“Did anyone fail to report for group last night?” I asked.
Her tiny black pupils widened, then returned to pinpoints. She went to her desk, tapped at her keyboard, took up a notepad, and wrote something down. She brought the note back to me.
“Lamar Bailey,” I read aloud. She’d also written Bailey’s DOB, address, phone, and the name of his parole officer.
I said good-bye to Victoria Pope, then stood in the corridor outside her office and pulled out my phone. “Good morning again, Detective Raymond,” I said with maximum team spirit.
Raymond, however, skipped the pleasantries. “You get something at the shrink’s office?” Obviously the sheriff had briefed him.
“A registered offender named Lamar Bailey didn’t show for group last night. He’s on the doc’s most-likely-to-reoffend list. Need to check with his parole officer and see if he called in the absence. And check his alibi for yesterday afternoon.”
“Sure,” Raymond said. “It’s not like I have anything else to do.”
So much for team spirit. I disconnected.
The heat was blasting off the baking parking lot in pungent, petroleum-based fumes. By midafternoon on a cloudless day, the asphalt gets so hot it feels soft under your shoes. The tar bubbles up out of it in shiny, sticky black patches. Kids poke at it in the road on summer days. They’d twirl it around the tips of sticks and sword fight with them, leaving black smears on their clothes and skin. I remembered racing home with blackened hands that smelled like a road repair crew.
What would Skylar be doing now if she hadn’t been plucked out of her life? She’d be in morning classes, looking forward to the lunch hour, social time in the cafeteria, writing notes, dreaming about Robbie and his garage band.
The hungry fingers of a headache reached for my temples just as my eye caught movement, a vehicle crossing over the bright yellow lines in the parking lot. It was a dark gray F-150. Peele’s truck. Was he waiting for me? I felt myself stiffen. His window was open, and the sun had turned the red hairs on the arm resting there into glistening steel wool. He pulled into a parking space two slots away. He stared at me, gave me a nod. That’s when I heard shoes hitting the paved lot behind me.
“Dr. Street, do you have a minute?”
I turned, squinted against the bright morning. Brenda Roberts was headed for me, cameraman in tow. Cameras used to scare the shit out of me. So did Brenda Roberts. But I’ve learned from experience that if you look scared on camera, your friends will make fun of you later. And what people need to see on television from the investigators charged with bringing them justice is confidence. So I choke it back.
“Dr. Street, you’ve been asked to consult on the murders of two thirteen-year-old females in Hitchiti County and the disappearance of another. Is this the work of a serial killer?” Brenda had latte skin and the bearing of a lioness. An Armani silk blouse I’d admired and hadn’t been able to afford at Phipps Plaza hung off her this morning like it had been stitched only for her. She pushed the microphone at me.
“I’m sorry. I’m not at liberty,” I told her. “Statements regarding investigations come only from the Hitchiti County Sheriff’s Department.” I kept moving.
“The department released your profile of the killer online. And now there is a third victim.” The mike came back at me.
“I’d like to remind you that the incident yesterday in Whisper was an abduction.”
“You’re a freelance analyst, Dr. Street. Your specialty is violent serial offenders. One would infer your presence here means there is a serial murderer at large.”
“Infer?” I repeated, incredulous. This is why police departments have spokespeople with cool heads to handle the press. “I’m sure you’d prefer facts. And I’m sure they’re forthcoming.”
My phone went off—the wailing of an Amber Alert, different from any other alert on my phone and unmistakable. Brenda Roberts’s phone followed. “Stop tape,” Roberts told her cameraman, her honeyed television voice sharpened by irritation. We both looked at our phones. Amber Alert: Abduction. Whisper, GA. 13 yr old WF. Hr: Blond. Eyes: Brn. Cottonwood Rd 3pm. Name: Skylar Barbour.
Roberts looked up from her phone. “They’re just getting an alert out?”
“There’s criteria,” I told her. “The system normally requires a description of the offender or the offender’s vehicle.”
“So a witness hasn’t been located?”
“No comment,” I said.
“But they ran the alert anyway, which means there has to be evidence the child is in imminent danger.” Roberts didn’t miss much. “So it is the same suspect. What’s the evidence?”
“No comment,” I said again. I opened my car door. Heat rolled out like I’d broken the window on a house fire. Roberts hovered around me as I lowered the top.
“What gives, Keye? We talked about a feature last month on the phone. You seemed open to the possibility.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper. She was holding the mike at her side. “Listen, this could be all about you investigating with the clock ticking on the third victim. The anatomy of an investigation, getting into the mind of a killer, that kind of thing.” I got in my car. The steering wheel felt like a hot coal. “Any viable suspects among the registered sex offenders you’ve been questioning?”
I looked at Logan Peele, sitting in his truck. He gave me a little salute. “No comment,” I told Brenda Roberts.
28
I kept an eye on the rearview mirror on the way back to Whisper. I didn’t want any more surprises. Peele had waited in the parking lot after his interview, while I met with Dr. Pope. Why? The nod, was that supposed to intimidate me? Or was he waiting for something else as well? Or someone? Could Peele have given Brenda Roberts information? She’d be the journalist most likely to nibble at a tip that included my name. Peele would relish doing anything that might muddy an investigation, because it entertained him, or because he was in fact the killer Meltzer wanted him to be. Sensational headlines could hurt Skylar’s parents even more than they’d been hurt already. And Peele liked hurting people.
The air was full of wild mint and sweetgrass and baled hay, and smelled like a basket weaver’s shop. I checked the time. Almost ten. Almost nineteen hours since Skylar had last been seen alive. She’d probably had her last decent meal at school yesterday. She’d been mad at her mom when she was dropped off yesterday morning, and all her pubescent misery had propelled her out of that car. Hayley Barbour had probably replayed that argument in her mind a million times.
I pulled over on the shoulder. I needed a minute, one minute to draw the clean air into my lungs and push out the images, the terrible images. Because they were only useful when I summoned them, controlled them, when I could scrutinize them for evidence, what they told me about him, the man who could break a little girl’s bones for his own pleasure.
I leaned against the car, looked down the empty highway. As soon as Peele pulled out of the justice center today, someone would be on his tail. Meltzer wanted Peele as badly as he wanted to find Skylar. Where was she? In what windowless room, what hole in the ground, what basement, what barn? And where were we? Not far enough. Detective Raymond was getting the skinny on Lamar Bailey, the sex offender who hadn’t shown up for group. Raymond and Brolin would be following other leads and reinterviewing witnesses. Had anyone noticed a man with a broken-down car? Someone changing a flat tire? Having the right question was sometimes the key to jogging the flawed human memory.
I got in my car and wished for an iced coffee, one of Neil’s treats for scorching days. I was heading back to Whisper to see what I could shake loose. It felt like I was chipping away at a stone wall with a toothpick.
I drove down Main Street and parked. I left the tiny key and padlock that fit Skylar’s diary in the glove compartment and took the journal with me.
I exited across the park under a jasmine-smothered arbor and walked to the middle school Melinda and Skylar had attended, a long one-story building, unremarkable and insti
tutional. I pulled open a double door and walked into a corridor lined with display cases—trophies, photographs, ribbons—not for athletics, but for the school band. An article from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about Whisper Middle School’s invitation and subsequent performance at the Rose Bowl was framed and displayed. Skylar’s parents had wanted her to stay in the band.
I walked down the empty hall on sound-absorbent commercial tiles in three colors—pale yellow, navy blue, and gold, the school colors. I slipped by the principal’s office and then the admin office, unnoticed. I didn’t want anyone alerted to my visit. I wanted to find Daniel Tray on my own. I drew bored stares as I passed open classroom doors, from kids who wanted to look at anything but what they were supposed to be looking at. I thought about that, and about how easy it was to walk into the school.
The hall was T-shaped. I followed it to the end as I had yesterday and turned right, passed another bank of lockers and a couple of classrooms. I stood there watching him, average height, average frame, not skinny, not fat. His hair was brown and short, thinning in the crown so that a bare spot the size of a half dollar showed white scalp. He was the kind of guy who looked better straight-on than in profile because his chin was short and pulled down into a skinny neck. He had a bulging Adam’s apple. He was humming to himself, absorbed in his task, putting instruments back in cases, breaking down music stands, folding chairs and stacking them.
“Daniel Tray?” I said.
He jolted the way people do when they’re thinking hard and unaware of the world. He crossed the room wiping his hands on a chamois polishing cloth, an unsure smile on his face. “Can I help you?”
“My name’s Keye Street. I’m a consulting investigator with the sheriff’s department.”
Tray wiped his right hand again and shook mine. I was thinking about polishing cloths and oil and Skylar’s phone. “I heard the sheriff had hired an outside investigator to help with Melinda Cochran’s murder. And that other girl.” He had the fringes of an accent that had once been southern.
“Tracy Davidson,” I said. No one seemed to know her name and it bothered me. “You have a second to talk?”
“Sure.” He said it enthusiastically, like he’d wanted someone to talk to. He hurried to the back and grabbed two chairs off the stack, unfolded one for each of us. “You know Melinda was a student of mine. It’s terribly sad what happened to her. It was such a shock. Nothing like that happens in Whisper.”
The room had the fatty smell of slide grease and woodwind swabs and valve oil. And it hit me the way scents do that connect to memories—Jimmy deciding he’d have a go at the trumpet when we were kids, his plastic bottle of valve oil tucked in a corner pocket of the velvet-lined case.
“Did you know Melinda well?” I asked.
“I like to think so.” He glanced at the diary I’d put in my lap. “I try to develop relationships with my kids. We have more fun that way.”
I thought about Bryant Cochran’s comments, which implied Daniel Tray was overtly and stereotypically gay. What I saw was a thin guy in his forties with a quiet voice who was losing his hair and probably stayed in on Friday nights. I thought about what Melinda’s friends had told me, the dangerous rumors about Tray behaving inappropriately with children. I’d run across pedophiles in my career. They’d all identified as heterosexual.
“Melinda confided in you?” I asked.
“As much as children that age are willing to confide in a teacher or parent. And teachers are not high on their list of confidants.”
“You think Melinda was hiding something?”
“No. Not really. But I had noticed she seemed … less focused. She started wanting to leave as soon as practice was over. She seemed less involved with the band outside practice.” He shrugged. “It’s natural. It’s about the age we begin to lose them.”
Skylar had been less interested too. She’d written about wanting to quit. It wasn’t much, just a scrap to file away. “You talk to Melinda about this?”
“I asked her if anything was wrong. She said there wasn’t.”
“You had this discussion with Melinda after school?”
He nodded. “One afternoon after practice. We have one after-school practice a week on the field, so we can work on our routines. And we meet two days a week in the classroom.” Tray’s eyes moved to the diary and back again. I heard the rush of air through the HVAC system in the silence between us.
“Did you consider telling the police Melinda had been disengaging?”
He looked surprised. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were green or brown or both. “No. I only saw Melinda for forty-five minutes three times a week. I guess that’s why they didn’t talk to me. All the teachers were brokenhearted for her family. Melinda was special. We all cared about her. And I think we all felt she’d ace a scholarship one day and contribute something to the world.”
“I was told she was a little awkward,” I said, thinking again about the conversation I’d had with her friends.
“Melinda Cochran?” Tray asked and again looked surprised. “Hardly. Very smart, confident young woman.”
“With boys?”
“Again, not awkward,” Tray said. It was another small thing, something that didn’t fit. Someone was lying—Tray or Melinda’s friends. Why?
I pulled up Logan Peele’s photograph. “You recognize this man?”
“Never seen him.”
“Were you surprised to hear Melinda’s body was discovered?”
“Oh no. We all thought the child was dead,” he said. “I just don’t think we understood what she’d fallen victim to.”
“What was that, in your opinion?”
“Well, there was that other girl out there who’d been killed too, so …”
“Tracy Davidson.”
“So this clearly wasn’t some random thing. This was someone who kills kids.” He swallowed and the knot that was his Adam’s apple slid up and back again. “Never thought I’d be talking about murdered kids, kids who were ours.”
“You ever see Melinda out of school?”
“I suppose I’ve run into most of the kids at some point at the grocery store or the pizza place. But specifically to meet her? Or any student. No. Even if she’d wanted to talk I would have insisted on it being here at school.” His forehead was glistening.
“But the band travels,” I said. “You travel with them. So you do see the students off campus.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“In fact you have a lot of time with them outside the classroom, right? Airplanes, buses, hotels.”
Sweat let go of his hairline and trickled down his temple. He dabbed at it with the chamois cloth. “I’m not sure what you’re implying, Miss Street, but I can assure you that our trips are chaperoned. We always have at least two parents along. And I don’t spend any time alone with the children. Not ever.”
“How about Skylar Barbour? She travel to California with the band last year?”
“Yes.”
“Is she a good student? Smart like Melinda, talented?”
“They actually have a lot in common—bright, outgoing, grown up for their age. But why are we talking about Skylar?”
“When was the last time you saw Skylar, Mr. Tray?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yesterday, in the hall. Today was her day for music class but she wasn’t present.” The trickle of sweat had turned to a stream. It made it all the way to his jawline before he swiped it away. “Has something happened to Skylar?”
“No one’s told you? Her parents made several calls to teachers and friends last night. The detectives spoke to some of her friends, the bus driver.”
“No. My God. What’s happened?”
“She didn’t make it home from school yesterday.”
“What do you mean she didn’t make it home?”
“Vanished.” I said it bluntly.
“Oh God.” He was getting breathy and twitchy as if he might fly up out of his chair. “I come in after second pe
riod on Friday. I haven’t spoken to anyone today.”
“No one called you last night at home? You’re not friends with the other teachers?”
“No. No one called me. And no, we’re not really friends outside work.” His eyes had darkened. I saw more brown than green now.
I opened the diary, glanced down at a random page. “Says here Skylar talked to you about wanting to leave the band.”
“What is that? Is that her diary or something? So something awful happened to her too?”
“It appears she was abducted. Perhaps by the same person who murdered Melinda and Tracy.”
He touched his forehead, rubbed his eyebrows. “Okay, wow. Yeah. She wanted to leave band.”
I remembered the music stand and flute book I’d seen at the Barbours’ house. “She’s what, alto flute?”
“One of only two in the band. And good. Would have been a big loss. I kept hoping she’d rediscover her passion for it if she just stuck with it a little longer.”
“Like Melinda?”
“Yes,” he agreed quietly. “I really can’t believe this is happening.” He paced to the door and back. His hands pushed through thin hair. “Her parents must be frantic. The whole school will be frantic.”
“Skylar wrote about a boy named Robbie,” I said. “What’s Robbie’s last name?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. I’ve only taught two that went by Robbie, one is in the sixth grade and one moved on to Whisper High a few years ago. Eighth-grade girls don’t get crushes on sixth-grade boys. And Melinda and Skylar were in-girls.”
That didn’t fit with the awkward girl her friend Heather had described. “You know Melinda’s friends well? Briana, Shannon, and Heather?”
“No,” Tray said. He was forcing himself to calm down a little but his face was still flushed. “None of them took band. But I’ve seen them. And you know the teachers talk in the lounge. We kind of know what’s going on with the kids. Melinda’s group was inseparable. I mean, they walked home together.” He sat back down. “That’s why we were all surprised Melinda could be abducted after school. I mean, how can that happen?”
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