Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (44 page)

“Let the girl go!” I yelled. “It’s over, Raymond.”

42

I could make it out now. It was small, a ramshackle woodshed, a smokehouse. Raymond
was standing at the corner of the shack. The lantern was burning on the ground behind
him, making him darker, bigger, bulkier. He fired again. Nowhere close. He’d lost
me.

I inched slowly toward him through reedy grass, felt the dry ground burning my elbows
raw. I found my keys, wrapped a firm fist around them so they wouldn’t jangle, then
hurled them with all my might. I heard them hit the ground, heard his weapon discharge
again. I scrambled up and fired.

Raymond howled, grabbed his leg, nearly crumpled. His gun hit the ground.
“Don’t move,”
I yelled as I ran toward him, the Glock in front of me. My own voice sounded foreign,
packed with adrenaline and fury. I scooped up his gun and wedged it in my pants, saw
his shredded pant leg and the blood spreading over his thigh. “Give me your cuffs
and your keys, asshole.”

Raymond made a move toward his belt, winced. I took a step closer and aimed at his
forehead. “Keys and cuffs. Now.” I looked at the shack, shouted out. “Skylar, honey.
You’re safe. It’s going to be okay, sweetheart. I’m coming in to get you.”

“How’d you know?” Raymond asked.

“The note you took to the lab. My prints weren’t on it. I handled it
without gloves, which means you wiped it clean. You had to make double sure you hadn’t
left anything on it. And the iced coffee in your car. You’d been in town. Robbie said
so too. No one would have noticed you leaving the note.”

His legs were stretched out in front of him awkwardly. He dropped the cuffs. “Put
them on,” I ordered, and called out to Skylar again. I heard no cries for help. No
screams.

“So now you think you’re gonna get to be the big shot,” Raymond growled, not moving.
“You have no idea—”

“I did some checking on you. Your sister lives in Silas. She’s a teacher where Tracy
went to school. You were around there a lot back then since Robbie lost his mom in
the lake and all. Funny thing about your wife.” I bent and snapped the cuffs on him.
He didn’t move. “She was a pretty blond, wasn’t she? Found out she was a good swimmer
in high school.”

Raymond grimaced. His pant leg looked slippery and dark in the lamplight. “None of
it matters now,” he said.

“You move while I’m gone and I’ll kill you when I come back.” I grabbed his keys.
“You even look at her when I bring her out, I’ll shoot you.”

I took the lantern. Thirty-seven hours into her nightmare, I was finally going to
dig her out.

The stench of urine and mildew and worse slapped me in the face when I pushed the
door open. “Skylar, honey. I’m here. It’s going to be okay.”

I held the lantern in front of me and saw that smiling girl in the photos looking
up at me. Her mouth was stretched wide and silent, eyes fixed with the terror and
betrayal she’d taken to death. The axe lay next to her head, gleaming with blood and
tissue. He’d killed her like he’d killed Tracy, as if it were just a necessary task.
He’d used the axe because he didn’t want to discharge his weapon. Not when the whole
county was watching and listening.

I knelt down next to her, smelled her blood and excrement and her dirty hair. I saw
a single mattress, stained and reeking. I saw the Nine West handbag he’d let her keep.
Skylar was on her back with her legs straight out in front of her, ankles rubbed raw
and bruised. Chains
had been secured around an old engine block and stretched out four feet, rusty ankle
cuffs attached to them. He was dragging her out when he’d heard me running and screaming,
running and screaming, then firing my gun. It was too late. I was too late. I hadn’t
screamed loud enough. I hadn’t fired fast enough. I’d let the world have her. I’d
let it crush her and break her parents’ hearts.

I put her head in my lap, touched her warm forehead, pushed blond hair out of her
eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I told her. I choked on the words. Even they were too late.

I put her head down gently, staggered outside, furious and heartsick, sucked clean
air into my lungs. Raymond watched me, my bullet burning in his leg, his cuffed wrists
in his lap. He was sweating.

“You fucker!” I cried. He stared up at me in the lantern light. “You could have let
her live. You knew this was almost over. You knew we were closing in.”

“I had to end this my way,” Raymond said. “You don’t understand, Street—”

“Oh I understand,” I snarled. “Remember, I’m the one who gets you.”

I heard that panicked scream again, raw and sharp—I heard it shooting across the fields
to the lake, ripped open and full of terror. I thought about Hayley and Brooks Barbour.
This sunrise was going to feel to them like the swing of that axe. I thought about
Bryant and Molly Cochran holding their candles in the park for the little girl he’d
taken and tortured and dumped like trash. I thought about him standing over that hole
with me, grinding his cigarette into the dirt and leaves, threatening me. I thought
about Josey Davidson, childless, twisting her wires.

Sirens screamed through the night. Rack lights flashed in the distance and lit up
low pockets of sky like a lightning storm.

I lifted my Glock, and I shot him again.

43

I didn’t go back inside that stinking, broken-down prison. Meltzer and Brolin were
inside now. They had walked past Raymond without a word after I’d briefed them at
their vehicles. Brolin had nearly broken down when she looked at him. She’d made a
tiny sound like a sick cat. Meltzer had reached for her arm to steady her, to keep
her moving.

The path to the shack was alive with squad cars and deputies and light in the fog,
and the squawking of police scanners. Sam and Mori had arrived in the crime-scene
van. Lights had been erected as they had the night we’d searched for evidence on Cottonwood
Road. Sam had swabbed Raymond’s hands for gunshot residue and other evidence, had
photographed his clothes before they went in to process the crime scene. She’d instructed
the deputies to bag his clothes at the hospital. Under the bright lights I saw now
that the front of his shirt was speckled with blood spatter.

I turned Raymond’s weapon in to evidence, then walked out in the field alone to search
for the keys I’d thrown, the keys that had bought me time, and maybe saved my life.

Sometimes it ends this way, I reminded myself. Sometimes things don’t work out.

I heard Brolin’s voice behind me. “Was the second shot just for fun? Or was that self-defense
too?”

An ambulance howled up the path. I turned. “My weapon accidentally discharged.”

“Mine would have accidentally discharged in his
face
,” she spat. She wasn’t kidding. She helped me look for my keys. The sheriff came
out and we all watched Raymond loaded onto a gurney. Two deputies piled into the ambulance
behind him. An EMT slammed the doors.

“What am I going to tell Robbie?” Meltzer asked quietly. “He’s at my house sleeping.”

“I just can’t believe it,” Brolin said, not for the first time. “How could he do something
like this?”

“Let’s find Raymond’s sister,” Meltzer said. “Robbie’s going to need her.”

“She’s in Silas,” Brolin and I said simultaneously. She looked at me, and I saw it
in her eyes. She’d realized all the ways she’d looked right past him, ignored the
connections. “He used me,” she said. “He kept me close to protect himself.”

“He used us all,” the sheriff told her. “Nobody’s getting out of this clean.”

“I have to go to the hospital and get his statement,” she said. “We can’t give him
time to think.”

“I’ll send Ferrell and the tech guy with video,” Meltzer told her. “I think you should
sit this one out, Major.”

“Ferrell’s a rookie,” Brolin argued. “He’ll lawyer up on her.”

“I’ll go,” I said. “He told me he wanted to end this his way. He’s ready to talk.
He didn’t even put up a decent fight. Funny how it goes like that. In the end, they’re
just cowards. They just put their fucking hands up.”

“You can’t go,” Meltzer said. “You shot the man, Keye. I’m sure the evidence will
support you, but if you were one of my people, you’d be on paid leave right now and
nowhere close to the case. You’re done. You’re a witness now. Meet us back at the
judicial center so we can get your statement. Come on, Tina, ride with me. We have
to wake up Skylar’s parents.” He looked at me before he got in his truck.
You okay?
he mouthed.

The coroner’s van zoomed past. I gave him a thumbs-up. But as I walked back through
the field to my car, I knew I’d lied.

44

The statement I gave to Meltzer and Brolin in an interview room at the judicial center
was long and detailed. It had to be told, then written and signed. I started with
the notes in my hotel room, the memory of Raymond’s messy car, the melted iced coffee
inside, remembering Robbie mentioning his father being in town, the dog from the K-9
unit tweaking to Raymond. We’d thought it was because he’d mishandled evidence, but
it was because he’d been near Skylar. I told them about the first note, which had
been wiped clean. I’d run a check and discovered Raymond’s wife was a strong swimmer,
that she was small and blond just like Tracy and Melinda and Skylar. That’s why he
punished them. He was trying to punish his wife. And that’s why he’d gotten drunk
then and why he’d gotten drunk last night. Because he knew how close we were and he
knew he had to kill Skylar and clean up his dungeon. I told them how I’d found his
sister had taught at Tracy’s school. He was in uniform then, and Tracy probably knew
him as the police officer brother of a teacher. And even as cautious as she was about
upsetting her abusive father, she might have accepted a ride from him. I told them
I’d gone to his neighborhood, slept on his street, and woke to his brake lights backing
out. I told them I hadn’t notified them before we arrived at that field because I
wasn’t sure, and because he was one of theirs. I wanted
a smoking gun. I didn’t know I’d find a dead girl. No one said it, but I knew we all
thought it. Might the ending have been different if I hadn’t acted alone? Would Skylar
have lived? How would we have acted as a unit if I’d called them from the hotel when
my suspicions first piqued? We’d never know. And the weight of that fell hard on my
shoulders.

I looked through the glass at Robbie Raymond in the next room. His fair skin was splotched
with red, his blue eyes were puffy and watery. A bruise covered his cheekbone and
circled one swollen eye. A woman stood with her arms around him, tall and dark-haired
like Raymond, but with softer features. His sister, I realized, Robbie’s aunt. The
woman who’d cared for him after his father had murdered his mother in Lake Oconee.
She held him. I saw the tremors shake his big body. Meltzer followed my eyes.

“Both his parents are gone now.”

“He have a clue at all?” I asked.

“No,” Meltzer said. “Said his dad didn’t talk much. He went out a lot and Robbie never
knew where. But it scared him when he heard about the kerosene last night. He’d smelled
it on Rob. He was trying not to believe it.”