Chapter Twenty-One
Riverbend, Louisiana
I have my phone open, and I’m taking pictures of Rosalie Adair’s license plate as I drive.
I’ve covered enough traffic fatalities in my day to know just how dangerous this is, but too bad.
I want that information just in case. Her car looks like the one I thought was following me the other day. The tides have turned.
I refocus on the road that takes us through the town of Piedmont. The speed limit abruptly drops to twenty-five, and I slow my dad’s truck. No parades today. There are a few cars at the Dollar General store, but other than that it’s quiet.
Rosalie puts on her left blinker as she approaches a small street, and I straighten behind the wheel. She turns, and I slow down and stop like I’m waiting on a car even though no cars are coming, giving her a chance to get farther down the street. Then I turn.
Up ahead, she takes another left.
I ease up to her street. It’s a dead end. I creep along it, hoping I’m not getting attention from the occupants of the small houses on either side.
Rosalie stops at a metal gate at the end of the street that looks similar to the one on the back of my dad’s property. She jumps out and opens it, then drives through and relocks it.
By the time I pull up to the gate and shift into park, her car is gone. I tell myself I have her cell number. I can call her. But then I might miss a chance to talk face to face.
And if she was following me recently, she may be more interested in visiting with me than she let on.
I consider the headlights I thought were Debby’s the other night.
Maybe Rosalie followed me farther than I thought.
If that’s the case, we need to have a visit sooner rather than later.
Besides, I can share any information I gather with Erin.
There, I think. Good convincing.
I hop out and slip through the slots of the metal gate.
I am now officially trespassing, and as I start down the narrow gravel road, I really hope Rosalie isn’t gun happy.
My lunch conversation with Kat and Summer comes back to me.
Rosalie at Poison Wood, yelling at Crowley about money.
Rosalie being fired in relation to a suspicious death.
I slow my pace. This, like going into the basement at Poison Wood, could be a knee-jerk reaction. I need to slow down and think, but as I do just that, a twig snaps. Or, rather, something snaps behind me. But it didn’t sound exactly like a snap. It sounded more like a shotgun being racked.
“Turn around,” Rosalie says.
I do, slowly, holding my hands out where she can see them and working to keep my breathing in check.
A shotgun hangs from her right hand, thankfully pointed at the ground.
“You’re trespassing,” she says.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m leaving.”
“What do you want?” she says.
“I was a student at Poison Wood.”
She looks at me like I am a complete idiot. “You think I don’t know who you are?”
I’m not sure if she means who I am now or who I was then.
“Can we talk?” I say. I keep my eyes on her shotgun. If she raises it, I’m running.
She clears her throat. “My brother’s not here.”
“I know,” I say. “I want to talk with you.”
“I told you on the phone I don’t want to talk.”
“I know,” I say again. “But I saw you at the school just now, and I thought maybe you’d change your mind if I came in person. I’m trying to piece together some things from the past, and they’re not making much sense at the moment. Maybe you can help me. Five minutes and I’m out of here.”
She shifts on her feet. “Five minutes,” she says, and she starts walking.
Thick oaks and pines fan out on both sides of the gravel road as I follow her. The gravel driveway stops at a small clearing with a double-wide trailer sitting off to the right.
The area around it is mowed, and a fenced garden sits off to one side.
This place is clean and cared for. Quite different from the Arceneauxes’ rotten house in Broken Bayou when I approached it.
I think about what happened when I knocked on that door and shiver.
I almost ended up dead in a bayou. And here I am, repeating the same mistake.
But sometimes mistakes have to be repeated in order to get answers.
Johnny certainly didn’t offer up any answers today.
If anything, he just created more questions.
And if Rosalie had wanted to hurt me, she could have done it already.
“Stand your ground” is a law in Louisiana.
Rosalie walks up onto a wooden porch and leaves the door open after she enters.
I’m at a point where I have to keep going.
I have to trust I’m doing what’s needed in order to get the answers.
But there’s something else fueling me that’s even more powerful than the need for answers.
Guilt. Guilt for claiming her brother was in those woods that night even though my memory was tainted by booze and weed.
I approach the porch as if it’s a ticking bomb. I have one hand in my tote on the stun gun. I find the switch to turn it on as I walk up the porch steps and cross the threshold into the mobile home.
It’s as clean as the property around it and smells like vanilla.
The floors are engineered hardwood and covered in area rugs.
A small white couch sits against the far wall, and two brown recliners fill up the space on the right, with a small table between them.
There’s no trash or food lying around. There’s no stench.
Nothing like Broken Bayou. This home is loved by its owner.
Clean dishes are on a rack by the kitchen sink. A small built-in desk sits between the living room and the kitchen, and it’s piled high with neat stacks of paper. A hallway leads off in the opposite direction as the kitchen.
This place was not cheap. It’s a manufactured home, but it’s a damn nice one.
Rosalie appears from down the hall no longer carrying the gun. She sits in one of the brown recliners and points to the sofa. I sit.
“I was wondering how long it’d take you to show up. I’ve heard about you. I think the word Pit Bull was used.”
I flinch. Last week, I would have considered that a term of endearment, but today it sounds like the insult it is.
She looks at my phone. “You gonna ask me if you can record this?”
I shake my head and Rosalie studies me with a look that says she doesn’t trust me.
“I’m not here as a reporter,” I say. When I record conversations, it’s to make sure I get the details right when I retell them, when I share the victim’s trauma or tragedy or whatever it is with the world.
But in this private moment, I see it differently.
I don’t see grief and despair as things that need to be shared.
Something shifts in my bones or maybe it’s something settling into them.
Something I’m not quite ready to acknowledge.
Rosalie smiles and pushes out of her chair. In the kitchen she grabs a glass and fills it with water. “Want one?” she says.
“Sure,” I say. “My mouth is quite dry after having a gun pointed at me.”
She fills a second glass and brings them both into the living area.
She sets mine in front of me, then nestles back into her recliner.
I pick up the glass and take a sip. The water tastes metallic, rusty, but I drink it anyway.
No need to be rude to the woman whose land I’m trespassing on.
That thought trips on something else in the back of my head.
“Rosalie, why were you at Poison Wood the other day?”
“My brother asked me to look for something.”
I move to the edge of my seat. “What?”
“None of your business.”
I sit back. It was worth a shot. “Did you follow me that day?”
She keeps her gaze on mine. She doesn’t flinch at all. “Yes.”
I exhale. “Did you follow me to Riverbend? To my father’s house?”
Her brow furrows. She crosses her arms over her chest. “Why are you here?”
I look around. “You’ve got a nice piece of property out here,” I say. “Do you mind me asking how many acres?”
“Six forty,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Six hundred and forty acres?” I say, shocked.
“Yeah. And Johnny’s got his six forty next door.”
Her head nods east as she says this. These two siblings have over twelve hundred acres of land, and one of them has been in prison for seventeen years.
“That must have been a lot to keep up with while Johnny was . . . away.”
The set of her jaw changes, hardens. “Yeah, it was.”
I know the property taxes on the land my father owns, and it’s not nearly this much land. Rosalie has definitely had her hands full covering that bill every year.
“How was it having to cover the property taxes on all of this on your own?”
“What do you care?” she says.
“I actually do care.”
“Right,” she says. “That’s your guilt talking.” She sips from her water. “You don’t need to worry, though. As soon as our mailbox money came in, Johnny and I were set. We don’t need your charity.”
I sit up straighter. “What mailbox money?”
She cocks her head to one side. “Haynesville. Like everyone else.”
I know all about Haynesville. Everyone in this part of the state knows about it.
It’s the reason the Cadillac dealership in Riverbend ran out of new cars in one day.
A natural gas shale that covers nine thousand miles of land in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas and, once made practical to extract in 2008, triggered a gold rush mentality.
Landowners with mineral rights became instant millionaires.
My father was one of those landowners. Energy companies descended on this area like buzzards to roadkill.
And they paid a fortune. Millions. Per acre.
Mailbox money, residents called the checks that flowed in once the gas started flowing out.
But not everyone profited the same. Underserved neighborhoods where the residents didn’t understand the thick legal documents presented to them ended up with far less.
“I didn’t realize it came down this far,” I say.
She shrugs. “Just far enough.”
“And it’s still paying out?” I say.
“Guess so. Checks keep coming.” She squints at me. “You followed me to my home to talk about my mineral rights?”
I shake my head. “I’m trying to figure out what happened the night Heather Hadwick ran off.”
“You and Johnny both. He’s spent seventeen years trying to figure it out.”
“Is that why he sent you to Poison Wood the other day?”
She doesn’t bite. “I said that was none of your business.” She shifts on her seat. “You think it’s smart for you to be here now?”
“No,” I say. “But I need answers, and I’m not sure where else to get them.” I study her dark eyes a second. “Do you know anything about the skull found at the school?”
“Excuse me?” She stands up and towers over me. Her height, while not as great as Johnny’s, is still impressive. “You accusing me of something?”
“Not at all,” I say.
Her expression shifts from anger to curiosity, and she sits back down.
“All I know is you girls were all trouble, and I told my brother not to work over there. I told him no good would come from it.” Her voice sharpens.
“That school took him from me. You girls, with your daddies protecting you, took him from me. I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forgive it either.”
“What do you mean our fathers protecting us?”
She scoffs. “What do you think I mean. One of you girls set Johnny up. Called your high-powered parents and next thing I know my brother’s in prison. Sins of the fathers, sins of the daughters.”
“That’s not fair, we—”
“Oh, none of this is fair. Seventeen years ago when I was talking, nobody was listening. Now I think they’re gonna listen. I told them then and I’ll tell you now, my brother walked in after the fact. Wrong place, wrong time. All I’ve ever wanted is for the truth to come out.”
Rosalie and I have more in common than I thought. Her anger is warranted. She lost someone, too, and like me, she’s been digging for the truth in order to help her family. What has it cost her? It’s possibly cost me my career.
“We both want the truth,” I say, thinking she sounds a lot like Erin’s source. I lean closer. “What do you remember about Archibald Crowley?”
Her expression shifts again. A new emotion in her eyes, fear.
“Get out of my house,” she says in a quiet voice. A voice that scares me more than if she were yelling.
“Rosalie—”
“Get out.” She stands and points to the door.
“You come in here with all your questions and you haven’t once asked how Johnny is doing?
How he’s sleeping? If he’s happy he’s out.
” Her rage is palpable. “He’s not well. He sleeps on the floor because the bed is too soft.
He may be free, but you all robbed him of his happiness. ”
Dazed, I step out onto the porch and turn back to her. “I should have asked about him. I’m sorry.”
Instead of responding, she slams the door in my face.
I walk past Rosalie’s white sedan toward the long driveway to the truck. Grooved scratches run the length of it. Scratches like the ones on my father’s truck. The ones caused by branches on narrow trails like the one I found, leading to the back gate.
Once back at the truck, I take out my phone and start typing notes on everything Rosalie said.
My mind is numb and reeling at the same time.
My hand is shaking. She is throwing around dangerous accusations, and from the sound of it, she’s ready to throw them around publicly. Even worse, she called me out.
I open my phone and send a text to Carl. I need to talk to Erin again.
I start the truck, put it in reverse, and back away from Rosalie’s locked gate.
When I do, I notice another gate, a few yards down in the direction Rosalie nodded when she spoke of Johnny’s land.
I ease down the road toward it. A rusted Posted: No Trespassing sign hangs on the barbed wire fence, but unlike Rosalie’s gate, this gate is open.
I turn the truck around in the narrow space so I’m facing out, not the dead end.
A black mailbox sits on a leaning, weatherworn wooden base next to the gate.
I pull up next to it and roll down my window.
The mailbox opens with a loud squeak. I look around.
Going through someone’s mail is illegal.
But I’m just going to have a quick look.
I pull out a small stack of mail as the truck idles. A grocery store flyer, a hunting catalogue, a book of coupons all addressed to Current Resident. I start to put them back in the mailbox when a white envelope falls from inside the pile into my lap.
I look down at it. Definitely not junk mail. I pick it up. This one is addressed to Johnny Adair. The return address: GWC and a P.O. Box. But it’s the postmark over the stamp that has my breath catching in my throat. This letter was sent from Miami, Florida.