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I could swear I recognized one newscaster. Then I realized I had seen him on a national news network. "Have you ever found that many bodies in one place before?" he asked. It was such a pertinent question, and exactly what I'd been thinking about, that I said, "No, never. I never want to again."
The others started screaming louder. If I'd answered one question, I might answer more.
But then he made a huge mistake—he asked a "How did it feel?" question.
Those I won't answer. My feelings are my own.
After a few seconds of struggle to get the door open, of falling inside the car, buckling my seat belt, and locking the door, I was safe from more questions, and then Tolliver tumbled in the driver's door and got himself ready to drive. He put the car in gear and the knot of newspeople relaxed and spread apart to allow us to leave.
It was lucky for us they all stayed close to the police station, hoping for more tidbits from the police or the SBI agents. We were able to get to Twyla's house by ourselves. Twyla's car was the only one in the garage. I wondered how long it would be before she got to bury her grandson. And then there'd be the trial and all the surrounding publicity. Jeff McGraw wouldn't get to rest in peace for years, at least in the minds of his family.
Tolliver pulled in behind Twyla's car, left ours in park with the engine on, and scrambled out with the key to the cabin. He didn't say a word. Maybe he was afraid that if he said something, I would, too; I'd change my mind about leaving.
A car pulled in behind us as I waited. After a second, someone knocked on the window. I pressed the button to roll it down. Pastor Doak Garland stood there, as pink and i
He said, "Hello again, Miss Co
"Hi. I forgot to tell you what a good job you did at the memorial service. I hope you all took up a good bit of money toward the funerals."
"Praise God, I think we got about twelve thousand dollars together now," he said.
"That's great!" I was genuinely impressed. That was a huge amount of money in a poor community like Doraville. Divided among the six local boys, that wasn't much, especially when you considered the cost of an average funeral these days. But it would help.
As if he could read my mind, Doak said, "Three of the boys had burial insurance, so they won't need funds. And we're hoping to bring in at least three thousand more with a raffle. Twyla has very generously offered to match whatever we make for the raffle."
"That is generous."
"She's a great woman. Can I ask you a question just out of sheer curiosity, Miss Co
"Ah…okay."
"I'm not sure I've ever been in that old barn behind the Almand house. Where was the poor young man?"
"He was in a kind of—oh, wait, I'm not supposed to talk about it. Sorry, the cops made me promise."
"Well, you hear all kinds of things, you know," he said. "I just wanted to get the facts straight. Where's your companion?"
"He's coming right back out in just a second," I said. Suddenly I felt very alone, though I was parked in a driveway on a suburban street. I jumped, pretending I'd felt my phone vibrate. "Hello?" I said, holding it to my ear. "Oh, hi, Sheriff. Yeah, I'm here at Twyla's, talking to Pastor Garland. He's standing right here, do you need him? No? Okay." I made an apologetic face at the minister, and he smiled and waved, and started into the house. I kept up the false conversation until he'd gone in the back door.
Half of me felt like a very big idiot, and the other half was simply relieved that he was gone. Where the hell was Tolliver? What was taking him so long?
I turned in my seat and began to undo my seat belt. I'd go in to find out what he was doing. I was really anxious. I had the uneasy feeling I'd overlooked something big.
Something about the ninth boy, the one who'd lived.
I stopped what I was doing and considered. He'd been identified. He was safe in the hospital in Asheville. He might never speak about what had happened to him, but I thought it was probable he would, when he got used to being safer and felt better physically. When he did begin to talk, he would identify the other killer, if in fact there was another one.
But what if he hadn't ever seen the other killer? What if he'd been kept in the stable because it had been Tom Almand, and Almand alone, who'd abducted him? Maybe it had been the first and only time Almand had made his son help him, and that was what had driven Chuck over the edge. Maybe Tom hadn't had a chance to share before he was discovered. So the accomplice had an even better chance of getting away with it.
And Doak Garland was not the man. He'd just asked me where the boy had been kept. If he'd been the other murderer, he would have known. If he'd just been trying to muddy the waters, he could have simply said nothing. It didn't make any difference what I thought. Why should he make such a point of asking me, unless he genuinely didn't know?
But someone had known, someone I'd talked to very recently. Someone had said the boy had been under the floor in the stall, or something to that effect. Who had it been? We'd seen so many people. Obviously, not Rain or Manfred; not any of the law enforcement people, they'd know and that would be okay. All right, who? Who had I talked to? The funeral home lady, Cleda something. No, not her.
I'd been sitting there with the door half-open, one foot out while I thought. With a sudde
Thirteen
I was in his vehicle by the time I was conscious enough to understand what was happening, and by then my mouth was taped shut and my hands were bound together. His blitz attack had caught me completely unawares.
Barney Simpson was hunched in the driver's seat, backing out of the driveway and taking off down the road like a maniac. The SUV lurched so violently that I slid to the floor. I had no means to stop myself. I landed on my bad arm, and the pain was excruciating. I would have screamed, but once again, he'd taken care of that.
There's something terrible about being right when being right means you get bitten on the ass.
I'd be lucky if that was all that happened.
He pulled over after five minutes. I still couldn't move, but I was trying to gather my energy. I had no idea where we were. Twyla lived in a suburb, maybe Doraville's only upscale housing development. Five minutes from it would take us almost anywhere: into the older part of Doraville or out into the country. Past Barney's head, I could see ice melting off a pine tree, one of a stand of trees. There are trees all over in North Carolina.
"We had it all," he said. He was looking down at me, and his big black-framed glasses magnified his eyes, so he was not just looking, but glaring. "We had it all, until you found them. I'd spot them at the hospital and mark them for the future, or Tom would see them out walking or hitching, and we would pick them up and then we'd just…use them up."
Oh, Jesus, I thought.
"We'd use every bit, all the pain, all the sex, all the fear. We'd consume them. Until they were nothing."
I was strangling behind the tape, gurgling and gasping.
"We had the second place, the place in the barn, in case we had two boys at the same time. It was like a holding cell. We'd never really had to use it. But I guess Tom just couldn't resist, even though the last thing he should have done was pick up another boy."
Having made his point, which was that I was the snake in their paradise, he put the SUV in gear and glanced in his rearview mirror. He pulled back onto the road.