“There’s a man here to see you,” he speaks into the receiver, then lifts his eyes back to Jimmy and asks, “What did you say your name was?”
“It’s Jimmy Eagan,” he answers. “I’m a reporter. Tell him I have some questions about an old case of his. A young woman was murdered in this area about seventeen years ago. Margot Buchanan.”
Margot’s name doesn’t seem to ring a bell with the man. He nods and delivers the information to the person on the other end of the phone, then hangs up. “He’ll be right out.”
Jimmy sits in one of the lobby’s three chairs to wait. A few minutes later, the interior door opens, and a tall, skinny, white man with thinning brown hair steps out. His gaze sweeps over Jimmy, disdain and impatience written all over his face.
“Who the hell are you?” His lip curls in a sneer.
Jimmy stands and offers his hand. “Jimmy Eagan. I’m a reporter with the Statesman Journal down in Salem. I’m working on a story about a serial murderer, and I’m following up on a possible lead. I had some questions for you about the Margot Buchanan case? From 1964? I believe you were the lead investigator.”
Stan stares at Jimmy’s hand for a few seconds. Finally, he sniffs and shakes his head. He fumbles his fingers in his jacket pocket, takes out a pack of cigarettes, and shakes it at Jimmy. “You smoke?”
“No.”
“Well, I do.” He sticks a cigarette in his mouth and gestures to Jimmy to follow him out the front door into the parking lot.
They walk to a patch of trampled grass between the building and the road. Cigarette butts litter the ground. Stan lights the cigarette dangling from his lips and, in between puffs, says, “I got a call about you this morning.”
Jimmy keeps quiet, staring across the street where a sliver of the bay is visible on the other side of a large parking lot. Three black, long-necked birds bob in the gentle rise and fall of waves near the shoreline. He should have guessed Rausch would make trouble for him, but some part of him hoped that he would have been able to get a few questions in before Rausch made a mess of things.
“That’s right,” Stan says with an unimpressed laugh. “A detective down in Salem calls me up a few minutes after I clock in this morning and starts yelling at me about a dead girl I’d all but forgotten. Wants to know why I’m handing out confidential information on open cases. I told him I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Then he said that if you showed up here, I should keep my damn mouth shut and send you packing. He also told me that if you showed up here and girls start coming up missing, I should arrest you immediately and then call him.”
Stan twists his eyebrows together as he gives Jimmy a long stare. “Well? What am I supposed to do with that? Should I take you in right now? Lock you up before you start making trouble?”
“Could you just look at this sketch for me?” Jimmy takes the paper from his pocket, deciding then and there that everything else can wait.
The questions he has about the investigation, or lack of one, the questions about Stan's only suspect, the gut feelings and instincts, things that never made it into any of the reports—those questions can all come later. After he gets a lead on this man. If he ever gets a lead. Maybe he won’t. Maybe this is a dead-end like every other dead-end he’s run up against in the past two years since Cherish Spalding’s murder. Maybe whoever is killing these girls, whoever killed Margot, is a phantom, a shapeshifter, slipping through time and space, immaterial.
Jimmy holds the sketch in the air between them. Stan reaches for it, but Jimmy doesn’t trust him and pulls it from his nicotine-stained fingers. The cop rolls his eyes, but curiosity gets the best of him. He squints at the image, but only for a second, his gaze darting away so fast Jimmy can’t be sure he even really looked at it.
“There’s no one around here who looks like that,” Stan says, taking one last puff on his cigarette before dropping the butt to the ground with the others.
“What about in 1964?” Jimmy carefully folds the sketch and tucks it back into his pocket.
Stan snorts a laugh. “I can’t even remember what I ate for breakfast this morning. You think I’m going to remember everyone who was hanging around this town seventeen years ago?”
“So you didn’t bring anyone in as a suspect who looked like him?” A flicker of hope at the base of Jimmy’s throat that this will be easy and the kid Stan liked as a suspect in 1964 will be the same man in the sketch, but Stan’s frown tells him he’s not going to get so lucky today.
“I told you I’ve never seen anyone around here who looks like that.”
Jimmy decides to push Stan a little, get him riled up to see what slips out. “You must have had some thoughts on who killed Margot Buchanan, though. Case like that, you don’t really expect me to believe you forgot about it. A young woman, a pretty girl, the granddaughter of a prominent family is brutally murdered, the killer’s never found, and the cop who investigated it moves on like it was nothing? That sounds awfully convenient to me.”
“Are you accusing me of something?” His cheeks flush red.
“I’m just wondering if you might have a reason for pretending you don’t recognize this man.” Jimmy shakes the paper a little.
Stan sputters. His hands fumble again in his pockets, but he seems to decide against another cigarette because he lets his hands drop to his side. “I’m not pretending, you little shit. I said I’ve never seen him because I’ve never seen him.”
Jimmy shrugs. “If you say so.”
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that.” With each word, his voice gets louder. “You’re a blood-sucking leech trying to get rich off other people’s miseries while the rest of us are just trying to do our goddamn jobs. So here’s what you’re going to do.” He jabs his finger into Jimmy’s chest. “You’re going to climb back inside whatever beat-up piece of shit you call a car and get the hell out of my town. If I see you so much as stopping for gas, I’m dragging your ass to jail and throwing away the key. Are we clear?”
A car door slams, and from across the parking lot, a man shouts, “Everything okay over there, Stan?”
Stan and Jimmy both look over to where a uniformed officer stands with his feet spread wide, and his arms crossed over his chest. He’s about Jimmy’s age, with dirty-blond hair buzzed short in typical cop fashion. He squints against the brightness of the sun, lifting his hand to block the light as he inspects Jimmy from a distance.
Stan waves his hand dismissively. “It’s fine, Eli. Just giving this man directions to the freeway.”
Eli watches them for a few more seconds, like he’s waiting for Stan to change his mind and call him over, or waiting for Jimmy to do something stupid. When neither thing happens, he crosses the parking lot and disappears into the precinct.
Stan leans close to Jimmy, the heat of his breath reeking of smoke. “This town has suffered enough over that girl’s death. We don’t need you here digging up old hurts. Whatever monsters you’re dealing with in Salem have nothing to do with us.”
He gives Jimmy one last menacing glare then walks away, leaving him standing there beside a pile of spent cigarette butts. Jimmy nudges the trash with the toe of his shoe. He didn’t come here looking for trouble; he came to get out of the trouble he’s already in. Stan can bellow and threaten all he wants, but Jimmy came to Crestwood for answers, and he’s not leaving until he finds them.
Chapter 15
The house on Bayshore Drive is easy to find. It’s the only house painted yellow with a fairytale castle turret jutting off one corner. The other houses on Bayshore Drive are newer construction, modern lines, functional architecture. Brett’s grandparents’ house, on the other hand, is whimsy and delight. It stands like a lighthouse on a small spit of land. A neatly trimmed lawn slopes down to a pebbled beach and a private dock with a small boathouse painted the same yellow as the house.
The woman who answers the front door has Brett’s cheekbones and the same cynical glint in
her eyes like she’s been disappointed by the world one too many times. After Jimmy introduces himself and Trixie, the hard outer shell falls away, and Anita Wilson turns soft and welcoming.
“Yes, Brett told me you might be stopping by. I’ve made some coffee. There’s enough for you if you’d like some.” She laughs, a broken-hearted sound, and says, “I always make enough for me and Frank. Frank was my husband. He’s been gone going on two years now, but my hand still puts in that extra scoop every time. Habit, I guess. Hard to break a lifetime of making coffee for two people.”
She smiles at Jimmy, and Jimmy smiles back. Brett told him a few months ago about her grandfather’s recent death, a heart attack, and how Anita was struggling to adjust to a life alone after some sixty years of marriage.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Wilson,” he says, as he steps inside and follows her through the house to the kitchen.
“Oh, we get by. And please, call me Anita.” She tells him it’s okay to let Trixie off her leash. “She’s housebroken, right?”
“Yes,” Jimmy says. “Since she was a puppy. Well, she’s still a puppy, actually. She’s only about ten months old.”
Trixie’s nose is pinned to the floor as she sniffs a winding trail that eventually leads her to the refrigerator. Anita reaches for the door, laughing. “She’s a smart girl, isn’t she? Is it okay if I give her hot dogs?”
Jimmy nods. Anita takes a pack from the fridge and carries it with her to the table. Periodically during their conversation, she drops pieces of the processed meat to Trixie who’s sitting politely at her feet.
“So, you’re here because of Margot?” Anita takes a break from Trixie to pour Jimmy a steaming cup of coffee.
Jimmy nods and stirs sugar into his cup. The table in the corner has a perfect view of the small boathouse and dock. Gray water laps the shore. A half-moon string of islands curves against the horizon, blue and hazy behind a thin mist. Trixie sits at Anita’s feet, gazing up at her, begging for more snacks. Anita obliges.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” she says to Jimmy. “Whatever I can remember, that is. Though I have to warn you, my mind isn’t as sharp as it used to be.” With a sad smile, she taps one finger against her temple. “But if you think it might help, I’ll answer any questions you have. Brett said you read the report from the initial investigation? That there really wasn’t much there?”
“Yeah, it was pretty sparse.”
“We didn’t have much to tell them.” She goes on to explain what Jimmy already knows, the things he read in the file. How Margot went missing on Tuesday morning. “Brett was the last person to see her. They were hanging out on the dock, swimming and splashing around, and then Margot took off. Brett couldn’t tell us where Margot went. Of course, she didn’t come to us right away. It was only after Margot didn’t come home for dinner, when I asked Brett if she’d seen her sister, only then that she told us she hadn’t seen Margot since before noon.” Her hands curl tighter around the coffee cup as she shakes her head. “I don’t blame her. Of course not. Things were so different back then. The girls were always off by themselves. This town. It was safe. We thought it was safe. It’s the kind of place where we look out for one another. Things like this. What happened to Margot. Things like that aren’t supposed to happen here.”
She takes a breath, her eyes darting toward the french doors, staring out through the glass toward the ocean. Absently, her hand strokes the top of Trixie’s head.
“It wasn’t Brett’s fault,” she says quietly. “Though that poor girl has spent most of her life since then blaming herself. We couldn’t have known. Margot would go off with her older friends a lot. She did her best to include Brett, but you know how it goes. Do you have siblings, Jimmy?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, Margot loved Brett, and she did her best to make sure she didn’t feel left out, but there was still an age difference between them. Margot was seventeen. She was more independent, more grown-up. And Brett was only thirteen, still so much a little girl. Understandably, Margot needed a break from her little sister from time to time. She would sometimes leave Brett at the house and go off with her friends and not return until after dark. It wasn’t the first time she had missed dinner, but it was the first time I worried about her.” Anita’s hand darts to her face, swiping at tears gathering on her lashes. “I don’t know why. There was something in the air that day, an electric heat, something unsettled in my soul. I tried to ignore it. ‘You’re being ridiculous, Anita,’ I told myself. That girl’s just fine. She wasn’t, though, was she?”
A faint smile plays on her lips, a smile twisted up in her grief.
Jimmy lays the sketch on the table in front of her. The wrinkles in Anita’s forehead deepen as she bends for a closer look. Her fingers brush the edge of the paper as if she’s afraid to touch it. “Is this him?”
Under the table, Trixie lets out the quietest of whines and lays her head across Anita’s feet.
“This is someone who might be a person of interest, yes,” Jimmy says. “I’d like to find him. I’d like to talk to him. Is he familiar to you?”
Anita studies the sketch more intensely, taking her time, tilting her head one way and then the other. He can see in her face that she wants to know this man, that she’s trying to recognize the slope of his nose and the tight grimace of his lips, the right eye that sits slightly higher on his face than the left. In the end, she shakes her head.
She pushes the paper across the table to Jimmy. “I’m sorry. I don’t know him.”
She drops another bite of hot dog under the table for Trixie, who snatches it off the floor like she’s never eaten a day in her life.
“This is a recent sketch,” Jimmy says. “The woman encountered this man about a year ago. If he was here in Crestwood the summer Margot died, he might look quite a bit different than this. Younger, maybe with a beard or shorter hair? Maybe he was one of the friends she hung out with? Maybe he was heavier back then, or maybe the shape of his face was different?”
Anita thinks a minute, then shakes her head again, a frown tugging on the corners of her mouth. “I’m sorry. I wish I knew him. I wish I could tell you exactly who he is, but no, I’m sorry. I don’t recognize him at all. The boys Margot hung out with that summer, they’re all still here. Oh sure, a few went away to college, but they came back. This town draws people back.”
She drinks the last of her coffee, then gets up and takes the mug to the sink. Trixie, tail wagging, follows at her heels. “Have you spoken with Danny Cyrus yet? He’s the boy the detective was really interested in right after it happened. The whole town thought he did it, of course. Some still do.”
“I’d like to talk to him, yes,” Jimmy says. “Do you know where I can find him?”
“Oh, sure.” Anita scratches directions onto a piece of paper. “He’s living out on his brother-in-law’s property near Lake Chastain. Now, be careful with that one. He came back from Vietnam a changed man. He used to work for Frank at the packing plant before it shut down, so I know he’s not a bad person. He’s just rough around the edges. Mostly bark. I just wouldn’t put my hand next to his food dish if you catch my meaning.”
She gives Jimmy a warning look, then her face spreads into a warm smile, and she lowers herself to the floor, taking Trixie’s head in both hands and giving her a mighty scratch. “You and Trixie are welcome over here anytime, Jimmy. Any friend of Brett’s is a friend of mine, and what you’re doing for our family, it’s kind of you. It truly is.”
She returns to the table where Jimmy is sitting and pats his cheek. Her hand is warm and soft.
“I hope you find him.” Her eyes shift to the sketch still lying on the table. “It would be good to be able to put all of this behind us once and for all.”
Chapter 16
Jimmy drives to Lake Chastain with the windows down. Trixie shoves her head into the wind, lapping the air with her tongue, her ears billowing like sa
ils. Her grin is wide and sloppy, drool streams from her lips. Dappled light scatters through the canopy of pine trees and alders heavy with spring leaves, turning the air a saturated green. A fine dusting of pollen stains the tarmac yellow.
As Jimmy approaches the turn-off Anita described—the tilted blue mailbox, the No Trespassing sign, the barbed-wire fence—a brown rabbit steps from the underbrush onto the shoulder. The animal tenses and twitches its ears. Trixie, catching the scent, tips her head back and howls. The rabbit darts back into the bushes.
Before Jimmy can turn into the driveway, a pickup truck emerges from the shadows, and Jimmy has no choice but to drive past it. He slows enough to glimpse the driver of the pickup, a heavyset man with light brown hair long enough it’s starting to curl around his ears. He fits the description Anita gave of Danny Cyrus.
Jimmy turns into the next pullout and glances in his rearview mirror. The pickup truck rattles past him and keeps going. Jimmy pulls his car onto the highway behind the pickup and, keeping his distance, follows it to a park at the edge of Lake Chastain.
It’s nearing noon on a Saturday, the start of a holiday weekend, and the parking lot is filling up quickly. Trucks drop off their ski and fishing boats at the ramp. Motors spew unburned fuel into the air as the boats rumble away from the dock, sending small waves splashing to shore. Kids scream and chase one another on the long pebbled beach near the boat ramp. Mothers carry picnic baskets and sunscreen into the shade. Fathers drag coolers and bags of charcoal briquettes to the grills dotting the shoreline.
Not wanting to draw attention to himself, Jimmy parks on the other side of the lot from the spot Danny chooses. Though the place is so busy, he doubts the other man even noticed a car following him here.
Danny gets out of his pickup, grabs a fishing pole and other gear from the cargo bed, and walks toward the lake. He walks past the dock and boat ramp and the families setting up their picnics. After a few minutes following the curve of the lake north, he disappears from sight.
The Ophelia Killer Page 11