Ellie brushed the snow from her pant legs as Mitchell knocked firmly on the front door. A moment later, Jerome Kenton opened the door.
Mitchell introduced himself then introduced Ellie.
Kenton stared at her hard for a moment then nodded. “Yeah, we met at Shorty McCorkle’s the other day.”
Ellie forced a smile. “Yes, we did. I have a couple more questions I’d like to ask, if you don’t mind.”
Kenton looked at Mitchell, sizing him up, then opened the door wide. “Sure. Come on in.”
Ellie’s eyes immediately found the rifle lying on the threadbare sofa. “Let me get that,” Kenton said and quickly removed the gun, propping it in the corner. Ellie’s hand twitched and instinctively moved to her hip, resting on the handgun underneath her blazer.
“Been hunting?” Mitchell asked.
“Yeah, got a big buck hanging around. I saw him this morning but couldn’t get a clean shot. Didn’t want to waste the bullet. I need to get into town and buy another box. That buck sure would look good mounted.” He smiled.
In heavy brown hunting pants and a thermal undershirt underneath a flannel shirt, Kenton was a bit over-dressed considering the warmth of the house. The living room would have been a decent size but was monopolized by a massive wood-burning stove protruding from a brick fireplace. The stifling heat felt good on Ellie’s skin for all of about a minute. The cheap sofa with worn-down cushions sat opposite an entertainment center holding a large television and video game console. A war game flickered across the screen until Kenton turned it off. He pushed one of the hand-held controllers off the arm of a recliner and sat down, motioning for Mitchell and Ellie to have a seat on the sofa. The room was tidy and neat, no empty pizza boxes or half-full glasses sitting forgotten on the coffee table.
Mitchell squirmed a little on the sofa, probably avoiding the springs that threatened to impale them at any moment. “Jerome, your wife’s sister came by the station this morning and filed a missing person’s report on your wife,” he said as casually as if he were talking about the weather. “I told her we’d hold up a day or two before we actually filed it. Give us a chance to talk to you about it first.”
Jerome rolled his eyes then smiled. “Karen’s a bit of a…drama queen. She jumps to a lot of conclusions.”
Mitchell nodded understandingly. “So, is Becky around?”
Kenton shook his head. “No. Like I told Karen when she called, Becky went down to visit her aunt in New Orleans for a couple weeks. She…ah….” He took a deep breath then blew it out slowly. “We lost a little boy a couple years ago in Katrina. Tomorrow would have been his birthday. Becky always has a hard time with it so we thought it might do her good to get away for a little while.”
But wouldn’t a trip back to the place where he died bring back the very memories she was trying to avoid, Ellie thought.
“Well, Karen says their aunt doesn’t know anything about Becky coming to visit,” Mitchell said.
“She wanted to surprise her. We haven’t seen her since we left.” He shifted his weight in the chair. “Look…I wouldn’t get too worked up about it. Karen likes to blow things out of proportion.”
Mitchell nodded. “Yeah, I figured as much. But, I told her we’d check it out. Did your wife drive down to New Orleans?”
Kenton hesitated a moment then shook his head. “No, she took the bus. I took her down to the station Tuesday afternoon.”
“Oh, well that probably explains it then. It’s a what…two- or three-day bus trip at best?”
Kenton was quick to nod. “At best. And with the weather being what it is, I’m sure that slowed them down even more.”
Mitchell bobbed his head up and down. “Probably so.”
Kenton looked dead at Ellie, and despite the heat, a chill ran the length of her spine. “Did you find out anything else about that little boy you were asking about the other day?”
Ellie cleared her throat. “We’re making some headway. And now that you’ve brought it up, one of your co-workers told me that you and Becky had a little boy with you at the company picnic back in the fall. A little boy you called JJ.”
Kenton stared at her a moment then quickly looked away and grinned. “It wasn’t JJ…his name was TJ.”
“Oh, OK. Maybe I misunderstood. And TJ is what relation to you and Becky?”
“He’s my nephew.”
Ellie thought her heart was going to beat right out of her chest. “So you have a brother or a sister?”
Kenton ran his tongue over his lips then smiled big. “No. He’s not actually my nephew. He’s…ah…what do you call it…my godson, if that’s what people still call it these days. I went to school with his mom and dad, known them all my life, and we’ve kept in touch. They came up and visited for a while this summer, and TJ wanted to stay. They were having some problems, finances and stuff, and Becky thought it’d be nice to have a kid around again, so we said sure, he could stay for as long as they needed.”
Ellie didn’t know what to say. Could what he had said be true? She collected her thoughts then continued. “Jerome, was TJ with you and Becky when you had the car wreck the other night?”
Kenton nodded. “Yeah. Shook the little guy up pretty bad, but he was OK. The truck, as you could probably see when you came in, took the brunt of the damage.”
Ellie looked around the living room. There were no indications a child had visited, let alone lived here. “Where is TJ now?”
Kenton didn’t miss a beat. “With Becky. That’s the other reason she went on back down to New Orleans. To take TJ back.”
“Oh, so you put them both on the bus Tuesday afternoon?” Mitchell asked.
Kenton nodded. “Yep,” he said slowly.
“And that would be the terminal in Clarksville?”
Kenton thought about it for a minute then slowly nodded.
“What’s TJ’s parent’s names? Just for our records,” Ellie said.
Kenton cleared his throat. “Tommy and Susan Baker.”
Ellie pulled her notepad from her jacket pocket and jotted down the names. “Do you have a phone number for Tommy and Susan?”
Kenton stared at Ellie hard, an apparent edge rising in his mood. He gnawed on his bottom lip then finally answered. “Yeah, I’m sure we’ve got it around here somewhere.” He pulled himself up from the recliner and started toward the kitchen.
“While you’re at it,” Mitchell called after him, “We’ll need a recent picture of Becky, too.”
Kenton stopped but didn’t turn around. He just stood there with his back to the living room a moment before disappearing in the kitchen. He was gone a minute or two then returned with a snapshot in a 3x5 acrylic frame with a magnet glued to the back. He handed the frame to Mitchell. “Becky must have taken our address book with her. She said she was goin’ to look up some old friends.”
Ellie nodded then glanced at the picture. Becky Kenton was a plain-looking woman with curly, dark-blonde hair and lackluster eyes. The smile she wore looked forced. Bone thin with shallow cheeks, she was the exact opposite of her sister, Karen.
“That was taken last summer,” Kenton said.
Mitchell stood up and offered his hand to Kenton. “Thanks. We’ll return it when we close this thing out.”
Kenton shook Mitchell’s hand with a firm grip and nodded. “How long do you think that’ll be?”
“Well, after we verify Becky’s safe and secure in New Orleans, we’ll call Karen and tell her everything’s fine. I don’t really see any sense in filing an official report just yet.”
Kenton laughed. “Yeah, give her at least a couple days to get down there. Have you got a card? I’ll call you as soon as I hear from her.”
“I’d appreciate that. I’m sure Karen will rest a lot easier knowing everything’s fine.” Mitchell dug one of his cards from his pocket and handed it to Kenton.
Kenton turned to Ellie as they moved toward the front door. “Sorry I couldn’t help you with that little boy. I sure hope yo
u find who did that to him.”
Ellie smiled. “We will. It’s just a matter of time.”
19
“What do you think?” Ellie asked as she climbed into Mitchell’s SUV and buckled up.
He cranked the engine. “My gut instinct?”
“Considering we have zero physical evidence, yes.”
“He’s lying through his teeth.”
Ellie grinned. “My gut instinct told me the same thing. So, what do we do next?”
“Head to Clarksville and see if Becky got on that bus.” Mitchell carefully backed out of the driveway and headed slowly down the road. He headed in the opposite direction from which they came.
“My thought exactly. How far is Clarksville?”
“I’ll get you home before dark.” He winked at her then settled in for the drive.
Ellie sighed. Not that she didn’t enjoy his company, but she was anxious to get back to Burkesboro and see what Jesse had come up with. “And if Becky didn’t get on that bus…where is she?”
Mitchell glanced over at her and frowned. “Gut instinct?”
He didn’t have to say anything else. Ellie stared out the side window at the landscape creeping by. With each curve, the landscape changed from deep snow-covered ravines to rocky slopes with towering pines close enough to reach out and touch.
If Kenton had killed his wife, finding her body in this terrain would be next to impossible. But what if Becky did get on that bus and had a little boy named TJ with her? Where did that leave Landon? Ellie would be no closer to finding out who left him for dead now than the night his body was discovered. Even if she was able to get a warrant to search the wrecked truck for hair fibers or Landon’s blood, all it would prove was that Landon was in the truck. It wouldn’t prove Jerome Kenton had beat him half to death and left him in an alley to die. Was it possible that Landon was TJ? If TJ even existed. And for whatever reason, he didn’t get on that bus, and a total stranger was the one responsible for leaving him for dead?
She wanted to talk to Jesse. She wanted to know if he had found anything on the registry. She took out her cell phone and tried to call, but the call wouldn’t go through.
Mitchell chuckled. “You’re not goin’ to get a signal out here.”
Ellie stared at her phone as if by magic, she’d have at least one signal bar pop up. Nothing. She slipped the phone back into her pocket and sighed. “How do y’all communicate up here? You don’t even have a dispatch radio in this thing.” She looked around the console of the vehicle for any signs of a squawk box but found none.
“We have ‘em. Just not in our personal vehicles.” Mitchell grinned.
“This isn’t the department’s?”
Mitchell shook his head. “Ain’t no way one of the department cars would make it through all this snow.”
“The department doesn’t have four-wheel drives?” Even the Burkesboro department had a couple.
“We’ve got ‘em, but they’re mostly used for patrol.”
That made sense. She didn’t know about Mitchell’s department, but investigators like Mike Allistar only left his desk for lunch. Why waste a perfectly good 4x4 on nothing but a burger run?
They had driven about twenty minutes when a small sign welcomed them to Clarksville, population 562. Main Street consisted of a hardware store, a funeral home that shared a parking lot with a diner, and the bus station. The snow had been pushed from the center of the parking lots to the sides where it sat in four-foot-high mounds. Mitchell pulled into the bus station and parked near the front door of the small brick building. Ellie followed him in and looked around.
There were three empty benches lining the far wall. Two vending machines offering soda and snacks stood near the benches. The ticket counter was on the opposite wall, encased in metal bars. An elderly man behind the counter peeked between the bars. “Can I help you?” His voice was crackly and old with age.
“Yes, sir, you can,” Mitchell said. He approached the counter and showed his shield. “Detective Brady Mitchell with the Avery County Sheriff’s Department, and this is Detective Ellie Saunders from the Burkesboro Police Department. We’d like to take a look at your passenger log for Tuesday afternoon if you don’t mind.”
The old man nodded obligingly. “Sure, sure. Looking for someone in particular?”
“As a matter of fact, we are,” Mitchell said and winked at Ellie. “A lady named Becky Kenton. She may have been traveling with a young boy named TJ.”
The old man nodded as he slid the papers through the small opening under the bars where tickets and money were exchanged. Mitchell scanned the papers then shook his head and handed them back. “And this is the only passenger log you have for that day?”
“Yes, sir. Would you like to see Monday’s and Wednesday’s? Maybe they were confused on the dates.” He pulled more papers from a book and handed them over to Mitchell.
Mitchell scanned through them and again shook his head. He handed them back. “Were you working Tuesday?”
The old man scratched at his head. “Let’s see…yes, sir. I worked 10 AM until 6 PM. Gladys Shipman usually works Tuesdays but she was down that day with her arthritis.”
“What time does the last bus pull out?”
“Five thirty. The terminal closes at six.”
So if Becky Kenton had gotten on that bus Tuesday, the old man would have been the one who sold her the ticket.
Mitchell pulled the picture of Becky from his coat pocket and showed it to the old man. “Do you remember seeing this woman get on the bus?”
The old man tilted his head to get a better look through his bifocals. He slowly shook his head. “No, sir. Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen her before.”
Ellie pulled up the picture of Kenton she had stored in her phone and also showed it to him. “How ‘bout this man? Have you seen him?”
The man looked at the phone with an air of distrust. “You have pictures in that thing?”
Ellie softly smiled. “Yes, sir. Do you remember seeing him?”
The old man shook his head. “Nope. Never seen him either.”
Outside, Mitchell stood in the parking lot eyeing the diner across the street. “You got time for a bite to eat?”
Ellie had a feeling it didn’t matter whether she did or not. “I guess I can spare thirty.”
“Good. It’s a long walk back.” He winked at her then headed across the street with Ellie in tow.
There were two cars and three pickups in the parking lot, and inside the few customers were scattered at different tables or booths as if they were scared a conversation would be overheard or a new strain of the flu would be spread. Ellie suddenly missed the noise and clatter of Caper’s.
Mitchell slid into one of the booths and motioned for the waitress. Ellie sat opposite Mitchell and smiled at the elderly woman with her hair under a hairnet who came to take their order.
She handed them two laminated menus, and before Ellie had time to look it over, Mitchell ordered two hotdogs all the way with fries. Ellie didn’t see a BLT listed anywhere so she settled for a cheeseburger with mayo.
“Who puts mayo on a cheeseburger?” Mitchell asked and laughed.
Ellie let the comment slide. It reminded her too much of Jesse, and she was really wanting to talk to him—to find out if he had come up with anything on the registry, of course.
“Think we have enough for a warrant?” Ellie asked.
“There’s always the possibility Kenton did drop her off at the bus station, and she hightailed when he was out of sight,” Mitchell said.
Ellie glanced out the grease-spattered window and looked at the knee-deep snow. “That depends on how desperate she was to get away,” she said.
“Maybe she had someone pick her up?”
Ellie stared at him a moment. Was his gut instinct floundering? She shook her head, disagreeing with the idea of a third party. “If Becky was as isolated as her sister says she was, she wouldn’t have the connections, or the guts, to pull of
f something like that.”
“Maybe she hitched a ride with someone. If that’s the case, then it’s possible Kenton isn’t the one who dumped your kid. Maybe Becky hitched a ride with the wrong person.” He obviously saw Ellie’s look of surprise, and winked. “I’m just looking at all the angles.”
The waitress brought their orders and handed the ticket to Mitchell. He doused his fries with pepper then smothered them with ketchup.
“OK, but hear me out,” he said. “Kenton takes them to the bus station, drops them off, and, as far as he knows, his wife and the kid are on their way to New Orleans. Becky and the kid get in the car with the wrong person, Becky ends up missing and your kid ends up in an alley beaten half to death.”
She guessed it was possible. But she didn’t believe it. “The kid was with Kenton when he had the wreck. That’s one of the last things the kid remembers. He’s never said anything about a bus station or getting into a car with someone he didn’t know.”
“Have you asked him?”
“Not directly, no.” She picked at her cheeseburger, her appetite waning.
Mitchell sighed. “Look, I’m not trying to burst your bubble. Just trying to get you to look at the less obvious possibilities.”
Was she so focused on Kenton she was missing something? Despite what she believed, she couldn’t rule out the possibility Kenton was telling the truth and whatever had happened to Landon happened between the bus terminal across the street and the alley beside Shorty McCorkle’s. And what if Becky’s sister Karen was the drama queen Kenton said she was? What if Karen did have a habit of blowing things out of proportion and jumping to false conclusions? What if…?
“Earth to Ellie?” Mitchell was staring at her, looking deep into her every thought.
“Oh, sorry.” Ellie pushed her hands through her hair and sighed. “Look, I know everything you’ve said is plausible. But gut instinct tells me Kenton’s involved with whatever happened to that little boy. The court can prove he’s innocent.”
“If you’re sure about it, then prove he’s lying.” He finished off his hotdogs then finished his tea. “Make a couple calls and see if Tommy and Susan Baker have a son named TJ.”
The Rising Page 19