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  She visited Liam’s restroom to brush her teeth and freshen her make-up before meeting Detective Scovoy. She arrived at Leigh Ann’s well-lit parking lot just as he pulled up in his navy blue Crown Victoria, the car of choice for the Grambling Police Department. He greeted her with an open smile. She wouldn’t call Chester Scovoy handsome exactly. But with brown hair graying at the temples, hazel eyes and the weight-lifter’s physique of so many of the force’s officers, he was quite appealing.

  “Detective,” she said.

  “Oh, no. Tonight it’s Chester.”

  “Then I’m Branigan, not Miss Powers.”

  “Fair enough.”

  They walked into Leigh Ann’s, Chester’s hand resting lightly in the small of her back. Branigan was surprised to find she liked it. Chester spoke to several fellow cops, who made no attempt to disguise their curiosity. Branigan knew some of them, and nodded as the pair made their way to a relatively quiet booth near the back. Chester ordered a beer, and Branigan a pinot noir.

  When it came, she took a sip and laid her head back against the cushioned booth. “This may put me to sleep. I feel like this is the first time I’ve stopped all day.”

  “Long day for sure,” he said. “Did you find out anything at Rutherford Lee?”

  “Seems like a week ago. Let’s see. Yes, in fact.” She gathered her thoughts. “Janie Rose moved into the Gamma Delta Phi house shortly after pledging last winter. Within a couple of days, a man visited her, asking about her father. The girls said he seemed to upset Janie Rose, and she slammed the door in his face.”

  Chester listened closely.

  “They also said she always looked out of a window before she left the house. But they couldn’t remember if she started that before or after his visit.”

  “Did they say why she left school?”

  “No, they claimed they didn’t know.”

  “‘Claimed’? Meaning you doubt them?”

  “No, it’s not that,” she said slowly. “It’s more that they struck me as kind of self-absorbed. Like maybe if they’d been looking out for her, they would have noticed. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “And how about you? Any luck with fingerprints in the hearse?”

  “Are we off the record?”

  “Sure.”

  “There were tons of prints, most of them belonging to Ralph Batson and Maylene Ayers. I ran them both through GBI.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was a statewide agency that provided assistance on forensics, databases and major crime investigations. “Ralph has DUIs and a domestic violence conviction from a former marriage. He did two years in prison. No surprise there. Maylene was clean, but do you know who she is?”

  “She said her people were cattle farmers in Gainesville.”

  “That’s one way to put it. Ever hear of Ayers Arena?”

  “Sure. Horse shows. Livestock shows. Huge farm.”

  “That’s her family. Maylene Ayers.”

  Branigan sat back, shocked. “Wow. What in the world is she doing here?”

  Chester shook his head. “It was all I could do not to call her folks. But there’s no missing persons report and she’s an adult.” He shrugged. “But she needs to get away from Ralphie.”

  “She’s got a shiner now.”

  “Yeah, I saw it when they came in to be fingerprinted. She swore she hit her face on the car door. A story I’ve heard a time or two.”

  “On a slightly different subject, did you talk to the state patrol about what they found at the crash scene?”

  “They said no witnesses.”

  “I mean about the luggage.”

  “Oh, yeah. They said the impact lifted the Jeep’s back door and threw the luggage out. The latches sprung – or is it sprang? I can never remember – and the girls’ clothes went everywhere. They also mentioned a duffel bag that was unzipped. At first they thought that meant something. But they mentioned it to the Delaneys and they said it was possible their daughter had left it unzipped.” He shrugged. “So it’s interesting, but inconclusive.”

  “Yeah, but if someone did force those girls off the road and then rifle through their luggage, that makes it very intentional, very deliberate.”

  “It does.”

  “But what could two college girls have that’s worth all that?” Branigan mused. She shook her head as if to clear it. “Let’s talk about something else. Tell me all about you and what brought you to Grambling, and the best and worst things about your job.”

  Chester laughed. “How long you got?”

  “All night.”

  So Chester told her about growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, going to the state university in Columbia, then the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, becoming a cop back home in Charleston, then making detective. He told her about moving to Atlanta, because it was the most challenging Southern city he could imagine for a homicide detective.

  After eight years, however, Chester had lost the stomach for the senseless gang-style shootings, the drug-related killings, the grim domestic abuse that underlay so many of his cases. So ten years previously he had gladly allowed himself to be recruited by Grambling’s first black police chief, Marcus Warren. At the time, Warren had been on the job only a year, brought in to professionalize the growing city’s force as Grambling navigated the change from a small farming and textile town to a mid-size city.

  “Best thing about the job?” Branigan repeated.

  “The people of Grambling,” he said promptly. “There’s not a disrespect for life and for authority. Not yet anyway.”

  “And the worst thing?”

  “Hmmm. That’s harder. I guess it’s having to depend on the state lab for the technology most big-city departments have. DNA, fingerprint analysis, things like that. But that’s minor. Now your turn.”

  Branigan told him about growing up in Grambling with her twin brother Davison, about graduating from the University of Georgia, about working for The Rambler, then the Detroit Free Press, about moving back to her late grandparents’ farm three years earlier.

  “I’m assuming last summer was the worst part of your life,” he said. “What about the best?”

  “Being back on the farm, being around family, my German shepherd Cleo,” she said. “And the work. I love the work. But newspapers are so uncertain right now. It’s hard to know whether I’ll have a job in two years.”

  “But you’re such a good writer.”

  “Thank you, but that seems to matter less and less.”

  More than three hours passed quickly. The dinner plates that had held Leigh Ann’s juicy burgers were empty, and Chester had ordered a second beer when his cell phone vibrated. “I’d better get this,” he said. “They don’t call after hours unless it’s important.”

  He listened for a moment, then said loudly, “No. No. No.” He slid from the booth, and stood, the phone still glued to his ear. Officers at a nearby table turned. He motioned for them to follow him, then turned to Branigan.

  “Damn it to hell. It’s Maylene.”

  He left without another word, his colleagues at his heels.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Malachi stood in the shadows of the depot used by Greyhound and Amtrak. The address was South Main Street, but the half-mile between the Nicholas Inn and the depot was the difference between shiny redevelopment and Southside decay.

  Malachi knew both Gramblings – knew that the people who visited the Nicholas Inn never got this far south. The depot was where the city’s broke-down people arrived – after being dropped off at other cities’ depots by prison vans, po-lice, churches, even worn-out, broke-down families. Travelers Aid in most towns would give you a bus or train ticket if you could prove there was someone on the other end to take you in. Other towns didn’t care about proof: they’d send you just to get you out
of theirs.

  Malachi had arrived at this very depot ten years before, when construction jobs had dried up in Hartwell. The drinking hadn’t helped either, if he was honest. But the drinking did help the panic attacks, so there you go.

  Malachi knew the building well – knew an exit was right behind him if he needed to make a quick escape across the railroad tracks. But for now, he stood to one side of the bus roundabout, looking through iron bars into an alley.

  A uniformed po-liceman had his Tent City neighbor Ralph in cuffs, the crowbar Ralph’d been holding kicked a few feet away. Ralph was all quiet, his shoulders slumped, his mouth slack and stupid. A woman’s crumpled body lay at the men’s feet. Her face was turned away, but Malachi knew who she was from the long brown hair that was turning black from leaking blood. Maylene. Her old backpack lay inches away, all her make-up and T-shirts and papers scattered on the ground where the officer had tossed it, looking for her ID. Her blue-jeaned legs were curled into her chest. That’s what got Malachi: those legs all bent in like a baby’s.

  He heard sirens close by. The po-lice station was just off North Main, so it wouldn’t take any time for the rest of the cops to get here. The bus dispatcher, he knew, had flagged down the officer, and was now squealing that the cops were on their way, as if the officer couldn’t hear his buddies’ wailing sirens.

  Ralph stood strangely silent, staring down at Maylene’s darkening hair, rocking on his heels. Two po-lice cars screamed into the murky light of the depot, and another two blocked the alley. The officers jumped out with guns drawn, but holstered them when they saw Ralph already in cuffs. Only then, surrounded by eight cops, several in off-duty duds, did he seem to wake up.

  “Maylene!” he shrieked, staring wildly at the arresting officers. “Help her! Help Maylene!”

  The first cop on the scene walked him to a car, shoving him a little harder than necessary into the back seat. “It’s a little late for that, buddy. She’s dead.”

  “But I ain’t did this!” Ralph yelled. “I woulden hurt Maylene.”

  Malachi saw Detective Scovoy, whom he’d met at Randall Mill this morning. Scovoy squatted beside the squad car to talk to Ralph. Malachi couldn’t make out the detective’s question, but he could hear Ralph’s answer.

  “I ain’t did this,” he insisted again. Then a pause while Scovoy talked. Then Ralph, quieter, but still loud enough for Malachi to hear. “Yeah, okay. I did hit ’er this mornin’. But I ain’t did this. Not this.” He shuddered.

  The detective spoke again. Ralph jerked his head from side to side. “It is my crowbar. I give it to her because she was goin’ out alone. But I found it beside her. You gotta believe me.”

  Detective Scovoy stood and hit the roof of the car. “Take him,” he said to the driver.

  Malachi melted into the dark railroad yard behind the depot. He needed to think. Part of him felt guilty because Ralph and Maylene’s tent was near his, and he knew Ralph was a violent ex-con. And part of him was mad at Maylene. Pastor Liam gave her every chance to get away. Why didn’t she listen?

  Lord knows he’d seen mean men and scared women on the street. But mostly, the women stayed because they didn’t want to be alone, or their man held the crack supply. On the other hand, he’d seen plenty of men become unable to provide crack and start selling their women.

  But Maylene hadn’t seemed scared of Ralph, and she hadn’t seemed overly fond of crack. Not yet anyway. That would’ve come later. More puzzling, she didn’t seem as worn as most of the women out here. It was hard to put into words, but she’d been prettier, fresher, unsullied. Malachi remembered that word from an honors English class in high school, long, long ago.

  So why was she putting up with such a loser?

  He remembered a late night this fall when he’d left his tent to pee, and found her alone next to a fire barrel, smoking a cigarette. Steady snores came from the tent she shared with Ralph, so he stopped for a moment.

  “Can’t sleep?” he’d asked.

  She’d shrugged and glanced at her tent. “Someone sure can.”

  Malachi had come right out and asked what was on his mind. “Whassa girl like you doin’ out here? Seems you coul’ do better.”

  “I could say the same for you,” she’d responded.

  “But I been out here years,” he said. “You gotta life in front of you.”

  “So don’t make the same mistakes you made?” Her tone softened the harshness of her words.

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “You got a fam’ly?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “They know where you’re at?”

  “They think I’m in Atlanta.”

  “Why they think that?”

  “Because I want them to.”

  Malachi waited for a moment while she blew smoke into the frosty air. “Why you don’t want your fam’ly to know where you’re at? They beat you?”

  She sighed. “No, they didn’t beat me. Let’s just say I screwed up and I don’t want them paying for it.”

  Malachi thought for a moment. “By bringing Ralph home?”

  Maylene turned then, and looked him full in the face. “You’re a nice man, Mr Malachi. But you don’t know everything. Good night.”

  No, she hadn’t seemed scared of Ralph. But maybe she should’ve been.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Branigan followed Chester Scovoy to the bus and train depot at a distance. Leaving her car on the street, she cinched her coat tightly and entered the bus depot. The cavernous place was creepy enough during daylight hours. At night, its dim interior was positively eerie.

  She approached the iron bars that separated the concrete structure from the grassy alley, normally an unexpected shock of green between the bus station and office building next door. Only now, Maylene’s curled body lay on the grass, her face invisible beneath a mass of dark, wet hair. Branigan felt her stomach lurch.

  Things had changed so rapidly over the course of the evening. She had very much enjoyed her time with Detective Scovoy and didn’t want to impose on his friendship. She waited until an officer had covered Maylene’s body, and the crime scene was taped and secured, before calling softly to him. He walked over.

  “I don’t want to bother you,” she said, “so can I just ask a couple of questions, then get going?”

  “Sure.” His tone was clipped, businesslike, all trace of their earlier camaraderie dissipated.

  “Was that Ralph I saw leaving in the back seat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Full name? And what’s he charged with?”

  “Ralph Lemay Batson. He will be charged with murder.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Don’t know yet.” Chester looked around and assured himself that his fellow officers weren’t paying attention. He seemed to relax a bit. “We’ve got one officer talking to the dispatcher and other officers talking to everyone in the bus station. No one’s come forward yet to say they actually saw it happen. The dispatcher called it in after a lady saw Maylene’s body and screamed. But with the murder weapon and Ralph’s history of domestic violence, it shouldn’t be a problem.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m just sorry it came to this.”

  “You and me both,” she said. “Good night.”

  He had already turned back to the crime scene.

  Branigan hurried to her car and locked the doors. Her teeth began to chatter, whether from the cold or from seeing Maylene’s battered head, she couldn’t say. Was it just this afternoon that she’d talked to the girl, urged her to get help? And was it her imagination or had the girl considered going home to Gainesville? Chief Warren would probably send an officer to the Ayers home. Pity the officer who got that assignment.

  Branigan called the newspaper office and dictated a few paragraphs to Bert, alerting him to Maylene’s identity as a member of the Ayers Arena clan. It wa
s forty-five minutes before the last deadline, so he could get it in the paper and online. He thanked her and told her that Jody would follow up in the morning.

  Wearily, Branigan turned her Civic toward the farm, jumpy and unsettled. She thought she would fall asleep minutes after crossing her threshold, but for most of the night she kept jerking awake, her mind returning instantly to the alley and Maylene’s broken body. She finally patted her bed to invite Cleo to leap up beside her. Only when she buried her face in the thick fur of the dog’s neck was she finally able to sleep.

  Janie Rose Carlton’s funeral was at ten on Saturday morning at Covenant United Methodist Church, a large, affluent campus near the courthouse on North Main Street. Branigan met Liam and Chan in the narthex. Her heart constricted when she looked at her nephew, lean and blond and slightly gawky, so like her brother Davison had looked at eighteen. Like his father, Chan towered over Branigan as he grabbed her in a bear hug.

  Aware of their somber surroundings, she stifled her delight. “How was Furman?” she whispered. “I want to hear everything.”

  “Mom asked if you can come to dinner tonight,” Chan said. “I’ll tell all.”

  “Who’ll be with Charlie?”

  “Grandma and Grandpa Delaney. Can you come?”

  “Sure, but tell Liz I’ll bring the bread and salad and wine. She can’t be messing with all that while she’s running back and forth to the hospital.”

  “I’m sure that’ll be fine,” said Liam. He nodded toward the church sanctuary where organ music could be heard. “But we need to go in.”

  The three of them signed the register, then took a pew near the back, not wanting their presence to make things more difficult for the Carltons.

  The church was filled with friends and neighbors of the Carltons, employees of Shaner Steel, a good portion of the faculty of Rutherford Lee, and friends of Janie Rose home from college. Branigan noted that two rows held what had to be Gamma Delta Phi sisters, dressed nearly identically in black sweater sets, black skirts and white pearls, with only an occasional blonde or redhead breaking the march of smooth brown heads. She saw Ranson Collier standing at the back, the funeral so important that he was working it himself. She waved discreetly, and he responded with a tight smile and a nod.