He made a loop, checking both the camouflaged garage and the hiding place where he kept the boat. Then he propped himself against a tree trunk and began making calls, opening each one with, “This is Bowie. I’m sure you know what happened today.”
Everyone to whom he spoke was happy to assist. He explained the basic research he needed done, stressing that it had to be done covertly, using a personal computer. He gave each the number of a burner phone. “If I change phones, I’ll notify you. In the meantime, this is the only way you can reach me, but get back to me as soon as you have something, even if it’s the middle of the night. This is acutely time-sensitive.”
Each cautioned him not to underestimate Tom Barker’s treachery.
When he returned to the cabin, Beth was in the kitchen, butcher knife in hand. “How was your walk?”
“I’m glad we got it in when we did. It’s going to rain again.” He joined her in the kitchen and, as he filled Mutt’s food and water bowls, saw that she was chopping fresh vegetables. “What are you making?”
She replied with a question. “Omelets okay?”
“Fine. Need help?”
“No thanks.” She lifted a bottle of beer from the countertop. “I helped myself. Want one?”
“Would love it, but I’m abstaining. I told Mitch I needed to keep my head clear.”
“I added a couple of names to your list of people we should contact.”
He sat down at the makeshift desk, woke up his computer, and read her additions. Noticing one in particular, he said, “Gracie Oliver died.”
Gracie, Billy’s grandmother, had reared him by herself. His mother had never named his father, possibly because she didn’t know. She died of a drug overdose when Billy was still in diapers. Without hesitation or complaint, Gracie had taken him in. She nurtured and loved him, and her affection was reciprocated.
When Crissy went missing, John and Mitch had questioned Gracie several times about her grandson’s relationship with their neighbor. John remembered her anxiously twisting an embroidered linen handkerchief and saying over and over, They’re friends, Mr. Bowie. My boy wouldn’t do that girl no harm. John had been inclined to believe her. Tom Barker hadn’t.
Beth abandoned her chopping and moved up behind his chair. “I hadn’t heard that she died. When?”
“A few months back. She was in a nursing home. Mitch’s wife saw a notice of it in the parish’s online newsletter. She called to let me know.”
Last night, Beth had accused him of being a man without feelings, one who didn’t give a damn. What she didn’t know, nor would even suspect, was that his emotions used to run hot. None of them, from rage to remorse, had had a moderate temperature setting.
That had changed the night he’d had to tell Gracie Oliver that her adored grandson Billy had hanged himself in his jail cell.
Straight from the gruesome scene and Barker’s repulsive, insensitive remark, he and Mitch had gone together to Gracie’s house, hoping to reach her before the media reported it. He couldn’t bear the thought of her seeing Barker on TV boastfully making the announcement.
When John broke it to her as gently as he could, she’d collapsed. He and Mitch had waited until friends from her church were notified. They’d arrived in numbers, soon filling the modest mobile home to mourn with her. He and Mitch then had extended her their pathetic, useless condolences and had said their goodbyes.
John had barely made it out the door without suffocating. He’d stormed from her house ready to murder Tom Barker for having said they should celebrate Billy’s suicide. If it hadn’t been for Mitch, literally wrestling with him to hold him back and shaking him until he’d calmed down, he might have acted on the impulse.
That was the night his life had begun to unravel.
It was also the night he had assumed the indifference immediately evident to Beth. That night, as Mitch had driven him away from Gracie Oliver’s house, he’d put his emotions in deep freeze and had donned a fuck-you attitude as impenetrable as a suit of armor. He wore it still to prevent him from ever again feeling too deeply, personally, hurtfully, destructively.
He now stirred himself out of the reverie and made himself focus on the business at hand by reading over the names Beth had added to their list of people to contact. “Who’s Victor Wallace?”
She had returned to the kitchen to continue preparing dinner. “Just before I left New York, I came across an online article he’d written. He teaches sociology at a community college in Orleans parish, but his syllabus includes extra credit lectures on the occult, fantasy, goth. Like that. I thought I might contact him to see if he had anything to say about the superstitions relating to blood moons.”
Another name she’d added had caught his eye. It was that of the deputy sheriff who’d discovered Billy hanging from the water pipe in his jail cell. “Isabel Sanchez,” he read aloud.
“Do you know her?”
“Yes. She was traumatized by what happened on her watch. Blamed herself for letting it happen. She got counseling, but couldn’t cope with the guilt over it and ultimately resigned from the SO.”
“She declined our request to give an interview for the show, but I thought I would add her, see what you thought.”
Without even having to ponder it, he said, “I think we should leave her alone.”
He checked his inbox for the dozenth time. None of the emails he was hoping for had come in. He got up and went into the kitchen, where Beth was adjusting the flame beneath the skillet on the ancient propane-fueled stove.
Her ponytail had slipped and hung lopsidedly against her nape. The incandescent bulb in the fixture overhead made her eyes shine like polished topaz in a jeweler’s case. Her lower lip caught that shine, too. The light also cast half-moon shadows of her breasts onto her midriff.
“Everything to your liking?”
He jerked his eyes up to hers. “Huh?”
She used the tip of the butcher knife to point out the ingredients she’d chopped and separated into mounds. “See anything you don’t like?”
Huskily, he replied, “No. I like it all.”
Chapter 17
A few minutes later they were seated across from each other at the dining table. As John picked up his fork, she said, “It’s not your grandma’s gumbo.”
He took a bite of the omelet and nodded with appreciation. “It’s good.” He reached for the bottle of Tabasco in the center of the table and sprinkled his omelet liberally. “No offense.”
“None taken,” she said, laughing. “In Louisiana, isn’t it considered one of the five basic food groups?”