Chapter Twenty-Two
Piedmont, Louisiana
A sound coming from the woods snaps me back to attention—the sound of an approaching car.
I open my phone and take a picture of the envelope, then shove the mail back in the mailbox as the sound gets closer. It’s coming from the dirt driveway leading away from the gate.
I shut the mailbox and press the gas pedal.
The truck lurches forward, leaving a cloud of dust in my wake.
One I hope dissipates before that car makes it to the mailbox.
I steer the truck right onto the narrow road that led me to Rosalie’s.
At the stop sign I turn left, then pull into the parking lot of the Dollar General and hunch down in the driver’s seat.
A moment later a black SUV pulls up to the stop sign. It looks like the one Johnny Adair climbed out of earlier. I grab my sunglasses from my tote and put them on. I’m glad I’m in this old truck. Unlike that SUV, my vehicle fits right in here.
The SUV turns right. Back toward Poison Wood. As it drives south, I back the truck out of the parking space. Decision time.
I look left toward home, look right toward the black SUV that is getting smaller and smaller.
Again I think about making those same mistakes. But talking to Rosalie didn’t turn out to be a mistake at all. If anything, it started the momentum building. And I never stand in the way of momentum.
I turn right and stay a good distance behind them on the two-lane road cutting through the national forest. There are very few cars out here and none between us.
As we get closer to the driveway that leads to the school, the SUV’s brake lights illuminate. My heart rate quickens, and I take my foot off the gas. The black SUV whips onto the rutted driveway to Poison Wood. I exhale and turn in as well.
When I make it to the opening where the school sits, there’s no SUV.
I park the truck and kill the engine. I grab my stun gun from my tote and climb down from the truck.
With my phone in one hand and the stun gun in the other, I walk up to the front of the old school.
Male voices come from the back of the building.
I walk around the south side, but I keep my distance from the stone wall next to me.
It’s like I can feel an energy coming off it, something toxic I don’t want to absorb.
As I ease closer to the corner, the voices become clearer.
I pause, listen. I can’t make out words, but I can make out inflection.
It’s Grant, and the other voice sounds a lot like Johnny Adair.
I put my thumb on the red button on the side of my Taser, and I step around the corner.
The black SUV is parked off to one side. Grant and Johnny are standing next to it.
Grant sees me first, and his mouth falls open. Johnny turns away from whatever he’s looking at in the woods, and his eyes widen as if he wishes he were the one holding a weapon.
“Hello, Grant,” I say to Grant; then I look at Johnny. “Hello, Johnny.”
“What are you doing here?” Grant says.
“You and I will talk about that later,” I say. “For now, I’d like to talk to Johnny.”
Johnny’s eyes dart in every direction.
“It’s okay, Johnny,” Grant says to him. “I know her.”
I raise my eyebrows. Boy, does he know me.
“I know her too,” Johnny says. “And it’s not okay.”
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” I tell Johnny.
Grant looks at my left hand. “Then put that down,” he says.
I look down at the Taser. “No way.” Johnny Adair may be innocent of one crime, but that doesn’t mean he’s innocent of the other one.
I will my legs to keep me upright. A siren buried deep in my central nervous system is wailing.
I tell myself I’m safe. That Grant is here and I’m safe.
But my every instinct says run as I study the massive size of Johnny Adair’s arms. His giant hands look as if, with one hard tug, he could dislocate my shoulder.
The kind of strength that would make it easy to dispose of a body.
“Can we talk?” I say to Johnny. “I just spoke with your sister.”
He looks down at me with narrowed eyes. “I told y’all to leave my sister alone.”
I take a step back. “I spoke with her off the record. I wasn’t there as a reporter.”
Grant looks between us, then focuses on me. “You’re a reporter?”
I study his face to see if he’s joking, but he looks serious.
“I thought you said you knew her,” Johnny says. “That’s Rita Meade.”
Grant shows no sign of recognizing my name, and my name coming from Johnny’s mouth is unsettling.
Johnny looks at me and says, “I watch you.”
I take another step back. Those three words can mean anything. I’ve had my fair share of stalkers over the years, the worst of which was a man I found sitting in my living room one morning holding a kitten and a knife. I ran from the home and moved two weeks later.
I think about the headlights I saw at the farm the other night, the tire tracks in the mud, but Johnny wasn’t out then.
Johnny starts walking around the far side of the school in the direction of the cottage.
Grant and I exchange a look. Then Grant jogs to catch up with him, and they both disappear around the side of the school. He doesn’t know this place. He doesn’t feel the memories leaking from its molded brick like blood from an oozing wound.
I could take this opportunity to leave. Turn around and drive home.
The adrenaline that’s kept me going this long today is no longer fueling me.
My legs feel weak and shaky. I’m exhausted and hungry and in need of a hair of the dog.
But instead of listening to my body, I listen to that inner drive that tells me if I stop moving, something will catch me that could be worse than what I’m chasing.
By the time I catch up, Grant and Johnny are standing in front of the cottage, staring at what was once the front door.
“I built this place,” Johnny says.
His voice shakes. His demeanor has changed, and for a horrified second I think he is going to start crying.
A man crying is not something I want to witness.
This man crying is not something I want to witness.
Tears are trouble, and if Judge Mac Meade were here, he’d say Straighten up and fly right.
There’s no time for that. But I find myself reaching out to Johnny’s massive arm and touching it.
Just like I reached out for Marshall Sanders’s daughter.
A moment, a connection, I normally don’t allow myself.
He looks at my hand, and I jerk it back as if I were burned.
“Sorry,” I say.
Johnny walks through the cottage entrance and disappears. The wood pops and moans under his weight, but I don’t hear any crashes.
Grant is next to me, shuffling from one foot to another in the cold shadow created by the school.
“We have a lot to discuss,” I say.
“Yes, we do,” he says without looking at me.
Johnny reemerges from the cottage, holding something in his giant hand. Something that cues my body again for fight or flight and dials up the headache behind my ear into a ripping jolt of pain.
“What’s that?” Grant says.
A strange sound escapes my mouth.
Grant looks between Johnny and me. “What’s going on?”
Johnny looks at me, and I answer for him. “That’s the coat Heather Hadwick was wearing the night she disappeared.” I stare at the red coat in Johnny’s giant hands, and every hair on my arms stands on end. “Did you send your sister here to look for that?”
Johnny’s eyes widen but he doesn’t answer me.
“Johnny?” Grant says.
“What are you doing with that coat?” I say to Johnny.
Grant looks between us. “Okay, maybe we need to find a place where we can all talk. Johnny, what do you think?”
“How the hell did the police not find that?” I say, but the answer comes instantly. Police miss evidence all the time, especially when they come from a department that doesn’t handle a lot of crimes. Even evidence in large cities gets missed. But this coat getting missed is big.
“Someone told me it was important,” Johnny says.
“Who?” I say, but I have a feeling I now know who else Laura Sanders contacted.
“It’s my insurance,” Johnny says.
“Johnny,” Grant says.
I tilt my head. “Insurance for what?”
“I’m not going back,” he says. “I’ll die before I go back.”
“You’re not going back anywhere,” Grant says.
Birds trill and twitter in the limbs above us, and clouds move over the sun, dropping the temperature.
“Why do you think you’d have to go back?” I ask Johnny.
“Because no one is going to believe me.”
“About what?” I say.
“About what happened that night?”
“This isn’t about Heather, is it?” I say, my mouth going dry. “This is about the skull.”
Johnny stares down at me, and for a moment I think he’s going to lunge at me, but he doesn’t. He turns and runs.