Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel Read online

  Meltzer was watching me. “I don’t know if I want to ask what’s going on inside your head.”

  “Probably not. How about your head?” He’d had a prisoner commit suicide inside his jail and he’d had to notify the boy’s mother. He hadn’t said a word about either. “Must have been a tough day.”

  “Awful. That woman, Mrs. Davidson, she’s just like you said, a hard-luck case. She’s worried about how to pay for the funerals of two kids. Tracy’s remains are ready to be released.” He slid his tortilla on the plate, reached for his glass. “Sometimes I’m glad I never had kids. I think the heartache might outweigh the rewards. Watching Molly and Bryant go through losing Melinda … I don’t know how you get through something like that. How about you? You ever want that life?”

  “Stay-at-home mom sounds kind of good. Only without the children.” Meltzer chuckled. We ate quietly for a minute. “I talked to Bryant today and to Melinda’s friends, the three girls she walked home with the day she disappeared.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “A music teacher named Tray.” I didn’t mention Cochran’s homophobic comment about track lighting, that he’d told me the sheriff was the bachelor to catch, or that he’d listed the reasons everyone hated me—stranger, female, Asian. “Melinda had band practice once a week,” I told him. “Tray’s name isn’t in the original reports. I went by the school but I missed him.”

  “We didn’t talk to him at all?” He got up and came back with a bag of chips, poured some out on our plates.

  I shook my head. “Would have been easy to miss without a thorough victimology. One of the hazards of knowing the victim. I’ll give you a report in the morning with a list of everyone I’ve spoken to and what I’ve learned. Just so we’re all on the same page. And I want to follow up on the band teacher tomorrow. You know anything about him?”

  Meltzer ate a potato chip, shook his head. “Not anything personal. Tray really turned our band into something. Brings in a lot of support for the school. You like him for this?”

  “I like him until he’s excluded.” I decided not to tell the sheriff what the girls had told me—rumors about the teacher’s inappropriate behavior with the kids. Something about those girls felt off to me. I wasn’t sure why they’d lie, and maybe they hadn’t, but I wasn’t ready to throw a man and his career under the bus. Not yet. “I need a background on him, residences, employment history, credit, criminal, whatever we can find. You want my office to run it?”

  “We’ll run it first thing. I’m not sure I can afford your office.”

  I took the last bite of my quesadilla, felt the string of cooling cheddar hit my chin. Ken Meltzer leaned over. I swallowed. He touched my chin with his napkin and looked into my eyes. Lightning shot through my body. He was going to kiss me, I realized. And I wasn’t moving away.

  The front door swung open. “Harold, I have been looking everywhere for you.” It was a small woman with short gray hair. Her voice was scolding and age-dried. Ginger jumped up and ran to her. “Hello, Red,” the woman said, and patted the dog.

  Meltzer looked at me helplessly. “She thinks I’m Dad again. I’m sorry.” He raised his voice. “It’s okay, Mom. I’ll be right there.”

  “Harold, who is that woman?” his mother demanded. Ginger was weaving around all our legs, panting, tail wagging.

  “I’m Keye Street, Mrs. Meltzer.” I went to her and held out my hand. She took it. “I’m working with the sheriff’s department.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it these days?” she said. She’d seen the almost-kiss. I froze.

  Meltzer laughed. He took both her hands and looked at her. “Did you ditch Patricia again?” His voice was soft with his mother, patient.

  She frowned. “I don’t want to see that woman. She’s a pain in the ass. Is Castle on? I think I’m missing Castle.”

  Meltzer picked up the remote control and handed it to me. “DVR,” he said. “I have to check on Patricia.”

  “Can I watch with you?” I asked Mrs. Meltzer. She looked at me with the wide brown eyes she’d passed on to her son. I clicked the remote and sat down on the couch, patted the place next to me. In the background Meltzer was talking to the caretaker. Mrs. Meltzer sighed and sat down. Ginger jumped up next to her. I found the saved programs menu. Twenty-three episodes of Castle. I grinned up at Meltzer and got a shrug. I hit PLAY and we both leaned back into the couch. Mrs. Meltzer put the balls of small, bare feet against a leather storage square that doubled as a coffee table. I kicked off my shoes and did the same thing. She nodded her approval.

  Meltzer hung up the phone. “Mom, Patricia says you were taking a nap while she was taking a shower.”

  “I tricked her.” She was staring at the screen as the opening segment played. “Oh, I love this part. We need popcorn, Ken.”

  “Right.” He went to the kitchen. I heard cabinets opening and closing, the microwave coming on.

  “You know,” Mrs. Meltzer confided to me in a whisper, her eyes fixed on the screen. “I can’t remember one storyline in this show. I just want to see if they’re going to make out.”

  “I hear ya,” I said. She sent an elbow my way, a soft jab that meant we’d connected, shared a joke.

  A few minutes later the cabin smelled like popcorn. I glanced over the back of the couch at Ken Meltzer awkwardly pulling a hot bag out of the microwave, throwing it on the counter like it was on fire. He caught me looking at him and mouthed, Thank you.

  A minute later he sat down on the other side of his mother—Hitchiti County’s sheriff, his rescued dog Ginger, his mother, and me on a couch watching network television and eating popcorn. It couldn’t have gotten any weirder. I mean, I never watch network. But it was a welcome and strangely wonderful end to an otherwise dark day. I didn’t know then that the day and the darkness were just beginning.

  20

  Meltzer’s phone rang as I was preparing to leave. I’d just made it through my first-ever episode of Castle. I watched him check the display, answer while I talked to Mrs. Meltzer. He plugged one ear with his finger and walked quickly into the hallway. His body language had changed. Whatever news he was getting wasn’t what he wanted to hear. I saw him click off a couple of minutes later and make another call. His voice stayed low. He returned and looked at me. “We have to go,” he said. Then to his mother, “Mom, Patricia’s coming over to watch TV with you, okay?”

  The door opened and a heavyset woman walked in wearing knee-length shorts and flip-flops, a man’s T-shirt. Her face was round and very plain but you had the feeling she was about to laugh. Brown bangs squared off over her eyebrows. She smiled at me. The sheriff didn’t bother to introduce us. He had other things on his mind. He slipped into his harness and checked the S&W 40 he carried.

  “Will you feed Ginger?” he asked the woman. “And make sure she gets out again before you leave?”

  “You betcha,” she answered and sat next to Mrs. Meltzer. “Want to watch some TV, Virginia?” Mrs. Meltzer’s hand came across and patted her caretaker’s knee.

  We were out the door a second later. “We have a girl missing,” Meltzer told me. His tone was curt. “Her name’s Skylar Barbour. Wasn’t home when her parents got off work. They called teachers, then they called her friends, and then they called us. We’re taking it seriously. I have a bad feeling.”

  “Was she in school today?” I asked as we walked quickly down the pebbled path.

  “All day. She appeared normal and not upset. Friends say they saw her walking toward home.”

  “So she disappeared between school and home. How far is that?”

  “Not far, but she would have had to take a trail through those woods on the southeast edge of the park.” There was a little jiggle in his voice because we were moving fast. “Here’s what we have so far. Patrols took preliminary statements from the parents, who told them their daughter always takes the bus home. Tina Brolin was able to contact a couple of the girl’s friends, who said she always walks home w
ith them.”

  “So the parents are lying,” I said. “Or their daughter was.”

  “Like I said, I have a bad feeling.”

  “Skylar’s Caucasian?” I asked. “And blond?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Age?”

  “Eighth grader,” Ken Meltzer answered, grimly. “Thirteen. Same school where Melinda went.” We stopped at our vehicles.

  “But there’s no evidence she was abducted,” I reminded him. I was having trouble selling it. I had a bad feeling too. I was thinking about Logan Peele and the band teacher who’d flown under the radar and the greeting on my windshield, a warning, a promise. “Your offender, if this turns out to be his work, he hasn’t had time to do what he does, Ken. He holds them. If he has Skylar, she’s still alive.”

  “Jump in,” Meltzer said, as if he hadn’t heard me. “We’re meeting Brolin and Raymond at the parents’ place.”

  “I’ll follow you.” I got in my car and waited for him to pull out. I wasn’t going to drive up with the sheriff after nine in the evening. I’d had enough trouble with Brolin and Raymond. Why feed them? And I was feeling guilty. To borrow from Jimmy Carter, I’d lusted in my heart. They’d smell it.

  We wound back through Whisper, quiet and quaint and lamp-lit, and hiding so many secrets. The sheriff cut through a neighborhood off Main Street and we came out on a dirt road half a mile later. The marker said COTTONWOOD ROAD. It was pitch dark. No moon. No streetlights on country roads. I followed the sheriff’s taillights through the dust, our headlights touching the fringes of a field with tall, blowing grass, rippling and rolling like a black sea in the dark night.

  I saw the sheriff’s vehicle turn past a mailbox; headlights hit white fences, a long ranch house at the end of the lane. Skylar Barbour had gotten dressed for school there this morning. And she hadn’t come home.

  Raymond and Tina Brolin were leaning against Brolin’s Crown Vic. Raymond was smoking. Both looked grim. We joined them.

  “Major Brolin,” I said, and nodded. “Detective Raymond.”

  “The Barbours are waiting,” Brolin said. She didn’t look thrilled to see me. No doubt Raymond had shared our conversation with her. I’d scolded him for conducting a very sloppy investigation. It would be hard for her not to take that personally. I didn’t care. How they handled it going forward would determine what kind of cops they really were.

  “We’re going to start at the beginning,” Meltzer told us. “They came home from work to an empty house. Let’s play it close. No need to alarm these people unnecessarily. And if there’s something else going on here, we don’t want them to clam up. Understood? We treat them like suspects, they’ll dive for cover.”

  “With all due respect, Sheriff,” Major Brolin said, “it’s not our first rodeo.”

  I glanced at Meltzer, saw the muscle ripple across his jawline. “I’m well aware of that, Tina.” He’d lowered his voice, but it had an edge I hadn’t heard before. He’d also dropped her designation and used her first name. “I’m also aware that your last rodeo ended with the missing girl found dead in the woods eight months later. I’m going to make sure this doesn’t end that way.”

  We followed the sheriff up the steps to a long railed porch. A German shepherd stood on the other side of a glass storm door. A low growl came through the glass. Meltzer pressed the doorbell, and the dog started to bark and show teeth.

  “It’s okay, Luke.” A man in a business suit came to the door. He was late thirties with thinning brown hair. “Brooks Barbour,” he told Meltzer, pushing open the door. They shook hands. “Thanks for coming.”

  “I’m Sheriff Ken Meltzer, and these are my investigators.” He introduced us. Barbour invited us inside. Luke sniffed the air as we passed.

  We found Mrs. Barbour sitting at an oblong table in the kitchen clutching a mug of something, shivering on this hot August night in Georgia, used Kleenex balled up around her. Luke sat down next to her chair. Hayley Barbour had the hollow, shocked eyes you see in hospital emergency rooms, seeing and not seeing. We all sat down at the table.

  “We’re anxious to get Skylar home, and I know you are too.” Meltzer spoke gently. “Most of the time these things are just a matter of somebody getting their signals crossed, someone made plans and forgot to call.” He was right. Kids don’t come home all the time. Almost none of them have been abducted. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not taking this seriously. We know you’re worried and we’re here to help. We may have to repeat questions my deputies already asked but bear with us.”

  The Barbours nodded. “When was the last time you saw your daughter?” the sheriff asked.

  “This morning.” Hayley Barbour spoke for the first time. “I took her to school.” She answered almost mechanically, like a sleepwalker.

  “Did you speak to her during the day at all?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t. Brooks, did you?”

  “No. But that’s normal,” Brooks Barbour said. “We don’t usually talk until I get home.”

  “What time is that, sir?” I asked. I was trying to put a time on her disappearance.

  “I get home around six-thirty or seven,” Brooks Barbour said. “But Hayley is home by five-thirty.” Hayley nodded her agreement. Skylar was last seen around three o’clock. Which meant she had vanished sometime between three and five-thirty. A large window of opportunity. My heart sank.

  “Was anything disturbed when you got home? Are any of Skylar’s things missing?” I asked.

  Hayley shook her head. “The deputies asked us to check for missing items but we didn’t find anything.” Her hand reached for Luke, her fingers disappeared in his thick fur.

  “Can’t you see what they’re doing?” Brooks Barbour asked his wife. His voice was sharp and angry and shot through the room in accusing spirals. Luke leaned in closer to Hayley. “You’re trying to figure out if she ran away, aren’t you?” he asked Meltzer gruffly. “Our daughter would not run away. Something happened to her and you need to be out there. Right now. Looking for her.”

  Hayley didn’t look at her husband. “I heard Luke whining through the door when I got home,” she told us. “I knew right away something was wrong.” One side of her mouth twitched. She bit back a sob. “He bounded out when I opened the door and ran up the driveway. He still hasn’t settled down.”

  “What usually happens when you get home?” I asked.

  “Skylar and Luke are in the den where she does homework,” she told me. “Luke barely looks up when I come home. He’s Skylar’s dog.” She covered her mouth and squeezed her eyes closed. “Oh God,” she moaned. The icemaker buzzed, cubes dropped into a freezer tray. I glanced at Brooks. He’d looked away. Some people pull in close during a crisis. Some people curl up in a little ball. Or was his response more than that?

  Detective Raymond took a notepad from his shirt pocket and put it on the table. He looked dead tired. The weight of his jowls and the bags under his eyes made him look like a cartoon dog. “I know you’re worried to death,” he said, in a voice I hadn’t heard before. “I just need to verify some information we got from the responding officers. Skylar was wearing khaki-colored pants and a sleeveless green blouse. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Barbour answered. “And a Nine West purse from Macy’s. Small, oblong, tan with a wide black band and a square buckle. And pink Nikes.”

  Detective Raymond verified other details—birth date, names of teachers, friends—then asked for a photograph of Skylar. Brooks Barbour got up, disappeared somewhere in the house. Luke stayed with Mrs. Barbour.

  “Does Skylar have a phone?” I asked.

  Hayley nodded. “We’ve been calling it for hours.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled down the pale skin of her cheeks. She pulled a fresh tissue from the box, clutched it. “It was her birthday present.”

  “Can you describe the phone?”

  “It’s an iPhone,” Brooks told us. “In a pink OtterBox.” He’d returned with a framed photograph, a
five-by-seven with the swirly gray-blue backdrop of a school picture. I studied the face of a smiling blond girl with her father’s brown eyes, a navy sweater vest over a white collared shirt.

  “Would you mind writing down Skylar’s cell phone number for us?” Meltzer asked.

  Hayley found a notepad and scribbled down a number. “We’ve called the provider already,” she told us. “There’s an app that finds it when it’s lost, but there’s no signal.” Her voice wobbled. So did her hands.

  “Did the mobile provider tell you where the GPS went out?” I asked.

  “No,” Hayley answered. “I … I didn’t think to ask. I don’t understand any of this. I talked to her friends. I called her teachers. Skylar was at school all day. She wasn’t sick. She was fine. She wasn’t talking about doing anything but going home. And the bus drops her right at the end of the driveway. Her friend Pam told me she walked home today. I don’t understand that …”

  “Skylar walked home every day,” Major Brolin said flatly. Meltzer’s head jerked in Brolin’s direction. The total lack of empathy in her tone made even Raymond’s head turn. “Her friend didn’t tell you that?”