Tell Me (24 page)

Nikki stood for a minute, rain now peppering down as she watched him leave. He wasn’t wrong. Everything he’d said, including the ugly part about her ambitions trumping his need to make a living, was true. As she walked to her car she couldn’t help but feel bad. The guy was older than she was, fifty pounds overweight, and a smoker, all of which didn’t mean diddly, but he was raising five kids and was caught, like so many people, in the economic changes affecting their industry. Should she hand him over the story?

No. The O’Henry story was one symptom of a larger problem: that Norm had let himself become a dinosaur. His downward spiral didn’t have anything to do with her personally. He would have to fight back any other ambitious reporter who wanted to take over the crime beat, as would she. Norm had been part of the “good ole boy” network for years, and now she was making him work a little harder. That’s the way it was in this cutthroat business.

Still, her already sour stomach ached a little more as she drove out of town by rote, turning on the wipers, stopping for red lights and pedestrians, making the proper turns without really thinking about it.

Metzger was on her mind, true, as was all the other information she’d gathered in the past few days on the O’Henry case. She thought about her uncle’s files, wishing she knew where the rest of the information was. Typed up on hard copy or stored somewhere else, she believed.

Her mind wandered to Amity O’Henry, and she made a sudden decision: she would go to the cabin herself and take a look around. If she couldn’t find any hard facts, she would at least get a feel, a mood for her book.

 

Acting on her new plan, Nikki drove past the city’s storefronts and subdivisions into lush countryside and rolling fields. Storm clouds rolled across the thick grass where horses and cattle grazed. A frisson slid down her spine, and she glanced in her rearview mirror. Cars were following her, of course, but at a distance, and she doubted any of the drivers were tracking her. She was just being spooked by thoughts of the cabin.

With an effort, she turned back to her thoughts. She hadn’t had any luck connecting with Roland Camp, and when she’d tried for another, more personal interview with Calvin O’Henry, June had said flatly, “Leave us alone.”

She hadn’t added a threat. No “or else” tagged to the end of the edict, but Nikki had gotten the feeling that it was implied. She’d done some research on Calvin’s second family and found that all the children from their previous marriages had abandoned the couple. Just lately, Niall seemed to be reunited with his father, but Blythe was estranged from June and Calvin, and as for June’s children, Leah Hatchett was married and living in Augusta, more than two hours away, and seemed to keep her distance. Cain Hatchett remained closer and resided in a small town to the east. A logger who drove monster trucks, he too had his own life, separate from June’s. As for Emma-Kate, the child Calvin and June had brought into this world, she was living on her own, downtown, but Nikki hadn’t bothered with her yet as she hadn’t even been born when her oldest half-sister was killed.

Her phone rang, and she attached the headset for her Bluetooth device into her ear. “Hello?”

“Is this a good time to talk?” Ina’s raspy voice came in clear as a bell.

“Good as any.”

“I spoke with Remmie. She read your synopsis and flipped over the idea. She’s taking it to the editorial meeting, and I’m sure they’ll accept it, but here’s the deal: Knox is going to want a fast delivery on this, and they want it unique, you know, like the first two books. The more insight into the Amity character, the better.”

“She was my friend. Not a character in a novel.”

“I know, but you get what I mean, right? Let’s tell the story through her eyes, if possible, and then after she’s killed, it can be a little more clinical, less personal, except—and here’s the kicker—Remmie would like the telling of the murder to come from Blondell’s viewpoint. In the end, since this is true crime and not fiction, you can go more into the police work, and anything from your fiancé’s perspective would be great.”

“I’m not sure I can deliver on all that,” Nikki said, a little uncomfortable.

“Well, just keep on it, and push that personal connection. I’ll keep you posted on what Remmie says.”

She hung up, and Nikki was left feeling as if she were treading on Amity O’Henry’s grave, trying to sensationalize and make a buck out of a tragedy, rather than present a true account of her friend’s life and death.

Her thoughts plaguing her, she yanked off the headset and tossed it onto the seat.

Between Norm Metzger’s rant and Ina’s scheme for the book, she felt a little bruised.
This is just the business. You know it. You didn’t steal Metzger’s job, and you surely didn’t have a hand in Amity’s death. And don’t even think about the phone call she made to you. So what? Do you really think you could have stopped a killer’s bullet?

She closed her mind to all the arguments waging in her head and paid attention to the road. Traffic was light, the road slick with rain, drops pouring from the sky. Turning up the speed of her windshield wipers, she achieved a clearer view of the surrounding farmland as it gave way to woods, pine and oak trees growing along either side of the road. Another two miles and the lake would come into view. Very soon she would be at the spot where Amity O’Henry had lost her life.

“I
haven’t seen him in what? Five? Maybe six days. Let’s just call it a week,” the woman on the other side of the rusty screen door said. Rain was pounding on the sagging roof of the porch that fronted the small bungalow, the last known address of Roland Camp, who until a week ago had worked the night shift at a mini-mart and gas station just west of town. According to the manager, Roland had called in sick and hadn’t returned. He’d given Morrisette and Reed the number of Camp’s cell, but so far no message had been returned.

So they had decided to pay Camp a visit. They’d been blocked at the door by a short, skinny woman with a ragged mop of brown hair that kept falling into her eyes—Peggy Shanks, the latest in a string of Roland Camp’s girlfriends—and she wasn’t giving the detectives the time of day. Balancing a baby of about eighteen months on one hip, she stared through the door at Morrisette and Reed as if they were planning to rob her rather than ask questions of her boyfriend. “Roland, he does this sometimes,” she explained. “Just goes and does who knows what? Hunts sometimes. Goes and finds a poker game. Whatever.”

Morrisette wondered how much BS they were being peddled. A couple of tons, she’d bet. Peggy tried to act cool, as if nothing bothered her, but she had a nervous tic near the corner of one eye, and it looked as if she hadn’t slept in about a month. The kid on her hip had a nose that kept running, no matter how many times Peggy swiped at his little red nostrils with a tissue. He made a face and turned away with each pass, and so the button of a nose remained wet.

“Did Roland disappear before or after Blondell O’Henry’s son recanted his testimony?” Reed asked.

“Beats me, but he
didn’t
disappear, okay? He’ll be back. I told you, this isn’t the first time, and I don’t know when exactly it was he took off.”

“This is his place of residence, though. He lives here. Most of the time,” Morrisette said.

Peggy’s gaze sharpened a bit, as if she thought Morrisette had thrown her a trick question. “Yeah, but it’s not a big deal that he took off for a few days. It’s not like we’re married.”

“Probably a good thing if he up and leaves whenever he wants.”

Reed slid her a look as Peggy protested, “It’s not like that.”

“You just said you had kind of a no-strings-attached relationship.” Morrisette looked pointedly through the ragged screen at the little boy, who was starting to fiddle with his mother’s hair. “Is Roland his father?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Seems like you have a pretty tight connection even if you aren’t married.”

“As if it’s any of your damned business. Look, I’m busy. I told you Roland ain’t here, and if he shows up, I’ll tell him you called,” Peggy said with a superior tone that irked the hell out of Morrisette. “But for the record, he ain’t a real big fan of the cops.”

“I’ll bet.” Morrisette didn’t even bother with a fake smile.

“Have him call,” Reed suggested, sliding his card through a tear in the screen.

Peggy snatched the card from his fingers.

Checking his watch, he said to Morrisette, “Let’s roll. We’re late as it is.”

As they stepped off the porch and into the driving rain, Morrisette said, “Where are we going in such an all-fired hurry?”

“Nowhere. Coffee maybe. And then a circle back.”

“A stakeout?” she asked, brightening.

“He probably never left town,” Reed observed.

“I like the way you think.” They climbed into her car, and she glanced back. “Look at that,” she said as a curtain moved in the window of the ramshackle house. “She’s watching us. Probably on the phone to Camp as we speak.”

“Better make it drive-through coffee, then,” Reed said.

A key from Uncle Alex’s ring fit the padlock on the gate, and Nikki sent up a quick prayer of thanks. While other reporters were locked out of the property marked clearly with
NO TRESPASSING
signs, she had access.

As ever, it paid to be the granddaughter of Eleanor Ryback. Even if someone saw her and found out her key had been “borrowed” from her uncle’s desk, Nikki had a reason and a right to be on the property owned by her grandmother’s trust.

She drove through and quickly shut the gate behind her, then, soaked to the skin, returned to her car and bumped down the overgrown lane leading to the cabin. As dark as it was, she had to turn on her headlights, and even then it was hard to see, an effort to keep the Honda’s tires in the overgrown dual ruts. Where there had once been a passable road cut through a stand of pine, oak, and ash, now potholes and weeds prevailed. With her wipers slapping away the rain, she edged carefully forward, bouncing and jarring through the woods before the trees gave way to a clearing where the hundred-year-old cabin was settling into the ground.

The cottage had aged in the past twenty years, the gutters broken and filled with leaves and debris, the one visible downspout broken but gurgling. The wood siding had never been painted and was dark with age, shingles on the roof patched in some places, missing in others.

Sitting in the car, staring at the decrepit old building, Nikki listened to the rain pound on the Honda’s roof and watched as it dappled the steely waters of the lake. With the gathering darkness, she thought today was much like the night Blondell had sworn she’d awakened to find a murderous stranger in the cabin.

Exhaling, she grabbed her camera and cell phone and stepped out of the car. Her boots sank deep into the mud. “Great. Just great.” After closing the door shut with her hip, she walked around the front of her car and stopped to take a few outside pictures of the cabin before the light faded completely. She doubted any of the shots she took would be used in the book, and they certainly would not appear in the paper, but she’d print them and tack them to the bulletin boards above her writing space to keep her focused as she put the chapters together.

She also took a picture of the lake, whitecaps brewing on the inky water, before heading up two rotting steps to the porch, where a screen door listed from one hinge.

Once again, a key from her uncle’s ring worked its magic, and with a click the old door creaked open and she stepped inside.

 

Morrisette pulled out of the drive-through window at the same moment Reed’s cell phone rang. He cleared the cup holder of trash and set his coffee in it before answering. “Reed.”

“Hey. Monty Hemler.” Hemler worked in the lab on the technical side, his specialty being electronic equipment. Tall and broad-shouldered, with oversized horn-rimmed glasses, Hemler, at around twenty-six, looked like Clark Kent in a lab coat. “I just checked out the little camera you brought in, and you’re right, it’s the type that’s used for surveillance; it can be bought online, and it isn’t cheap. I went out to the place you told me it was found, on the fence, there behind your house, and from what I can figure, the lens could have been tilted to view into your window, or more probably the French doors, but unless the lights were on, the view wouldn’t have been that great.”

“How about looking into the apartment below us?”

“Possible, but I took the liberty of climbing the utility pole near the fence. It was clean, but about thirty feet up, a branch from one of your neighbor’s trees hangs over the fence. On that limb, taped down where the branches split, was a remote lens.”

“Meaning what?” Reed asked, the muscles in his jaw tightening.

“That whoever was spying could look right into
your
apartment.”

“Damn!” he spat out the word so hard that Morrisette, taking a swallow from her paper cup, peered over the rim at him. Her eyebrows raised in question as he said, “Any way you can find out who bought the camera? Or what’s on it?”

“Probably not what’s on it. The way it works is that the pictures or video are sent to a receiver. Whoever has the receiver sees the pictures, probably on his computer.”

“And can download them, or upload them, or whatever.”

“I’d say so. Yeah, probably.”

“Were there any prints on the lens or camera?”

“None on the lens, but some smudged ones on the camera, which I’m guessing are yours and your fiancée’s.”

“I’ll get you my prints and Nikki’s, in case you can get a clear print.”

“Okay,” he said dubiously.

“Can you track down the manufacturer, maybe a local outlet, so we find who bought it by its serial number?”

“Already on it.”

“Good. Let me know.” He remembered making love to Nikki on the floor of the apartment just the other night, their playful banter and hard sex. That sex-charged incident probably hadn’t been recorded—she’d already found the camera, and the remote lens would have needed it to record the images—but there had been other times as well. Many and just as carnal. Heat climbed up his neck. He was a deeply private man. His passions were no one’s business, especially not some sick voyeur who got off looking through keyholes.

Morrisette was driving slowly, for once staying within the speed limit, as she drank coffee and wended her way back to Roland Camp’s house.

“Can you spare a tech to sweep the apartment?” Reed asked Hemler as it suddenly hit him that if there was a camera outside the house there could be more spy equipment inside Nikki’s home. He conjured up an image of some pervert jacking off while drooling and watching Nikki and Reed in bed. They might have unwittingly created their own not-so-private sex tape. Or there might be film of Nikki undressing, or stepping into the shower . . . “Sweep the entire apartment,” he told Hemler as his mind spun out other private scenarios. Maybe the voyeur had gotten bolder, come inside and turned himself on while lying on Nikki’s bed, or fingered Nikki’s bras and teddies, maybe caressed her underwear and masturbated.

He’d been a cop long enough to have seen some sick things, so it wasn’t too hard to visualize what someone with a fascination for Nikki might do.

“I’ll let you know when I can get a couple of techs together,” Hemler was saying. “I’ll give you a call so that you can let us in.”

“Good. Thanks.” He hung up and saw the questions in his partner’s eyes. “Looks like someone’s been spying on Nikki. Maybe me too.” He quickly filled Morrisette in.

She whistled softly. “You don’t think this has anything to do with the fact that she’s writing a story on Blondell O’Henry.”

“Don’t see how. The equipment was probably put up there before the news came out about Niall O’Henry recanting his testimony.”

“You sure?”

“Hell, no, I’m not sure,” he said angrily, then stared out the window. “Sorry. Let’s do this thing.”

“You got it.” Morrisette could be bossy at times, nosy at others, but she read her partner well enough to leave him alone when he needed to cool off.

Reed picked up his coffee and told himself to get his head on straight. No matter what else was happening to him personally, he had to put it aside.

“You okay?”

“Just . . . fine.” He shot her a look he knew said otherwise, but she got the message and stepped on the gas.

By the time she turned the corner onto Roland Camp’s street, Reed was finished with his coffee and focused on the case again. As Camp’s house came into view, Morrisette slowed down, and there, big as life, parked in the driveway, was a Dodge pickup that hadn’t been there earlier, with plates Reed recognized as being registered to Roland Camp.

“Looks like the prodigal boyfriend has returned,” Morrisette observed as she nosed her car into the spot behind the huge truck’s bed and the street. The only way out was through a dilapidated garage or the fences lining the drive or, Reed supposed, over the top of Morrisette’s Chevy, and if Camp tried that, Morrisette might shoot first and ask questions later.

Before they reached the porch, the front door banged opened. “What the fuck do you want?” Roland Camp, all six-feet-five of him, demanded. His head was shaved, his jaw was set, and he looked as if he worked out seven days a week.

“Detective Pierce Reed, Savannah-Chatham Police Department. This is my partner, Detective Sylvie Morrisette, and we just want to ask you a few questions.”

“About that fuckin’ Blondell! Shit! I ain’t got anything further to tell you, man, I swear. Whatever I said before. It’s golden.”

“Just checking some facts.”

“Then haul me the fuck in. I got a good job now and a good woman and a kid. All that other shit, it’s ancient history, man, so leave me, leave us the hell alone!”

“You know Ms. O’Henry might be let out of prison,” Reed said.

“Who cares? She did her time, let her be. Why the hell are you all nosing around, anyway? Don’t you have other cases? You know, people who were killed this week or last week or sometime in the last twenty years? Let this one go, for Chrissakes!” Some of his belligerence had begun to fade, and he seemed a little calmer as they reached his porch. Behind him, barely visible, Peggy, her boy still attached to her hip, peeked around Roland.