Chapter Twenty-Five
Riverbend, Louisiana
Twenty minutes later, I walk into the hospital, shaky, and thankful I’m not being admitted.
I considered calling the sheriff about the car that ran me off the road, but I don’t have a license plate or really anything other than a careless driver to report.
It was a white sedan similar to Rosalie’s, but I didn’t see the driver.
And even though Rosalie is angry, she doesn’t seem like the type to use that tactic. Her brother, though . . . maybe.
The elevator arrives, and I hop on.
Of course it could have been a distracted driver, looking at their cell phone and not realizing how close they were getting to me. Just a random moment. But so far, in this town, nothing has felt random.
I exit the elevator onto the seventh floor.
In room 704, my father is propped up in the hospital bed and Debby is on the green sofa with Erin sitting next to her. Carl stands beside Erin and looks horrified when I walk in.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I say to Erin as I enter.
“Oh my,” Debby says.
Carl meets me halfway. “Your father called Erin,” he says.
I look at my father, and he nods. “Why would you do that?” I say to him.
“I figured if I needed to make a statement, your network would be the one to go to.”
“You should have come to me,” I say. Something in my voice sounds close to whining, and I cringe at the sound of it. A little girl whose father has ignored her.
“I’m not here to cause any trouble,” Erin says.
I turn to her. “He’s in a hospital bed, Erin. He can talk to you when he gets home.”
“I feel fine,” my father says, and I shoot him a look.
“He feels fine,” Debby says, and I want to shake them both and tell them to get a grip. They have no idea what they are doing.
“Is this your idea of how to be a reporter?” I say to Erin.
“Does anyone need a Diet Coke?” Debby says, getting up. “I need a Diet Coke.”
“No,” Erin and I say at the same time.
Seeing Erin sitting here in the same room as my father thumps a nerve I didn’t even realize was exposed, and then something worse happens.
I remember when I pulled an all-nighter to drive from the scene in Broken Bayou to Fort Worth, Texas, to interview Dr. Willa’s mother.
A woman who was in a nursing home, hooked up to oxygen, and I walked into her room and started peppering her with questions.
Willa was furious when she found out. Now I understand why.
This is not okay. Erin being here is not okay.
And not just because of the story she’s digging into but because he’s my father, and although he understands a lot, he doesn’t understand how this works.
How his words will forever be recorded and can come back to haunt him at any time.
“We’ll set up an interview with you,” I say to Erin. “But not today.”
She looks to my father. “Judge Meade, are you okay with that or would you rather talk now?”
He looks from her to me and back to her. Her politeness is unnerving.
Erin’s phone buzzes, and she looks down at it. “You’re in luck,” she says, looking back up. “We will be waiting to do this after all.” She turns to Carl. “We need to go. Now.”
She gathers her purse and thanks my father for his time, and I follow her and Carl to the elevator.
“What is going on?” I say.
Erin presses the down button. “Maybe we can talk at the hotel,” she says. “I need to get ready.”
“Ready for what?”
The elevator arrives, and she and Carl walk in. Erin turns to me and holds her hand out so the doors won’t close. “I’ve got the scoop on something.”
“What scoop?” I say, my heart racing.
Erin smiles. “The results are back on the skull.”
When the elevator doors start to close again, Erin pushes them back with a loud clang.
She stares at me long enough to make it uncomfortable.
She starts to say something, then stops.
She removes her arm from the elevator doors, and as the doors shut, she smiles again and says, “See you at the hotel.”
I look at the silver doors for a moment as I process her words. Definitely an invitation. I’m not sure what’s more surprising, that soft-spoken Erin got the scoop on it or that she invited me to be a part of it. I certainly wouldn’t have invited her.
I walk back to my father’s hospital room, and Debby is on the sofa again, sipping on a can of Diet Coke.
“Did you run her off?” Debby says.
“No. She had to be somewhere.”
“You sure do come in hot, Rita,” she says between sips.
“I’m sorry. Have we met?” I say with enough sarcasm for even Debby to get it.
“Mm-hmm,” she says, giving me a look.
“All right,” my father says. “Rita, I didn’t think it’d be a problem to talk with her. She said you two work together.”
“We do. But you have to be careful with reporters,” I say.
“Yep. Uh-huh,” Debby says to my father. “Hon, those reporters can be trouble.” Then she gives me a smile.
It’s a small gesture, but I take it and smile back. Like it or not, Debby is here to stay. And the way she is looking at my father tells me she loves him. Maybe there’s even a part of her that loves me too. We just haven’t taken the time to figure it out. I haven’t taken the time.
I came charging into this room ready for a fight, ready to confront him about the secret he’s kept from me.
But speaking to him while he is in a hospital gown again has taken the wind out of my sails.
So instead of confronting him like I planned, I give him a hug and tell him I’m here if he needs me.
But am I? So far it’s safe to say I haven’t been.
I’ve been too caught up in the past to help in the present, allowing Heather and that skull to distract me.
But, at this point, it feels like more than a distraction, more than an avoidance mechanism.
It feels like a calling. Almost as if some magnetic beacon buried deep under that old school flipped on and started sucking me toward it.
Maybe my connection to Poison Wood wasn’t as severed as I thought it was.
Maybe one silky thread remained, tethering me to it.
And now the school is tired of its secrets and spitting them back out for me to play with.
I whip into the valet at the Kingston Hotel and walk through the sliding glass doors to see Grant sitting in the corner, holding a coffee go-cup. He glances up and smiles at me.
I pull out my phone and text him.
Did Johnny return the car?
I walk around to the elevator, and my phone dings.
No. He’s still missing.
I step onto the elevator and press the button for the fourth floor.
I don’t like this. I don’t like any part of it. Johnny missing, Erin talking to my father, strangers running me off the road. On top of that, I’m now carrying around the knowledge my father is not afraid to lie to protect me.
The elevator door opens, and I step out into a hive of activity.
The common room on the fourth floor has turned into a makeshift newsroom, and Erin is like a miniature conductor at the center.
Her small frame and quiet voice are deceptive.
I’ve never seen a woman who doesn’t have to yell to be heard.
An intern is nodding as she gives the girl commands.
Here we go.
Erin spots me as I walk in and stops mid-sentence. As others in the room recognize me, they stop talking as well. The hum of conversations softens, then stops. Carl looks up from the far corner of the sofa with a laptop in his lap.
I walk to him.
Some of the faces in the room I recognize; some belong to strangers. I weave through their silent stares to Carl. He pats the sofa next to him, and I sit.
“That was a fun entrance,” he says.
I shrug. “I do my best.”
Erin walks to where we are sitting. She studies me a moment, then looks at Carl before turning her attention back to me.
“Today’s going to be very important, Rita. I want you and I to work together on this.”
She’s treading lightly, like I’m a skittish animal that may bolt if she tries to pet me. Smart woman.
“What do you think?” she says.
“I’m in.” Then I add, “Why, though?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you including me? I know you don’t have to. What’s in it for you?”
She laughs. “What’s in it for me? Getting to work with you. That’s what’s in it for me.”
I glance at Carl, then back to her. “What?”
“Rita, I’ve followed your career since I started J-school. I’ve always dreamed of working with you. You inspired me to find my voice, and I know it’s not as loud as yours—”
Carl laughs, and I punch his leg.
“Strong as yours,” Erin says, eyeing him. “No way I’m going to be in the same city as you, whether you are part of the story or not, and not work with you.”
“I . . . I’m speechless,” I say. “And that’s saying a lot.”
Investigative reporters work together all the time, but I’ve never had another reporter, much less a woman, ask me to work with them. Especially after the stunt I pulled by not giving Dom the full story behind the story.
“Dom’s not going to okay it,” I say. “He doesn’t want me anywhere near this.”
“Let me handle Doom,” she says, using his nickname. “Okay?”
I nod. “I’m sorry I wasn’t completely upfront from the beginning with all of this,” I say. “I thought you were pissed at me.”
“I was,” she says. “Until I wasn’t. Look, reporters are humans too. Even though a lot of people out there say otherwise.” She smiles. “We make mistakes. And I believe you’ll correct the one you made. I want to give you a chance to do that.”
I look at Carl and back to Erin. “Wow.”
“Deal?” she says.
“Deal.”
She smacks her hands together. “Great. I’ll be right back.” She walks to a table on the far side of the room and starts working on a laptop.
I turn back to Carl and tell him about my drive to the hospital.
He sits up straighter. “Shit, Rita.”
“Yeah. And I’ve seen Rosalie driving a similar car.” I keep the fact I saw that car after a B and E at Poison Wood to myself. No need to send him and Erin running from our new deal.
“What do you think that’s about? I mean was it just to scare you or worse?”
“Probably just to scare me,” I say. “Which it did. But I don’t know why.”
“Maybe it was a message to back off the story. Maybe you know something, but you don’t know what it is.”
I nod. “Both are possible. I’m definitely getting closer to something.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t like it. I’m working with Erin now, so you don’t have anyone watching your back.”
“I’m glad you still care about my back,” I say.
He rolls his eyes. “C’mon, now. Course I do.”
Erin returns to the sofa with her laptop and sets it on the table. “Are you ready for this?” she says to me and to Carl.
I nod, but I have no idea what I’m ready for. “You said at the hospital the results were back on the skull.”
She nods and pulls up a link on her email. “Detective Lane Gautreaux’s already gotten this information in Natchitoches. I’ve spoken to her and told her I have a source at Faces who sent them to me as well,” Erin says. “That lab hustled and got it done in record time. I’m going live at eleven.”
Her eyes are bright and alert. I know that look well. I also know this scoop could have been mine, but I don’t feel envy tugging at me as I think that. I don’t feel anything.
Erin continues, tapping on the keys. “The condition of the skull indicated blunt force trauma was the cause of death. And . . .” She turns the screen so Carl and I can see it. “Voilà.”
A computer-generated picture appears, and there he is, from his thinning hair to his bulging brown eyes. Just as I suspected.
“Hello, Archibald,” I say.