Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (42 page)

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 near 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.

The minister talked about the value of faith in trying times. I wasn’t even sure what
that meant. Faith that Skylar would come home? Faith that bad things don’t happen
to innocent people? Because they do. He finished with another prayer, and Ken Meltzer
stepped in front of the microphone. Pastor Hutchins touched my shoulder as he passed
and slipped in next to his wife. Someone handed us candles. Bernadette let go of my
arm for the first time.

Meltzer was brief and professional. He seemed comfortable behind a lectern, commanding,
reassuring. He repeated the information from the Amber Alert, and added new information
we’d obtained from forensic evidence. The kidnapper—he was careful not to say
killer
—is likely to be holding his captive in an abandoned or vacant property without electricity,
he told the people of Whisper. He might keep odd hours, be secretive about why he
leaves work or home. Someone may have detected a kerosene scent about him or his clothes.
Meltzer appealed to everyone to search his or her memories. Were you on Cottonwood
Road around three-fifteen yesterday? Had you noticed any broken-down vehicles or vehicles
out of place? Did you know anyone who was in the area of the abduction? He reminded
everyone that the tip line number was on flyers all over town and that sign-up sheets
were available for volunteers who wanted to help. He then spoke briefly about the
oath he’s taken twice, and what the community means to him and to his mother, who
had traveled back to her roots a decade ago. I spotted her for the first time when
he gestured to her. She sat in a folding chair, her caretaker sitting next to her,
and Ginger the golden retriever mix at her feet.

Hayley and Brooks Barbour followed the sheriff to the microphone. Hayley’s voice wobbled
and broke as she said Skylar’s name. Brooks bit his lip and stared straight into the
night. I had to look away. Feel it, push it aside. Feel it, push it aside. That’s
what you do. That’s what you
must
do. Save it. Stuff it in your pocket and pull it out on your own time. Have a complete,
magnificent fucking breakdown only when the case is closed. Think about the victim
and the killer, I reminded myself. Forget the collateral damage.