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“Miss is fine,” she said. “And I have no idea. I was standing there…”
“Why was that?”
“I was going for a morning walk to the Formal Gardens.” She worked to keep the irritation and anxiety out of her voice. “He saw me and recognized me. He asked for my help. He seemed afraid.”
“I might be afraid if I had murdered two girls and was caught napping at the crime scene with blood all over me, Cheryl.” He stared at her and stroked the edge of his moustache with his right index finger. His shoulders were a straight line of tension.
“Is that what happened? You found him there asleep?”
Brooks sat back straight and hesitated. She knew he had told her more than he had intended. But that only made her want to know more.
“The Formal Gardens seem like a pretty public place.” She looked at him evenly and let the silence fall between them.
Finally, “You don’t know the campus very well, do you, Cheryl?”
“My name is Cheryl Beth.”
She didn’t like him well enough to tell the story of how in the first grade, the teacher had been confronted with three girls named Cheryl, so she called them by their first and middle names: Cheryl Ann, Cheryl Sue, and Cheryl Beth, and how the name had stuck and she liked it. If she were back at the hospital, back in her position as pain nurse, she would have added: Are you trying to piss me off?
“Sure, okay, Cheryl Beth,” he said. “There are times of the day when parts of the campus can be very isolated. All the trees and shrubbery and open spaces. Even so more at night and in the early morning.”
“So the girls were killed overnight?”
“I can’t discuss the details,” he said, but she got the point: The killings had not occurred soon before she arrived.
“And Noah fell asleep in the bushes, naked?” she said. She raised her hands to calm him. “I know, you can’t tell me anything.”
“I can’t get over him calling to you and asking for your help.” He leaned forward on his elbows and stared at her. She looked back at him, wearing her pleasant face.
“That’s what happened. Actually, he seemed disoriented. I don’t really get your point, Detective Brooks.”
“This is a small-town department, but we’re not idiots, Cheryl Beth.”
“I didn’t say you were, Hank.”
He flipped back a yellow page of handwriting and studied it.
“I don’t think you told me where you’re from with that accent? Originally.”
“I didn’t tell you. Corbin, Kentucky.”
“Corbin, Kentucky,” he said, neutrally. “Never been there.”
“I haven’t lived there in twenty-five years.” She realized she was nervously playing with her hair. She forced her hands back to the top of the table.
“Noah Smith is from Corbin, Kentucky.”
“What?”
“That’s right, Cheryl Beth. And you’re telling me you don’t know him? Must be a pretty small town.”
Noah had never told her that. His accent was as Midwestern as most of her students.
Brooks persisted. “Want to tell me more, now?”
She took a deep breath but maintained her composure. “There’s nothing to tell, Hank. I don’t live in Corbin. I haven’t lived there in a very long time. I didn’t know he was from there. Lots of people named Smith in every town, probably even Oxford.”
She ran through her mental Rolodex. In fifth grade, she had a crush on Billy Smith. His family moved away. She knew Donna Smith all through school; Donna had brothers but none was named Noah. Joe Smith owned the filling station on Main Street before it was shut down. It was an impossible task.
