Uncovering Small Town Secrets

by Tyler Anne Snell

  Foster was at least more engaged than Detective Gordon had been at this point.

  “Did he like the idea?” he asked.

  Millie actually laughed, her heart becoming lighter at the memory.

  “He thought it was the best thing ever,” she said. “Every night before bed we’d sit and write in his room until he got it. He likes art, so I think to him it was more like drawing than writing. After he mastered it, he was unstoppable. Every day until I went to college, he’d write me a note in nothing but cursive. That’s a lot of letters from me being thirteen to leaving at eighteen, and even after I first got to school he continued to write me these script-filled letters. I told him I didn’t expect him to keep it up, but he told me that if I took the time to teach him something, he’d take the time to use it. So, I got a letter every week while I was away. Until I didn’t.”

  She turned her gaze toward the two-way mirror, assuming the sheriff was there.

  “You can check the police reports about what happened next. Just like I told Detective Gordon.”

  Foster’s eyebrow rose in question.

  “What do you mean? What happened next?”

  Millie decided right then and there that this was the last time she ever told this story in its entirety. If they didn’t believe her? Well, that was their problem, not hers.

  “My mom tried to fill the hole in her heart by marrying a man named Steve Conway when I was eighteen. Two years later and Fallon stops writing me. One day I get suspicious of how he sounds on the phone, then the next day my mom calls and says he’s run away. Since he’d never done that before, I rush home and find him in one of his favorite spots in town. He had bruises all over him. You don’t have to be a detective to guess what good ole Steve had been up to.”

  “He was abusing Fallon.”

  Millie nodded. “Turns out, not only was it not the first time he’d run away, but he’d also gone to the hospital three times with mysterious injuries.” Millie was angry again. “I filed a report, but by then no one wanted to listen to Fallon. They assumed he was just some teen acting out and hating his stepdad because he wasn’t his real dad.”

  “What about your mom?”

  Millie snorted. “She wasn’t much better. She went on record saying that she didn’t know if she could handle Fallon anymore. Talked about possibly getting DHR involved to get him into foster care so she could get a break.” Millie shook her head. “There was no way I was going to let that happen so I left school, got a job in town and made a deal with her that I wouldn’t ask for any money from them if she let Fallon live with me until he turned eighteen. She agreed, and the last thing Fallon and I ever did in that place was sit in my car next to the town limits sign and blow out his birthday candle on a cupcake at midnight. Then we ate that cupcake and drove until I found the first Help Wanted sign in a window. We’ve been in Kelby Creek ever since.”

  Foster opened his mouth to say something, but Millie wanted to be thorough in her last attempt. She held out her hand to stop him.

  “And before you point out that Fallon ran away after we first got here, I’ll tell you what I told Detective Gordon. Mom showed up at the house while I was at work one day. She told Fallon she wanted to make sure I hadn’t thrown my life away because of him. I got there just as she was leaving and realized Fallon was gone. My then-boss at the grocery store heard me panicking and reported him missing. But this time he had just needed some time to process. To breathe. But the rest, as you know, is history. William Reiner gets hit by a car while Fallon smokes pot in the woods. No one in Kelby Creek has liked him since.”

  The room filled with silence.

  Millie hadn’t realized how much adrenaline was pumping through her. She was no longer cold.

  Foster was also no longer impassive.

  He leaned forward, eyebrow raised again, and put emphasis on the first question he asked.

  “And why did you think the note from him was a fake?”

  Millie made sure her voice was as clear as crystal as she answered.

  “Because it wasn’t in cursive.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Steve Conway has been booked three times for domestic violence but no charges have ever stuck.” Sheriff Chamblin tossed his hat onto a chair next to where Foster was standing. His tone said it all. Disgust at Millie’s stepfather. “It seems that Miss Dean was telling the truth about that.”

  Foster had a hard time not snarling in response.

  “I already believed her before she even said a word.”

  Chamblin sidled up to Foster and gave him a long look. Their reflections were slight in the two-way mirror. He could barely make out the imploring look from his father’s old friend in the glass. What he could see clearly was Millie in the next room, tearing the paper off a water bottle and openly trying not to fidget.

  Foster didn’t like it.

  He liked how he’d handled her even less.

  “You know, I never thought I’d have to remind you of all people to be objective on a case, but here we are,” Chamblin said. “You’re working a case. That means asking questions even if it’s uncomfortable.”

  Foster tore his gaze from Millie.

  “I’m not uncomfortable with the questions, just how they’ve been asked and their answers ignored in the past,” he countered. “I have no problem with being objective either, but I think that’s what’s been the problem for the Dean kids since they came to Kelby Creek. Too much objectivity can turn into apathy if you’re not careful, and if the law enforcement sworn to help and protect is too apathetic to you, then there’s very little chance anything is going to get done the right way.”

  “Detective Gordon,” Chamblin guessed.

  “Detective Gordon,” Foster confirmed. “Millie said she told him word for word what she told me in there, and he didn’t even take the time to put it in his report. Let alone even entertain the thought that she was right about the note. If it had been me? If Millie had come in and told me that same story when Fallon first disappeared? I wouldn’t have stopped digging until I hit something.”

  “So you think Fallon really didn’t write it? The note I mean.”

  Foster crossed his arms over his chest. He was going into a hard stance that his ex-wife used to call Full Detective Mode. Defensive but ready to strike. Walls up, focus engaged.

  “I can’t say for sure if he did or didn’t, but my guess? If he did, he purposely didn’t use cursive as a way to tip Millie off that something was wrong. It sounds like she mostly raised him so he had to have known she would look for him. Either way, I think Fallon is caught up in something. I just don’t know what yet. But I think it’s time I finally talked to Gordon myself.”

  “You think he knows something.”

  “He’s either incompetent or there’s a reason he did such a bad job when he got the case. No matter which one it is, I want to hear it from him. Clearly he knows more than he put in his report.”

  Sheriff Chamblin let out a sigh so long that it could have rooted into the tiled floor beneath them.

  “Gordon is going to have to wait. We have a few more pressing issues.” He put his hands on his hips and didn’t look pleased at all. Not that either man had looked pleased in days. “We finally identified the two men from the boat.”

  Foster’s ears perked up at that. Since being in the hospital he’d only been updated on their medical statuses. The younger man who had been shot in the leg by Deputy Park had made it out of surgery and was in recovery. The older man had sustained a concussion but would be transferred back into custody once the doctor cleared him.

  Past that, Foster felt like he’d been isolated on an island the last several hours while everyone else was on the mainland, so to speak.

  “Donni Marsden is the older fellow and Wyatt Cline is the younger one.”

  Foster tilted his head, trying to jostle
a memory loose at either name. Nothing came free.

  “I don’t think I’ve heard of or read about them before.”

  Sheriff Chamblin shook his head.

  “I hadn’t either, though Park said Wyatt sounded familiar. He went and did a search on social media and found an account for him on Facebook. It hadn’t been touched in seven months, but we could see where he loved Auburn football, thought Bill Gates was trying to spy on us all, and frequented a bar in Mobile up until he stopped using the account.”

  Foster felt his eyebrow raise on reflex.

  “Just from what we heard on the boat, I got the distinct impression that he didn’t take whatever their job was seriously. And that Donni wasn’t a fan of him. Do we know anything else? Mobile is a good drive from here, and Bill Gates does us no good in this situation.”

  The sheriff snorted and then went serious again.

  “Both men have records that were pretty easy to pull up. Though old, Donni Marsden did time for manslaughter back in the nineties down the road in Kipsy and had time added on to his sentence after starting a fight in the prison cafeteria. It was a ‘mutual stabbing’ according to a guard, and one that left scars on both. After Donni served the extra time and was released, his daughter picked him up at the front gate. That’s where Donni Marsden seems to disappear. We couldn’t track down anything else aside from an address for his daughter who now lives in Georgia. We reached out to her but so far no luck there either.”

  Georgia was a state away. Kipsy was a city in the county over. A good drive too, just like Mobile.

  And there Foster was thinking that Donni had been a local.

  “And let me guess, Wyatt’s rap sheet had a whole lot of ‘petty’ attached to it.”

  Chamblin gave him a questioning look.

  “Petty theft, intoxication, simple assault and disorderly conduct from ages seventeen until last year at twenty-five. How’d you know?”

  Foster sighed. “Just a vibe I got from the time on the boat. Plus, if Donni Marsden did time in prison where he got and gave his own hits, I suspect someone who’d only done quick time, if any, wouldn’t be someone he respected all that much.” That gave Foster an idea. “We might be able to use that. If Donni won’t talk, I bet he’d believe Wyatt did. That could get us a reaction from him. He could slip and give us some real info. Have you talked to them yet?”

  “Donni clammed up like the devil was trying to tempt him.” The sheriff shifted his weight to the other foot. His tone changed to frustrated defeat. “And apparently Wyatt didn’t react too well to the anesthesia coming out of surgery. He slipped into a coma.”

  “What?”

  Foster hadn’t seen that coming.

  “It’s rare, I’m told, but it happens. The doc said all we can do is to wait to see when he wakes up. If he wakes up.”

  “Leaving us with a man who might rather go back to prison than answer any of our questions.”

  “Unless we can find a way to hit a nerve, I’m thinking that’s the gist.”

  Foster turned back to Millie. She had abandoned her project of stripping the label off her water bottle and was now tracing circles with her finger along the top of the table.

  The details.

  Foster was good at those. Or, really, he was good at distancing himself from them. So, he made a quick change to the interrogation room and let a new scene play out in his head.

  Donni Marsden was sitting where Millie had been, his halo of gray hair centered beneath the harsh light, and Foster across from him.

  Donni would growl. He would say that he wouldn’t say anything. He’d go tight-lipped and he’d cross his arms over his chest, leaning back to show that he rather lounge in the belly of the beast than fret about his luck.

  He wasn’t nervous or afraid.

  He wasn’t angry.

  He was resigned with a side of sass.

  It wouldn’t be the first time Foster had to deal with someone like that in a soundproofed room with a metal table in its center.

  But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a challenge. Though at least it was a challenge Foster was used to taking on.

  Unlike his and Millie’s stint on the boat.

  Foster slowly let the image of Donni fade.

  Millie was twisting a long curl of her hair between her fingers.

  “Is Donni still here?” Foster finally asked.

  The sheriff nodded. “In the basement.” He clapped Foster on the shoulder. There was a grin in his voice. “Waiting for you.”

  Foster nodded too. It was more to himself than his company.

  “Good because I definitely have questions that need answering. And that woman in there? She deserves them too.”

  Chamblin turned to face the two-way mirror again. Like Foster slipping into detective mode, he’d gone right into sheriff.

  “I’ll admit I’m not used to having a case that has so many leads. You’re going to have to delegate some of them or you’ll just spread yourself too thin.”

  “And where do you want me to start, boss man?” Foster hadn’t meant to, but the words came out with snark attached. Chamblin didn’t hold it against him.

  “I’d focus on who had the great gall to drug and kidnap a man of the law and his companion from a public place. You pull that thread and follow it, and you might just find out what in the Wild West is going on. And how Fallon might fit, especially after Wyatt name-checked him on the boat.”

  That was something Foster had spent time in his hospital bed thinking on.

  Who was the better opponent that Donni had warned Wyatt about?

  And was that the same “him” who had taken Fallon to the boat before Foster and Millie?

  “Which means I need to have a lengthy conversation with William Reiner. Again. Preferably one I can remember after the fact.”

  Chamblin let out one last, long sigh.

  “Oh, goody, you have some more news for me?” Foster asked, heavy on the sarcasm. The sheriff didn’t take offense, but his mood had definitely soured even more.

  “I didn’t want to tell you until I knew you were okay and ready to leave the hospital, but we couldn’t find him.”

  “Reiner? What do you mean you couldn’t find him? I thought the Good Samaritan who called the department said that Reiner’s truck was already gone when she saw us thrown into the one that took us to the boat? Did you send someone to his house?”

  Chamblin crossed his arms. “I’m going to glaze by the fact that you’re acting like I’m an idiot and didn’t immediately look for the man at his house and put an all-points bulletin out on him, and instead I’m going to go ahead and dip right into an apology for lying to you earlier.” Foster turned his entire body to face the older man. Like the night in the woods, he looked years older than he had the last time Foster had seen him. He nodded toward the two-way mirror.

  “You trust her,” Chamblin stated. “Why? You barely know her.”

  Foster didn’t know why the answer came so easily.

  But it did.

  “I just do. Call it a gut feeling. Why?”

  There it was. Something that the sheriff had been hiding their entire conversation. Something he’d already had before he’d even directed Foster and Millie into the interrogation room.

  Something else had happened while Foster had been in the hospital.

  Something that had shifted the sheriff’s sense of duty from helping Millie to questioning her.

  Now it was like the blindfold had been ripped off.

  Chamblin went to pick his cowboy hat back up.

  He wasn’t a happy man as he spoke.

  “Because, son, if you don’t trust her, then this next part might get a little awkward for you.” He lowered his voice despite there being no way that Millie could have heard him in the soundproofed room. Not even if he’d yelled. Though his w
ords still rang loud in Foster’s ears.

  “The truck you and Millie were thrown into was none other than Fallon Dean’s.”

  * * *

  MILLIE DIDN’T KNOW who Donni Marsden or Wyatt Cline were when Foster reported they’d identified the men who’d drugged and kidnapped them, but she wished she did. If only for the fact that saying she didn’t seemed to buy her a one-way ticket to Foster’s office.

  Since he’d gotten her out of the interrogation room, he’d done a spectacular job of avoiding her. Though if she was honest with herself, he was probably just doing his actual job.

  And if she was keeping with her self-honesty thing, she was still a bit angry at having to relive the past again in the hopes that someone would do something in the present to help her.

  Or she was disappointed.

  Millie couldn’t decide.

  Either way she was quiet when Foster asked her to wait while he did a few things, and she was quiet again when the door to his office opened a half hour later.

  “Donni Marsden didn’t say a word.” Foster ran a hand through his hair and rounded his desk. He pulled open a drawer. Tension lined his shoulders. “I mean, not even one syllable.” He rummaged through the drawer, obviously looking for something, then abandoned the search altogether.