Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (18 page)

“Of course, Raymond and Brolin are over here every day at some point,” Meltzer added
as we walked toward the doors. “The labs, court appearances. Be a lot more convenient
for them here. But inconvenience builds character. Think I’ll keep them in Whisper
awhile longer.” The smile again, this time with a wink.

We pushed open glass doors and cruised through security, Meltzer stopping to talk
to the deputies whose responsibility it is to guard the judicial center. He was light
with them, friendly; he appeared to know everyone’s name. Ken Meltzer was not a sit-behind-the-desk
kind of sheriff. I wondered how that would work for him in Washington if he
managed to get elected. He’d like the campaigning, I decided. He was good with people.

I stopped just past the security check and waited for one of the deputies to hand
me the plastic bowl with my keys and phone. Carved into the floor in the atrium were
the words,
“THE OFFICE OF SHERIFF CARRIES WITH IT THE DUTY TO PRESERVE THE PEACE AND PROTECT
THE LIVES, PROPERTY, HEALTH, AND MORALS OF THE PEOPLE.”—GEORGIA SUPREME COURT
. I don’t know about you, but I get a little nervous when anyone wants to be in charge
of morals.

In the sheriff’s tenth-floor office, he gave me access to Jeff Davidson’s file and
some time to read it in an empty office before I headed for the bridge that connected
the two towers and waited alone in an interview room for Jeff Davidson, younger brother
to Tracy Davidson, the first victim to disappear and turn up at the bottom of an isolated
embankment.

The room looked like a hundred others I’d seen. A box with sage walls, a table, two
metal chairs, a camera angled in the corner, recording, broadcasting live to monitors
somewhere, an interior window with an invisible observation room behind it. A deputy
had delivered a bottle of water. I asked for a second one.

Jeffrey Davidson came in with cuffed wrists hanging in front of him. He had his mother’s
wide eyes. But the strong bridge of his nose, the dimple on one cheek, the perfectly
shaped lips reminded me of the photographs in his sister’s file. His hair was dark
and needed a cut. The safety-orange jumpsuit hung on him. He sat down across from
me. I asked the deputy to uncuff him. Davidson had been in a string of trouble, none
of it violent: petty theft, break-ins when homeowners were away, then grand theft
auto. He’d never used a weapon, never been aggressive. He had stayed out of trouble
in jail too.

The deputy unlocked the cuffs and took them with him. I switched the voice recorder
on my phone to the on position and set it on the table between us, bare except for
the two water bottles. I looked at Jeff Davidson’s thin face. “My name is Keye Street.
I’m a consultant to the sheriff’s department. I’m here to assist in the investigation
of your sister’s murder.”

“Murder?” Color drained from his face. “They found her?” No one
had told him.
Jesus
. It never crossed my mind I would be the bearer of this news. I certainly might have
delivered it differently. He’d been in jail when the bodies were discovered. He either
didn’t have access to news or wasn’t interested. I wondered when or if his mother
had last visited. I couldn’t imagine her not making the drive from Silas to inform
him. It was less than ten miles away.

“Yes,” I answered quietly. “They found her. I’m sorry.”

Davidson clasped bony hands together and looked down at dirty nails. Dark hair fell
in front of his eyes. “It’s a little late, isn’t it?” he asked finally. His voice
was even and he’d learned how to disguise some of the accent he’d probably had growing
up, the one his mother had. But I could hear that country road and that little house
where he’d been raised in every word. I thought about the bug lady again and her weird
aquarium, her thick drawl, the too-long, too-blond hair, the regrets. I didn’t feel
sorry for her this time. I just felt pissed off. Why hadn’t she bothered to inform
her son about the discovery of his sister’s body?

“Yes, it is,” I told him. “But we still have a chance to catch the person who did
this.” I handed him the bottle of water across the table. He took it, uncapped it,
and gulped some down.

“Where?” he wanted to know. Of course he wanted to know. They’d been close. Tracy’s
disappearance was probably the most traumatic event of a childhood chock-full of trauma.
Tracy had protected him from a violent father and had given him what a neglectful
mother couldn’t. I silently cursed his bug-killing mama again for not getting her
ass over here. Some people should not have children. I thought about my biological
addicts, otherwise known as parents. At least they’d had the good sense to give me
up.

“Do you know of a place called Oconee Campground and RV Park?” I asked Jeff.

“Sure. It’s in the national forest. Or near it. I used to park there and go fishing
sometimes.”

“You ever go down there with Tracy?”

Davidson shook his head. “Neither one of us was old enough to drive when she disappeared.
And we lived miles away in Silas. That was where she was found?”

“Close to there.”

“Do they know how?” he asked. “How she died?”

“Someone hit her very hard,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him the weapon dug into
Tracy’s skull and left a pattern of radiating fractures, that she’d been held prisoner,
that she’d probably experienced childbirth in captivity. I didn’t want to be the one
to tell him she’d been discarded in the woods and left to decompose.

“So what are you gonna do now?” he wanted to know.

“Try to understand a little more about Tracy’s life,” I answered. “Do you remember
Tracy having any older friends? Maybe someone she kept a secret? An older boyfriend?”

“We didn’t have no kind of life,” he said.

I showed him a picture of Logan Peele. “Does this man look familiar at all?”

He stared at the photo for a few seconds. “Yeah. I seen him. He was in here once when
I was here. Mean, I heard. I never got close to him.”

“But you’d never seen him before that? When you were kids, I mean?”

He shook his head. “You think he did it?”

“Was there anyone she confided in? A teacher, maybe? Any adults who may be able to
help us now?”

Once more, he shook his head. “I don’t think so, but we were in different grades with
different teachers.” He looked down at his hands again.

“How about after-school activities?”

Jeff Davidson looked up from his clasped hands. “You shittin’ me? What we had was
get home and do the chores so you didn’t get your ass beat. That was our after-school
activity. We went to school and we came right home. And once a week if he felt generous
my father would let us leave on Sunday and go to church. And we didn’t talk to nobody
because we knew what was waiting for us if it ever got back to him. I didn’t have
no kind of life until that bastard went to jail.”

16

Ken Meltzer was on his desk phone. He waved me in. The office was spacious with a
view of downtown Muscogee Creek, the county seat, which sat on the banks of the lake.
His desk was covered with papers and sticky notes with little arrows pointing to signature
lines without a signature. He was agreeing on the phone, reluctantly it seemed to
me, to speak at some function. “This is why I don’t like being here,” he told me when
he finally hung up. “Someone always finds out. And Doris isn’t here to protect me.
How’d it go?”

“He didn’t know about Tracy,” I said, and knew instantly my darkening mood was evident.
“Don’t you notify prisoners when something happens with a family member?”

“Sure,” Meltzer said. “We have a system. I’ll find out what went wrong.”

“He didn’t recognize Logan Peele’s photograph. Not from eleven years ago anyway. But
he recognized his face from lockup. Told me Peele was mean. Had a reputation.” I thought
about Logan Peele, about his bright, amused, utterly confident eyes. The arrogant
prick. “He didn’t have a lot of information to offer. But I have a clearer picture
of Tracy’s home life. Father sounds like a typical abuser. He isolated those kids.
They were terrified of him.”

“It’s discouraging, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question. It was an
I’ve been there
.

“Jeff Davidson is twenty-one,” I answered. “And he has nothing but a mass of scars
from warring parents and violence and kidnapping, and not much chance of turning his
life around.”

“Eighty percent of the kids around here come from families with incomes below the
poverty level, Keye. The only rich people in Hitchiti County are the part-timers with
summer homes up around the resorts. What we produce here are service people and support
staff. It’s got to stop. We have to find a way to give them opportunity. Poverty and
hopelessness breed crime.”

I didn’t know many law enforcement professionals who considered social and economic
issues when dealing with criminals. I told him that. “You know why I teach that tae
kwon do class on Saturdays?” he asked. “It’s about discipline, respect, humility,
meditation, funneling your energy and strength. It gives them self-esteem. These kids
will need it later in life. Change is coming to this area, but it’s going to take
time. Years.”

“Spoken like a congressman,” I said. His eyes stayed on mine. Something about the
way he looked at me, something knowing in his gaze, made the moment feel too intimate.
I entertained a vivid fantasy of flying out the door and down the long, cold marbled
corridors, back to my car, back to Atlanta, back to Rauser. Because everything about
those moments when he looked at me like that felt too close, too warm, too familiar,
too right.

There was a tap on the door. Meltzer didn’t take his eyes off me when he said, “It’s
open.”

A man with thinning hair and a business suit stepped inside. He was very thin with
glasses, dark frames. He nodded politely to me. “May I speak with you privately, Sheriff?”

“Sure thing.” Meltzer pushed away from his desk, walked out into the corridor. The
door closed. I sat there for a moment with just the faint sound of men’s voices through
the thick door. I got up and walked to the windows, looked out at Meltzer’s view.
What was I doing?
What was I doing?
I’d had a few flirtations in my life. I knew exactly where those long looks led.
The terrible truth that I was as attracted to him
as he was to me filled me with guilt. This wasn’t me. I’m not a flirter. Not when
I’m in a relationship. Or a cheater. But I had a saboteur’s heavy hand when it came
to relationships, career, success. I wasn’t going to do it this time. I wasn’t going
to let Ken Meltzer’s dreamy brown eyes do me in. I loved Rauser, handsome, sexy, kind,
funny Rauser. I knew what this was about. Rauser was living in my house and the fucking
walls were closing in. It was the first time I’d admitted to myself that I wasn’t
ready. I was barely pieced back together after my life had totally collapsed. I didn’t
want to feel married again. I didn’t want to feel responsible for someone’s happiness.
It’s temporary
, I reminded myself.
Rauser’s house will be back together in a couple of months and he’ll go back home.
Fighting to get time together is much better than having too much
. I thought about the silverware drawer I’d labeled. That’s why Rauser had been so
angry. Because he knew what it meant. Funny how it always seems like you’re doing
great until someone is standing in front of you, willing and capable and put together,
and you realize how broken you are. I find it unbearable.

I noticed the sheriff’s iPhone on his desk. For the record, investigators not only
have a suspicious nature but are prone to outright, unapologetic nosiness. I stood
very still and listened to the muted voices beyond the wood door. I thought this over.
One little voice knew it probably wasn’t right to look at the sheriff’s messages.
One little voice wanted to go for it. Three guesses which one won out.

I picked up the phone and hit the message icon. The first name on his list of messages
was Molly. Not Molly Cochran. Just Molly. I was going to click on it when the door
cracked open. I saw Meltzer’s hand holding it partially closed, heard affirmative
yes sir
s. I returned the phone hastily to the homepage and dropped it on the desk.

I was standing at the window looking out at the town edging up against the lake when
he came back in. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting.” Meltzer’s voice was smooth, but
I knew as soon as I looked at him that something was wrong. “Come and sit down, Keye,”
he said. I took my chair across from his desk and he took the other one, faced me.
“It’s the Davidson kid. He’s dead.”

“How?” I thought of the way his eyes refused to meet mine, how he kept gazing down
at his gritted hands.

“Suicide,” he answered quietly. “Six more months and he was out of here.”

“Are they sure it was suicide?”

I could see a white square of sky from the window in his dark eyes. He blinked like
someone just coming awake, a long, slow blink. “Found him in the kitchen where he
worked. Security cameras got the whole thing, apparently. He used a kitchen knife.”