in town. Not a lot of friends.”

  “Why not?”

  “Her daughter’s behavior, for one thing, but before that, her grandfather swindled a bunch of people back in the sixties.”

  “Grandfather.”

  “Small towns,” he says. “Long memories.”

  “I’m guessing the whole reason you were sent to take charge of this case is that the TBI has zero confidence in the abilities of the Wolfhunter PD. This girl still needs your help.”

  The amusement is all gone when he finally responds. “God help her, then. And you. If you want my advice, Gwen, just let it go. This town isn’t a good place. It never has been. My advice . . . don’t stay here.” He pauses. “I wouldn’t. And I’ve got a badge and the force of law behind me. This town’s sour. Just leave.”

  Then the call ends, and I sit with the slowly cooling air blasting over us, thinking. My daughter turns to me and says, “He doesn’t want to even try to help her, does he?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie,” I say. “I honestly don’t know what he’s thinking.”

  Downtown Wolfhunter River, at 4:00 p.m., is not exactly jumping. Most stores—those few still in business—are already closed down. A few people are on the streets, mostly clustered near the diner we pass on the way to the garage where Marlene worked. I don’t need to look up the name; there’s only one garage—a ramshackle, fairly large place built of cinder blocks. Amateurish hand-painting spells out GARAGE in uneven block letters above closed bay doors. There are a few windows in the place, but they’re covered by graying mini-blinds. An apparently ancient tire special is still in force, from the price painted on the one larger window up front.

  “This looks deserted,” Lanny says. The sunbaked sign in the window still says OPEN, and as I check my watch, we’re still an hour before the posted time to shut down.