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“Yeah. And well, my aunt still lives there, in the Savannah area, and she texted me a news clip where you were asking about a couple of teenagers who were in the movie theater that night. The night those girls disappeared?”
Reed couldn’t believe his ears. “You know them?”
“Well, yeah, I am one of ’em. Me and Carl Jetkins, we were at the
movies that night, but we weren’t supposed to be. We, uh, we snuck in through a side door. Carl, he knew someone who worked there and knew that the security cameras weren’t working and that this guy would let friends in the side for free. So we went to the flick and ducked out the same way we came in.”
“You saw something.”
Reed listened hard. Finally, a break!
“Yeah.”
“And you didn’t come forward?” He was listening hard.
“I was a kid. Doing a lot of things that I shouldn’t. That day I was supposed to be with my grandma. She was out of it, didn’t really know I wasn’t there. She was in the bedroom, I was in the living room, had the TV on and snuck out. No one was the wiser.”
Stunned, Reed listened, barely aware that the object he’d picked up wasn’t a dog toy as expected but an e-cigarette.
“Anyway,” Kaminiski continued. “I think maybe I saw what happened. A guy came in the same way I did, I think, and took the girls out early. I saw him with two of ’em.”
“You mean three,” Reed said, trying to reconstruct the events at the theater.
“No, man. Just two. Blond. Girls. Maybe like ten or twelve or so. I just caught a glimpse, you know?”
Reed’s attention was laser focused on the conversation with the first witness to come forward in two decades.
“And I think maybe the little one, she was hiding. Carl, he said he saw a kid hiding under the row of seats, you know. He told me as we were leaving and he said he thought she maybe touched his ankle or something . . . I don’t really remember, but he was pissed about it. Like, she knocked over his drink or something.”
Rosie.
The reason she wasn’t taken. Because she wasn’t with the others.
“Would you recognize him, the guy who took the girls?”
A pause. Then, “I don’t know. It was dark by then and I didn’t really know anyone in Savannah. I lived in Cincinnati with my folks. Now, I’m closer. Just south of Charleston. Anyway, like I said, I was only there visiting. And really, I wasn’t payin’ much attention, just saw this dude slip out with the kids. Didn’t think anything of it, y’know? Thought he was with them. It’s not like they were struggling or seeming scared or anything. And, to tell the truth, I was just killin’ time, avoiding babysitting my nana. Gettin’ high.” There was a long pause. “I think I heard something about it later, but again I was more into girls and weed and well, whatever. Truth is, I barely made it through high school and, at the time, I didn’t really put two and two together. I mean, I didn’t want to, right?”
Reed couldn’t believe it. This could be the break in the case he’d been waiting for. But he had to keep moving. He glanced down at the Juul still clutched in his hand and, in the light from the fixture over the garage, saw it had lettering on it: TY.
Thank You?
Didn’t matter. He jammed the e-cig into his pocket. He didn’t have time to think about it. Right now, Nikki might be in trouble.
“Carl Jetkins can confirm this?” he asked, climbing into the department’s vehicle.
A beat.
Reed was about to start the engine but paused. “Right?”
“Uh. No, man. Carl’s dead.”
“Dead?” That stopped Reed cold.
“Yeah, car accident. Like right after that summer.”
All of a sudden Reed second-guessed the caller. Could this be a prank call? A phony? Someone just pulling his chain or looking for fame like Greta Kemp, the phony Rose Duval? He heard a baby crying and then a muffled, “Just a sec, honey.” More loudly. “Look, I gotta go.”
“No, wait.”
