Last Look (11 page)

9

“Wow, who’d have figured you to be so smooth,” Dorsey muttered as they walked back to the car. “Way to turn off the witness.”

“I had to ask. I knew there was a chance I might piss her off, but I had to get her thinking.” Andrew stuck his hand in his pocket for the car keys and unlocked the doors with the remote. “I had to make her start looking back. Maybe there was something she didn’t totally understand at the time.”

“She’s thinking, all right,” Dorsey told him. “She’s thinking she never should have opened the door in the first place.”

“Look, if you’d been Shannon, you’ve been away from your home for God knows what reason or how you got there—let’s put the whys and the hows aside for a moment. Wouldn’t there be some point when you’d at least try to contact your mother? Wouldn’t you want to hear her voice again? No matter the circumstances, wouldn’t you at some point miss her so much that you had to hear her voice just one more time?”

“Probably.” Dorsey nodded. “Yeah, I probably would.”

“So maybe Shannon did. Maybe her mother just didn’t realize it at the time. Maybe it will come back to her.”

“You could be right. Maybe she will remember something. And with any luck, she’ll even tell us about it.” Dorsey rolled the window down to let out the steamy summer air before she fastened her seat belt. “Where first?”

“I think maybe we’ll start by working our way through the sisters.” He started the car and handed the list of names and phone numbers to Dorsey.

“Well, we know Paula Rose is still here in Hatton.” She glanced down the list that Judith Randall had prepared. “Just three blocks away.”

Andrew put the car in gear and made a U-turn in the middle of the street. “We’ll stop there first, but before we leave town today, we’ll pay a call on Granny Randall. She was the last person to see Shannon that night.”

“The last person who admitted to seeing her, anyway, other than Eric Beale.” Dorsey looked up from the sheet of notebook paper. “The three friends are all still living in Hatton. It’s tempting to stop by to see them while we’re here, but I’m thinking we should probably keep this within the family for as long as we can.”

“Which probably won’t be more than another twenty-four hours. I still can’t believe the story isn’t out there, locally, anyway. At the very least, I’d expect the cops to be discussing it.”

“Maybe this Chief Bowden that Mrs. Randall mentioned hasn’t spread the word through the troops yet.”

“Well, that’s all going to end the minute word gets out that Shannon Randall’s body has arrived at the local funeral home,” he reminded her. “Let’s get what we can before the media storm hits Hatton.”

“Third Street is right up there.” She pointed off to the left.

“He’s really bitter,” Andrew said as he turned the corner. He didn’t have to tell her who he meant.

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Yeah. I’m sure that bitter would be the very least of it. And he sure didn’t talk like any preacher I ever met.”

“The man’s been through a lot. His faith has been tested. He lost his daughter, believed she’d been murdered. Then the accident, that not only took his legs, his mobility, but cost him his position in his church as well. You can see why he’d be pissed off. And now this…this has to have been a bombshell for him,” Dorsey said.

“And toss into all that the fact that his wife said he feels guilty about not having saved Shannon, and you have one very unhappy man. You have to wonder how much more he can take.”

“I would have liked to have asked him a few questions, but I figured that would have gotten us tossed out even sooner.”

“He sure wasn’t in a friendly frame of mind,” Andrew said, as he parked the car. “Listen, the comments he made about your dad—”

She stopped him with a wave of her hand.

“I have to expect that. Actually, I expected to hear a lot worse.”

“And you well may, before we’re finished.”

She shrugged. “There are going to be a lot of people who blame my father for the way things turned out, and they’ll probably be right. He’s my dad and I love him, but he obviously screwed up big time and a lot of good and innocent people were hurt very badly because of it. Why the investigation went the way it did…I don’t know. But he was in charge of it, and things went horribly wrong. People’s lives were destroyed.”

“Still, it has to be hard for you to hear it.”

“He has a lot to answer for.” She unfastened her seat belt.

Andrew merely nodded and got out from behind the wheel. He knew all too well how heavy the burden of someone else’s sins could be. He’d been carrying plenty of weight this past year. Time to change the subject.

“Nice, they painted the manse to match the church,” he observed.

They stood in the center of a wide driveway that divided the church property in half. On one side stood the church, a modest structure with little embellishment other than the bell tower above, and the beds of brightly colored flowers spread out in front. A sign stood among the flower beds.

THE CHURCH OF THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE REVEREND PAULA ROSE RANDALL WELCOMES YOU

On the other side stood the clapboard house that, like the church was painted a light gray. Black shutters framed the windows and red impatiens in white pots hung from the porch roof. Four white rocking chairs stood on the porch and a wreath of flowers hung on the front door. Next to the front steps, a sign announced
WELCOME
in dark blue letters on a pale blue background.

“Pretty.” Dorsey nodded. “Welcoming, like the signs say.”

“Well, let’s see if that welcome extends to us,” Andrew said as they walked up the porch steps. A pile of mail held together with a thick rubber band sat on the top step. Andrew picked it up, then rang the doorbell.

Moments later, the door was opened by a young woman wearing a white blouse and a tailored black skirt. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail gathered low on the nape of her neck, and tortoise-shell glasses sat atop her head. She was of medium height, and seemed to carry most of her weight between her hips and her knees. Carefully applied makeup gave her face interest, but her features were too uneven to be called pretty, the nose too sharp, the pale brown eyes too small and set too close together to highlight her face. Nothing, Dorsey thought, distinguished her in any way. She appeared…average.

“Reverend Randall?” Andrew asked.

“Yes.” She opened the door. “And you’re Agent Shields.”

He raised an eyebrow and she smiled as she reached for the bundle of mail. “I know you’re not the mailman.”

“And you know I’m with the FBI because your mother called.” He returned the smile.

“Just hung up the phone.” She beckoned them inside. “Come on in out of that heat. It’s just been terrible these past few weeks, hasn’t it?” She turned to address Dorsey. “And you’re the lady agent whose name Momma couldn’t remember. Starts with a
C.
”

“Collins,” Dorsey said as she stepped into the foyer behind Andrew.

“Agent Collins. I will remember,” Paula Rose told her. “Now, shall we sit for a few minutes in the parlor? It’s nice and cool in there, relatively speaking. These old houses can sure hold the heat, but all these trees give a bit of shade. I’ll get us a cold drink—I just made iced tea and was about to pour myself a glass when Momma called to tell me you were on your way. You just have a seat and I’ll be back in a minute.”

Dorsey stood near the window facing the church and said, “I would have thought ‘Momma’ would tell her not to talk to us.”

“I suspect she probably did.” Andrew sat on a wing chair on one side of a round table holding a large, ugly lamp. “Either Reverend Paula Rose is going to ignore Momma, or she’s got a point of her own to make.”

“I just turned the air conditioning up a notch; it’s still a bit warmer than I like.” Paula Rose returned with a tray holding three tall glasses, frosty with condensation. She held the tray out for her visitors to help themselves, then set it on the coffee table. She took the last glass, seated herself on the sofa, and gestured for Dorsey to sit as well.

“Now. You wanted to talk about Shannon.” She looked from one agent to the other. “What exactly is it that you want to know?”

“We’re trying to go back over the night your sister disappeared—” Andrew began.

Paula Rose cut him off. “I know all that. Momma told me. I’m asking, what do you want from me?”

“Just what you remember from that night, the following day,” Andrew told her as he took his notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket.

“I don’t remember much at all. I was only eleven years old. My bedtime was 9:30, and my parents were pretty strict about it.”

“Who else was home when you went to bed that night?”

“My daddy was there, in his study. He was working on his sermon for Sunday. He came in from choir practice and went straight to work.”

“I thought your grandfather was still the pastor then,” Andrew said.

“Well, he was, but Daddy was his assistant. He didn’t take over full-time preaching until Granddaddy retired. He founded this church, you know. Helped raise every dime that went to building it.”

“You’re very proud of that,” Dorsey remarked.

“I surely am,” Paula Rose assured them. “Proud of the legacy he left behind, proud of all the good works he did for the people in this community. Whether they followed him to the church’s door or not, he did what he could for anyone who asked for his help. It’s a privilege and an honor to be carrying on in their footsteps.”

“None of your sisters had an interest in the church?” Andrew asked.

“Good heavens, no. Now, Natalie, I must say, does her best to do what’s right for others. She’s one of those mythical creatures that you sometimes hear about but never see?” Paula Rose smiled. “An honest politician. Yes, she really is. Aubrey, on the other hand, well, let’s just say she’s more worldly than we’d like her to be. All that time spent on TV, showing people how to make wreaths and dry flowers and bake meringues.”

Paula Rose laughed indulgently. “Well, she isn’t harming anyone, but she’s not exactly doing God’s work, either. I can’t say she ever had much of a calling, though.”

“And Shannon? Did she ever have a calling?” Dorsey found herself asking.

“Well, apparently not.” Paula Rose all but sniffed indignantly. “Look at how she ended up.”

“If Shannon had been out after you’d gone to bed, wouldn’t you have heard her come in?” Andrew jotted down some notes and changed the subject.

“Not necessarily. Most nights, I’d read for a while in bed, then Momma would call upstairs to tell me to turn the light out and go to sleep. Momma wasn’t home that night, and I don’t remember if Daddy was still at the church when I turned out the light. I think I may have heard Aubrey come in after I’d turned off my light, but I was falling asleep right about that time. I don’t know if I thought it was Aubrey or Shannon, but if Shannon had been out late, I’d have been sleeping soundly by the time she got home.”

“So you didn’t realize she hadn’t come home until…” Andrew continued.

“Until the next morning. When Shannon didn’t come down for breakfast, I went up to get her and she wasn’t there.” Her face darkened. “She wasn’t anywhere. Not in her room, not in Aubrey’s. Not in the bathroom.”

“And Aubrey was where?”

“Aubrey had to be at school really early that day. She left the house before I woke up. There was a class trip down to Savannah, some cultural thing for a class she was in.”

“What did you do after you realized Shannon was gone?” Andrew asked.

“I went downstairs and told Momma that Shannon must have gone to school early with Aubrey, ’cause she wasn’t there. Momma went upstairs and looked for herself. She looked everywhere in that house—outside, down in the basement, up in the attic.” Paula Rose shook her head. “She was just calling all over the place.”

“And your father?”

“He was already over to the church. He and my granddaddy had breakfast with the church’s senior-citizen group on Wednesday mornings. He didn’t know Shannon was missing till Momma ran over there and asked him where she was. Well, he didn’t know, either.” Paula Rose’s fingers tapped on the side of her glass. “So they started calling everyone—all of Shannon’s friends, the girls she’d been with after school the day before, but none of them knew where she was. Turned out nobody’d seen her since she left the church the day before. Nobody, apparently, except for Eric Beale.”

“Whom we now know did
not
murder your sister,” Dorsey reminded her.

“He did something to her, didn’t he? Even though they found her dead just a few weeks ago, that was still her blood they found on his shirt, right? And that was her notebook they found there in his car, wasn’t it? And didn’t he admit he picked her up after she left the church?” Paula Rose set her glass on the tray and folded her arms across her chest. “He may not have killed her back then, but he did something to her. Maybe something that made her feel she needed to run away.”

“What do you think happened, Reverend Randall?” Dorsey casually sipped at her tea.

“I think—and please call me Paula Rose, I’m not in the pulpit right now—I think he took her to the park, like he said he did, and then I think he raped her. I think she was so upset about what he did to her, she ran away.”

“Why would she run away?”

“It would have been very hard for her to come home and face Momma and Daddy and tell them what he’d done to her. I think she was too ashamed.”

“So she ran away and stayed away for twenty-four years?” Dorsey raised an eyebrow.

Paula Rose shrugged her shoulders. “That’s how I see it. Makes sense.”

“But once she found out that Eric had been arrested for her murder, once the papers carried the story that he’d been tried and was going to be executed, wouldn’t she have come home? Wouldn’t she let someone know she was still alive?”

“If he hurt her…if he raped her…she probably thought he deserved it, after he defiled her,” Paula Rose said righteously. “Then again, maybe wherever she was, she didn’t hear about him being sentenced to death. Didn’t know he was executed. Maybe if she’d’a known, she would have come back and let people know she was alive.”