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Mettner added, “We have a guy over there that we trust. You can talk to him, and just him.”
“Who?”
Josie said, “Cyrus Grey.”
Carolina gave a slow nod. “His daughter died. Yeah, I know who he is. I guess he’s okay. Then again, I guess it doesn’t much matter if what I’m about to tell you gets me killed. I’m going to die anyway.”
FORTY
They sat on a bench with Carolina between them. She talked low and fast, keeping her eyes on the washer’s timer across the room from them as it counted down from forty-two minutes to zero.
“I didn’t hear much of what they said,” she explained. “I looked out the window, saw they were arguing. I went to the door so I could hear better. I didn’t want to open it and draw attention to myself ’cause then they would stop. But I heard some stuff. He wanted her to come home with him, but she was going out to meet with someone. She said it was important. She’d been working on getting ‘the information’ for weeks. The guy, Mathias, said it was a scam or something like that, blah blah blah, but basically he didn’t want her meeting with this guy.”
Mettner said, “Did either of them say the name of the guy?”
“No. Not that I heard. He tried to get the name out of her but it didn’t seem like she was going to tell him. They had a fight. Like, a physical fight, sort of. He was trying to stop her from going.”
They waited for her to say more but she kept silent. Over her head, Mettner caught Josie’s gaze. She could see the question in his eyes. That was it? That was Carolina’s big revelation? Then why had she said that what she was about to tell them might get her killed? Josie looked at Carolina’s hands, tangled in her red locks, twisting until more and more dried, damaged strands of hair fell away. One of her heels drummed against the tile. She turned and looked at Josie. “Either of you got a smoke? I could use a smoke.”
“I’m sorry, we don’t,” said Josie. She was reminded of Needle—Zeke—and the way he held information close, only giving it up if she asked precisely the right questions. It was infuriating and yet it was one of the things that made him so savvy and able to survive on the street year after year—and stay out of trouble with the police for the most part.
“Carolina,” said Josie. “Doyouknow the guy Jana Melburn was going to meet that night?”
“Well, yeah,” Carolina said. “It was Vance Hadlee.”
Josie was surprised and yet, at the same time, not surprised at all. Everything seemed to come back to the Hadlees. The bodies of Sharon Eddy and Keri Cryer had the literal marks of Vance Hadlee on them.
Over Carolina’s head, Mettner stared at Josie as if she’d just performed a miracle. He said, “How do you know?”
As if it was the most obvious thing in the world, Carolina said, “’Cause he told me.”
“Vance was helping Jana find her birth parents?” Mettner asked.
Carolina wrinkled her nose. “What? I don’t know nothing about that. I just know they were together that night.”
“Were they seeing one another?” asked Josie.
Carolina shook her head. “No, it wasn’t like that. I mean, yeah, Vance would have liked to…what’d he say? ‘Defile’ her. He wanted her real bad, but she wasn’t into him. I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have stopped him, but then she was dead so it didn’t matter.”
Mettner said, “He talked about Jana?”
“When I asked him about her, yeah. Just so happened, he was out back of the gas station that night after my shift. He looked a mess. Like, he was really strung out, but he said he hadn’t even taken anything yet. He wanted to get high. We took a walk. There’s an area not far from there that’s pretty much hidden from everything. Well, I think someone built a house there a few years ago but back then it was just a lot with a bunch of trees on it. If he was coming to meet me after my shift, that’s where we went.”
“You did this often?” asked Josie.
“Yeah. Few times a month. Sometimes more. When his wife was ignoring him, he said, which she did a lot. He was always complaining about her. I’m pretty sure by that time she’d already left him. The divorce was turning him into a monster. He really didn’t deal well with it. He complained nonstop about how she kept telling all these lies about him to everyone and getting him into legal trouble. I was trying to get him off the subject, so I asked him where he’d been all night. He said he was with someone. I said, someone like a woman? He said a girl, way too young for him, and it went all wrong. He said he might be in big trouble. He never said her name. I didn’t find out till a few days later when the whole damn town was flipping out over her body being found.”
“How do you know he was talking about Jana Melburn?” Mettner asked.
Carolina reached up and massaged her throat. “’Cause of what happened next. We were getting real high and I started ribbing him about the girl. Asking, well, how young was she? Is that why you’re gonna be in big trouble? I said you think you’re in deep shit with your old man right now ’cause of what happened with your wife, wait till he finds out you’re a cradle-robbing perv! Well, he just burst right into tears. He said that wasn’t the problem. I said, what in the hell did you do? Did you run her over with your truck or something? I was half joking, but he completely lost his shit. Went batshit crazy.”
“In what way?” asked Josie.
“He tried to kill me. Slammed me against a tree and started strangling me. Said I could never tell anyone about her. That she knew him or that they’d met. He said I could never tell anyone what I heard. He said blink twice if I understand, so I did. After I caught my breath, I was mad at him. I said, all these years we’ve been doing this—the drugs and the sleeping together—and I’ve never told a single soul. No one could even tell we knew one another. Whatever he did was none of my business. That’s when he kind of told me.”
“Told you what?” asked Mettner.
Her fingers lingered over her throat. “That he’d met this girl along the road a few blocks away where no one would see her get into his truck. He’d met her somewhere. She wanted to talk to him. He never did say about what. I don’t think he cared. I think he was just trying to get in her pants. He took her to the farm. They had an argument and he hit her.”
