Chapter Seventeen
Riverbend, Louisiana
Erin Stockwell walks into the lobby of the Kingston with exactly zero swagger, looking like she’s dressed for a business casual barbecue. Khaki pants, sensible shoes, and a white button-up shirt. I have yet to see her on camera, but I hope she tries harder than this on those days.
None of the guys at the bar look her way when she enters, and there’s an uncomfortable, competitive voice in my head that takes note of that.
Carl looks around and spots me.
I nod. He nods back. Nothing in his expression tells me if he’s still pissed or not.
Erin glances my way and smiles, and I wish like hell I’d refilled my drink.
They walk over to my table, and Erin says, “Hello, Rita.”
“Hey, Erin,” I say.
“We have a lot to discuss. I thought we could go up to the fourth floor. We have some space up there.”
“Sure,” I say. I look down at the box I brought from home. “I brought you something.”
“Huh,” she says, eyeing it. “Someone’s been busy.”
Carl leans down and picks up the box and shoots me a look I ignore.
“I brought your other suitcase from Miami,” he says, pointing to one of the black bags beside him.
The one I was leaving there until I could get back and finish reporting on Laura Sanders. An awkward silence sits between Carl and me, which is even more awkward because we don’t have awkward silences.
“Thank you,” I say, taking it from him.
I follow them to the elevator, rolling my bag of suits and makeup I won’t be needing, and we take an uncomfortably silent ride up to the fourth floor.
The elevator opens into a giant room with a pool table, a huge sectional couch in front of a big-screen television, and a full kitchen with a subzero fridge and giant island.
Four closed doors surround it. Two on the east side, two on the west side.
The north wall is lined with huge paned windows in an exposed brick wall.
“Wow,” I say. “Which room is yours?”
“All of them. The studio booked the whole floor. We need a war room, and the hotel worked us out a deal.”
NCN must feel this story is bigger than most. If they’re footing the bill for this, it says a lot. A lot I don’t like.
Carl puts his camera bags off to the side and drops the box on the square coffee table in front of the sectional sofa. I follow Erin to the sofa, and we both sit.
“Are you okay with me recording this?” she says.
I glance at the box. “In a minute.”
She sets her phone down. “What have we got here?” she says, nodding to the box.
“Some old files and journals from Poison Wood.”
“How did you get these?” she says.
Carl clears his throat.
“I borrowed them.”
“Rita, what the hell? I can’t take those.”
“Then don’t take them. But I’m going to tell you what’s in them. And there aren’t any names on any of them, not real names. But”—I pause—“I do think I know the real name of who wrote in these journals, Heather Hadwick.”
“Shit,” Carl says, coming over to the sofa. He picks one up and turns it over.
“You can give them to the police,” I say. “Tell them someone left it for you at the hotel.”
“Lie?” she says.
“I’ll leave the box at the front desk,” I say. “So not a lie.”
She looks up at Carl, then back to me. “It’s fine. Can we go on the record now?”
I nod. She puts her phone on the table and starts recording.
She leans forward and places her forearms on her legs, clasps her hands.
This is not what I look like when I’m the one pressing record. I sit up straight. I square my shoulders. I let the person know I’m in charge and I’m going to lead. Erin is doing the exact opposite. She is moving slowly, her body is relaxed, and her voice is calm and soothing.
It’s unnerving me. In our industry, calm, soothing, and relaxed are not the norm.
“Can I get you something to drink before we start?”
I stare at her. What the hell? Now we are at a tea party.
“No,” I say.
“All right then.” She speaks into the phone. “This is Erin Stockwell. February fifteenth, two thousand nineteen. Seven fifteen p.m. I’m speaking with Rita Meade. Rita, you are aware this is being recorded, correct?”
“Correct.”
“And you know I took over on the Laura Sanders case?”
“Yes.”
“And that Laura Sanders has now been identified as Heather Hadwick.”
“Yes.” I sigh. “You can skip the foreplay. There’s something I need to show you.” I reach in my tote and pull out the clear bag containing the pregnancy test.
Erin studies it. “What the hell is this?”
“I think Laura Sanders sent this to me. And I think it’s old. Seventeen years old. She mailed me a package to my father’s address, my high school address. But the package had been opened. Then I found this,” I say, pointing to the bag. “Under the seat in my father’s truck.”
Erin looks up and sits back. “Your father opened it?”
“I think so.” I stop her before she can speak again. “I’m going to talk to him about it. I don’t know why he opened it.”
“Okay,” Erin says. “Do you still have the package?”
I point in the box. “It was mailed from Miami.”
She nods. “I’ll make sure Mulholland gets it.”
“I have a contact at the crime lab here,” I say. “Just in case Mulholland needs it.”
Erin nods. She sits quietly for a second, then picks up the clear bag between two fingers and studies it. “Do you know of any girls who were pregnant at Poison Wood?”
I shake my head. “No. But I have another contact you will want to talk to. Hang on.”
I scroll back through my texts and find one from Erin. I attach my list of names to it and send it.
Her phone dings, and she picks it up from the table. “Yes, you have been busy.” Then she surprises me. “Thank you for sharing that.”
No yelling. No lecturing. Just a thank-you.
“You’re welcome.”
“Laura Sanders, a.k.a. Heather, has a child,” she says, setting her phone back down.
“Yeah, but I saw her child—she was only seven or eight years old. If she’d been pregnant at Poison Wood, she’d have a teenager.”
“Would be a good reason for her to run off, though,” Erin says.
I nod. “Yes, it would.”
Erin makes a note in her notebook and looks back up. “Walk me through what happened the night Heather disappeared.”
I quickly scroll through phrases and pick one that I feel will give her enough but not too much. “Heather snuck out a lot. That night was no different. We figured she was going to meet a boy.”
“We?”
Shit. I’m too distracted. Too uncomfortable on this side of a recorder. And Erin is being too nice. Pay attention, Rita.
“My classmates and I.”
“And their names are?”
I answer even though I think she already knows them. “Katrina Donovan and Summer Chamberlain.”
“Okay. Did you, Katrina, and Summer see Heather leave the building?”
She jots something in her notebook, but she’s moving on quickly.
If she’s aware of the importance of their last names, she’s not showing it.
She’s not from around here. Erin’s from Canada.
She doesn’t know the roots and tendrils of last names in Louisiana and how easily they can tangle up with one another.
“Should I repeat the question?” Erin says.
I shake my head. “We didn’t see Heather leave the dorm. I saw her later. Running toward the woods.”
“Did you all follow her?”
“No.”
“Were you alone when you saw her?”
I think about the picnic table and looking around for my friends. “Yes.”
“I want to switch gears a little. If that’s okay?”
Asking me takes away her element of surprise. She is doing this all wrong, but I nod and say, “Sure.”
“What did you know about Johnny Adair?” she says.
“Now or then?”
“Then.”
“Not much. I knew he was a hunter. I knew he fixed things when they broke, and stuff on that old building broke all the time. Lights needed changing, windows needed repairing, ceilings leaked, toilets overflowed. Every day it seemed like something else broke.”
“How did you know Johnny was a hunter?”
“The turkey beards he framed in his cottage.”
“Turkey beards?”
“Yeah. Apparently it’s a thing. Hunters cut off the beards and frame the large ones. It’s like having a good deer rack or something.”
“Interesting.” She makes a quick note, then adds, “So when were you in Johnny’s cottage?”
How did she somehow get the upper hand here?
“I wasn’t ever in his cottage, but I did look in it occasionally.”
“What about your classmates?”
“They went in it.”
“That night?”
“No.”
“Are you sure about that?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Who called the police that night?”
“Johnny Adair.”
“And are you aware of what Johnny looked like when the police arrived?”
This part of the night is much clearer. I’d been awakened by red and blue lights flashing into our room. I was alone, and I snuck to the front stairs, where Summer and Kat were sitting, eavesdropping on what was happening downstairs.
“Yes.” Where is Erin going with this?
“Can you describe it to me?”
Johnny was pacing the floor below us. Martha Lee and B.O. were off to one side watching him while the police were trying to calm him down.
“He was covered in blood,” I say. “He kept saying he slipped and fell in it. That something bad happened in the cottage.”
“That must have been scary for you,” Erin says.
No one has ever said that to me before. Not even my father.
And when I look back at that moment, I’m looking at it through the lens of a woman who has seen a lot worse than that.
When I try to think of the lens I saw it through that night, a young girl’s, I can’t quite reach the emotions I must have felt. And I don’t want to.
I say nothing.
“Was Heather part of your close friend group?” Erin says.
Heat starts to rise in my cheeks. “No,” I say. “She wasn’t.”
“Tell me about that.”
“Why?”
“Because it feels important,” she says.
I glance at Carl. “Can I get a drink? What have you got over there?”
He hops off the stool in the kitchen area and opens the fridge. He pulls out a bottle of wine. “Chardonnay?”
I make a face. “Fine.”
He pours me a glass and brings it over. Then he sits next to me. I sip the wine and tell myself it’s better than nothing. I turn back to Erin.