* * *
Shortly before two, Conley dragged herself—and her laptop—to bed. She’d rewritten her piece for the Atlanta paper, focusing more on the national angle and the bizarre ongoing Robinette family feud, and throwing in, for good measure, some of the backstory on Symmes Robinette’s role in defending the railroad against cancer claims in Plattesville.
Once this funeral story died down, she vowed to take a trip over to Plattesville and then to the county courthouse to dig into whatever records she could find about the lawsuits arising from the chemical waste dump there.
She couldn’t resist checking the Beacon’s Facebook page. Michael had posted links to the digital edition, as well as some of the video footage he’d shot outside the church. It had only been a few hours, but the story had already gotten nearly 800 views, 120 likes, and 40 comments. Tomorrow, she thought, she’d read the comments.
Her eyelids felt like concrete blocks. She set the laptop on the nightstand and turned off the lamp.
Sleep came immediately. When her phone rang sometime later, she fumbled for it in the dark and groggily answered without checking the caller ID.
“Hello?”
No answer. Just heavy breathing. And then that voice again. “You’re dead, bitch.”
Her scalp prickled, and her pulse quickened. She sat up in bed and looked wildly around the room.
For what? Conley thought. This anonymous caller was obviously trolling her, hoping to get a reaction out of her. And it was working. Because she was scared.
This time, she dialed 911 and got another recording. “You’ve reached the Silver Bay Sheriff’s Office. If this is a nonemergency, please hang up and call back during office hours. If you do have an emergency to report, stay on the line, and a dispatcher will be with you momentarily.”
* * *
“Shit,” Buddy whispered when he realized the cop was headed back toward Felicity Street. This was not good. As the truck approached the house with the Subaru in the driveway, the driver cut the headlights. He drove slowly past the house. The front porch lantern was lit, but no other lights burned from inside the house.
Buddy cut the Vette’s headlights and pulled into the driveway of a cottage with a FOR SALE sign in the driveway. Unlike the other homes on the block, this one had no outside lights. The lawn and shrubbery were overgrown, and a handful of yellowing newspapers still encased in plastic bags poked out from a rusted mailbox.
“Now what?” he wondered aloud. The truck hadn’t stopped at the reporter’s house and hadn’t circled back. So where was it? And what should he do now?
* * *
“Nine-one-one,” the female dispatcher said. “What is the nature of your emergency?”
Conley hesitated. “I’m alone, at my grandmother’s house, and I’ve been receiving harassing, anonymous phone calls all evening. Just now, a man called and said, ‘You’re dead, bitch.’ And then he hung up.”
“Address and name?”
“Conley Hawkins, 38 Felicity Street. In Silver Bay. I called earlier and left a message on the nonemergency line, asking that a detective call me, but this feels different.”
“Do you feel threatened?”
“I do,” Conley said, her voice tightening.
“And you don’t know the caller’s identity?”
“No.”
“Okay, ma’am,” the dispatcher said. “I’m going to send a patrol unit over there, just to check things out.”
“Thank you,” Conley said fervently. “Thanks so much. I feel kind of silly.”
“You’re not being silly. You’re being cautious,” the dispatcher said. “What’s your name again?”
“Conley Hawkins.”
“Well, Conley Hawkins, you sound like you might be the age of my daughter, so I’ll tell you what I always tell her. Stay inside. Don’t open the door to anybody unless it’s an officer. And you call me right back if you need me. Okay?”
“Okay,” Conley said meekly, blinking back tears. “I will.”
She sat very still, crouched in the dark, in the middle of her childhood bed for a minute or two, feeling vulnerable, even cornered, two emotions she despised with all her heart.
“Fuck this,” she said finally. “This asshole doesn’t get to do this to me.” She shoved her feet into a pair of flip-flops. She glanced out the bedroom window. The street below was deserted. She turned on the overhead light, then went out into the hallway. Moving rapidly, she opened every door on the second floor, flipping on lights as she went.
When she came to the last door, she stopped and leaned her forehead against the white-painted doorjamb. She hadn’t been in this room in years. Six years, to be precise.
It had been a warm summer night like this one. G’mama and Winnie were already out at the beach. Grayson and Tony were newly married and living in Tampa. She’d come home to Silver Bay because she was worried about her father. He hadn’t been answering her phone calls, and he’d lost a lot of weight, according to her grandmother.
“I don’t think things are going well at work. That big bank from Charlotte swallowed them up, and now they keep sending consultants down here, telling Chet how to run a bank he’s been running all his grown life,” G’mama said. “He hardly eats, and I know he’s not sleeping, because I see lights from under his door at all hours of the night.”
She’d timed the surprise visit for Father’s Day, taking extra care picking out his gifts—a biography of Franklin Roosevelt that he’d mentioned wanting to read, a box of his favorite chocolate-covered cherries, and, as an inside joke, the most hideous necktie she could find, a puke-green satin number with a repeating pattern of purple armadillos.
That Saturday, she’d parked behind her father’s Chevy and used her key to unlock the front door. The house was unusually quiet—no radio playing in the kitchen or television playing in the den. She walked through the downstairs rooms, calling for her father.
“Dad? Daddy?” He wasn’t in the backyard either. She climbed the stairs, wondering if he was napping, which would have been totally out of character for her father, who claimed he was unable to sleep during daylight hours.
She stood outside his bedroom door. For it was his now. Some of Melinda’s clothes still hung in the closet, and the room still held the king-size bed they’d shared, but everybody knew Mrs. Chet Hawkins was not coming home again.
“Dad?” she called, tapping on the door. “Are you asleep?” When there was still no answer, she’d turned the knob. He was stretched out on the bed, his face turned away, toward the window, the empty bottle of pills still clutched in his now cold, stiffened fingers.
* * *
Conley clenched her teeth together, opened the bedroom door, glanced around, and flipped the light switch. The room was empty except for some boxed-up books and old bank files.
She closed the door again and ran downstairs, moving through the rooms, switching on lights. In the den, she turned the television on, comforted by the high volume. She went into the kitchen and rechecked the back door.
Her phone was tucked into the pocket of her shorts.
It had been ten minutes since she’d called 911. Plenty of time for a police cruiser to be dispatched from anywhere in the city. What was taking so long? She could feel the tension ratcheting up.
This was stupid, she decided. Skelly was two doors away. Yes, it was a ridiculous time to call somebody, but Skelly cared about her. If she called, he would come, and it wouldn’t matter what time it was.
She scrolled through her contacts until she came to the Ks.
When the doorbell rang, it startled her so badly she dropped the phone. She ran toward the door, peeped out the window, and saw the cop. He wore wraparound aviator sunglasses, and a baseball cap shaded his face. He was holding a leather badge holder in front of the window.
Relief swept through her body, and her hands shook as she began to unbolt the door. As soon as the tumblers on the lock clicked, the door slammed violently open. Her mouth opened to scr
eam, but no sound came out.
56
The inside of the Corvette was stifling—like a coffin. Buddy’s eyelids drooped, then fluttered. He sat up, shook his head. He had to get out of the car and move around if he was going to stay alert—or else just give up and move on, as the cop driving the pickup had probably done fifteen minutes ago.
He was about to turn the key in the ignition when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. As he watched, a shadowy figure stepped out of the shrubbery bordering the side of the driveway where Conley Hawkins’s Subaru was parked.
The bill of a baseball cap obscured his face, and he now wore dark, wraparound sunglasses, but nothing could disguise his bulked-up physique. He was studying the house, where lights were blinking on, room by room, one after another.
“Shit,” Buddy muttered as the cop inched up the driveway. He had to do something. Shit or get off the pot. That girl, Conley, was in trouble. He scrabbled around in the Vette’s console, looking for his phone. He heard a dull thud as something bounced on the passenger-side floorboard, and he leaned over to grab for it.
He was still fumbling around in the dark when he heard the crack of wood, and when he sat up, he saw that the door of the house had been kicked in and the cop was inside.
“Shit, shit, shit!” He was frantic. The phone must have slid beneath the seat. He got out of the car and sped around to the passenger side, opening the door and kneeling on the cracked asphalt, groping around, trying to find the phone.
Finally, his fingers closed on it. He dialed 911 and waited.
“Come on, come on.” He was staring at the door waiting to see what happened next.
“Nine-one-one,” a male dispatcher said.
“I want to report a break-in at a house over here on Felicity Street,” Buddy said.
“What’s that street number?”
“Uh, I don’t know. It’s uh, between Liberty and, well, I can’t see the sign.”
“Can you describe the situation?”
“Hell yes,” Buddy said. “There’s a woman in that house, and a cop just kicked in the door.”
“Sir? That’s one of our officers. He was dispatched to that address after the resident called for assistance.”
“No,” Buddy insisted. “This guy, he’s been stalking this woman. I watched him—he’s been following her for the past week.”
“Okay,” the dispatcher said, sounding unconvinced. “I’ll let the officer on the way to the scene know about your concern.”
“So do you have a cop on the way?” Buddy asked. He sounded hysterical, he knew.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, where the hell is he? This guy just kicked in the door.”
“He’s en route,” the dispatcher said.
* * *
Conley stared up at the black-garbed figure who’d just forced his way into the house. She’d been knocked to the floor when the door flew open.
The cop. She knew him. Popps. He was Skelly’s friend, the deputy who’d been at the crash the night Symmes Robinette was killed.
He grabbed her by the forearm and jerked her upright, and she yelped. “What are you doing?”
He smiled, his perfect white teeth gleaming in contrast to his deeply tanned face.
“Hey. You wanna hang out now?”
It was the voice. The same voice on the phone.
“Why?” she managed, still in shock. “Why are you doing this?”
He squeezed her arm, and she yelped again in pain. “I asked you out. I asked nicely. You think you’re too good to date a cop?”
“No. Why are you doing this? I don’t even know you.” She looked around, wondering what had happened to her phone. She’d been about to tap Skelly’s number. Had the call gone through?
“What are you looking at?” He saw the phone on the floor and brought his boot down on it with full force. “Sorry, no phone-a-friend for you.” He laughed. “Why am I doing this?” he asked in a singsongy voice. “You got me fired, bitch.”
“I didn’t,” she protested.
He grabbed a handful of her hair and twisted it so hard she screamed in pain.
“You told Goggins I screwed up the Robinette investigation.”
“No,” she said.
“Not even a suspension. The sumbitch fired me. You know what that does to my career? I’m in the shitter. All because of you.”
“I didn’t get you fired,” she repeated.
“So maybe you do like me. Cool. Let’s hang out. Like at my place.” His eyes skimmed meaningfully down her body. “Or we could just stay right here. Bedroom’s upstairs, right?”
“I called 911,” Conley said, willing herself to stay calm. “Right after you called. There’s a patrol car on the way.”
He shrugged. “So we’ll go to my place.”
“No!” she yelled. “I’m not going anyplace.”
He looked around the living room with its polished antiques, thick carpets, and gilt-framed family portraits. “Nice house. You got a nice house out at the beach too. Is that where your grandma’s at?”
Conley felt a ripple of terror shoot up her spine. He’d been watching her. That night when she and Skelly were on the beach. Skelly had joked about G’mama peeking out the windows, but it was him. Walter Poppell.
“Come on,” he said, pulling her toward the door. “Let’s go for a ride. Maybe we’ll take a moonlight walk on the beach. Hey, why don’t we do it in the dunes?”
She knew with an absolute certainty if he got her out of the house, she was dead. She had to stall him, no matter what it took.
“Get out!” she screamed. “Get out and leave me alone!”
He slapped her with such force she was knocked off balance. Her ears were ringing, and she felt a warm trickle of blood slide down her cheek.
“Leave me alone,” she sobbed, kicking out at him.
Poppell yanked her to her feet. She screamed again, and he clamped a hand over her mouth and began dragging her toward the door.
Conley closed her eyes and opened her jaws and bit down on his hand, feeling his flesh tear, tasting the hot salt of his blood.
“Bitch!” He howled and slapped her, but she hung on, attacking him with the only weapon she had like a crazed, rabid dog.
Suddenly, she felt cold metal pressing against her temple. She opened her eyes. He had a gun to her head. She heard the click as the hammer was drawn back.
“I’ll fucking shoot you,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’ll splatter your brains all over your grandma’s pretty house.”
With the gun to her head, he dragged her out the door and onto the porch.
* * *
“Oh shit,” Buddy muttered, seeing the cop emerge from the house. He saw the glint of metal. “Oh shit. Dude’s got a gun.”
He glanced wildly up and down the street. Quiet as a graveyard. Not a soul around. No flashing blue lights. It was the oldest joke in the world, and it was suddenly the unfunniest oldest joke in the world. Where were the cops when you needed them?
The girl was kicking and dragging her feet, but the cop seemed unfazed by her struggling. Where was he taking her? He must have parked his truck on the block behind the house and cut through the backyard. If he got her in his vehicle, no telling where he’d go or what he’d do to her.
Buddy didn’t stop to think. He gunned the motor and threw the Vette into reverse, backing out of the driveway with screeching tires. The cop looked up, surprised and maybe confused.
Suddenly, Gregg Allman’s ghostly verses popped into his head again.
Screw Daytona. Not gon’ let ’em catch the midnight rider, he vowed.
Buddy stomped on the accelerator, and the Corvette flew down the street. He flipped on his brights and steered the car toward the house, hurtling over the curb, plowing through the thick grass, aiming straight at the cop, who, in his surprise, had relinquished his hold on the girl.
On her hands and knees, the girl was frantically scrabbling backward. Good. Get away, Buddy
thought grimly. Get. The. Fuck. Away.
The cop planted his feet apart, knees bent, both hands clutching the gun, which was aimed straight at the car.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Buddy muttered. He kept his foot on the accelerator, even as he heard the crack of the shot, saw the bright flash from the gun’s barrel, and—the very last thing he saw—the Vette’s windshield spiderwebbing.
* * *
The white Corvette kept moving straight at them. In desperation, Conley crawled as fast as she could away from the oncoming car.
Poppell saw it coming, but instead of running, he assumed the stance, holding the gun, straight-armed, in front of him.
She screamed. She screamed until she felt her throat was being ripped in two. She heard the gunshot and quickly looked away, curling herself into a tight ball, head tucked under her arms like a defenseless toddler.
At some point, she realized Poppell’s scream merged briefly with hers. And then it stopped. She heard the impact of the Corvette, slamming into the front porch of G’mama’s house, and the sharp crack of wood.
When she finally looked up, she saw that the thick plaster columns were split in half where the Corvette came to rest between them. A moment later, the porch roof began to sag and slowly tear loose from the old wood-frame house. As if in slow motion, it crumpled onto the top of the white Corvette, raining timber, shingles, and pieces of framing all around the car.
She was still numb, but she somehow managed to stagger to her feet and wobble over toward the house. When she saw the front of the Corvette, with the Working Press license tag and the shattered windshield, she gasped.
Averting her eyes past the broken body sprawled on the lawn, she made her way through the debris toward the porch, where she clambered over the bits of boards and plaster.
The driver was slumped sideways, his head covered in blood. She hesitated, then remembered that the driver had not hesitated but had sped up and barreled straight ahead into Walter Poppell and his bullet. She reached in through the open window and gingerly touched a finger to the driver’s neck. There was no pulse.
Hello, Summer Page 40