Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (21 page)

I drove to the middle school, where the bell rang half an hour later than the high
school. I parked and worked my way against the stream of kids blasting through propped-open
double doors. The hall was packed. I stuck my head in a door marked
TEACHERS’ LOUNGE
, empty but for one woman lowering herself into a chair. She put a can of Coke and
a package of cheese crackers on the table in front of her, and looked exactly like
you’d imagine a teacher must feel after a day with eleven-, twelve-, and thirteen-year-old
kids. Or as my dad would say, “Shot at and missed. Shit at and hit.”

“I’m looking for Mr. Tray’s room,” I told her.

“It’s the band room. Take a right at the end of the hall.” She popped the top on the
can, leaned back, and blew out enough air to puff her cheeks.

“Thanks.” I smiled. “Carry on.”

“Oh hey, Mr. Tray leaves early twice a week. I haven’t seen him since this morning.”
She grabbed the crackers off the table and tore the corner with her teeth, spit out
cellophane. “I think today was one of his days.”

I walked through the emptying halls. The band room door was locked. I returned to
my car and found Highway 441, then turned south. Just a couple of hundred yards outside
the city limits, I spotted
the huge white bowling pin against the sky. Under it, a long red-and-white block building.
A bowling-pin-shaped sign hung like a marquee on the front of the building.
WHISPER LANES. OPEN LATE
. The word
COCKTAILS
blinked in lavender neon on the front door. The building appeared windowless, a bunker
the size of a football field. There were a couple of eighteen-wheelers in a dirt parking
lot, a pickup truck, a white van, a Cadillac, and an old Dodge Dart that looked like
it might have once been a burgundy color.

I pushed through the door from brilliant sunlight to dimly lit lounge. It took a second
for my eyes to adjust. Ahead of me all twenty-four bowling lanes were oiled and gleaming
and lit up. But the front of the space was deep in neon shadows like most roadside
taverns. I saw the bar to the right with customers on stools. Round tables with chairs
were set up like an airport lounge. A silver-haired man in a short-sleeved buttondown
and brown dress pants let go of a bright yellow ball. I watched it roll toward the
pins, striking them hard. The noise didn’t seem to bother anyone. Apparently a bowling
alley was as good a place as any to pull off the highway and have a drink in the early
afternoon.

I went to the lounge, nodded at the man behind the bar. “You’re Keye Street,” he said.
He was filling a mug from his tap. “My wife said she met you this morning. I’m Bryant
Cochran. Give me a second and I’ll meet you at a table. Want something to drink?”

Yes, I did. I wanted a big, honking glass of, well, anything. Vodka preferably—coating
my throat and loosening up my shoulders and neck. I wanted to feel the heaviness on
my tongue. I wanted to forget the way I felt when Meltzer looked at me. I wanted to
find out who was taking girls and torturing them and killing them. “I’d love a club
soda,” I answered. “With lemon.”

I waited at a table while Bryant Cochran checked on his customers and poured my soda.
I kept thinking about Logan Peele, about the way he’d looked at me in his kitchen,
standing there with an ice cube held against his bloodied lip, arrogant and taunting.
I thought about the way he knew me. I thought about the note on my windshield.

Two guys at the bar in T-shirts and ball caps drank butter-colored beer from clear
glasses and talked about hunting season opening next
month and hunting stuff. We don’t do a lot of hunting on Peachtree Street. Not that
kind anyway.

A woman sitting two stools down drank white wine and listened to them. She was in
black skinny jeans, flats, a shoulder-length curly perm. “Why y’all wanna talk about
killing all the time?” She spoke to them in a teasing way that said they all knew
one another. “Didn’t your mamas take you to see
Bambi
?”

Bryant Cochran came to the table in jeans, worn to blue-white, and a red baseball
cap. He was a big guy, Rauser’s height, but thicker. The jeans were tight around his
thighs. He had a close black beard and the kind of chalky complexion you get from
living your life inside.

“Is it hard to be in a bar?” he asked. I looked at his face and believed he was absolutely
sincere. He set my soda down, flipped a chair around, and straddled it across from
me. He’d obviously Googled me. And boy, was there ever a boatload of information out
there, both true and outright fiction. So thrilled alcoholism and meltdown were now
an official part of my bio. Always instills confidence.

“It is, kind of,” I said, and looked into his blue-gray eyes.

“I know,” he said. In the background, a slow but steady steam of bowling balls rolled
down an alley. I’d never bowled. I’d never even been inside a bowling alley. Not that
I was above it. I’d spent plenty of time in bars with a pool cue in my hand. “I had
to give it up too.” He said it with the matter-of-fact cadence of a country boy. “Drinking,
I mean. A couple years ago when the bowling alley business wasn’t supporting us, Molly
and me had to think long and hard before I applied for a liquor license. It’s tempting
on bad days.”

“And I know you’ve had some lately,” I said. “I’m sorry about Melinda.”

His eyes lifted to mine. “It breaks you, Miss Street. It takes a guy like me and snaps
him right in half. It was bad enough when we didn’t know where she was. But now knowing
she’d been held and all.” He cleared his throat. “Can you find out who did this? I
want to look that bastard in the eye. I want him to know what he did to us.”

He thought confronting the monster who had treated his daughter to inexplicable cruelty
would give him closure. Family members can’t wait for those moments in the courtroom.
They want to tell him how
he dismantled a family, how he broke their hearts and marriages and lives. But telling
a psychopath who wants and needs to make his mark on the lives of others how deeply
he wounded you is nothing more than handing him a parting gift. It’s another sick
memory he can take off to jail with him. I wish judges wouldn’t allow it. I wish families
understood that the man they were attempting to shame was soaking it in, savoring
their pain, and probably fighting a growing erection. These guys don’t have a heart
you can touch with your pain.

“Mr. Cochran,” I began carefully. He stopped me and asked me to call him by his first
name. “Bryant,” I started again. And I was careful. You can’t talk to the family of
a victim in the detached way you talk to professionals. You can’t describe the psychological
characteristics of a crime scene to the grieving father of a murdered girl. You can’t
break them any more than they’ve been broken. “Because Melinda was found in this area
with another girl who also lived in Hitchiti County, we believe the suspect is local.
Especially given the length of time between their disappearances. I think we’re looking
for someone who has been in this area a long time, someone you or your wife may know.”
I stopped there. I didn’t mention other similarities—broken bones and sexual abuse.
I wasn’t sure how much the sheriff or his investigators had shared with the parents
and I didn’t want to drop an emotional bomb for the second time today. I thought again
about Jeff Davidson, shaggy and thin and hopeless, staring down at his hands and planning
to open his veins with a kitchen knife.

Bryant Cochran glanced at his customers at the bar, the two guys, the woman, then
leaned forward and said very quietly, “I … we … always figured it was a stranger.”
There was emotion in his voice and it embarrassed him. “Whisper is surrounded by highway.
And some of these truckers that come in here are rough guys.
No
.” He shook his head. “Nobody that lives around here would do something like that.”
He blinked watery eyes, sniffed, touched his nose self-consciously with the back of
his hand.

I took a sip of my club soda and wished again it were loaded with Absolut. “It’s hard
to imagine an everyday person could be capable of something so terrible, I know. But
one of the things I’ve learned about
this kind of individual is that there’s a psychological disconnect between the terrible
part-time violence in their life and their real life, the life where they’re part
of a community. It’s the same kind of disconnect that a lot of us have in our everyday
lives but it’s taken to the extreme. You run a bar. You’ve seen guys talk to women
in a way they’d absolutely hate their mothers or wives or sisters being talked to.
Multiply that kind of emotional disconnect between behavior and values by about a
hundred.”

Cochran was silent.

“Did you or your wife know Tracy Davidson and her family?” I asked. “Is there any
connection between you at all? Same church, same anything?”

“That’s the girl they found when Melinda was found?” he asked, and I nodded. “Neither
one of us knew any of them. And I don’t believe we ever ran across them doing anything.
Molly and me both grew up around here. I don’t know one person in Silas. We only half
remember seeing posters of her after she ran away.”

“Tracy didn’t run away,” I said flatly. “She disappeared under circumstances very
similar to Melinda’s.” Another ball rumbled down the alley and cracked into bowling
pins. “I want you to think about the people in your life or in Melinda’s life, all
the relationships. Did she ever have any interaction with someone that didn’t feel
right to you? Maybe you just felt something in your gut. An adult, a friend who paid
too much attention to her. Did she ever mention anyone who bothered her? I know this
is tough but it will help.”

Bryant Cochran shook his big head. “Nobody in our life that couldn’t be trusted with
a child.” It was a belief held by most people who loved and trusted their friends
and family. And it wasn’t true.

“Was there anyone Melinda may have confided in if something was bothering her?”

“Just her friends, I guess.”

“Did Melinda keep a diary?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I understand she was in the school band.”

Bryant nodded, smiled a little. “The band got to go to the Rose
Bowl last year. Melinda was so excited. That was just a couple weeks before she disappeared.”

“I’ve heard good things about the band teacher,” I lied. I’d heard terrible accusations
from Melinda’s friends. But I figured it would fly with Cochran. If the teacher got
the band to the Rose Bowl he must be pretty good.

“He’s all right, I guess. Only met him a few times,” Cochran said. “But he does good
with the band.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re crazy about him.”

“I think he’s gay. Like he-oughta-come-with-track-lighting gay,” Cochran said. “It’s
just uncomfortable for a guy like me, you know? I don’t like being around ’em.”

What I knew about big burly guys who get uncomfortable with gay men is that they need
to turn that spotlight inward. I thought about all the times my brother had been picked
on by homophobic creeps. I slid my card onto the table. “Please don’t hesitate to
call if you think of something.”

“Thank you, Miss Street. I heard about how they treated you at the Silver Spoon. Molly
wouldn’t have let that happen if she’d been there. Somebody put something on your
windshield?”

“A note,” I said casually. “Did you hear who put it there?”

“Nah, but you know how rumors get started in a small place like this. The sheriff
is an eligible bachelor.” He said it with a half smile, without bitterness, with something
close to admiration. I thought again about the text from Molly Cochran the sheriff
had ignored. They were friends, I kept telling myself. He was investigating the murder
of her daughter. It was normal. “And some people might have thought y’all looked awful
cozy over breakfast.”

I smiled. “That’s why I’m getting the cold shoulder?”

He shrugged. “Some cops might think you’re here to make them look bad. Mostly people
aren’t used to having an outsider asking questions. Outsiders are usually just tourists.
People are private around here.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said.

“And, well, you’re a woman and, you know, an Oriental.”

——

He’d seen her on the periphery, coming out of that little stretch of woods behind
the park. Right on time. That’s the thing about good girls. You can count on them.

He didn’t look up. Not even when he felt her next to him, bending into his raised
hood, peering into the engine as he was.

“Whatcha doing over here?” She turned her head and smiled at him. He could smell the
grape bubblegum in her mouth. His pulse tapped against his collar. “What’s wrong with
it?”

“Wish I knew,” he said.

She looked back at the engine. “You going to fix it with duct tape?” She giggled at
the roll of silver tape sitting on the radiator.

He laughed with her. “Guess I should have learned something about cars.” He rubbed
engine dirt off his hands onto the shop rag he’d stuffed in his pocket. “I can’t find
my phone. I need to call somebody.”

He watched her reach into the leather bag that hung off her slim shoulders and pull
out a phone in a rubbery pink case. Her little pink lifeline. She was going to give
it up, just hand it over. And she did.

He keyed in a number, tucked the phone against his shoulder, and leaned back to look
at the engine. She leaned in too as if she might be able to help. He jiggled a hose
around with the rag, but he was barely aware of his own movements now. His heart was
fluttering like a hummingbird. A recorded message that her family had made was playing
in his ear, the three of them together taking turns saying their names.
Hi, this is Brooks. And Hayley. And Skylar
. And then all together—
And Luke. You know what to do after the tone
. Yes, he certainly did know what to do.

He talked over the message as if he were giving someone his location. But that was
the rehearsed part of him, the part that functioned automatically, the survivor. He
listened to their voices while he had his fake conversation, to them pretending to
be happy. He got it all out before the beep, before voice mail could record him.